Spatial judgments of exocentric extents in an open-field situation: familiar versus unfamiliar size.

Carlson and Tassone (1971) found that an object of familiar size presented in an outdoor setting and viewed at an appreciable distance is judged to be more distant than an unfamiliar object. Three experiments examined whether object familiarity also affects spatial judgments of exocentric extents presented under conditions comparable to those of Carlson and Tassone's experiments. The markers of the extents were either familiar or unfamiliar objects. In Experiment 1, subjects reproduced the perceived extents of depth intervals by adjusting a comparison egocentric extent, and in Experiment 2, subjects also compared the relative depths of two equally long extents. In Experiment 3, the two equally long extents were presented in the subjects' frontoparallel plane, and the subjects reported which of these two extents appeared longer and farther away. The results of these experiments indicate that familiar size does not affect the perceived depths or lengths of exocentric extents viewed under naturalistic conditions.     

Driving tests with older patients: effect of unfamiliar versus familiar vehicle

The aim of the study was to study the effect, for older license holders, of taking a driving test with an unfamiliar vehicle, as compared to their own cars. The study population consisted of licensed patients 65–85 years referred to the Traffic Medicine Centre (TrMC), Huddinge University Hospital, for an evaluation of their medical and cognitive fitness to drive. In the clinical practice of TrMC, driving tests have been used since 1997, with inspectors from the Swedish National Road Administration (SNRA) acting as evaluators. Initially, patients were allowed to use their own cars. From the beginning of the year 2000, however, dual brakes were made mandatory and most evaluations were then made with SNRA cars. When comparing the outcomes of driving tests from the period prior to 2000 (n=96) and after 2000 (n=69), it was found that the number of drivers who failed the test increased by 16%. Also, those who passed the test after more than one trial decreased by 20%. The potential of the neuropsychological assessment to correctly classify drivers in outcome groups was considerably reduced in the period after 2000. These results support the view that, for older drivers with cognitive deterioration, the need to adapt to an unfamiliar vehicle represents a supplementary cognitive load that may compromise their driving ability and the validity of the assessment. A measure aimed only at increasing the safety of examiners and examinees thus had an unintended side-effect that is detrimental to older clinical populations.     

Chicks' responses to familiar stimuli in unfamiliar environments

The aim of the present experiments was to find out how imprinted chicks respond to familiar figures in unfamiliar settings. Experiment I showed that chicks individually imprinted with a coloured stationary disc did not readily approach it when later confronted with it in a larger pen—a confirmation of an earlier finding. Experiment II showed a similar disruptive effect when the chicks were individually presented with a stationary object (a ball) in a pen differing in colour from the original one. Experiment III, however, in which chicks were imprinted to a moving ball, showed unattenuated imprinting when testing took place in a strange environment. It was concluded that the disruptive effect of neophobia can be overcome when a high degree of figure salience ensures powerful imprinting.     

Allocation of attention in familiar and unfamiliar traffic scenarios

Increased travel worldwide has led to an escalation of road traffic accidents, particularly among tourists driving in unfamiliar, opposite traffic flow driving scenarios. Ability to allocate attention to driving-relevant information and regions is predicted to be the main cause of tourist accidents, with a lack of attention directed to areas of space that are inhibited in familiar traffic conventions but relevant in overseas driving. This study investigated the influence of habit and expectancy on driver behaviour and allocation of attention in familiar (left-hand traffic; LHT) and unfamiliar (right-hand traffic; RHT) contexts. Twenty-eight drivers from the UK were presented with video clips of driving taken in the UK and in Poland and asked to judge whether it was safe to enter a roundabout in each clip. Half were given information about differences in LHT and RHT situations prior to the task. Judgement performance was not influenced by this information, however accuracy was higher for LHT and the RHT task was rated more difficult, supporting the notion that driving in unfamiliar surroundings is more effortful. In LHT both groups made more fixations to the right side of each roundabout, however in RHT, whilst the control group allocated attention in the same way, the intervention group made significantly more fixations to the left. Pre-drive preparatory information can therefore increase attention to the most relevant areas of space in unfamiliar driving contexts. This has implications for drive tourism and it is suggested that such information is made more explicit to drivers.     

Infant social behavior in front of a mirror and in front of a familiar and an unfamiliar peer

In this study, we explored the differences in infant social behaviors in front of the mirror and in front of a familiar and an unfamiliar peer. We assumed that infant social behaviors in front of the mirror constitute mainly an exploration of the mirror image characteristics. Our observations were videotaped and coded according to definitions of social behavior in infant-infant situations. The results obtained indicate that 6- to 13-month-old infants display significantly more frequent social behaviors in front of a mirror than in front of a familiar or an unfamiliar peer. These behaviors are characterized by tactile contact with the mirror surface, adapting the hand to this surface, and very frequent coordinated social behaviors. This pattern of social behaviors in front of the mirror is discussed and linked to the exploration of distinctive characteristics of the self-reflected image such as perfect synchronicity of movement and two-dimensionality.     

