Familiarity breeds contempt for the road ahead: The real-world effects of route repetition on visual attention in an expert driver

The majority of journeys by car take place on familiar roads, with many routes being driven time and time again. This familiarity has been linked to mind wandering and reduced attention to specific elements of the visual scene (e.g. speed signs). The current study presents on-road eye tracking data from a driving instructor who drove the same route 28 times, incorporating two types of suburban roads, dual and multi-lane carriageways, and a country road. Data reveal a significant positive correlation between the number of times the same route is navigated and off-road dwell time across all five road sections. In addition, route familiarity was associated with decreasing dwell time on safety-relevant aspects of the road ahead in four out of the five sections. These data suggest that route familiarity can lead to undesirable changes in visual attention on real roads, even for expert drivers under observation.     

How does horizontal and vertical navigation influence spatial memory of multifloored environments?

Although a number of studies have been devoted to 2-D navigation, relatively little is known about how the brain encodes and recalls navigation in complex multifloored environments. Previous studies have proposed that humans preferentially memorize buildings by a set of horizontal 2-D representations. Yet this might stem from the fact that environments were also explored by floors. Here, we have investigated the effect of spatial learning on memory of a virtual multifloored building. Two groups of 28 participants watched a computer movie that showed either a route along floors one at a time or travel between floors by simulated lifts, consisting in both cases of a 2-D trajectory in the vertical plane. To test recognition, the participants viewed a camera movement that either replicated a segment of the learning route (familiar segment) or did not (novel segment—i.e., shortcuts). Overall, floor recognition was not reliably superior to column recognition, but learning along a floor route produced a better spatial memory performance than did learning along a column route. Moreover, the participants processed familiar segments more accurately than novel ones, not only after floor learning, but crucially, also after column learning, suggesting a key role of the observation mode on the exploitation of spatial memory.     

Global and local spatial landmarks: their role during foraging by Columbian ground squirrels (Spermophilus columbianus)

Locating food and refuge is essential for an animal's survival. However, little is known how mammals navigate under natural conditions and cope with given environmental constraints. In a series of six experiments, I investigated landmark-based navigation in free-ranging Columbian ground squirrels (Spermophilus columbianus). Squirrels were trained individually to find a baited platform within an array of nine identical platforms and artificial landmarks set up on their territories. After animals learned the location of the food platform in the array, the position of the latter with respect to local artificial, local natural, and global landmarks was manipulated, and the animal's ability to find the food platform was tested. When only positions of local artificial landmarks were changed, squirrels located food with high accuracy. When the location of the array relative to global landmarks was altered, food-finding accuracy decreased but remained significant. In the absence of known global landmarks, the presence of a familiar route and natural local landmarks resulted in significant but not highly accurate performance. Squirrels likely relied on multiple types of cues when orienting towards a food platform. Local landmarks were used only as a secondary mechanism of navigation, and were not attended to when a familiar route and known global landmarks were present. This study provided insights into landmark use by a wild mammal in a natural situation, and it demonstrated that an array of platforms can be employed to investigate landmark-based navigation under such conditions.     

Can active navigation be as good as driving? A comparison of spatial memory in drivers and backseat drivers

When driving a vehicle, either the driver or a passenger (henceforth: backseat driver) may be responsible for navigation. Research on active navigation, primarily addressed in virtual environments, suggests that controlling navigation is more central for spatial learning than controlling movement. To test this assumption in a real-world scenario, we manipulated movement control through seating participants in the front or the back position of a tandem bike, and navigation control by presenting differently detailed maps to participants unfamiliar (Experiment 1) or familiar (Experiment 2) with an environment. Landmark knowledge was tested with recognition tasks. For participants unfamiliar with the environment (Experiment 1), passive navigation enabled better landmark recognition than active navigation, but there was no effect of movement control. For participants more familiar with the environment (Experiment 2), there was no effect of navigation control, but drivers showed better landmark recognition than backseat drivers. These findings are discussed in relation to action memory research. Measures of route and survey knowledge demonstrated that good performance resulted from active navigation (Experiment 1-2). Moreover, with regard to these measures, driving compensated for passive navigation if the environment was familiar (Experiment 2). An additional experiment in a lab setting (Experiment 3) validated the manipulation of navigation control and the used tasks and demonstrated the importance of real environment exposure. As our findings suggest, driving may be more relevant for remembering landmarks, but actively controlling navigation (even as a backseat driver) is more relevant for remembering a route than maneuvering a vehicle.     

