Effects of repetition priming on recognition memory: Testing a perceptual fluency-disfluency model.

Abstract

Five experiments explored the effects of immediate repetition priming on episodic recognition (the "Jacoby-Whitehouse effect") as measured with forced-choice testing. These experiments confirmed key predictions of a model adapted from D. E. Huber and R. C. O'Reilly's (2003) dynamic neural network of perception. In this model, short prime durations pre-activate primed items, enhancing perceptual fluency and familiarity, whereas long prime durations result in habituation, causing perceptual disfluency and less familiarity. Short duration primes produced a recognition preference for primed words (Experiments 1, 2, and 5), whereas long duration primes produced a preference against primed words (Experiments 3, 4, and 5). Experiment 2 found prime duration effects even when participants accurately identified short duration primes. A cued-recall task included in Experiments 3, 4, and 5 found priming effects only for recognition trials that were followed by cued-recall failure. These results suggest that priming can enhance as well as lower familiarity, without affecting recollection. Experiment 4 provided a manipulation check on this procedure through a delay manipulation that preferentially affected recognition followed by cued-recall success.

The Rise and Fall of the Recent Past

“…However, it is not clear whether there is any perceptual fluency following a long-duration prime, whereas my threshold identification results suggest that there might even be a perceptual disfluency. As explained next, my coauthors and I undertook a series of experiments designed to determine whether the negative priming effect with easily seen primes in episodic recognition is due to a process designed to correct for the effect of perceptual fluency or whether it might instead reflect perceptual disfluency (Huber, Clark, Curran, & Winkielman, 2008).…”

The revelation effect: A meta-analytic test of hypotheses

“…For example, some authors argue that primed words are processed more fluently (e.g., Whittlesea et al, 1990). However, Huber, Clark, Curran, and Winkielman (2008) argue that longduration primes appearing for about 1 s cause habituation rather than a fluency increase. This would explain why short-duration primes cause an increase of the reported familiarity in matching recognition test items whereas longduration test items cause a decrease (Huber et al, 2008;Jacoby & Whitehouse, 1989).…”

“…However, Huber, Clark, Curran, and Winkielman (2008) argue that longduration primes appearing for about 1 s cause habituation rather than a fluency increase. This would explain why short-duration primes cause an increase of the reported familiarity in matching recognition test items whereas longduration test items cause a decrease (Huber et al, 2008;Jacoby & Whitehouse, 1989). Other authors argue that not fluency per se, but a surprising discrepancy between expected and observed fluency influences judgments (Whittlesea & Williams, 1998).…”

Frequency Effects on Memory: A Resource-Limited Theory

“…A=1), which means that they receive an activation boost of 1/B. The result is that stronger items require less activation boost to be activated, which could potentially be responsible for perceptual fluency effects (Jacoby, 1983), repetition priming (Huber, Clark, Curran & Winkielman, 2008), the reduction in fMRI activation for repeatedly presented items (Horner & Henson, 2008), and the fact that HF words elicit less fMRI activation than LF words (Chee, Westphal, Goh, Graham & Song, 2003). Nodes can also be activated by their neighbors through spreading activation.…”