Abstract
It has recently been suggested that the familiarity of a stimulus can affect early sensory processes involved in their detection. This hypothesis was tested in a detection task using fragmented forms varying in familiarity and their structural properties but equivalent in their spatial frequency content. No effect of familiarity or structure was found on the detectability of the stimuli. Possible reasons for the familiarity effect observed in previous detection studies are discussed.
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This research was supported by grants from the British Council and Naturalia and Biologia to the first author.
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Boucart, M., Humphreys, G.W. Familiarity and nameability do not affect picture detection. Bull. Psychon. Soc. 28, 409–411 (1990). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03334052
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03334052