Individual strategies and release site features determine the extent of deviation in clock-shifted pigeons at familiar sites

When homing from familiar areas, homing pigeons are able to exploit previously acquired topographical information, but the mechanisms behind this ability are still poorly understood. One possibility is that they recall the familiar release site topographical features in association with the home direction (site-specific compass orientation strategy), another that the spatial relationships among landmarks guide their route home (piloting strategy), without relying on the compass mechanism. The two strategies can be put in conflict by releasing clock-shifted birds at familiar locations, in order to highlight which is preferred. We analysed GPS tracks of clock-shifted pigeons, with familiarity controlled at each of three different release sites, and we observed that pigeons can display individual preferences for one of the two orientation strategies and that some characteristic features of the release site have an important role in determining the level of landmark-based homeward orientation.     

Familiarity with the test environment improves escape responses in the crimson spotted rainbowfish, Melanotaenia duboulayi

Animals that are familiar with their environment have been reported to have greater survivorship for a number of reasons related to their knowledge of the terrain, which they recall from memory. In an initial experiment rainbowfish significantly improved their escape response towards a novel trawl apparatus over a sequence of five runs. Escape latencies were still low during a subsequent exposure 11 months after the initial exposure. While part of the improvement in escape success was certainly due to learning associated with the location of the escape route, it is likely that this was aided by habituation to the tank environment and the experimental protocol. In a follow-up experiment, fish that had been kept in the experimental tank for 3 weeks prior to testing, and had become familiar with the test tank, showed significantly lower escape latencies and escaped more often than fish that were not familiar with the test environment. It is suspected that familiarity with the testing arena decreased stress and enabled individuals to detect novel stimuli and devote more attention to them. These findings have significant implications for experimenters studying aspects of animal cognition, such as learning and memory, in laboratory situations. Accepted after revision: 10 August 2001 Electronic Publication     

Featural and configurational processes in the recognition of faces of different familiarity

Previous research suggests that face recognition may involve both configurational and piecemeal (featural) processing. To explore the relationship between these processing modes, we examined the patterns of recognition impairment produced by blurring, inversion, and scrambling, both singly and in various combinations. Two tasks were used: recognition of unfamiliar faces (seen once before) and recognition of highly familiar faces (celebrities). The results provide further support for a configurational-featural distinction. Recognition performance remained well above chance if faces were blurred, scrambled, inverted, or simultaneously inverted and scrambled: each of these manipulations disrupts either configurational or piecemeal processing, leaving the other mode available as a route to recognition. However, blurred/scrambled and blurred/inverted faces were recognised at or near chance levels, presumably because both configurational processing and featural processing were disrupted. Similar patterns of effects were found for both familiar and unfamiliar faces, suggesting that the relationship between configurational and featural processing is qualitatively similar in both cases.     

Memory advantage for produced words and familiar native accents

Our memory is better for words that we have read aloud than for words that we have read silently or have listened to. The present study tested this memory advantage for words with native accent markers that participants were either highly familiar or less familiar. As in previous studies, produced words were subsequently remembered better than listened-to words. In contrast to previous studies that involved a comparison of global foreign accents with standard native accents, in the present study words with highly familiar accent markers were remembered better than words with less familiar accent markers (Experiment 1). The familiar accent advantage was also found when participants could not hear their own productions during the training phase (Experiment 2). When tested with a week delay, produced words were still remembered better than listened-to words, but the advantage for words with familiar accent markers was no longer found (Experiment 3).     

