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Biomedical subjects

B W Whittlesea

Publications and source records attributed to B W Whittlesea.

12 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2001

Implicit/explicit memory versus analytic/nonanalytic processing: rethinking the mere exposure effect.

In studies of the mere exposure effect, rapid presentation of items can increase liking without accurate recognition. The effect on liking has been explained as a misattribution of fluency caused by prior presentation. However, fluency is also a source of feelings of familiarity. It is, therefore, surprising that prior experience can enhance liking without also causing familiarity-based recognition. We suggest that when study opportunities are minimal and test items are perceptually similar, people adopt an analytic approach, attempting to recognize distinctive features. That strategy fails because rapid presentation prevents effective encoding of such features; it also prevents people from experiencing fluency and a consequent feeling of familiarity. We suggest that the liking-without-recognition effect results from using an effective (nonanalytic) strategy in judging pleasantness, but an ineffective (analytic) strategy in recognition. Explanations of the mere exposure effect based on a distinction between implicit and explicit memory are unnecessary.

Humans↗
PubMed2001

The discrepancy-attribution hypothesis: II. Expectation, uncertainty, surprise, and feelings of familiarity.

In the accompanying article (B. W. A. Whittlesea & L. D. Williams, 2001), surprising violation of an expectation was observed to cause an illusion of familiarity. The authors interpreted that evidence as support for the discrepancy-attribution hypothesis. This article extended the scope of that hypothesis, investigating the consequences of surprising validation of expectations. Subjects were shown recognition probes as completions of sentence stems. Their expectations were manipulated by presenting predictive, nonpredictive, and inconsistent stems. Predictive stems caused an illusion of familiarity, but only when the subjects also experienced uncertainty about the outcome. That is, as predicted by the discrepancy-attribution hypothesis, feelings of familiarity occurred only when processing of a recognition target caused surprise. The article provides a discussion of the ways in which a perception of discrepancy can come about, as well as the origin and nature of unconscious expectations.

Adult↗
PubMed2001

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).

Adult↗
PubMed2000

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.

Adult↗
PubMed2000

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.

Adult↗
PubMed2000

When lust is lost: orthographic similarity effects in the encoding and reconstruction of rapidly presented word lists.

A reconstructive account of memory is presented to explain the finding that report of a word (C2) appearing in a rapidly presented list is reduced when it is orthographically similar to an earlier word (C1) in the list. By this account, the effect arises when the list is reconstructed from memory, not at the time of list presentation as proposed by accounts based on failure of encoding or tokenization. The reconstructive account is supported by a series of experiments that show a retroactive effect in which report of C1 is enhanced by similarity to C2; a nonword C1 can either interfere with or enhance report of C2, depending on how accurately C1 is encoded; manipulation of reconstructive processes can eliminate or enhance the effect of orthographic similarity; and a bidirectional trade-off in the report of an orthographically similar C1-C2 pair, whereby report of one member compromises report of the other.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1998

Why do strangers feel familiar, but friends don't? A discrepancy-attribution account of feelings of familiarity.

Recent articles on familiarity (e.g. Whittlesea, B.W.A, 1993. Journal of Experimental Psychology 19, 1235) have argued that the feeling of familiarity is produced by unconscious attribution of fluent processing to a source in the past. In this article, we refine that notion: We argue that is not fluency per se, but rather fluent processing occurring under unexpected circumstances that produces the feeling. We demonstrate cases in which moderately fluent processing produces more familiarity than does highly fluent processing, at least when the former is surprising.

Analysis of Variance↗
PubMed1998

Implicit learning of complex structures: active adaptation and selective processing in acquisition and application.

Subjects exposed to members of a structured domain become sensitive to the general structure of that domain, even when they are unaware that the domain has such structure (e.g., Reber, 1993). Numerous investigators have attempted to characterize this learning as unselective in acquisition and automatic in application. However, we contend that this characterization miscasts the fundamental nature of learning. In a series of experiments, we demonstrate that what subjects learn implicitly about the structure of a domain critically depends on decisions they make about how to organize the structural components. Similarly, the application of knowledge gained implicitly is not stable, but may be selected or even created under the demands of the test task. We conclude that implicit learning, just like explicit learning, proceeds through active organization of the stimulus complex, rather than by passively absorbing any level of structure. We propose a synthesis, in which learning, with and without awareness, is understood through a common set of principles.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed1997

Reverse "repetition blindness" and release from "repetition blindness": constructive variations on the "repetition blindness" effect.

N. Kanwisher observed that subjects shown rapid lists of words recall two occurrences of a repeated word less often than two unrelated words. Kanwisher explained this "repetition blindness" through a type/token account, which assumes that encoding the second occurrence of a repeated word is inhibited if it occurs too soon after the first. More fundamentally, it assumes that failure to recall a word from a rapid list results from failure to encode its occurrence. Contrary to that interpretation, we observed that subjects can often recognize words that they cannot recall from a rapid list. We also observed "reverse repetition blindness," when the second presentation was given greater contextual support, and a "release from repetition blindness" effect, when distinctive contextual support was given to ech occurrence. We concluded that a constructive account of remembering provides a better explanation of all of the effects.

Adult↗
PubMed1997

Implicit (and explicit) learning: acting adaptively without knowing the consequences.

Subjects exposed to members of a structured domain become sensitive to the general structure of that domain, even when unaware that the domain has such structure. Numerous investigators have taken this as evidence for a mode of learning in which memory passively and unselectively absorbs the structure of the environment. The authors contend that this assumption miscasts the fundamental nature of learning. The authors demonstrate that even when task and stimulus structure are held constant, subjects react to variations in incidental stimulus properties by processing the stimuli in qualitatively different ways. The authors conclude that implicit learning, just like explicit learning, proceeds through active organization of the stimulus complex, rather than through passive absorption of any level of structure. The authors propose a synthesis in which learning, with and without awareness, is understood through a common set of principles.

Adaptation, Physiological↗