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PubMed1986

Influences of familiarity on the processing of faces.

Three experiments are reported in which undergraduate subjects made simple perceptual judgements about the faces of familiar and unfamiliar academic staff. Any effects of familiarity in these tasks were assessed by comparison with performance on the two groups of faces when both sets were unfamiliar to student subjects at a different university. In experiment 1 there was no effect of familiarity of the faces on a task requiring judgements of expression, consistent with recent models of face processing in which expression analysis proceeds independently from the analysis of identity. In experiment 2 there was a significant effect of familiarity on a task in which the sex of the faces was judged. This appeared to be due to familiarity acting to facilitate only those faces whose sex was difficult to judge from the picture presented. In experiment 3, significant effects of familiarity were also observed when the task was to distinguish intact faces from jumbled faces. Although the effects of familiarity in experiments 2 and 3 were small and emerged in interactions between item sets and university, they suggest that a simple perceptual hierarchy of the kind proposed by Ellis requires some revision.

Face↗
PubMed2001

The neural correlates of person familiarity. A functional magnetic resonance imaging study with clinical implications.

Neural activity was measured in 10 healthy volunteers by functional MRI while they viewed familiar and unfamiliar faces and listened to familiar and unfamiliar voices. The familiar faces and voices were those of people personally known to the subjects; they were not people who are more widely famous in the media. Changes in neural activity associated with stimulus modality irrespective of familiarity were observed in modules previously demonstrated to be activated by faces (fusiform gyrus bilaterally) and voices (superior temporal gyrus bilaterally). Irrespective of stimulus modality, familiarity of faces and voices (relative to unfamiliar faces and voices) was associated with increased neural activity in the posterior cingulate cortex, including the retrosplenial cortex. Our results suggest that recognizing a person involves information flow from modality-specific modules in the temporal cortex to the retrosplenial cortex. The latter area has recently been implicated in episodic memory and emotional salience, and now seems to be a key area involved in assessing the familiarity of a person. We propose that disturbances in the information flow described may underlie neurological and psychiatric disorders of the recognition of familiar faces, voices and persons (prosopagnosia, phonagnosia and Capgras delusion, respectively).

Acoustic Stimulation↗
PubMed2004

The brain response to personally familiar faces in autism: findings of fusiform activity and beyond.

Past functional MRI (FMRI) studies of autism have reported reduced activation in response to the faces of strangers primarily in the 'fusiform face area' (FFA). An alternative and potentially stronger test of FFA function in autism is one that attempts to affect levels of FFA activity using factors believed to modulate function in this brain region, such as face familiarity and the perception of face identity. The current study presented personally meaningful faces, such as mother and co-worker, as well as stranger faces in a rapid event-related FMRI design. Seven autistic and nine normal control adults participated and pressed a button in response to all female faces. A deconvolution analysis revealed significant FFA activity in response to familiar and stranger faces in both autism and normal control groups. Individuals with autism also showed greater fusiform activity in response to familiar faces than stranger faces, as well as the prototypical right hemisphere dominance in response to both types of faces. Normal subjects showed additional activation to familiar faces in the posterior cingulate, amygdala and medial frontal lobes, including the anterior cingulate. Subjects with autism showed a similar, but more limited, network in response to familiar faces. This network included the amygdala and implies that this structure, involved in multiple socio-emotional functions, can be responsive in autism in the presence of stimuli that represent high reward value, such as mother's face. Furthermore, the presence of a distinct network to process familiar faces in autism, one that included limbic structures and was not found in response to the faces of strangers, suggests socio-emotional processing in autism. A potentially noteworthy trend, however, was evidence for a reduction in medial frontal lobe function in the autism group. The main finding of FFA activity in autism stands in contrast to most past FMRI studies of face processing in this disorder. This positive result may reflect the use of personally significant faces that enhanced attention and motivation in the autistic participants. Furthermore, given the proposed role of the FFA in establishing person identity, the use of almost a dozen different personally familiar faces for each participant (totalling 32 non-repeating faces) may have additionally maximized FFA involvement. Therefore, dysfunction in the FFA found in other studies of autism may reflect defects in systems that modulate the FFA, rather than the FFA itself.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2000

Right-nostril dominance in discrimination of unfamiliar, but not familiar, odours.

