Contribution of perceptual fluency to recognition judgments.

Following a shallow (count vowels) or deep (read) study task, old and new words were tested for both fluency of perception and recognition memory. Subjects first identified a test word as it came gradually into view and then judged it as old or new. Old words were identified faster than new words, indicating implicit, perceptual memory for old words. Independently of this effect, words judged old were identified faster than words judged new, especially after shallow study. Eight experiments examined the possible causal relationship between perceptual fluency and recognition judgements. Experiments 1 to 4 showed that fast identifications per se do not promote old judgments. Accelerating the identification of test items by semantically priming them or making them come more quickly into view did not affect recognition judgments. Experiment 5 showed that the usual association of fast identifications with old judgments is not an artifact of item selection because the association disappeared when the identifications and judgements were segregated into different phases of the test task. Experiments 6 and 7 showed tha the likelihood of old judgments increases directly with the pretested perceptibility of test words, but only after shallow study. Experiment 8 showed that the dependency of recognition judgments on perceptual fluency continues to hold when the requirement to identify the words before judging them is eliminated. We conclude that fluency of perception contributes to recognition judgments, but only when the fluency is produced naturally (e.g., through perceptual memory) and explicit memory is minimal.     

On the contribution of perceptual fluency and priming to recognition memory

Repetition priming has been shown to be independent of recognition memory. Thus, the severely amnesic patient E.P. has demonstrated intact stem completion priming and perceptual identification priming, despite at-chance performance on recognition memory tasks. It has also been shown that perceptual fluency can influence feelings of familiarity, in the sense that items perceived more quickly tend to be identified as familiar. If studied items are identified more fluently, due to perceptual priming, and fluency leads to familiarity, why do severely amnesic patients perform no better than chance on recognition memory tasks? One possibility is that severely amnesic patients do not exhibit normal fluency. Another possibility is that fluency is not a sufficiently strong cue for familiarity. In two experiments, 2 severely amnesic patients, 3 moderately amnesic patients, and 8 controls saw words slowly clearing from a mask. The participants identified each word as quickly as possible and then made a recognition (old/new) judgment. All the participants exhibited fluency, in that old responses were associated with shorter identification times than new responses were. In addition, for the severely amnesic patients, priming was intact, and recognition memory performance was at chance. We next calculated how much priming and fluency should elevate the probability of accurate recognition. The tendency to identify studied words rapidly (.6) and the tendency to label these rapidly identified words old (.6) would result in 36% of the studied words being labeled old. Other studied words were identified slowly (.4) but were still labeled old (.4), resulting in an additional 16% of studied words labeled old. Thus, the presence of fluency increases the probability of accurate recognition judgments to only 52% (chance = 50%). This finding explains why amnesic patients can exhibit both priming and fluency yet still perform at chance on recognition tests.     

Effects of perceptual fluency on judgments of truth.

Statements of the form "Osorno is in Chile" were presented in colors that made them easy or difficult to read against a white background and participants judged the truth of the statement. Moderately visible statements were judged as true at chance level, whereas highly visible statements were judged as true significantly above chance level. We conclude that perceptual fluency affects judgments of truth.     

Empirical tests of the recognition heuristic

The recognition heuristic postulates that individuals should choose a recognized object more often than an unrecognized one whenever recognition is related to the criterion. This behavior has been described as a one‐cue, noncompensatory decision‐making strategy. This claim and other assumptions were tested in four experiments using paired‐comparison tasks with cities and other geographical objects. The main results were (1) that the recognized object was chosen more often than the unrecognized one when the recognition cue was valid; (2) that participants' behavior did not reflect the recognition validity of their own knowledge; (3) that a less‐is‐more effect (i.e., better performance with less knowledge) was either absent or of only small size; and (4) that judgments were influenced by further knowledge, which could even compensate for the recognition cue. In sum, the recognition cue represents an important piece of knowledge in paired comparisons, but apparently not the only one. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

It just felt right: The neural correlates of the fluency heuristic

Simple heuristics exploit basic human abilities, such as recognition memory, to make decisions based on sparse information. Based on the relative speed of recognizing two objects, the fluency heuristic infers that the one recognized more quickly has the higher value with respect to the criterion of interest. Behavioral data show that reliance on retrieval fluency enables quick inferences. Our goal with the present functional magnetic resonance imaging study was to isolate fluency-heuristic-based judgments to map the use of fluency onto specific brain areas that might give a better understanding of the heuristic’s underlying processes. Activation within the claustrum for fluency heuristic decisions was found. Given that claustrum activation is thought to reflect the integration of perceptual and memory elements into a conscious gestalt, we suggest this activation correlates with the experience of fluency.     

