Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-c4f8m Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-23T14:08:22.392Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The Experience of Perceptual Familiarity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

Gordon Lyon
Affiliation:
Rhodes University, Grahamstown

Extract

Psychologists have recently turned their attention to the nature of the recognition involved in judgment of familiarity. It has been suggested that, apart from judging a stimulus to be familiar when one is able to recall a context in which it was previously perceived, subjects are also able to judge that something is familiar merely on the basis of its faster perceptual processing.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1996

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Larry Jacoby has been most important in developing this view. See Jacoby, L. L. and Dallas, M., ‘On the Relationship between Autobiographical Memory and Perceptual Learning’, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 110 (1981), 306340;CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMedJohnston, W., Dark, V. J., and Jacoby, L. L., ‘Perceptual Fluency and Recognition Judgments’, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition 11 (1985), 311;Google ScholarJacoby, L. L., and Whitehouse, K., ‘An Illusion of Memory: False Recognition influenced by Unconscious Perception’, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 118 (1989), 126135;CrossRefGoogle ScholarWhittlesea, B., Jacoby, L. L., and Girard, K., ‘Illusions of Immediate Memory: Evidence for an Attributional Basis for Feelings of Familiarity and Perceptual Quality’, Journal of Memory and Language 29 (1990), 716732;CrossRefGoogle ScholarKelley, C. M. and Jacoby, L. L., ‘The Construction of Subjective Experience: Memory Attributions’, Mind and Language 5 (1990), 4968;CrossRefGoogle ScholarJacoby, L. L. and Kelley, C. M., ‘Unconscious Influences of Memory’, The Neuropsychology of Consciousness, Milner, A.D. and Rugg, M. D. (eds) (London: Academic Press, 1992).Google ScholarCompare Mandler, G., ‘Recognising: The Judgment of Previous Occurrence’, Psychological Review 87 (1980), 252271;CrossRefGoogle ScholarJohnston, W., Hawley, K. J. and Elliott, J. M. G., ‘Contribution of Perceptual Fluency to Recognition Judgments’, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition 17 (1991), 210223;Google ScholarPubMedJoordens, S. and Meikle, P. M., ‘False Recognition and Perception without Awareness’, Memory and Cognition 20 (1992), 151159.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Wittgenstein, L., The Blue and Brown Books (Oxford: Blackwell, 1969), 88.Google Scholar

3 Russell, B. A. W., The Analysis of Mind (London: Allen and Unwin, 1921), 168169.Google Scholar

4 Op. cit. note 3, 161.

5 Hacker, P. M. S., An Analytical Commentary on the ‘Philosophical Investigations’, Vol. 3: Wittgenstein: Meaning and Mind (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990), 232.Google Scholar Compare Wittgenstein, L., Philosophical Remarks, Rhees, R. (ed.) (Oxford: Blackwell, 1975), 64; op. cit. note 2, 21-22.Google Scholar

6 6 Op. cit. note 2, 127.

7 James, W., The Principles of Psychology (1890), Vol. 1 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981), 635, n. 30.Google Scholar

8 Op. cit. note 2, 180-181.

9 Wittgenstein, L., Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology, Vol. 1, Anscombe, G. E. M. and Wright, G. H. von (eds) (Oxford: Blackwell, 1980), sect. 120-121.Google Scholar

10 Hacker, P. M. S., op. cit. note 5, 80;Google ScholarSchulte, J., Experience and Expression: Wittgenstein's Philosophy of Psychology (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 89.Google Scholar

11 Op. cit. note 7, 232. Compare Ibid. ., 218, 316ff, 434, 612.

12 Op. cit. note 2, 182; op. cit. note 9, sect. 123.

13 Wittgenstein, L., Philosophical Investigations, Anscombe, G. E. M. and Rhees, R. (eds) (Oxford: Blackwell, 1967), sect. 596.Google Scholar

14 Op. cit. note 2, 182.

15 Op. cit. note 9, sect. 295.

16 Bergson, H., Matter and Memory (5th ed., 1908), Paul, N. M., Palmer, W. S. (tr.) (New York: Zone Books, 1988), 93.Google Scholar

17 For the latter suggestion, see Bauer, R. M. , ‘Autonomic Recognition of Names and Faces’, Neuropsychologia 22 (1984), 457469;CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMedTranel, D. and Damasio, A.R., ‘Knowledge without Awareness: An Autonomic Index of Facial Recognition by Prosopagnosics’, Science 228 (1985), 14531454;CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMedEllis, H.D. and Young, A.W., ‘Accounting for Delusional Misidentifications’, British Journal of Psychiatry 157 (1990), 239248;CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMedBruyer, R., ‘Covert Face Recognition by Prosopagnosics: A Review’, Brain and Cognition 15 (1991), 223235.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18 Wittgenstein, L., Philosophical Occasions 1912-1951, Klagge, J., Nordmann, A. (eds) (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1993), 305.Google Scholar

19 Contra Burton, A. M., Bruce, V. and Johnston, R. A. , ‘Understanding Face Recognition with an Interactive Activation Model’, British Journal of Psychology 81 (1990), 365–6.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

20 Op. cit. note 9, sect. 120.

21 Searle, J. R., The Rediscovery of the Mind (Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1992), 133, 134.Google Scholar

22 Wittgenstein, L., Last Writings on the Philosophy of Psychology, Wright, G. H.von and Nyman, H. (eds) (Oxford: Blackwell, 1982), sect. 538-539.Google Scholar Compare ibid. ., sect. 594, 598-599; op. cit. note 13, 197.

