The discrepancy-attribution hypothesis: I. The heuristic basis of feelings of familiarity

B. W. A. Whittlesea and L. D. Williams (1998, 2000) proposed the discrepancy-attribution hypothesis to explain the source of feelings of familiarity. By that hypothesis, people chronically evaluate the coherence of their processing. When the quality of processing is perceived as being discrepant from that which could be expected, people engage in an attributional process; the feeling of familiarity occurs when perceived discrepancy is attributed to prior experience. In the present article, the authors provide convergent evidence for that hypothesis and show that it can also explain feelings of familiarity for nonlinguistic stimuli. They demonstrate that the perception of discrepancy is not automatic but instead depends critically on the attitude that people adopt toward their processing, given the task and context. The connection between the discrepancy-attribution hypothesis and the "revelation effect" is also explored (e.g., D. L. Westerman & R. L. Greene, 1996).     

When increased group identification leads to outgroup liking and cooperation: the role of trust

Two studies explored the influence of group identification and the functional relations between groups on outgroup liking. In a laboratory study, Study 1 (N = 112) found that outgroup liking was highest when group identification was high and relations between groups were cooperative, but outgroup liking was lowest when group identification was high and relations were competitive. In a field replication of Study 1, Study 2 (N = 181) similarly found more liking with high group identification and cooperative relations between groups. Additional analyses revealed that the Identification x Relations interactions found in Studies 1 and 2 were mediated by outgroup trust. We discuss how trust is an important factor for predicting outgroup bias for both high and low group identification.     

Distractor familiarity leads to more efficient visual search for complex stimuli

Previous reports suggest that distractor familiarity plays an important role in determining visual search efficiency. However, the specific tasks used in those studies limit the extension of their findings to real-world situations and everyday images. In the present study, subjects engaged in a prolonged period of search experience as a control of their level of familiarity with a large set of target and distractor images. Reaction times and search slopes decreased dramatically over this period, especially for trials with a large target eccentricity and many distractors. Following extended practice, search among familiar distractors was more efficient than search among unfamiliar distractors. Furthermore, we found that familiar targets were located more efficiently than unfamiliar targets and that subjects were faster at locating targets that they had experienced in the majority of the search trials. These results show that prolonged visual experience facilitates processing of both target and distractor items during search.     

Face learning with multiple images leads to fast acquisition of familiarity for specific individuals

Matching unfamiliar faces is a difficult task. Here we ask whether it is possible to improve performance by providing multiple images to support matching. In two experiments we observe that accuracy improves as viewers are provided with additional images on which to base their match. This technique leads to fast learning of an individual, but the effect is identity-specific: Despite large improvements in viewers’ ability to match a particular person's face, these improvements do not generalize to other faces. Experiment 2 demonstrated that trial-by-trial feedback provided no additional benefits over the provision of multiple images. We discuss these results in terms of familiar and unfamiliar face processing and draw out some implications for training regimes.     

The contribution of familiarity to recognition memory is a function of test format when using similar foils

Patient Y.R., who suffered hippocampal damage that disrupted recollection but not familiarity, was impaired on a yes/no (YN) object recognition memory test with similar foils. However, she was not impaired on a forced-choice corresponding (FCC) version of the test that paired targets with corresponding similar foils (Holdstock et al., 2002). This dissociation is explained by the Complementary Learning Systems (CLS) neural-network model (Norman & O'Reilly, 2003) if recollection is impaired but familiarity is preserved. The CLS model also predicts that participants relying exclusively on familiarity should be impaired on forced-choice noncorresponding (FCNC) tests, where targets are presented with foils similar to other targets. The present study tests these predictions for all three test formats (YN, FCC, FCNC) in normal participants using two variants of the remember/know procedure. As predicted, performance using familiarity alone was significantly worse than standard recognition on the YN and FCNC tests, but not on the FCC test. Recollection in the form of recall-to-reject was the major process driving YN recognition. This adds support to the interpretation of patient data, according to which hippocampal damage causes a recollection deficit that leads to poor performance on the YN test relative to FCC.     

