Familiarity effects in visual comparison tasks and their implications for studying human intelligence.

Two experiments were carried out to study the effect of prior knowledge on cognitive processes related to human intelligence by examining its role in defining task novelty. In Experiment 1, Ss performed a letter-matching task involving same-different judgments based on 4 rules of sameness: physical identity, form, system, and name. When the stimuli were unfamiliar, performance on the name classification task was correlated with measures of fluid abilities, whereas when the stimuli were familiar, performance on this task was not correlated with measures of fluid abilities. In Experiment 2, Ss performed 3 different forms of a mental rotation task. When the stimuli were unfamiliar, the slope of the rotation function was correlated with a test of fluid ability, whereas when the stimuli were familiar, the slope of the rotation function was not correlated with a test of fluid ability. These results are discussed in terms of their implications for understanding the nature of task complexity and the way knowledge and processing interact in the development of skilled performance.     

The hard-won benefits of familiarity in visual search: naturally familiar brand logos are found faster

Familiar items are found faster than unfamiliar ones in visual search tasks. This effect has important implications for cognitive theory, because it may reveal how mental representations of commonly encountered items are changed by experience to optimize performance. It remains unknown, however, whether everyday items with moderate levels of exposure would show benefits in visual search, and if so, what kind of experience would be required to produce them. Here, we tested whether familiar product logos were searched for faster than unfamiliar ones, and also familiarized subjects with previously unfamiliar logos. Subjects searched for preexperimentally familiar and unfamiliar logos, half of which were familiarized in the laboratory, amongst other, unfamiliar distractor logos. In three experiments, we used an N-back-like familiarization task, and in four others we used a task that asked detailed questions about the perceptual aspects of the logos. The number of familiarization exposures ranged from 30 to 84 per logo across experiments, with two experiments involving across-day familiarization. Preexperimentally familiar target logos were searched for faster than were unfamiliar, nonfamiliarized logos, by 8 % on average. This difference was reliable in all seven experiments. However, familiarization had little or no effect on search speeds; its average effect was to improve search times by 0.7 %, and its effect was significant in only one of the seven experiments. If priming, mere exposure, episodic memory, or relatively modest familiarity were responsible for familiarity’s effects on search, then performance should have improved following familiarization. Our results suggest that the search-related advantage of familiar logos does not develop easily or rapidly.     

Incidental learning as a function of anticipated task difficulty

Three experiments were conducted to demonstrate the effects of motivational arousal, due to anticipated task difficulty, on retention of familiar and unfamiliar incidental materials. Brehm, Wright, Solomon, Silka, and Greenberg (1983) have provided evidence that motivational arousal in immediate anticipation of a task is a nonmonotonic function of task difficulty, with difficult tasks producing a relatively higher level of motivational arousal than easy or impossible tasks. It was predicted that increased motivational arousal would facilitate retention of incidentally presented familiar materials (presumably more easily retained) and interfere with retention of incidentally presented unfamiliar materials (presumably less easily retained). In Study 1, subjects anticipating either an easy or a difficult task were exposed to familiar and unfamiliar first names. The predicted interaction between task difficulty and familiarity on recall of the first names was reliably supported. In Study 2, an impossible task condition was added. The results indicated that an effective impossible condition had not been created. In a third study designed as a procedural modification of Study 2, the predicted nonmonotonic interaction was found. Theoretical implications are discussed.These experiments were ably conducted by Ralph Young, whose help is gratefuly acknowledged. We would like to express our gratitude to Jack Brehm for invaluable suggestions concerning this research.     

Facilitation in Wason’s selection task: Content and instructions

Two experiments investigated the influence of rule content and instructions on subjects’ ability to reason about conditional rules. Experiment 1 had subjects determine whether two rules were “true or false” or whether two rules were being “violated.” Subjects had direct experience with one rule and indirect experience with the other. Performance was superior with direct experiential rules and with violation instructions. Experiment 2 was conducted to determine whether violation instructions could facilitate correct selections with content for which subjects had no experience. Subjects were presented with a familiar and unfamiliar rule. The results were consistent with those of Experiment 1. The possibility of a cognitive trade-off between rule familiarity and instructions is discussed.     