Order of feature recognition in familiar and unfamiliar faces

Three experiments measured order of processing for single faces presented to the left or right visual field (VF) using a same-different matching task. In contrast to earlier studies, the stimuli in the present experiments were carefully matched for overall similarity prior to the actual experiments. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that a significant top-to-bottom order of processing occurred for line drawings of unfamiliar faces but not for line drawings of familiar faces. Experiment 3 found evidence supporting top-to-bottom processing for unfamiliar photographic face stimuli. The photographic stimuli in Experiment 3 were matched more quickly when presented in the left VF (right hemisphere); however, this VF asymmetry was not related to previously reported differences in order of processing. It is suggested that under some conditions faces presented to the right hemisphere may be processed more like familiar faces than faces presented to the left hemisphere; however, this difference is not critical for the left VF (right hemisphere) superiority often found in face recognition tasks.     

Demonstrating how unfamiliar faces become familiar using a face matching task

Two experiments examine a novel method of assessing face familiarity that does not require explicit identification of presented faces. Earlier research (Clutterbuck & Johnston, 2002; Young, Hay, McWeeny, Flude, & Ellis, 1985) has shown that different views of the same face can be matched more quickly for familiar than for unfamiliar faces. This study examines whether exposure to previously novel faces allows the speed with which they can be matched to be increased, thus allowing a means of assessing how faces become familiar. In Experiment 1, participants viewed two sets of unfamiliar faces presented for either many, short intervals or for few, long intervals. At test, previously familiar (famous) faces were matched more quickly than novel faces or learned faces. In addition, learned faces seen on many, brief occasions were matched more quickly than the novel faces or faces seen on fewer, longer occasions. However, this was only observed when participants performed “different” decision matches. In Experiment 2, the similarity between face pairs was controlled more strictly. Once again, matches were performed on familiar faces more quickly than on unfamiliar or learned items. However, matches made to learned faces were significantly faster than those made to completely novel faces. This was now observed for both same and different match decisions. The use of this matching task as a means of tracking how unfamiliar faces become familiar is discussed.     

Electrodermal discrimination of familiar but not unfamiliar faces in prosopagnosia

It has been previously shown that prosopagnosics can electrodermally "recognize" faces they cannot verbally identify and with which they feel no familiarity. This study extended previous results by showing that electrodermal discrimination of faces exists only on a famous face identification task, and not on a matching-to-sample task involving unfamiliar faces. This suggests that electrodermal recognition reflects the activation of stored identity-specific information built up on the basis of past contact with faces, and provides a psychophysiological distinction between familiar and unfamiliar face processing. Implications for cognitive models of face recognition, and for understanding the nature of prosopagnosia, are discussed.     

The perception of sensation seeking in familiar and unfamiliar others

In Study I, 20 heterosexual couples filled out the Sensation Seeking Scale (Form V) for themselves and as they thought their partner would. The mean difference between the predicted score for one's partner and the partner's actual scale was -2.40 for the males and -1.10 for the females; neither of which significantly differed from 0. The predicted scores and actual scores were highly correlated (r = 0.58 for males and r = 0.66 for females). The results support the idea that people are accurate in their estimations of sensation seeking in familiar others.In study II, the ability to evaluate sensation seeking in unfamiliar others was investigated. Segments from four commercial movies involving six different characters were shown to subjects. After viewing one of these segments subjects filled out a sensation seeking scale as they thought the movie character would. A high level of inter-observer agreement was observed for these ratings. Moreover, the ratings for each of the six characters were congruent with the experimenters' prior judgements of each character's level of sensation seeking. These data support the hypothesis that rapid and accurate judgements of the sensation seeking trait in unfamiliar others are possible.     

Early stuttering as a type of language difficulty

EDUCATIONAL OBJECTIVES: The reader will learn about and be able to describe (1) the characteristics of incipient stuttering, (2) how it differs from stuttering in older children, and (3) the relationship of such early stuttering to developing language skills.     

Decision-making quality of younger and older adults in familiar and unfamiliar domains

Age-related differences in purchasing decisions were examined as a function of age and familiarity. On each trial, participants received purchasing options which varied in quality but ultimately cost the same amount of money. On half the trials, participants made decisions about items familiar to younger adults and on the other half of the trials, participants made decisions about products familiar to older adults. The participants’ task was to choose the option that provided the best value for the money. We were particularly interested in participants’ performance when inferencing was required to select the optimal option from the two choices. Younger adults outperformed older adults in unfamiliar but not familiar domains. It appeared that both younger and older adults used inferencing and elaborative processing to make the best decision in familiar domains but that only younger adults used inferencing and elaborative processing in unfamiliar domains.     

