The Effects of Familiarity and Self-Relevance on the Visual Search of Screen Names

Abstract

The present study used a series of visual search experiments to explore the reason of the cognitive priority of screen names and mainly focused on the possible effects of the familiarity and self-relevance. In experiment 1, the participants were divided into two groups (high-frequency vs. lowfrequency) according to the usage frequency of their own screen names. The results showed that the performances for own screen-name in both groups were significantly better than any other materials, while no significant difference was found between the high-frequency and low-frequency group. Experiment 2 and 3 were one-way within-subjects design. Experiment 2 aimed to explore the effect of familiarity on the visual search task by comparing the performance of famous names and that of general screen names. Experiment 3 explored the effect of familiarity on the screen name recognition by directly comparing the visual search performance between the two different usage frequency screen names. Results showed that famous names were detected more accurately and quickly than general screen names, while there were no significant differences between the two screen names. In conclusion, the present research confirmed the cognitive priority of self-related screen names, and found the vital role of self-relevance on the visual search of screen names. Moreover it also suggested that the familiarity might not be the key factor for the processing priority although it had an effect on the visual search.