Hack83.Fake Familiarity

Hack 83. Fake Familiarity

Hack memory to make people feel they've seen something before.

The memory system is chockablock with hacks. The information that our environment constantly provides exceeds any viable storage capacity, so memory employs a variety of methods that allow it to be choosy. One memory experience we all know is the feeling of familiarity for previously seen things or people. The process beneath it is quick and feels automatic, with an almost perceptual flavor. As we will see, that is not too far from the truth. However, there are hidden layers that contribute to this process, and these can be revealed by the use of a memory illusion.

9.4.1. In Action

Try this teasing task, using stimuli from Whittlesea and Williams' 1998 study.1 Or better yet find a volunteer to tax instead. Look at the words in Table 9-1, one at a time (around 2-3 seconds a word), in both columns. Then take a breather for a minute or two.

Table 9-1. Study each word for 2 to 3 seconds each

MACHINE	ISOLATE
DAISY	FRAMBLE
FISSEL	SUBBEN
PNAFTED	STOFWUS
FAMILIAR	VASSIL
COELEPT	DETAIL
HADTACE	GERTPRIS
STATION	MEUNSTAH
PLENDON	HENSION

Now turn to the second list of words, Table 9-6, at the very end of this chapter. Go through the second list and check/tick with a pencil those that feel familiar (if you like, you can put a cross by those you definitely didn't see).

What did you experience? Most people find that while the real words were easy to identify one way or another, certain of the nonwords had a creeping feeling of familiarity. Possibly you checked/ticked some that, in fact, you hadn't seen. If so, your recognition memory has just been royally messed with.

9.4.2. How It Works

This test is a good way to bring out the heuristic, fast-and-loose nature of recognition memory. When we encounter something we have experienced before, familiarity can hit us extremely rapidly. This feeling need not be accompanied by extensive memory information, which shows it isn't due to deep memory retrieval. Instead, recognition memory seems to be piggybacking on the rapid incoming sensory information to flood us with this sense of "having seen." What qualities of perception might be useful? Well, as seen before, items that have been seen recently are processed faster and more easily [Hack #81] we can call this fluent processing, or just fluency. The level of fluency you experience when you encounter something should be an ideal source of information for recognition memory; if you feel fluent in something, it's a good sign you've seen it before. But there's a problem.

Consider catching sight of your partner as you enter your home after work versus the situation in which you catch sight of a less familiar figure in an incongruous situation (say, your boss at a nightclub). The flash of familiarity comes in only the second situation, even though the first is far more common. So it turns out the fluency system is a little bit smarter. It needs to be, or we would spend our waking life overwhelmed by the familiarity of every experienced object in our environment. Other mechanisms are brought in to compensate for the high level of fluency associated with regularly encountered experiences. For example, words are processed extremely fluently, due to our dedicated language systems [Hack #49], and so the mind usually takes this extra fluency into account when presented with meaningful verbal items.

The complication in word lists like the ones in the tables is that there is no clear division between word things and certain of the nonwordlike things, the ones you felt you'd seen before. These nonwords are meaningless yet nonetheless have the structure of words and therefore feed into the mind as easily as they trip off the tongue, becoming more fluent than nonwords ought to be. This discrepancya "surprising fluency," as Whittlesea puts itfools your brain into concluding you've seen the nonwords before. The effect extends to music, with famous tunes, well-structured (catchy) and ill-structured (less musical) novel tones. The brain takes a measure of its own speed of processing (fluency) and uses that to produce smart and fast information about the environmentin this case, whether the specific experience has been had before. Well-structured tunes get falsely tagged as already heard much more than the others, because they have more fluency.

Not all false recognition research revolves around this internal measure of fluency. False familiarity can be produced by other means: for example, subjects can find the word "sleep" familiar when they have previously heard the word "snooze," because the two terms are associated, an effect known as priming [Hack #81] . The argument traditionally goes that the familiarity results not from fluency, but that, if you hear a word (and activate it in your brain), it passes on some of that activation to associated words. That's the principle behind the techniques in [Hack #85], although that's not to say that future research won't settle on an explanation based on a fluency mechanism for these false familiarity effects after all.

9.4.3. In Real Life

This kind of memory illusion serves advertisers well in their search for ways to get products in with the public: word-like product names are not only easier to repeat, but feel more familiar the first time around, as can musical jingles and catchphrases. Bearing in mind the slight, but real effect that mere exposure [Hack #82] can have, this makes fluency a design ambition. It could have more serious ramifications when it comes to the law, as the process of identifying criminals can involve amplification of ambiguous feelings, such as "I've seen you beforebut where?" Such feelings could be produced by preexposure to a suspect among hundreds of mug shots before a lineup or a glimpse of the subject's face in a mug shot book before the ID session has officially begun.

But we must recognize that these highlighted errors reflect a fundamental process, one essential to our day-to-day behavior, as fluent processing flips us into familiarity mode only when something in the environment falls out of line with expectations. It's a handy hack, using "norms on the fly," as Whittlesea puts it.¹

There is an ongoing debate about the localization of mechanisms upon which familiarity responses depend, with the parahippocampal gyrus (part of the limbic system [Hack #7], adjacent to the hippocampus in the temporal lobe) being touted as a candidate region. It is clear that, relative to the healthy brain, damage to temporal lobe regions impair both recognition and recall memory, but there is conflict over whether these amnesiac patients are more prone to these memory errors or actually less; this is becoming a topic of considerable interest in neuroscience.

Familiarity could be considered the cognitive equivalent of sensory pop-out (just like flat shapes that pop out into 3D using shading to emulate shadows [Hack #20] ), but our brain makes sure these things pop out only when they tend to be useful, harnessing higher-level expectations and lower-level rules of thumb to home in on the interesting features of our environment.

9.4.4. End Note

1. Whittlesea, B. W. A., & Williams, L. D. (1998). Why do strangers feel familiar, but friends don't? A discrepancy-attribution account of feelings of familiarity. Acta Psychologica, 98, 141-165.

9.4.5. See Also

• "Social Psychology Principles Can Be Used to Facilitate Eyewitness Testimony" (http://www.uplink.com.au/lawlibrary/Documents/Docs/Doc51.html).

Alex Fradera