Abstract
The decision that two words are identical is made more quickly than the decision that two nonwords are identical. This familiarity effect was shown to be larger in a simultaneous matching task than in a sequential matching task. In the simultaneous task, two words were not matched as quickly as a single letter and a letter in a predesignated location within a word. The latter finding rules out a perceptual unitization account of the familiarity effect (Silverman, 1985). The familiarity effect was interpreted to be due to the facilitated encoding of a comparison item when a holistic cognitive unit representing the target is activated in memory.
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This research was supported by Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada Grant OGP0000684.
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Marmurek, H.H.C. Familiarity effects and word unitization in visual comparison tasks. Mem Cogn 17, 483–489 (1989). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03202622
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03202622