The impact of subjective recognition experiences on recognition heuristic use: A multinomial processing tree approach

The recognition heuristic (RH) theory states that, in comparative judgments (e.g., Which of two cities has more inhabitants?), individuals infer that recognized objects score higher on the criterion (e.g., population) than unrecognized objects. Indeed, it has often been shown that recognized options are judged to outscore unrecognized ones (e.g., recognized cities are judged as larger than unrecognized ones), although different accounts of this general finding have been proposed. According to the RH theory, this pattern occurs because the binary recognition judgment determines the inference and no other information will reverse this. An alternative account posits that recognized objects are chosen because knowledge beyond mere recognition typically points to the recognized object. A third account can be derived from the memory-state heuristic framework. According to this framework, underlying memory states of objects (rather than recognition judgments) determine the extent of RH use: When two objects are compared, the one associated with a “higher” memory state is preferred, and reliance on recognition increases with the “distance” between their memory states. The three accounts make different predictions about the impact of subjective recognition experiences—whether an object is merely recognized or recognized with further knowledge—on RH use. We estimated RH use for different recognition experiences across 16 published data sets, using a multinomial processing tree model. Results supported the memory-state heuristic in showing that RH use increases when recognition is accompanied by further knowledge.     

Relative fluency and illusions of recognition memory

A hallmark of the experience of perceptual fluency is the sense that a familiar stimulus seems to pop out from its background, such as when one notices the face of a friend in a crowd of strangers. This experience suggests that fluency-based illusions of recognition memory may be more powerful when there are only a few fluent stimuli presented in a recognition context. The results of the present study were consistent with this prediction. The magnitude of fluency-based illusions of recognition memory was inversely related to the percentage of fluent stimuli on a recognition test. Furthermore, standard fluency manipulations did not impact recognition responses in between-participants designs. The results suggest that illusions of recognition memory may be more powerful when fluency is encountered in a context in which the surrounding stimuli are less fluent.     

Negative priming and perceptual fluency: more than what meets the eye

In two priming experiments, we manipulated the perceptual quality of the target or the distractor on the prime trial; the stimuli were repeated or novel. Negative priming was found to be contingent on stimulus repetition, because it was obtained with repeated items but not with novel items. Prime trial perceptual degradation modulated negative priming for repeated items but had no effect on priming in ignored repetition conditions using novel stimuli. These patterns were obtained even when the effect of perceptual degradation was (1) greater than the effect of stimulus repetition and (2) greater for novel words than for repeated words. Although stimulus repetition increases perceptual fluency, the activation of perceptual representations by itself is not sufficient to produce negative priming. Instead, we suggest that negative priming is a manifestation of an activation-sensitive inhibitory mechanism that functions to reduce response competition.     

Negative priming and perceptual fluency: More than what meets the eye

In two priming experiments, we manipulated the perceptual quality of the target or the distractor on the prime trial; the stimuli were repeated or novel. Negative priming was found to be contingent on stimulus repetition, because it was obtained with repeated items but not with novel items. Prime trial perceptual degradation modulated negative priming for repeated items but had no effect on priming in ignored repetition conditions using novel stimuli. These patterns were obtained even when the effect of perceptual degradation was (1) greater than the effect of stimulus repetition and (2) greater for novel words than for repeated words. Although stimulus repetition increases perceptual fluency, the activation of perceptual representations by itself is not sufficient to produce negative priming. Instead, we suggest that negative priming is a manifestation of an activation-sensitive inhibitory mechanism that functions to reduce response competition.     

Development of perceptual expertise in emotion recognition

How do children’s early social experiences influence their perception of emotion-specific information communicated by the face? To examine this question, we tested a group of abused children who had been exposed to extremely high levels of parental anger expression and physical threat. Children were presented with arrays of stimuli that depicted the unfolding of facial expressions, from neutrality to peak emotions. The abused children accurately recognized anger early in the formation of the facial expression, when few physiological cues were available. The speed of children’s recognition was associated with the degree of anger/hostility reported by the child’s parent. These data highlight the ways in which perceptual learning can shape the timing of emotion perception.     

Units of episodic memory in perceptual recognition

Two studies examined the cognitive units of sentence memory using a perceptual recognition task. Four candidate cognitive units were considered: concepts, propositions, integrated propositions, and nonintegrated propositions. Subjects first received a list of acquisition sentences and then were asked to reproduce sentences presented under a white-noise mask. These masked sentences were replicas of the acquisition sentences, were formed of recombined clauses from the acquisition sentences, or were formed of recombined words from the acquisition sentences. Reproduction accuracy was employed as the dependent measure. Results supported propositions (operationalized by clauses) as cognitive units of episodic memory. No conclusive evidence was obtained for concepts, integrated propositions, or nonintegrated propositions as cognitive units. The utility of perceptual recognition tasks for studying the cognitive units of episodic memory is discussed.     

