The discrepancy-attribution hypothesis: I. The heuristic basis of feelings and familiarity.

Abstract

B. W. A. Whittlesea and L. D. Williams (1998, 2000) proposed the discrepancy-attribution hypothesis to explain the source of feelings of familiarity. By that hypothesis, people chronically evaluate the coherence of their processing. When the quality of processing is perceived as being discrepant from that which could be expected, people engage in an attributional process; the feeling of familiarity occurs when perceived discrepancy is attributed to prior experience. In the present article, the authors provide convergent evidence for that hypothesis and show that it can also explain feelings of familiarity for nonlinguistic stimuli. They demonstrate that the perception of discrepancy is not automatic but instead depends critically on the attitude that people adopt toward their processing, given the task and context. The connection between the discrepancy-attribution hypothesis and the "revelation effect" is also explored (e.g., D. L. Westerman & R. L. Greene, 1996).

Mere exposure effect: A consequence of direct and indirect fluency–preference links

“…This study, along with the results of several other recent studies (e.g., Butler et al, 2004;Whittlesea & Leboe, 2003;Whittlesea & Williams, 1998, 2001a, 2001b; see also Westerman et al, 2002), supports the notion that familiarity and preference are a function of the perceiverÕs dynamic attributional processes. That is, a stimulus may be perceived either as familiar and/or liked or as unfamiliar and/or unliked depending on the expectations and interpretations of the perceiver (Lloyd et al, 2003).…”

“…In Experiment 2, with a more perceptible but still unnoticed quality difference at the time of testing, the pre-exposure influence was particularly great when target stimuli were presented with a low-quality level. In that case, it is the surprise related to the discrepancy between what is expected of the type of stimulus and what actually happens in processing that sponsors the attribution process moderating the role of fluency in preference and recognition judgment (Whittlesea & Williams, 1998, 2001a, 2001b. In other words, this experiment shows that people are able to use the surprising fluency when the quality of an event cannot be reconciled with the actual feeling of fluency (see Whittlesea & Leboe, 2003).…”

“…For example, Kelley and Rhodes (2002) suggest that when an irrelevant source of fluency (e.g., the presentation of an obvious supraliminal prime just before the stimulus) is noticed and appreciated by the subject, high-processing fluency may be perceived as uninformative and may be entirely attributed to this irrelevant source (i.e., to the prime at the test time and not to a previous encounter); accordingly, it will not give rise to a feeling of familiarity. Further, a recent series of works by Whittlesea and colleagues (Whittlesea & Leboe, 2003;Whittlesea & Williams, 1998, 2001a, 2001b; see also Lloyd, Westerman, & Miller, 2003;Westerman, Lloyd, & Miller, 2002) provide evidence that these attributional processes are quite sophisticated. According to their discrepancy-attribution hypothesis, enhanced fluency is attributed to prior exposure to a stimulus, and creates a feeling of familiarity, only when the individual is surprised by the ease with which he or she is able to process the item.…”

Remembering by the Seat of Your Pants

“…As this example suggests, SCAPE explains (sometimes contradictory) feelings by a discrepancy-attribution hypothesis (Whittlesea & Williams, 2001). Depending on context, people have different implicit expectations of processing fluency.…”

“…According to Whittlesea and Williams (2001), when processing expectations are violated, the production process issues a nonspecific signal leading people to experience feelings of either memory or memory failure. This nonspecific signal is generally interpreted as familiarity.…”