Exposure effects on music preference and recognition

In three experiments, the effects of exposure to melodies on their subsequent liking and recognition were explored. In each experiment, the subjects first listened to a set of familiar and unfamiliar melodies in a study phase. In the subsequent test phase, the melodies were repeated, along with a set of distractors matched in familiarity. Half the subjects were required to rate their liking of each melody, and half had to identify the melodies they had heard earlier in the study phase. Repetition of the studied melodies was found to increase liking of the unfamiliar melodies in the affect task and to be best for detection of familiar melodies in the recognition task (Experiments 1, 2, and 3). These memory effects were found to fade at different time delays between study and test in the affect and recognition tasks, with the latter leading to the most persistent effects (Experiment 2). Both study-to-test changes in melody timbre and manipulation of study tasks had a marked impact on recognition and little influence on liking judgments (Experiment 3). Thus, all manipulated variables were found to dissociate the memory effects in the two tasks. The results are consistent with the view that memory effects in the affect and recognition tasks pertain to the implicit and explicit forms of memory, respectively. Part of the results are, however, at variance with the literature on implicit and explicit memory in the auditory domain. Attribution of these differences to the use of musical material is discussed.     

Inhibition of response mode in task switching

Task inhibition was explored in two experiments that employed a paradigm in which participants switched among three tasks. Two tasks required manual choice responses based on numerical judgment (parity or magnitude), whereas a third task required an unconditional double-press of both response keys. Both experiments showed that switching to a just-abandoned task (n-2 task repetition) generally leads to a performance cost relative to switching to another task. Specifically, this task inhibition effect also occurred for the double-press task, suggesting inhibition of response mode. Prolonging the task-cuing interval showed that advance task preparation reduced only inhibition of the double-press task but not of the choice tasks (Experiment 1). Prolonging the response-cue interval led to a decrease of the inhibition effect in all tasks (Experiment 2), suggesting a time-based release of task inhibition. Together, the experiments support the notion of a response-related component of task inhibition.     

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.     

Tasks of a feather flock together: Similarity effects in task switching

Recent research on task switching has paid little attention to how tasks are represented and how the relations between task representations might affect the executive processes engaged to achieve a task switch. Two experiments investigated the effect of task similarity on task switching. Similarity was defined in terms of shared component operations--attentional control settings in Experiment 1 and response modality in Experiment 2--with tasks sharing more component operations said to be more similar to each other than tasks sharing fewer component operations. Across both experiments, task similarity facilitated task switching, seen in reduced switch costs for switching between similar tasks as opposed to dissimilar tasks. These results indicate that task similarity defined in terms of component operations can be used to define a multidimensional task space in which the executive processes of task selection and implementation are active.     

认知控制的层级性：来自任务切换的脑电证据*

认知控制的主要研究范式之一是任务切换。以往研究发现切换代价受到认知控制层级性的调节, 但鲜有研究探索这一调节过程的动态神经机制。本研究通过嵌套的线索-任务切换范式考察不同层级任务切换代价的差异及其神经机制。在实验中, 要求被试完成高低两种层级任务, 低层级任务要求被试判断数字大小(或奇偶); 高层级任务则须先加工数字的某一语义特征(如当前数字是否是偶数), 然后进行大小判断。行为结果表明, 高层级任务切换代价显著大于低层级任务切换代价。线索锁时的脑电结果表明, 层级效应最早出现于P2成分, 切换效应(切换与重复之差)在CNV成分上受到任务层级的调控, 反映了在任务目标重构阶段给予高层级任务更多的选择性注意以及更高的主动性控制。目标锁时的脑电结果表明, 在N2及慢波(SP)成分上, 高层级任务切换与重复的波幅差异相比低层级任务显著更大, 反映了在抑制旧任务集与重构新反应集的过程中增强的反应性控制。这些结果为任务设置重构论和认知控制的层级性提供了新的证据。     

