Processing fluency: Difference between revisions

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Revision as of 06:04, 3 October 2016

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Research in cognitive neuroscience and psychology has shown that processing fluency influences different kinds of judgments. For instance, perceptual fluency can contribute to the experience of familiarity when fluent processing is attributed to the past. Repeating the presentation of a stimulus, also known as [[Priming (psychology)|priming]], is one method for enhancing fluency. Jacoby and Dallas in 1981 argued that items from past experience are processed more fluently.<ref name=Jacoby1981/> This becomes a learned experience throughout our lifetime such that fluent items can be attributed to the past. Therefore, people sometimes take fluency as an indication that a stimulus is familiar even though the sense of familiarity is false.<ref name=Whittlesea1993/> Perceptual fluency literature has been dominated with research that posits that fluency leads to familiarity. Behavioral measures of fluency do not have the temporal resolution to properly investigate the interaction between fluency and familiarity. [[Event-related potentials]] (ERPs) are a method of averaging brainwaves that has been successful in dissociating different cognitive mechanisms due to small time scale that brainwaves are measured.<ref name=Rugg2007/> One study was able to use a manipulation of visual clarity to change perceptual fluency during a recognition task. This manipulation effected ERPs for fluency and familiarity at different times and locations in the brain leading them to believe that these two mechanisms do not come from the same source.<ref name=Leynes2012/>

Later research observed that high perceptual fluency increases the experience of [[positive affect]].<ref name=Reber1998/> Research with [[psychophysiological]] methods corroborated this positive effect on affective experience: easy-to-perceive stimuli were not only judged more positively but increased activation in the [[zygomaticus major muscle]], the so-called "smiling muscle".<ref name=Winkielman2001/> The notion that processing fluency is inherently positive led to the [[processing fluency theory of aesthetic pleasure]],<ref name=Reber2004/> and it has been used to explain people's negative reactions towards migrants, who appear to be more difficult to process than nonmigrantsnon-migrants.<ref name=Rubin2010/>

Other studies have shown that when presenting people with a factual statement, manipulations that make the statement easier to mentally process—even totally nonsubstantive changes like writing it in a cleaner [[font]] or making it [[rhyme]] or simply repeating it—can alter judgment of the truth of the statement, along with evaluation of the [[intelligence]] of the statement's author.<ref name=Bennett2010/> This is called the "[[illusion-of-truth effect]]". InMultiple onestudies study,have peoplefound that subjects were more likely to judge easy-to-read statements as true.<ref name=Reber1999/><ref name=Newman2012/><ref name=Waldman2014/> This means that perceived beauty and judged truth have a common underlying experience, namely processing fluency. Indeed, experiments showed that [[beauty]] is used as an indication for the correctness of mathematical solutions. This supports the idea that beauty is intuitively seen as truth.<ref name=Reber2008/> Processing fluency may be one of the foundations of [[Intuition (knowledge)|intuition]]<ref name=Topolinski2009/> and the [[Eureka effect|"Aha!" experience]].<ref name=Topolinski2010/><ref name="Wray2011"/>

As high processing fluency indicates that the interaction of a person with the environment goes smoothly,<ref name="Winkielman2003"/> a person does not need to pay particular attention to the environment. By contrast, low processing fluency means that there are problems in the interaction with the environment which requires more attention and an analytical processing style to solve the problem. Indeed, people process information more shallowly when processing fluency is high and employ an analytical thinking style when processing fluency is low.<ref name=Alter2007/><ref name=Song2008/>

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<ref name=Leynes2012>{{cite journal|doi=10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2012.10.004|pmid=23063967|title=Event-related potential (ERP) evidence for fluency-based recognition memory|journal=Neuropsychologia|volume=50|issue=14|pages=3240–3249|year=2012|last1=Leynes|first1=P. Andrew |last2=Zish|first2=Kevin}}</ref>

<ref name=Newman2012>{{Cite journal|last=Newman|first=Eryn J.|last2=Garry|first2=Maryanne|last3=Bernstein|first3=Daniel M.|last4=Kantner|first4=Justin|last5=Lindsay|first5=D. Stephen|date=2012-10-01|title=Nonprobative photographs (or words) inflate truthiness|url=https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22869334|journal=Psychonomic Bulletin & Review|volume=19|issue=5|pages=969–974|doi=10.3758/s13423-012-0292-0|issn=1531-5320}}</ref>

<ref name=Reber1998>{{cite journal|doi=10.1111/1467-9280.00008|title=Effects of Perceptual Fluency on Affective Judgments|journal=Psychological Science|volume=9|pages=45–48|year=1998|last1=Reber|first1=R.|last2=Winkielman|first2=P.|last3=Schwarz|first3=N.}}</ref>

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<ref name=Topolinski2010>{{cite journal|doi=10.1177/0963721410388803|title=Gaining Insight into the "Aha" Experience|journal=Current Directions in Psychological Science|volume=19|issue=6|pages=402–405|year=2010|last1=Topolinski|first1=S.|last2=Reber|first2=R.|ref=harv |url=http://wayback.archive.org/web/20160613103031/https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Rolf_Reber/publication/258127962_Gaining_Insight_Into_the_Aha_Experience/links/547f4f730cf2ccc7f8b91e33.pdf}}</ref>

<ref name=Waldman2014>{{Cite news|url=http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2014/09/truthiness_research_cognitive_biases_for_simple_clear_conservative_messages.html|title=The Science of Truthiness|last=Waldman|first=Katy|date=2014-09-03|newspaper=Slate|language=en-US|issn=1091-2339|access-date=2016-10-03}}</ref>

<ref name=Whittlesea1993>{{cite journal|doi=10.1037/0278-7393.19.6.1235|title=Illusions of familiarity|journal=Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition|volume=19|issue=6|pages=1235–1253|year=1993|last1=Whittlesea|first1=Bruce W. A.}}</ref>