In a recent PET study on processing of unfamiliar odours we observed that odour discrimination performance was superior during right compared with left nostril presentations, and that mainly the right cerebral hemisphere was activated. In the present study we investigated whether the asymmetric performance is present also during the processing of familiar odours. Seventy-one right-handed healthy subjects (age 21-49 years, 40 females) with normal nasal anatomy and olfactory thresholds participated. Forty pairs of odours (20 familiar and 20 unfamiliar) were presented in the same/different paradigm, alternating nostrils and balancing the order. The number of errors during the discrimination task was compared with respect to nostril and odour familiarity. The overall odour discrimination performance was superior on the right side. However, this difference was valid only for unfamiliar odours, whereas the performance for familiar odours was symmetrical. Familiar odours were easier to discriminate than unfamiliar ones. The present data are congruent with the idea of a semantic influence on odour processing. Odours seem to be processed with a right sided preponderance when not clearly familiar, and symmetrically when language becomes involved. Future studies on odour processing should therefore take into account odour familiarity and side of presentation.

Adult↗
PubMed2005

The calming effect of a familiar odor on full-term newborns.

We assessed the effectiveness of an odor (familiar or unfamiliar) in soothing healthy full-term newborns undergoing a routine heel stick. Forty-four breast-fed newborns were randomly assigned to one of four groups: Before the heel stick, Group 1 was naturally familiarized with their mother's milk odor, Group 2 was familiarized with a vanilla smell, and Groups 3 and 4 did not receive any familiarization. During and after the heel stick, Group 1 was presented with their mother's milk odor, Group 2 was presented with the familiar vanilla, Group 3 was presented with an unfamiliar odor, and Group 4 was a control group. Infants' crying, grimacing, and head movements were analyzed before, during, and after the heel stick. Results show that infants who smelled a familiar odor (their mother's milk or vanilla) cried and grimaced significantly less during the recovery phase compared with the heel stick phase. Infants who were presented with an unfamiliar odor or no odor showed no significant changes during recovery. Moreover, infants who smelled their mother's milk exhibited significantly less motor agitation during the heel stick compared with the other groups. These findings indicate that smelling a familiar odor reduces agitation during the heel stick and diminishes distress after the procedure.

Female↗
PubMed2004

Four types of novelty-familiarity responses in associative recognition memory of humans.

Animal studies show that, like inferior temporal neurons, dorsolateral prefrontal and parietal neurons often respond more strongly to individual novel than to individual familiar stimuli. It is currently unclear whether the novelty preference of prefrontal and parietal neurons extends to associative memory. We used electromagnetic recordings (MEG/EEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging in two groups of healthy young adults to identify neural populations outside the inferior temporal cortex that exhibit associative novelty (stronger responses for new than for old configurations of two familiar items), and to distinguish them from associative familiarity (stronger responses for old than for new configurations of two familiar items). Subjects were required to learn and were later tested for associations based on the spatial configurations of two stimuli (a face and a tool). At test, learned (old) and rearranged (new) spatial stimulus configurations had to be discriminated. This recognition memory test could only be solved through the associative relationship between individual items because all component items of the stimulus configurations were equally familiar. In both imaging modalities, right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and right parietal cortex showed an associative novelty response, whereas the right superior temporal cortex showed an associative familiarity response. With EEG/MEG only, the right extrastriate cortex showed an early associative familiarity and a late associative novelty response, whereas the opposite pattern emerged in bilateral frontopolar cortex. Thus, through a multimodal approach, it was possible to identify four types of associative novelty/familiarity responses outside the inferior temporal cortex.

Adult↗
PubMed1993

The representation of stimulus familiarity in anterior inferior temporal cortex.