Mind-set and close relationships: when bias leads to (In)accurate predictions

The authors investigated whether mind-set influences the accuracy of relationship predictions. Because people are more biased in their information processing when thinking about implementing an important goal, relationship predictions made in an implemental mind-set were expected to be less accurate than those made in a more impartial deliberative mind-set. In Study 1, open-ended thoughts of students about to leave for university were coded for mind-set. In Study 2, mind-set about a major life goal was assessed using a self-report measure. In Study 3, mind-set was experimentally manipulated. Overall, mind-set interacted with forecasts to predict relationship survival. Forecasts were more accurate in a deliberative mind-set than in an implemental mind-set. This effect was more pronounced for long-term than for short-term relationship survival. Finally, deliberatives were not pessimistic; implementals were unduly optimistic.     

Why and when justice sensitivity leads to pro- and antisocial behavior

People differ in how injustice-sensitive they are either as victims or as observers. Whereas observer sensitivity is positively related to cooperative behavior, victim sensitivity promotes antisocial and egoistic behavior. The present article investigates the dynamics underlying these effects. Participants played an online-based public goods game and were informed about the number of people who violated a fairness rule in previous rounds of the game (no, some, or many violators). High victim-sensitive participants contributed less to the public good even in the “some violators” condition. High observer-sensitive participants contributed more to the public good even in the “many violators” condition. The findings correspond with the sensitivity to mean intentions model and cannot be explained by individual differences in general trust.     

Recollection and familiarity through the looking glass: when old does not mirror new

The authors use the qualitative differences logic to demonstrate that 2 separate memory influences underlie performance in recognition memory tasks, familiarity and recollection. The experiments focus on the mirror effect, the finding that more memorable stimulus classes produce higher hit rates but lower false-alarm rates than less memorable stimulus classes. The authors demonstrate across a number of experiments that manipulations assumed to decrease recollection eliminate or even reverse the hit-rate portion of the mirror effect while leaving the false-alarm portion intact. This occurs whether the critical distinction between conditions is created during the test phase or manipulated during the study phase. Thus, when recollection is present, it dominates familiarity so that the hit-rate portion of the mirror effect primarily reflects recollection; when recollection is largely absent, the opposite pattern associated with the familiarity process emerges.     

Dishonest deed, clear conscience: when cheating leads to moral disengagement and motivated forgetting

People routinely engage in dishonest acts without feeling guilty about their behavior. When and why does this occur? Across four studies, people justified their dishonest deeds through moral disengagement and exhibited motivated forgetting of information that might otherwise limit their dishonesty. Using hypothetical scenarios (Studies 1 and 2) and real tasks involving the opportunity to cheat (Studies 3 and 4), the authors find that one's own dishonest behavior increased moral disengagement and motivated forgetting of moral rules. Such changes did not occur in the case of honest behavior or consideration of the dishonest behavior of others. In addition, increasing moral saliency by having participants read or sign an honor code significantly reduced unethical behavior and prevented subsequent moral disengagement. Although dishonest behavior motivated moral leniency and led to forgetting of moral rules, honest behavior motivated moral stringency and diligent recollection of moral rules.     

The shadow of familiarity: a contributor to the intersubjective field

This paper examines the influence of familiarity on the progress of analysis. It is proposed that familiarity is a particular aspect of the intersubjective field which emerges over time and begins to shape and influence the behaviours, perceptions, thoughts, and feelings of the participants. It is also proposed that states of familiarity can have facilitative or defensive functions in an analytic relationship and that it is an influence co-created in the field. The experience of familiarity operates as background to our various foreground concerns in analytic work and therefore exists primarily as an implicit, rather than explicit, experience in analysis. Defensive familiarity often creates a feeling of relatedness that is subtly unrelated, a form of pseudo-intimacy. Parallels between defensive familiarity and related concepts are examined including defences against the unknown, role responsiveness, romantic love, the image of the stranger, and unformulated experience. This paper concludes with two case examples and a discussion of procedural knowledge in the implicit domain as an explanatory framework for the understanding of familiarity states in the analytic setting.     

Heading judgments in minimal environments: the value of a heuristic when invariants are rare

Observers made systematic heading judgments in two experiments simulating their translation through an environment with only two trees. When those trees converged or decelerated apart, observers tended to follow the invariant information and make heading judgments outside the near member of the pair. When those trees accelerated apart, however, observers tended to follow the heuristic information and make judgments outside the far member, although this result was tempered by the angular separation between the trees and their relative acceleration. The simultaneous existence and use of invariants and heuristics are discussed in terms of different metatheoretical approaches to perception.     

