Effects Of Familiarity Research Articles

Virtual reality as a tool to investigate and predict occupant behaviour in the real world: the example of wayfinding

The use of virtual reality (VR) is expanding within the AEC sectors, commonly in design and pre-construction decision-making, including as a tool to test and predict the behaviours of building occupants. The implicit assumption is the experience of an immersive Virtual Reality Environment is representative of the Real Environment, and understanding this prior to construction reduces the likelihood and significance of design errors. However, there are very few studies that have validated this basic assumption, and even fewer that have made a direct comparison between Virtual and Real building use. One behaviour that influences design is wayfinding, and the acknowledged effect of familiarity with the layout of a building, which is the subject of this study. We produced an accurate immersive VR model of part of an existing University building and asked participating students to complete a wayfinding task in both the Real and VR buildings. The results show a quantitative improvement in the route and time taken to complete the task, but highlight differences in behaviours in each environment, including subtleties of head movement, a tendency to experiment and seek amusement, and a range of responses to the technology from enjoyment to suspicion. Further research is required to explore in more detail the effect of VR technologies on participants’ behaviour, and the limitations and potentials of VR as a decision-making tool beyond the example of wayfinding that we use. In conclusion, we need to adopt a cautious approach when designing by VR and recognise that the results of experiments such as ours should complement design decisions, rather than act as their sole justification.

Listeners with congenital amusia are sensitive to context uncertainty in melodic sequences

In typical listeners, the perceptual salience of a surprising auditory event depends on the uncertainty of its context. For example, in melodies, pitch deviants are more easily detected and generate larger neural responses when the context is highly predictable than when it is less so. However, it is not known whether amusic listeners with abnormal pitch processing are sensitive to the degree of uncertainty of pitch sequences and, if so, whether they are to a different extent than typical non-musician listeners. To answer this question, we manipulated the uncertainty of short melodies while participants with and without congenital amusia underwent EEG recordings in a passive listening task. Uncertainty was manipulated by presenting melodies with different levels of complexity and familiarity, under the assumption that simpler and more familiar patterns would enhance pitch predictability. We recorded mismatch negativity (MMN) responses to pitch, intensity, timbre, location, and rhythm deviants as a measure of auditory surprise. In both participant groups, we observed reduced MMN amplitudes and longer peak latencies for all sound features with increasing levels of complexity, and putative familiarity effects only for intensity deviants. No significant group-by-complexity or group-by-familiarity interactions were detected. However, in contrast to previous studies, pitch MMN responses in amusics were disrupted in high complexity and unfamiliar melodies. The present results thus indicate that amusics are sensitive to the uncertainty of melodic sequences and that preattentive auditory change detection is greatly spared in this population across sound features and levels of predictability. However, our findings also hint at pitch-specific impairments in this population when uncertainty is high, thus suggesting that pitch processing under high uncertainty conditions requires an intact frontotemporal loop.

Spontaneous recognition: Investigating the role of working memory.

In almost every aspect of life, focusing on a target and ignoring distractors effectively is very important. Alternative to the common view, distraction may aid recognition via triggering automatic responses. Spontaneous recognition (SR) can be defined as the unintentional recognition of target stimuli and is measured by the effect of familiarity to distractors on a recognition task. Research has indicated that previously seen or not seen (old/new) distractors affect the recognition of targets. This research aimed to investigate the influence of working memory load on SR. A dual-task was designed to ensure engagement in two tasks-namely, the memory Stroop task (recognition task) and the n-back task (working memory task) at the same time. This design enabled an investigation of the influence of working memory load and allowed for further exploration of the influence of episodic memory load and the characteristics of n-back task. The results are in line with previous research; participants were more accurate when target and distractor were congruent versus when they were incongruent, but only when WM load was high. This interaction was modulated by episodic memory load and n-back task trials (match/mismatch). It was concluded that many factors may contribute to the SR effect. This research demonstrated that the SR effect is determined by WM availability and recognition processes engaged in another task.

The Other Accent Effect in Talker Recognition: Now You See It, Now You Don't.