23 Op. cit. note 13, 197; op. cit. note 22, sect. 541, 574.

24 Op. cit. note 13, 198. Compare op. cit. note 22, sect. 575, 598-599.

25 See Hay, D. C. and Young, A. W., ‘The Human Face’, Normality and Pathology in Cognitive Functions, Ellis, A. W. (ed.) (London: Academic Press, 1982);Google ScholarBruce, V. and Young, A. W., ‘Understanding Face Recognition’, British Journal of Psychology 77 (1986), 305327;CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMedEllis, A. W., Young, A. W. and Hay, D. C., ‘Modelling the Recognition of Faces and Words’, Modelling Cognition, Wiley, P. E. (ed.) (Chichester: John Wiley, 1987);Google ScholarBruce, V., Recognising Faces (Hove, Sussex: Erlbaum, 1988);Google Scholar op. cit. note 19; Ellis, A. W., ‘Cognitive Mechanisms of Face Processing’, Processing the Facial Image, Bruce, V., Cowey, A., Ellis, A. W., and Perrett, D. (eds) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992).Google Scholar

26 Jacoby and Dallas, op. cit. note 1, 333; Jacoby and Whitehouse, op. cit. note 1, 132; Whittlesea, Jacoby, and Girard, op. cit. note 1, passim; Jacoby and Kelley, op. cit. note 1, 208.

27 Kelley, and Jacoby, , op. cit. note 1, 53.Google Scholar

28 Op. cit. note 7, 618.

29 Op. cit. note 7, 534.

30 Op. cit. note 7, 634-635, n.30.

31 Op. cit. note 7, 244.

32 Jacoby and Whitehouse, op. cit. note 1; Whittlesea, Jacoby and Girard, op. cit. note 1; Kelley and Jacoby, op. cit. note 1, 55; Joordens and Meikle, op. cit. note 1.

33 Loftus, G. R. and Bell, S. M., ‘Two Types of Information in Picture Memory’, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory 1(1975), 103113.Google Scholar

34 Lucy, J. A. and Schweder, R. A., ‘Whorf and his Critics: Linguistic and Non-Linguistic Influences on Colour Memory’, American Anthropologist 81 (1979), 581615;CrossRefGoogle ScholarGarro, L. C., ‘Language, Memory, and Focality: A Re-Examination’, American Anthropologist 88 (1986), 128136.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

35 Nisbett, R. E. and Wilson, T. D., ‘Telling more than We Know: Verbal Reports on Mental Processes’, Psychological Review 84 (1977), 231259.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

36 Freund, R.N., Verbal and Nonverbal Processes in Picture Recognition, Ph.D. dissertation, Stanford University, 1971.Google Scholar

37 Lucy, and Schweder, , op. cit. note 34, 593.Google Scholar

38 Ward, W. D. and Burns, E. M., ‘Absolute Pitch’, The Psychology of Music, Deutsch, D. (ed.) (New York: Academic Press, 1982), 445ff.Google Scholar

39 Mull, H. K., ‘The Acquisition of Absolute Pitch’, American Journal of Psychology 36 (1925), 490.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Cf. op. cit. note 38, 436; Miyazaki, K.Absolute Pitch Identification: Effects of Timbre and Pitch Region’, Music Perception 7 (1989), 12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

40 Cf. Rakowski, A., ‘The Magic Number Two: Seven Examples of Binary Apposition in Pitch Theory’, Humanities Association Review 30 (1979), 3435.Google Scholar

41 Siegel, J. A., ‘Sensory and Verbal Coding Strategies in Subjects with Absolute Pitch’, Journal of Experimental Psychology 103 (1974), 43.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

42 Zatorre, R. J. and Beckett, C., ‘Multiple Encoding Strategies in the Retention of Musical Tones by Possessors of Absolute Pitch’, Memory and Cognition 17 (1989), 588.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

43 Op. cit. note 7, 244.

44 This research was supported by grants from Trinity College, Cambridge; from the Cambridge Overseas Trust; from the Centre for Science Development, South Africa; and from Rhodes University. I am indebted to Edward Craig, Naomi Eilan, Jane Heal, Anthony Marcel, James Russell, David Shanks, and Andrew Woodfield for comments on earlier work. Earlier versions of this paper were read to a graduate seminar at Cambridge University; at the Sixteenth International Wittgenstein Symposium; to a staff seminar at Rhodes University; to an annual meeting of the Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology; and to a colloquium at Florida State University. I am grateful for comments from all these audiences, and especially for assistance and advice from David Gruender, David Owens, Cees van Leeuwen, and Marius Vermaak.