Task-switching abilities in children with autism spectrum disorder

Task-switching performance is often used as a measure of executive control functions. Various task-switching studies in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) found, in contrast to expectations, no impairments in cognitive flexibility. Here, we studied whether the role of memory for arbitrary task rules can explain these findings, and how studying rule memory can help to generally better understand executive control. We designed a novel task-switching paradigm to separate cognitive flexibility from demand on memory for arbitrary rules, and we compared 19 children with ASD (9 to 16 years old) with an age- and IQ-matched control group. Children with ASD had increased difficulty with task switching only when memorizing arbitrary rules was required. When no arbitrary rules needed to be memorized, they performed accurately and quickly. Nevertheless, they showed less distraction from task-irrelevant stimulus features, suggesting that they represented tasks differently from the children in the comparison group. We conclude that children with ASD have a weaker capacity of forming rule representations, which only leads to performance impairment when they need to memorize arbitrary rules. Further, executive control impairments in ASD seem more complex than hitherto hypothesized due to mutual interactions between memory demand and task representations.     

Switching between tasks and responses: a developmental study

Task switching requires the ability to flexibly switch between task rules and responses, and is sensitive to developmental change. We tested the hypothesis that developmental changes in task switch performance are associated with changes in the facilitating or interfering effect of the previously retrieved stimulus-response (S-R) association. Three age groups (7-8-year-olds, 10-12-year-olds and 20-25-year-olds) performed a two-choice reaction time (RT) task in which spatially compatible or incompatible responses were required. The RT costs associated with switching between tasks were larger when responses were repeated than when responses were alternated. Younger children showed a greater cost than adults when switching between tasks but repeating responses. This age difference decreased when the interval between the previous response and the upcoming stimulus increased. Switch costs were larger when switching to the compatible task than to the incompatible task, but this effect did not differ between age groups. These findings suggest that young children build up stronger transient associations between task sets and response sets, which interfere with their ability to switch to currently intended actions. A similar pattern has previously been observed for older adults (Mayr, 2001), suggesting a common contributor to task switching deficits across the life span.     

Practice makes perfect: familiarity of task determines success in solvable tasks for free-ranging dogs (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Canis lupus familiaris</Emphasis>)

Domestic dogs’ (Canis lupus familiaris) socio-cognitive faculties have made them highly sensitive to human social cues. While dogs often excel at understanding human communicative gestures, they perform comparatively poorly in problem-solving and physical reasoning tasks. This difference in their behaviour could be due to the lifestyle and intense socialization, where problem solving and physical cognition are less important than social cognition. Free-ranging dogs live in human-dominated environments, not under human supervision and are less socialized. Being scavengers, they often encounter challenges where problem solving is required in order to get access to food. We tested Indian street dogs in familiar and unfamiliar independent solvable tasks and quantified their persistence and dependence on a novel human experimenter, in addition to their success in solving a task. Our results indicate that free-ranging dogs succeeded and persisted more in the familiar task as compared to the unfamiliar one. They showed negligible amount of human dependence in the familiar task, but showed prolonged gazing and considerable begging behaviour to the human experimenter in the context of the unfamiliar task. Cognitive abilities of free-ranging dogs thus play a pivotal role in determining task-associated behaviours based on familiarity. In addition to that, these dogs inherently tend to socialize with and depend on humans, even if they are strangers. Our results also illustrate free-ranging dogs’ low competence at physical cognitive tasks.     

More than a matter of getting ‘unstuck’: flexible thinkers use more abstract representations than perseverators

Why do people perseverate, repeating prior behaviours that are no longer appropriate? Many accounts point to isolated deficits in processes such as inhibition or attention. We instead posit a fundamental difference in rule representations: flexible switchers use active representations that rely on later‐developing prefrontal cortical areas and are more abstract, whereas perseverators use latent representations that rely on earlier‐developing posterior cortical and subcortical areas and are more stimulus‐specific. Thus, although switchers and perseverators should apply the rules they use to familiar stimuli equally reliably, perseverators should show unique limitations in generalizing their rules to novel stimuli, a process that requires abstract representations. Two behavioural experiments confirmed this counterintuitive prediction early in development. Three‐year‐old children sorted cards by one rule, were asked to switch to another rule, and then were asked simply to continue their behaviour, with novel cards. Perseverators applied the rule they were using (the first rule) just as reliably as switchers applied the rule they were using (the second rule) with familiar cards; however, only switchers generalized their rule to novel cards. This finding supports an early link between active representations that support switching and abstract representations that support generalization. We interpret this synergy in terms of prefrontal cortical development.     