Licking and liking: The assessment of hedonic responses in rodents

Affective processes are a key determinant of behaviour: At its simplest, liked stimuli are approached while disliked stimuli are avoided. Although assessing hedonic responses in nonverbal animals can be difficult, one relatively tractable approach relies on detailed analyses of rodents' consummatory behaviour. Rodents typically produce rhythmic sets of licks that can be grouped into clusters on the basis of the intervals between licks. The mean number of licks in a cluster (cluster size) is directly related to the concentration of palatable and unpalatable solutions. These relationships suggest that lick cluster size might be a useful index of an animal's hedonic reaction to the solution being consumed. I begin by reviewing studies of conditioned flavour preference and aversion that support the idea that lick cluster size can provide useful information about rats' hedonic reactions. I then describe how this methodology has been used to address previously intractable issues in the investigation of contrast effects as well as revealing an analogue of effort justification effects that, in humans, are commonly explained in terms of cognitive dissonance reduction. Finally, I consider how lick analysis might provide information about hedonic responses in animal models of human psychiatric disorders. In all these cases, how an animal did something was particularly informative about why it was doing it.

     

When 'fit' leads to fit, and when 'fit' leads to fat: how message framing and intrinsic vs. extrinsic exercise outcomes interact in promoting physical activity

A unique aspect of exercise is that people may choose to engage in it to achieve a variety of outcomes, ranging from extrinsic (appearance, health) to intrinsic (satisfaction, enjoyment). We examined how the impact of gain- vs. loss-framed messages depends on the type of outcome emphasised. Drawing from regulatory focus theory (Higgins, E.T. (1997). Beyond pleasure and pain. American Psychologist, 52, 1280-1300; Higgins, E.T. (2000). Making a good decision: Value from fit. American Psychologist, 55, 1217-1230), we predicted that gain-framed messages would 'fit' with intrinsic outcomes and loss-framed messages would 'fit' with extrinsic outcomes, but the effect of such fit on physical activity would depend on the participants' need for cognition (NC). We tested these hypotheses with a sample of 176 sedentary young adults who read an exercise message with randomly assigned frame (gain/loss) and outcome (intrinsic/extrinsic). Participants provided daily reports of exercise over the following week. The predicted interaction between frame, outcome and NC was found (p=0.001) such that a 'fit' message promoted somewhat, but not significantly, greater exercise for those with high NC, but a 'non-fit' message promoted significantly greater exercise for those with low NC. Furthermore, differences in physical activity were partially mediated by attitudes towards exercise. Findings shed light on how the outcomes and motivations associated with physical activity shape people's behavioural responses to framed health communications.     

Episodic memory updating: The role of context familiarity

We previously demonstrated that spatial context is a powerful reminder that can trigger memory updating (Hupbach, Hardt, Gomez, & Nadel in Learning & Memory, 15, 574–579 2008). In the present study, we asked whether the familiarity of the spatial context modulates the role of spatial context as a reminder. Since context familiarity can be easily manipulated in children, we chose 5-year-olds as study participants. In two experiments, we demonstrated robust memory-updating effects in children. Spatial context triggered incorporation of new information into old memories only when the context was unfamiliar. In highly familiar spatial environments (children’s homes), spatial context did not initiate memory updating. Other reminders (the experimenter and a reminder question) became highly effective in familiar contexts. These findings shed further light on the specific conditions that trigger memory updating and support the view that the mechanisms underlying it are similar in children and adults.     

Preferences for idioms: Restrictions due to lexicalization and familiarity

Two experiments examined the hypothesis that preferences for figurative interpretations of common idioms depend on both lexicalization and the degree of familiarity of the phrase's idiomatic meaning. Experiment I reported that native English speakers understood both high and low familiarity idioms as lexicalized units while nonnatives did not. Experiment 2 found that preferences for idiomatic interpretations depended on the degree of familiarity only when idioms were recognized as lexicalized units. It was concluded that both lexicalization and familiarity contribute to the likelihood of idiomatic preferences, while only lexicalization contributes significantly to the comprehension of idiomatic meanings.     