干扰材料的熟悉性和认知方式对语篇阅读的影响

采用熟悉词和不熟悉词为干扰材料,考察了干扰材料的熟悉性对语篇阅读的影响.实验第一阶段要求不同认知方式被试朗读插入熟悉度不同干扰材料的短文,考查被试的阅读效率;第二阶段采用学习—自由回忆任务考查不同提示条件下在短文中使用过的干扰词和新词的学习效果.结果发现:(1)对场独立者而言,熟悉词的干扰作用明显大于不熟悉词,而对场依存者而言,熟悉词和不熟悉词的干扰作用无差异;(2)在提示条件下,被试对干扰词的回忆量大于对新词的回忆量.研究结果表明,在语篇阅读过程中,与场依存者相比,熟悉的干扰材料对场独立者的影响更大;熟悉词比不熟悉词产生更大干扰的原因可能是由于其激活了读者更多的经验,而非具有加工的优势.     

Familiar Verbs Are Not Always Easier Than Novel Verbs: How German Pre‐School Children Comprehend Active and Passive Sentences

Many studies show a developmental advantage for transitive sentences with familiar verbs over those with novel verbs. It might be that once familiar verbs become entrenched in particular constructions, they would be more difficult to understand (than would novel verbs) in non‐prototypical constructions. We provide support for this hypothesis investigating German children using a forced‐choice pointing paradigm with reversed agent‐patient roles. We tested active transitive verbs in study 1. The 2‐year olds were better with familiar than novel verbs, while the 2½‐year olds pointed correctly for both. In study 2, we tested passives: 2½‐year olds were significantly below chance for familiar verbs and at chance for novel verbs, supporting the hypothesis that the entrenchment of the familiar verbs in the active transitive voice was interfering with interpreting them in the passive voice construction. The 3½‐year olds were also at chance for novel verbs but above chance with familiar verbs. We interpret this as reflecting a lessening of the verb‐in‐construction entrenchment as the child develops knowledge that particular verbs can occur in a range of constructions. The 4½‐year olds were above chance for both familiar and novel verbs. We discuss our findings in terms of the relative entrenchment of lexical and syntactic information and to interference between them.     

Evidence for a non-lexical influence on children's auditory repetition of familiar words

This paper examines evidence for a nonlexical influence on children's repetition of real words. We investigate the extent to which two computational models of auditory repetition can simulate the performance of 68 children aged between 5 and 11?years-old when they are attempting to repeat familiar words. Both computational accounts were derived from Foygel and Dell's (J Mem Lang 43:182-216, 2000) semantic-phonological model of picture-naming. Results showed that a dual-route model in which a lexical and a nonlexical route work together to repeat familiar words (Hanley et?al. in Cogn Neuropsychol 21:147-158, 2004) provided an accurate simulation of children's repetition, whereas Foygel and Dell (J Mem Lang 43:182-216, 2000) single lexical-route model under-predicted performance. The only exception was the repetition performance of 5?year-old children, which was over-predicted by the dual-route model. It is argued that at 5?years of age, some children have available both a lexical and a nonlexical repetition route but the output of the two routes does not summate when real words are being repeated. Some young children may lack the attentional skills that would enable them to co-ordinate the activity of the lexical and nonlexical repetition routes.     

Effect of Landmark Type on Route Memory in Unfamiliar Homogenous Environment

Landmarks are objects that have salience that is either visual, semantic or structural. Recent researches have pointed out observer characteristics that make a landmark salient. These have been termed cognitive salience. This study investigated the effects of two components of cognitive salience, familiarity and degree of recognition, on route memory. The first experiment examined the effect of familiarity of landmark and ease with which it could be recognized (degree of recognition) on remembering a route, while in the second experiment only degree of recognition was varied while holding familiarity constant. Two types of landmarks (text and image) were shown to participants who had to recollect course taken at decision points during wayfinding tasks. Participants were shown navigation videos generated using Squareland Model. The videos had six decision points each having one landmark, and the participants were required to indicate the direction of the turn when the landmarks were shown again. Results showed that pictorial landmarks (high degree of recognition) were better facilitators of route memory than textual landmarks (low degree of recognition). Results also indicated that familiar buildings served as better landmarks than unfamiliar buildings. In the second experiment another level of degree of recognition (medium) was added and compared with high and low levels. Results confirmed the findings of the first experiment with high degree of recognition being the best facilitator followed by medium and low degree of recognition. Our findings lend empirical support to the concept of cognitive salience proposed by Caduff and Timpf (Cogn Process 9:249–267, 2008) and highlight the importance of observer characteristics in determining what constitutes as good landmark.     