Infant perception of audio-visual speech synchrony in familiar and unfamiliar fluent speech

We investigated the effects of linguistic experience and language familiarity on the perception of audio-visual (A-V) synchrony in fluent speech. In Experiment 1, we tested a group of monolingual Spanish- and Catalan-learning 8-month-old infants to a video clip of a person speaking Spanish. Following habituation to the audiovisually synchronous video, infants saw and heard desynchronized clips of the same video where the audio stream now preceded the video stream by 366, 500, or 666 ms. In Experiment 2, monolingual Catalan and Spanish infants were tested with a video clip of a person speaking English. Results indicated that in both experiments, infants detected a 666 and a 500 ms asynchrony. That is, their responsiveness to A-V synchrony was the same regardless of their specific linguistic experience or familiarity with the tested language. Compared to previous results from infant studies with isolated audiovisual syllables, these results show that infants are more sensitive to A-V temporal relations inherent in fluent speech. Furthermore, the absence of a language familiarity effect on the detection of A-V speech asynchrony at eight months of age is consistent with the broad perceptual tuning usually observed in infant response to linguistic input at this age.     

Effect of electric shock on rats' activity in familiar and unfamiliar environments

It is found that electric shock delivered before exposure to a Y-maze reduces the activity of rats whether the maze is familiar or unfamiliar. Increasing familiarity with the maze reduces activity for shocked and unshocked rats. It is argued that this finding presents difficulties for theories according to which exploratory behaviour depends on fear.     

Repetition priming and the haptic recognition of familiar and unfamiliar objects

In four experiments, we examined the haptic recognition of 3-D objects. In Experiment 1, blindfolded participants named everyday objects presented haptically in two blocks. There was significant priming of naming, but no cost of an object changing orientation between blocks. However, typical orientations of objects were recognized more quickly than nonstandard orientations. In Experiment 2, participants accurately performed an unannounced test of memory for orientation. The lack of orientation-specific priming in Experiment 1, therefore, was not because participants could not remember the orientation at which they had first felt an object. In Experiment 3, we examined haptic naming of objects that were primed either haptically or visually. Haptic priming was greater than visual priming, although significant cross-modal priming was also observed. In Experiment 4, we tested recognition memory for familiar and unfamiliar objects using an old-new recognition task. Objects were recognized best when they were presented in the same orientation in both blocks, suggesting that haptic object recognition is orientation sensitive. Photographs of the unfamiliar objects may be downloaded from www.psychonomic.org/archive.     

Effects of familiar and unfamiliar asynchronous music on treadmill walking endurance

To assess effects of familiarity of music on treadmill endurance, 15 female undergraduates in sports science performed an incremental treadmill walking task on three separate occasions while listening to Familiar Music, Unfamiliar Music, and White Noise. A repeated-measures analysis of variance indicated that participants walked for significantly longer when accompanied by Familiar and Unfamiliar Music in comparison to White Noise (p<.01). Although participants rated Familiar Music as significantly more motivating than Unfamiliar music (p<.05), no significant differences were found between the two music conditions for treadmill endurance. Heart rates did not appear to be influenced by music during treadmill walking or on completion of the task.     

The discovery of a miniature linguistic system: Function words and comprehension of an unfamiliar language

Two experiments investigated two complementary hypotheses: (a) The presence of semantically unimportant function words in sentences will not slow down the way subjects, unfamiliar with the language, extract the meaning of those sentences, provided suprasegmental cues are present, and conversely (b) the omission of such function words—as in native speakers' simplified speech to nonnative speakers—will not necessarily facilitate the task of meaning extraction, contrary to popular belief. In Experiment I, Dutch adult subjects were exposed to sentences in a miniature artificial language (MAL). In Experiment II, Greek adult subjects were exposed to sentences in an unfamiliar natural language (Dutch). In both experiments, the sentences contained eight words constituting a miniature linguistic system (mls), a system that subjects discovered through an audiovisual, concept-indentification task. The rate by which subjects performed this task was investigated as a function of two linguistic variables: (a) the presence or absence of semantically unimportant function words, and (b) the presence or absence of suprasegmental cues, in the input sentences, respectively. Results from both experiments confirmed the hypotheses (p<.001) The findings are discussed with reference to the linguistic versus cognitive simplicity issue, and to the comprehension versus production issue in language acquisition research. The methodological potential of the experimental paradigm for psycholinguistic research is also discussed.This paper forms part of a doctorate research project concerned with the comprehensibility of foreigner talk, and was supported by the Foundation for Linguistic Research, which is funded by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research, NWO.