The priority heuristic: making choices without trade-offs

Bernoulli's framework of expected utility serves as a model for various psychological processes, including motivation, moral sense, attitudes, and decision making. To account for evidence at variance with expected utility, the authors generalize the framework of fast and frugal heuristics from inferences to preferences. The priority heuristic predicts (a) the Allais paradox, (b) risk aversion for gains if probabilities are high, (c) risk seeking for gains if probabilities are low (e.g., lottery tickets), (d) risk aversion for losses if probabilities are low (e.g., buying insurance), (e) risk seeking for losses if probabilities are high, (f) the certainty effect, (g) the possibility effect, and (h) intransitivities. The authors test how accurately the heuristic predicts people's choices, compared with previously proposed heuristics and 3 modifications of expected utility theory: security-potential/aspiration theory, transfer-of-attention-exchange model, and cumulative prospect theory.     

The source of feelings of familiarity: the discrepancy-attribution hypothesis

Many investigators have observed that the feeling of familiarity is associated with fluency of processing. The authors demonstrated a case in which the feeling of familiarity did not result from fluency per se; they argued that it resulted instead from perceiving a discrepancy between the actual and expected fluency of processing (B. W. A. Whittlesea & L. D. Williams, 1998). In this article, the authors extend that argument. They observed that stimuli that are experienced as strongly familiar when presented in isolation are instead experienced as being novel when presented in a rhyme or semantic context. They interpreted that result to mean that in those other contexts, the subjects brought a different standard to bear in evaluating the fluency of their processing. This different standard caused the subjects to perceive their performance not as discrepant, but as coherent in one case and incongruous in the other. The authors suggest that the perception of discrepancy is a major factor in producing the feeling of familiarity. They further suggest that the occurrence of that perception depends on the task in which the person is engaged when encountering the stimulus, because that task affects the standard that the person will apply in evaluating their processing.     

Looking time: The effects of stimulus complexity and familiarity

During a 10 min. stimulus familiarization period, three groups of 60 Ss each received either 0, 10, or 20 sec. of familiarization on each of 30 experimental stimuli: 10 each of low, medium, and high stimulus complexity. All Ss then viewed the experimental stimuli in a second task, during which they could look at each stimulus for as long as they wished (free looking). For half the Ss in each group, free looking was administered immediately after the familiarization period. The remaining Ss received free looking 48 hr. later. The results replicated earlier research which has shown that free looking time is inversely related to stimulus familiarity, and directly related to stimulus complexity. Unlike earlier findings, the data suggested that with a 48 hr. delay between familiarization and free looking, a stimulus can, at least partially, recover from the decrement in looking time produced by 10 sec. of familiarization.     

The sensorimotor contributions to implicit memory, familiarity, and recollection

The sensorimotor contributions to memory for prior occurrence were investigated. Previous research has shown that both implicit memory and familiarity draw on gains in stimulus-related processing fluency for old, compared with novel, stimuli, but recollection does not. Recently, it has been demonstrated that processing fluency itself resides in stimulus-specific motor simulations or reenactment (e.g., covert pronouncing simulations for words as stimuli). Combining these lines of evidence, it was predicted that stimulus-specific motor interference preventing simulations should impair both implicit memory and familiarity but leave recollection unaffected. This was tested for words as verbal stimuli associated to pronouncing simulations in the oral muscle system (but also for tunes as vocal stimuli and their associated vocal system, Experiment 2). It was found that oral (e.g., chewing gum), compared with manual (kneading a ball), motor interference prevented mere exposure effects (Experiments 1-2), substantially reduced repetition priming in word fragment completion (Experiment 3), reduced the familiarity estimates in a remember-know task (Experiment 5) and in receiver-operating characteristics (Experiment 6), and completely neutralized familiarity measured by self-reports (Experiment 4) and skin conductance responses (Experiment 7), while leaving recollection and free recall unaffected (across Experiments 1-7). This pattern establishes a rare memory dissociation in healthy participants, that is, explicit without implicit memory or recognizing without feeling familiar. Implications for embodied memory and neuropsychology are discussed.