Cognitive mechanisms of visuomotor transformation in movement imitation: Examining predictions based on models of apraxia and motor control

When we observe a movement and then reproduce it, how is this visual input transformed into motor output? Studies on stroke patients with apraxia suggest that there may be two distinct routes used for gesture imitation; an indirect route that recruits stored movement memories (motor programs) and a direct route that bypasses them. The present study examined 30 healthy adults ages 18–80 (mean age = 44.0 years, SD = 19.5) to learn how motor programs are recruited or bypassed in movement imitation depending upon task conditions (whether familiar letters or novel shapes are imitated) and perceptual factors (whether shapes or letters are perceived). Subjects were asked to imitate the movements of a model who formed shapes and letters on a sheer mesh screen, and to report whether they perceived the task as a shape or a letter. Movements were recorded using a Vicon motion analysis system, and subsequently analyzed to determine the degree of difference between the demonstrated and produced movements. As predicted, letter perception on the letter tasks resulted in increased temporal error when the demonstrated stroke order conflicted with subjects’ habitual pattern of letter formation. No such interference effects were observed when the letter tasks were perceived as shapes. These findings are discussed in the context of current theories on imitation, and implications for rehabilitation and motor re-learning are presented.     

A serial test of the laterality of familiar face recognition

The purpose of the present study was to address the issue of laterality of familiar face recognition. Seventy-two participants judged familiar faces presented laterally or centrally for their "faceness," familiarity, occupation, and name (which represent four stages of familiar face processing) using one of three response modes-verbal, manual, or combined. The pattern of reaction times (RTs) implied a serial process of familiar face recognition. Centrally presented stimuli were recognized faster than laterally presented stimuli. No RT differences were found between the left and right visual fields (VFs) across all judgments and response modes. The findings were interpreted as supporting the notion that there are no significant hemispheric differences in familiar face recognition.     

The muddy waters of idiom comprehension

Target sentences containing familiar and less familiar idioms used either literally or figuratively or containing no idioms were presented repeatedly for 100 msec per presentation. Each sentence was preceded by a short paragraph. The number of presentations required to read each target sentence and the cued recall of those target sentences containing idioms were recorded. Control sentences required fewer presentations to be read than all sentences except those with less familiar idioms used literally. Sentences with less familiar idioms used literally required fewer presentations to be read than those with less familiar idioms used figuratively and those with familiar idioms used literally. Familiar idioms were recalled significantly more often than less familiar idioms. The results of this study were unexpected and a model of idiom comprehension incorporating these results and those of other researchers is proposed. This model suggests that idioms fall along continuums of figurative meaning familiarity and literal meaning likelihood, and that their positions along these continuums determines whether the figurative or the literal meaning is processed initially.     

Spatial cognition and behavior in young and elderly adults: implications for learning new environments

Young and elderly women's performances on scene-recognition, distance-ranking, route-execution, and map-placement tasks were compared in familiar and novel supermarkets to seek evidence of an age-related deficit in spatial cognitive performance, a benefit of environmental familiarity, and an age-related decrement in the efficiency of spatial learning. Results suggested that younger adults acquired spatial information in a novel environment more quickly than did elderly adults, but findings indicated neither an age-related deficit in spatial cognitive performance nor a benefit of environmental familiarity. Scores from psychometric tests produced low correlations with cognitive task performance. Of the behaviors observed during exploration and route execution, only 1 was significantly correlated with cognitive task performance. Standing without scanning was negatively correlated with performance on 3 tasks for elderly adults only.     

Developmental differences in cognitive mapping: Configurational knowledge of familiar large-scale environments

In order to investigate the development of cognitive mapping of familiar large-scale environments. First-, fifth-, and eighth-grade children were asked to make bearing and distance estimates to six targets from three sighting locations in their school. Correlations between estimated and actual bearings and distances were extremely high at all grade levels, indicating that (a) children at all grade levels could reliably make such estimates, and (b) route knowledge of even the youngest children was quite high. Bearing accuracy increased between first- and fifth-grade and showed little improvement thereafter. Increases in a measure of configurational accuracy were found between first- and fifth-grade and between fifth- and eighth-grade. Differential accuracy as a function of the demands of particular sighting locations was found only for the younger children.