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.     

Size and reflection effects in priming: A test of transfer-appropriate processing

Prior research has suggested that priming on perceptual implicit tests is insensitive to changes in stimulus size and reflection. The present experiments were performed to investigate whether size and reflection effects can be obtained in priming under conditions that encourage the processing of this information at study and at test, as predicted by transfer-appropriate processing. The results indicate that priming was affected by a change in the physical size of an object when study and test tasks required a judgment about the real size of pictorial objects (e.g., deciding whether a zebra presented small or large on the screen was larger or smaller than a typical chair), and when the test task required the identification of fragmented pictures. However, a change in left-right orientation had no effect on priming when study and test tasks required a judgment about the left-right orientation of familiar objects, or when the test task involved the identification of fragmented pictures. This difference between size and reflection effects is discussed in terms of the differential importance of size and reflection information in shape identification.     

The effects of massive repetition on speeded recognition of faces

Models of face processing suggest that recognizing a person should prime recognition of a consecutive, but different, image of the same person. This prediction is tested in four experiments using large blocks of different views of the same person. The experiments demonstrate that reaction times decreased according to a negative power function as the number of repetitions increased. After sufficient repetitions, however, the reaction times lengthened. The presentation of a different familiar person between blocks of repetitions caused the reaction time for the target to increase to a level equivalent to that with no repetitions. Experiments 2 and 3 investigated the effect of different intervening stimuli (unfamiliar faces and objects). Such stimuli reduced the effect of mass repetition-but the reduction using a familiar face was greater than that with either unfamiliar faces or objects. Experiment 4 confirmed that the effects of massive repetition occur for a face familiarity task as well as for face identification tasks. The results are discussed in termsof the predictions of Burton's (1994) IACL model.     

The boundaries of self face perception: Response time distributions,perceptual categories,and decision weighting

The current study uses an RT distribution analysis approach to examine the self-bias in face categorization. In two experiments we systematically manipulated the decision boundaries between the self, familiar, and unfamiliar others in face categorization tasks. For the first time in studies of self-categorization we estimated parameters from ex-Gaussian fits of reaction time distributions in order to capture the influence of different boundaries on the latency distribution of the categorization responses. The results showed that the distribution of responses to self faces was stable regardless of the face context and the task demands, and changes in context only shifted the response distribution in time. In contrast, varying the decisions with familiar and unfamiliar faces changed the shape of the RT distributions in addition to shifting RTs in time. The results indicate that, in contrast to our perception of familiar and unfamiliar faces of other people, self face perception forms a unique perceptual category unaffected by shifts in context and task demands.     

The basis of the 3/4 view advantage in face recognition

Three-quarter views of faces promote better recognition memory for previously unfamiliar faces than do full-face views. This paper reports experiments which examine the possible basis of the effect, and, in particular, examine whether the effect reflects some ‘canonical’ role for the 3/4 view of a face. Experiment 1 showed no advantage of 3/4 views over full-face views when the task was to decide whether or not each of a series of faces was that of a highly familiar colleague. In Experiment 2 a sequential matching task was used, where subjects had to respond positively if both members of a pair of faces were of the same person. When the faces used were highly familiar to the subjects, there was no evidence of an advantage for a 3/4 view in the matching task. Three-quarter views and full-face views led to equivalent performance, though profiles produced decrements in performance. When the same faces were shown to subjects who were unfamiliar with the faces, 3/4 views did lead to increased speeds in same trials, compared with full-face, though profiles again proved difficult. Thus a 3/4 view advantage appeared only where the faces were unfamiliar, and the task had to be performed at the level of visual matching. It appears that the 3/4 view advantage may be obtained only when the task involves explicit matching between test views and remembered target photographs, rather than reflecting any more fundamental properties of the representations used to recognize highly familiar faces.