1. The inferior temporal (IT) cortex plays an important role in both short- and long-term memory for visual patterns. Most previous studies of IT neurons have tested their responses in recency memory tasks, which require that the memory lasts only the length of a single behavioral trial, which may be < 1 s. To determine the role of IT neurons in longer lasting memories, we measured their responses to initially novel stimuli as the stimuli gradually became familiar to the animal. 2. Two rhesus monkeys were trained on a delayed matching to sample (DMS) task with several intervening stimuli between the sample and the final matching stimulus on each trial. The purpose of the task was to ensure that the animal attended to the stimuli and held them in memory, at least temporarily. Unlike in several previous studies, the focus was not on within-trial effects but rather on the incidental memories that built up across trials as the stimuli became familiar. Each cell was tested with a set of 20 novel stimuli (digitized pictures of objects) that the monkey had not seen before. These stimuli were used in a fixed order over the course of an hour-long recording session, and the number of intervening trials between repetitions of a given sample stimulus was varied. 3. The responses of about one-third of the cells recorded in anterior-ventral IT cortex declined systematically as the novel stimuli became familiar. After six to eight repetitions, responses reached a plateau that was approximately 40% of the peak response. Virtually all of these cells also showed selectivity for particular visual stimuli and thus were not "novelty detectors" in the sense of cells that respond to any novel stimulus. Rather, the responses of these cells were a joint function of familiarity and specific object features such as shape and color. A few cells showed increasing responses with repetition over the recording session, but these changes were accompanied by changes in baseline firing rate, suggesting that they were caused by nonspecific effects. 4. The decrement in response with familiarity was stimulus specific and bridged > 150 presentations of other stimuli, the maximum tested. For some cells the maximum decrement in response occurred for those stimuli that initially elicited the largest response. There was no significant change in response to stimuli that were already familiar. 5. The same cells that showed familiarity effects also showed reduced responses to the matching stimuli at the end of each trial, compared with the responses to the samples.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)

Animals↗
PubMed2004

Positivity can cue familiarity.

Given that familiarity is closely associated with positivity, the authors sought evidence for the idea that positivity would increase perceived familiarity. In Experiment 1, smiling and thus positively perceived novel faces were significantly more likely to be incorrectly judged as familiar than novel faces with neutral expressions. In Experiment 2, subliminal association with positive affect (a positively valenced prime) led to false recognition of novel words as familiar. In Experiment 3, validity judgments, known to be influenced by familiarity, were more likely to occur if participants were in happy mood states than neutral mood states. Despite their different paradigms and approaches, the results of these three studies converge on the idea that, at least under certain circumstances, the experience of positivity itself can signal familiarity, perhaps because the experience of familiarity is typically positive.

Adult↗
PubMed2006

Haven't we met before? The effect of facial familiarity on repetition priming.

Within the word recognition literature, word-frequency and hence familiarity has been shown to affect the degree of repetition priming. The current paper reports two experiments which examine whether familiarity also affects the degree of repetition priming for faces. The results of Experiment 1 confirmed that familiarity did moderate the degree of priming in a face recognition task. Low familiarity faces were primed to a significantly greater degree than high familiarity faces in terms of accuracy, speed, and efficiency of processing. Experiment 2 replicated these results but additionally, demonstrated that familiarity moderates priming for name recognition as well as face recognition. These results can be accommodated within both a structural account of repetition priming (Burton, Bruce & Johnston, 1990) and an Episodic Memory account of repetition priming (see Roediger, 1990), and are discussed in terms of a common mechanism for priming, learning and the representation of familiarity.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2001

The effect of familiarity on visual-search performance: evidence for learned basic features.

In this study, the effects of familiarity on visual search were investigated. To avoid any confounding between familiarity and visual-feature differences between item pairs, Ns and mirror-Ns were presented as target and as distractors to a group of German participants and to a group of Slavic participants. For the Germans only N was familiar, whereas for the Slavs both N and mirror-N were familiar. The results show that search was difficult only when the Germans had to find an N among mirror-Ns. In any other case, search was efficient. Therefore, our results demonstrate that, contrary to earlier suggestions, search for a familiar item among familiar distractors can be easy. This supports the hypothesis that familiarity improves distractor grouping. However, the data are also compatible with the idea that letters are standard or basic features, which implies that basic features can be learned.

Adult↗
PubMed2001

Letter detection in very familiar texts.

