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Biomedical subjects

B W Whittlesea

Publications and source records attributed to B W Whittlesea.

6 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1998

Why do strangers feel familiar, but friends don't? A discrepancy-attribution account of feelings of familiarity.

Recent articles on familiarity (e.g. Whittlesea, B.W.A, 1993. Journal of Experimental Psychology 19, 1235) have argued that the feeling of familiarity is produced by unconscious attribution of fluent processing to a source in the past. In this article, we refine that notion: We argue that is not fluency per se, but rather fluent processing occurring under unexpected circumstances that produces the feeling. We demonstrate cases in which moderately fluent processing produces more familiarity than does highly fluent processing, at least when the former is surprising.

Analysis of Variance↗
PubMed1998

Implicit learning of complex structures: active adaptation and selective processing in acquisition and application.

Subjects exposed to members of a structured domain become sensitive to the general structure of that domain, even when they are unaware that the domain has such structure (e.g., Reber, 1993). Numerous investigators have attempted to characterize this learning as unselective in acquisition and automatic in application. However, we contend that this characterization miscasts the fundamental nature of learning. In a series of experiments, we demonstrate that what subjects learn implicitly about the structure of a domain critically depends on decisions they make about how to organize the structural components. Similarly, the application of knowledge gained implicitly is not stable, but may be selected or even created under the demands of the test task. We conclude that implicit learning, just like explicit learning, proceeds through active organization of the stimulus complex, rather than by passively absorbing any level of structure. We propose a synthesis, in which learning, with and without awareness, is understood through a common set of principles.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed1997

Reverse "repetition blindness" and release from "repetition blindness": constructive variations on the "repetition blindness" effect.

N. Kanwisher observed that subjects shown rapid lists of words recall two occurrences of a repeated word less often than two unrelated words. Kanwisher explained this "repetition blindness" through a type/token account, which assumes that encoding the second occurrence of a repeated word is inhibited if it occurs too soon after the first. More fundamentally, it assumes that failure to recall a word from a rapid list results from failure to encode its occurrence. Contrary to that interpretation, we observed that subjects can often recognize words that they cannot recall from a rapid list. We also observed "reverse repetition blindness," when the second presentation was given greater contextual support, and a "release from repetition blindness" effect, when distinctive contextual support was given to ech occurrence. We concluded that a constructive account of remembering provides a better explanation of all of the effects.

Adult↗
PubMed1997

Implicit (and explicit) learning: acting adaptively without knowing the consequences.

Subjects exposed to members of a structured domain become sensitive to the general structure of that domain, even when unaware that the domain has such structure. Numerous investigators have taken this as evidence for a mode of learning in which memory passively and unselectively absorbs the structure of the environment. The authors contend that this assumption miscasts the fundamental nature of learning. The authors demonstrate that even when task and stimulus structure are held constant, subjects react to variations in incidental stimulus properties by processing the stimuli in qualitatively different ways. The authors conclude that implicit learning, just like explicit learning, proceeds through active organization of the stimulus complex, rather than through passive absorption of any level of structure. The authors propose a synthesis in which learning, with and without awareness, is understood through a common set of principles.

Adaptation, Physiological↗