The architecture of intuition: Fluency and affect determine intuitive judgments of semantic and visual coherence and judgments of grammaticality in artificial grammar learning.

Abstract

People can intuitively detect whether a word triad has a common remote associate (coherent) or does not have one (incoherent) before and independently of actually retrieving the common associate. The authors argue that semantic coherence increases the processing fluency for coherent triads and that this increased fluency triggers a brief and subtle positive affect, which is the experiential basis of these intuitions. In a series of 11 experiments with 3 different fluency manipulations (figure-ground contrast, repeated exposure, and subliminal visual priming) and 3 different affect inductions (short-timed facial feedback, subliminal facial priming, and affect-laden word triads), high fluency and positive affect independently and additively increased the probability that triads would be judged as coherent, irrespective of actual coherence. The authors could equalize and even reverse coherence judgments (i.e., incoherent triads were judged to be coherent more frequently than were coherent triads). When explicitly instructed, participants were unable to correct their judgments for the influence of affect, although they were aware of the manipulation. The impact of fluency and affect was also generalized to intuitions of visual coherence and intuitions of grammaticality in an artificial grammar learning paradigm. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved).

Subliminal mere exposure and explicit and implicit positive affective responses

“…This model focuses on processing ease and subtle indicators of PA as important links in the chain of intuitive judgements. From this perspective, fluid processing (such as that caused by repeated subliminal presentations) leads to subtle, positive changes in core affect (i.e., affect that is diffuse, automatic, and relatively ''free floating;' ' Russell, 2003;Topolinski & Strack, 2009). This fluencytriggered affect is believed to lead the types of ''gut feeling'' that influence intuitive judgements (e.g., Reber, Wurtz, & Zimmerman, 2004;Topolinski & Strack, 2009;Wurtz, Reber, & Zimmerman, 2008).…”

Feeling before knowing why: The role of the orbitofrontal cortex in intuitive judgments—an MEG study

“…In scrambled line drawings, the pixel information of the resulting fragments are, on top of that, randomly mixed up, which makes the original displayed object unrecognizable. Studies applying WGCT-like paradigms (Bolte & Goschke, 2008; Bowers et al, 1990; Luu et al, 2010; Topolinski & Strack, 2009; Volz & von Cramon, 2006) have revealed that participants discriminate between fragmented and scrambled line drawings over chance; that is, they are significantly more likely to rate fragmented than scrambled line drawings as coherent. This is true even for those coherence judgments after which participants cannot explicitly name the objects displayed but solely report having had a “feeling of coherence.” Such findings support the existence of a guiding stage, in which an initial intuitive feeling of coherence is strong enough to trigger a judgment, even if its basis cannot yet be explicitly reported.…”

Uniting the Tribes of Fluency to Form a Metacognitive Nation

“…For example, participants with little expertise in genetics found it easier to process an abstruse passage on genetic coding when they first read an analogous passage on computer data storage. Referring to a similar mechanism, Topolinski and Strack (2009) coined the term semantic coherence to describe the ease with which people process target stimuli that follow conceptually related primes.…”