In the present study, we investigated whether patterns of letter detection for function and content words in texts are affected by the familiarity of the material being read. In Experiment 1, subjects searched for target letters in sentences that had been rehearsed prior to performing the letter detection on them as well as on unfamiliar sentences. In Experiment 2, subjects searched for target letters in highly familiar verses (e.g., nursery rhymes) and in unfamiliar sentences that were matched to the familiar verses. A disadvantage in letter detection for function as compared with content words consistently found with unfamiliar passages was reduced significantly with the familiar material in both experiments. Specifically, letter detection for content words grew worse in familiar text, but letter detection for function words showed a contrasting modest, though nonsignificant, improvement. The results are consistent with the proposition that in very familiar texts, parafoveal analysis permits the identification of generally less familiar content words. Simultaneously, the normal pattern of weighing the structure and content elements of text changes so that more fixations on function words occur than when one is reading unfamiliar texts.

Cognition↗
PubMed1994

Perceived size of familiar objects and the theory of off-sized perceptions.

In three experiments, I examined the claim (Gogel, 1969; Gogel & Newton, 1969) that familiar objects viewed under reduced stimulus conditions frequently appear to be off-sized (i.e., larger or smaller than normal). In Experiments 1 and 2, I presented images of different familiar objects, one at a time, at distances of 1 and 2 m from the observers. The images were normal-, large-, or small-sized versions of familiar objects, and the observers judged the perceived size of each object relative to its familiar normal size. In Experiment 3, I presented normal-, large-, and small-sized versions of the same familiar object at physical distances of 1 and 2 m. The pattern of size results was similar across the three experiments. In general, normal-sized objects appeared normal-to small-sized at the 1-m distance and small-sized at the 2-m distance; small-sized objects appeared small-sized at the 1-m distance and even smaller at the 2-m distance; and large-sized objects appeared normal- to large-sized at the 1-m distance and normal- to small-sized at the 2-m distance. The distance results of Experiment 3 indicated that familiar size was an effective determinant of reported distance. These results are consistent with Gogel's theory of off-sized perceptions and, more generally, with the claim that familiar size is not an important determinant of perceived size.

Adult↗
PubMed2001

[The effect of familiarity on eyewitness identification testimony: the relationship between accuracy and confidence].

In this study, we examined eyewitness identification involving a person who was slightly familiar to the witness. Although identification of a familiar person has been believed to be more accurate than that of a stranger, we expected that misidentification of a familiar distracter as the target would occur, and in such cases, the witness would be more confidence than when correctly rejecting the familiar person. A total of 102 participants were assigned to one of four conditions where familiarity with the distracter and the visibility of the target's photo were manipulated. First, they rated impressions of several photos in terms of personality traits to increase familiarity of some, then were presented with the target photo in either dark or bright condition. Finally, they were asked to identify the target in a two-photo lineup, where the critical trial included a familiar distracter. Results indicated that 66.7 per cent of subjects who saw the target photo in the dark condition misidentified the distracter as the target. At the same time, confidence for the choice (misidentification) was significantly higher than that of correct rejection. The findings were discussed from the forensic viewpoint.

Female↗
PubMed2001

The combined contributions of the cue-familiarity and accessibility heuristics to feelings of knowing.

A model for the basis of feeling of knowing (FOK) is proposed, which combines 2 apparently competing accounts, cue familiarity (L. M. Reder, 1987), and accessibility (A. Koriat, 1993). Both cue familiarity and accessibility are assumed to contribute asynchronously to FOK, but whereas the effects of familiarity occur early, those of accessibility occur later and only when cue familiarity is sufficiently high to drive the interrogation of memory for potential answers. General information questions were used to orthogonally manipulate cue familiarity and accessibility. As expected, both familiarity and accessibility enhanced FOK judgments, but the effects of accessibility were found mostly when familiarity was high. This interactive pattern was replicated when FOK judgments were delayed but not when they were immediate. The results support the proposed cascaded model of FOK but also imply a differentiation between 2 variants of the accessibility heuristic.

Adult↗
PubMed2004

Effect of word familiarity on visually evoked magnetic fields.