Models of ecological rationality: the recognition heuristic

One view of heuristics is that they are imperfect versions of optimal statistical procedures considered too complicated for ordinary minds to carry out. In contrast, the authors consider heuristics to be adaptive strategies that evolved in tandem with fundamental psychological mechanisms. The recognition heuristic, arguably the most frugal of all heuristics, makes inferences from patterns of missing knowledge. This heuristic exploits a fundamental adaptation of many organisms: the vast, sensitive, and reliable capacity for recognition. The authors specify the conditions under which the recognition heuristic is successful and when it leads to the counterintuitive less-is-more effect in which less knowledge is better than more for making accurate inferences.     

A signal detection analysis of the recognition heuristic

The recognition heuristic uses a recognition decision to make an inference about an unknown variable in the world. Theories of recognition memory typically use a signal detection framework to predict this binary recognition decision. In this article, I integrate the recognition heuristic with signal detection theory to formally investigate how judges use their recognition memory to make inferences. The analysis reveals that false alarms and misses systematically influence the performance of the recognition heuristic. Furthermore, judges should adjust their recognition response criterion according to their experience with the environment to exploit the structure of information in it. Finally, the less-is-more effect is found to depend on the distribution of cue knowledge and judges’ sensitivity to the difference between experienced and novel items. Theoretical implications of this bridge between the recognition heuristic and models of recognition memory are discussed.     

On the psychology of the recognition heuristic: retrieval primacy as a key determinant of its use

The recognition heuristic is a prime example of a boundedly rational mind tool that rests on an evolved capacity, recognition, and exploits environmental structures. When originally proposed, it was conjectured that no other probabilistic cue reverses the recognition-based inference (D. G. Goldstein & G. Gigerenzer, 2002). More recent studies challenged this view and gave rise to the argument that recognition enters inferences just like any other probabilistic cue. By linking research on the heuristic with research on recognition memory, the authors argue that the retrieval of recognition information is not tantamount to the retrieval of other probabilistic cues. Specifically, the retrieval of subjective recognition precedes that of an objective probabilistic cue and occurs at little to no cognitive cost. This retrieval primacy gives rise to 2 predictions, both of which have been empirically supported: Inferences in line with the recognition heuristic (a) are made faster than inferences inconsistent with it and (b) are more prevalent under time pressure. Suspension of the heuristic, in contrast, requires additional time, and direct knowledge of the criterion variable, if available, can trigger such suspension.     

Nice and easy does it: How perceptual fluency moderates the effectiveness of imagined contact

Recent research has identified several moderators of the effectiveness of imagined contact — a relatively new prejudice-reducing intervention. However, research to date has not examined the meta-cognitive experience of doing an imagined contact task (independent of the content of the instruction set), or the ways in which this meta-cognitive experience could moderate the task's effectiveness. In two experiments, using a font manipulation, we demonstrated that altering the difficulty of the imagined contact task moderates its effects on prejudice. In both experiments, when the instructions were easy to read, participants who imagined intergroup interactions subsequently reported less prejudice than participants in the control condition. However, when the font was difficult to read participants who imagined intergroup interactions subsequently reported as much prejudice or even more prejudice than participants in a control condition. Implications for imagined contact theory, research and application are discussed.     

Bayesian face recognition and perceptual narrowing in face-space

During the first year of life, infants' face recognition abilities are subject to 'perceptual narrowing', the end result of which is that observers lose the ability to distinguish previously discriminable faces (e.g. other-race faces) from one another. Perceptual narrowing has been reported for faces of different species and different races, in developing humans and primates. Though the phenomenon is highly robust and replicable, there have been few efforts to model the emergence of perceptual narrowing as a function of the accumulation of experience with faces during infancy. The goal of the current study is to examine how perceptual narrowing might manifest as statistical estimation in 'face-space', a geometric framework for describing face recognition that has been successfully applied to adult face perception. Here, I use a computer vision algorithm for Bayesian face recognition to study how the acquisition of experience in face-space and the presence of race categories affect performance for own and other-race faces. Perceptual narrowing follows from the establishment of distinct race categories, suggesting that the acquisition of category boundaries for race is a key computational mechanism in developing face expertise.     

The heuristic basis of remembering and classification: fluency, generation, and resemblance

People use 3 heuristics (fluency, generation, and resemblance) in remembering a prior experience of a stimulus. The authors demonstrate that people use the same 3 heuristics in classifying a stimulus as a member of a category and interpret this as support for the idea that people have a unitary memory system that operates by the same fundamental principles in both remembering and nonremembering tasks. The authors argue that the fundamental functions of memory are the production of specific mental events, under the control of the stimulus, task, and context, and the evaluation of the coherence of those events, which controls the subjective experience accompanying performance.