title: Event-related potentials indicate that fluency can be interpreted as familiarity.
abstract: Recent evidence suggests that fluency may be capable of supporting recognition independently of familiarity. This hypothesis was further tested in the present study. 29 participants encoded name-brand and off-brand products in an incidental task. Participants then judged whether the product was old or new during two tests with products from one category (i.e., only name-brand or only off-brand products) and a mixed test (where both name-brand and off-brand products were shown). The ERP data elicited by off-brand products varied as a function of test format. During the mixed test, off-brand products were correlated with a FN400 effect, whereas a fluency ERP (old ERPs were more negative than new at parietal electrodes 225-400ms) was observed during the other test. Importantly, no FN400 was detected during this test. The ERP results suggest that viewing the off-brand products during the mixed test produced a familiarity experience; however, fluency supported recognition when viewing off-brand products on the other test. The results are strong evidence that top-down processing of visual features during recognition interprets the information relative to the context. This process results in either fluency or, in other contexts, it is interpreted as familiarity as the Discrepancy-Attribution Hypothesis (Whittlesea and Williams, 2001a, 2001b) contends.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, The College of New Jersey, P.O. Box 7718, Ewing, NJ 08628-0718, USA.
authors.forename: Heather
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Bruett
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, The College of New Jersey, P.O. Box 7718, Ewing, NJ 08628-0718, USA. Electronic address: Leynes@tcnj.edu.
authors.forename: P Andrew
authors.initials: PA
authors.lastname: Leynes
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005071:Evoked Potentials; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment / Q000502:physiology; D008297:Male; D008960:Models, Psychological; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D012372:ROC Curve; D011930:Reaction Time; D021641:Recognition, Psychology / Q000502:physiology*; D017603:Signal Detection, Psychological / Q000502:physiology; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Event-related potentials; Familiarity; Fluency