This study investigated the effect of word familiarity of visual stimuli on the word recognizing function of the human brain. Word familiarity is an index of the relative ease of word perception, and is characterized by facilitation and accuracy on word recognition. We studied the effect of word familiarity, using "Hiragana" (phonetic characters in Japanese orthography) characters as visual stimuli, on the elicitation of visually evoked magnetic fields with a word-naming task. The words were selected from a database of lexical properties of Japanese. The four "Hiragana" characters used were grouped and presented in 4 classes of degree of familiarity. The three components were observed in averaged waveforms of the root mean square (RMS) value on latencies at about 100 ms, 150 ms and 220 ms. The RMS value of the 220 ms component showed a significant positive correlation (F=(3/36); 5.501; p=0.035) with the value of familiarity. ECDs of the 220 ms component were observed in the intraparietal sulcus (IPS). Increments in the RMS value of the 220 ms component, which might reflect ideographical word recognition, retrieving "as a whole" were enhanced with increments of the value of familiarity. The interaction of characters, which increased with the value of familiarity, might function "as a large symbol"; and enhance a "pop-out" function with an escaping character inhibiting other characters and enhancing the segmentation of the character (as a figure) from the ground.

Adult↗
PubMed2026

AI-generated familiarity estimates are a useful new source of information about word knowledge in Simplified Chinese.

This study evaluated the usefulness of AI-generated estimates of word familiarity for predicting word difficulty in Simplified Chinese, building on previous research in alphabetic languages. We found that familiarity estimates produced using large language models (LLMs) showed moderate-to-strong correlations with human familiarity ratings. These LLM estimates were the most effective predictors of both word naming and lexical decision times, surpassing traditional metrics such as word frequency and human familiarity ratings, while the latter still provided modest, non-overlapping variance. GPT-4o with English instructions produced superior results compared to the Chinese-centered models currently available. The results imply that LLM familiarity estimates are a valuable resource for Chinese psycholinguistics, supporting work across experimental design, modeling, and norming. We release familiarity estimates for 27,624 words for unrestricted research and educational use.

Humans↗
PubMed1998

Female sexual preferences differ in Mus spicilegus and Mus musculus domesticus: the role of familiarization and sexual experience.

Mating systems correspond to particular ecological conditions and result from proximate interactions between individuals. We compared the mating preferences of female mice of two species: the house mouse, Mus musculus domesticus, and the mound-builder mouse, Mus spicilegus. Because of differences in their habitat, we expected to observe differences in their sexual preferences. We studied female preferences for a familiar or an unfamiliar male and the occurrence of copulation with the unfamiliar male, during two states of female sexual activity: (1) the postpartum oestrus of paired females, to evaluate the stability of their sexual partnership; and (2) the oestrus of females familiarized with a male, to study the mechanisms underlying their sexual preferences. In the polygamous house mouse, postpartum oestrous females did not show a clear preference between their familiar male and the unfamiliar one. Moreover, oestrous females, familiarized with a male (without sexual interactions), preferred an unfamiliar male and copulated with him. In contrast, postpartum oestrous females and oestrous females of M. spicilegus preferred their familiar male and rarely copulated with the unfamiliar male. This study indicates a strong pair bond in established breeding pairs in M. spicilegus and shows that this bond can be established by familiarization, which is not the case in M. m. domesticus. Our study suggests the existence of monogamous traits in M. spicilegus in contrast to the polygamous M. m. domesticus. (c) 1998 The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour.

Journal Article↗
PubMed1996

The production of specific and generic associates of living and nonliving, high- and low-familiarity stimuli in Alzheimer's disease.

The goal of this paper was to address three issues relevant to the semantic-lexical deficit of Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients: (1) the nature of the deficit (contrasting the loss of information with the difficulty of intentional access hypothesis), (2) stimulus familiarity effects, (3) semantic category effects (contrasting living with nonliving categories). Sixteen patients affected by AD and 11 matched control subjects were given a naming task, a word-picture matching task and a generative associative naming task, constructed by using as stimuli the same 40 items. Stimuli were either living or nonliving items of high, medium, and low familiarity. Responses given on the generative associative naming task were classified as generic (poorly informative) or specific (more informative). As expected, AD patients were poorer than controls both in naming and in word-to-picture matching tasks. In the generative associative naming task, AD patients tended to produce fewer specific than generic associations with respect to controls. Category effects had a significant influence on performance only on the naming task, but not on the word-to-picture matching or on the generative associative naming task. Stimulus familiarity, on the other hand, strongly influenced performance both in AD patients and in controls: naming and comprehension were better for high familiarity items with respect to low familiarity items. For generative associative naming, the tendency of AD patients to produce fewer specific than generic associations was mainly significant for low familiarity items.

Aged↗