Grit Herzmann

At some point in all of our lives, we have wondered why we can remember one thing but not another, or why we cannot recognize a person who remembers us right away. My research focuses on the neural processes that give rise to abilities in memory and perception, and investigates how environmental factors and traits of an individual influence these processes. To study such brain-behavior relationships, I combine event-related potentials (ERPs), which measure the brain activation of cognitive processes, with behavioral indices of memory and perception.

In my current lines of research, I investigate the so-called other-race effect, the phenomenon that people remember faces better if they are of the same race as they are. This effect has been shown to be very robust, but also malleable through extensive experience with people from other races.

One line of research investigates the underlying mechanisms of the other-race effect by manipulating learning situations and testing whether or not they are able to reduce the other-race effect. Another line of research examines whether celebrity status, that is remote experience with people through media but not personal contact, can minimize the other-race effect. Understanding the perceptual and memory processes that underlie the other-race effect in face memory may be able to diminish racial biases present in everyday life.

• PSYC-324 Cognitive Neuroscience with lab
• First Year Seminar
• NEUR-200 Introduction to Neuroscience
• PSYC-230 Human Neuropsychology
• PSYC-340 Face Recognition
• NEUR-451 Independent Study Thesis
• PSYC29916 Neurodiversity

Herzmann, G., *Ogle, O. & Curran, T. (2022). More elaborate processing of own-race faces and less elaborate processing of other-race faces contributes to the other-race effect in face memory. British Journal of Psychology: Special Issue. http://doi.org/10.1111/bjop.12581

Sendek, K., Herzmann, G., Pfeifer, V., & Lai, V. (2021). The impact of acquisition context on the affective perception of swear words. Cognitive, Affective, and Behavioral Neuroscience. doi.org/10.3758/s13415-021-00951-4.

Kacin, M. & Herzmann, G. (2021). Facial expressions of anger improve neural correlates of memory retrieval but not encoding of same-race but not other-race faces. Neuropsychologia, 159, 107915.

Minor, G. & Herzmann, G. (2019). Effects of negative emotion on neural correlates of item and source memory during encoding and retrieval. Brain Research, 1718, 32-45.

Herzmann, G., *Minor, G., & Curran, T. (2018). Neural evidence for the contribution of holistic processing but not attention allocation to the other-race effect on face memory. Cognitive, Affective, and Behavioral Neuroscience, 18, 1015-1033.

Herzmann, G., *Minor, G., & *Adkins, M. (2017). Neural correlates of memory encoding and recognition for own-race and other-race faces in an associative-memory task. Brain Research, 1655, 194-203.

Herzmann, G. (2016). Increased N250 amplitudes for other-race faces reflect more effortful processing at the individual level. International Journal Psychophysiology, 105, 57-65.

Herzmann, G. & Curran, T. (2013). Neural correlates of the in-group memory advantage on the encoding and recognition of faces. PLoS ONE 8: e82797.

Herzmann, G., Willenbockel, V., Tanaka, J. W., & Curran, T. (2011). The neural correlates of memory encoding and recognition of own-race and other-race faces. Neuropsychologia, 49, 3103-3115.

Herzmann, G., Kunina, O., Sommer, W., & Wilhelm, O. (2010). Individual differences in face cognition: Brain-behavior relationships. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 22, 571-589.

Herzmann, G., Danthiir, V., Schacht, A., Sommer, W., & Wilhelm, O. (2008). Toward a comprehensive test battery for face processing: Assessment of the tasks. Behavior Research Methods, 40, 840-857.

Herzmann, G., Schweinberger, S. R., Sommer, W., & Jentzsch, I. (2004). What’s special about personally familiar faces? A multimodal approach. Psychophysiology, 41, 688-701.

Note: * denotes undergraduate author.