The existence of the Language Familiarity Effect (LFE), where talkers of a familiar language are easier to identify than talkers of an unfamiliar language, is well-documented and uncontroversial. However, a closely related phenomenon known as the Other Accent Effect (OAE), where accented talkers are more difficult to recognize, is less well understood. There are several possible explanations for why the OAE exists, but to date, little data exist to adjudicate differences between them. Here, we begin to address this issue by directly comparing listeners' recognition of talkers who speak in different types of accents, and by examining both the LFE and OAE in the same set of listeners. Specifically, Canadian English listeners were tested on their ability to recognize talkers within four types of voice line-ups: Canadian English talkers, Australian English talkers, Mandarin-accented English talkers, and Mandarin talkers. We predicted that the OAE would be present for talkers of Mandarin-accented English but not for talkers of Australian English-which is precisely what we observed. We also observed a disconnect between listeners' confidence and performance across different types of accents; that is, listeners performed equally poorly with Mandarin and Mandarin-accented talkers, but they were more confident with their performance with the latter group of talkers. The present findings set the stage for further investigation into the nature of the OAE by exploring a range of potential explanations for the effect, and introducing important implications for forensic scientists' evaluation of ear witness testimony.

레스토랑의 사회적 서비스 스케이프가 혼밥 외식 만족도에 미치는 영향

Recently, the changes of personalized lifestyle, solo dining became one of the culture, and in terms of restaurants side it became an important fact to attract solo diners. This study explored the relationship between crowding, negative response from other diners, interactional fairness from employees, and solo dining satisfaction as well as moderating effect of restaurant familiarity. The survey was conducted in September 2020 among Korean consumers who have dined alone within the last three months. A total of 403 consumers participated in this study. The results of the structural equation model analysis suggested that the crowding level of the restaurants was identified as the predictor of the negative response from other diners, while it had no significant influence on the interactional fairness from employees. The influence of the negative response from other diners and the interactional fairness from employees on solo dining satisfaction were also verified. Multi-group analysis results found the moderating effect of familiarity between crowding and the negative response from other diners. Specifically, crowding had a significant impact on the negative response from other diners for solo diners with low familiarity, whereas crowding did not show any significant effect on the negative response from other diners for solo diners with high familiarity. This study contributes to enhance understanding of solo dining experience and provide beneficial information to relevant practitioners by verifying the role of social servicescape and restaurant familiarity in the solo dining experience.

What are friends for? The impact of friendship on communicative efficiency and cortisol response during collaborative problem solving among younger and older women

ABSTRACT Conversation is a skilled activity that depends on cognitive and social processes, both of which develop through adulthood. We examined the effects of age and partner familiarity on communicative efficiency and cortisol reactivity. Younger and older women interacted with familiar or unfamiliar partners in a dyadic collaborative conversation task (N = 8 in each group). Regardless of age, referential expressions among familiar and unfamiliar partners became more efficient over time, and cortisol concentrations were lower for speakers interacting with familiar partners. These findings suggest that communicative effectiveness is largely preserved with age, as is the stress-buffering effect of a familiar partner.

The Role of Gender and Familiarity in a Modified Version of the Almeria Boxes Room Spatial Task.

Individual factors like gender and familiarity can affect the kind of environmental representation that a person acquires during spatial navigation. Men seem to prefer relying on map-like survey representations, while women prefer using sequential route representations. Moreover, a good familiarity with the environment allows more complete environmental representations. This study was aimed at investigating gender differences in two different object-position learning tasks (i.e., Almeria Boxes Tasks) assuming a route or a survey perspective also considering the role of environmental familiarity. Two groups of participants had to learn the position of boxes placed in a virtual room. Participants had several trials, so that familiarity with the environment could increase. In both tasks, the effects of gender and familiarity were found, and only in the route perspective did an interaction effect emerge. This suggests that gender differences can be found regardless of the perspective taken, with men outperforming women in navigational tasks. However, in the route task, gender differences appeared only at the initial phase of learning, when the environment was unexplored, and disappeared when familiarity with the environment increased. This is consistent with studies showing that familiarity can mitigate gender differences in spatial tasks, especially in more complex ones.

Pictorial Referents Facilitate Recognition and Retrieval Speeds of Associations Between Novel Words in a Second Language (L2) and Referents

This study reveals associative processes for novel words in a second language (L2) and their referents. Thirty Japanese participants learned associative pairs for novel words in Chinese and pictorial referents (CP), as well as novel words in Chinese and words in Japanese (CJ), against a condition in which they learned only novel words in Chinese (C). After the learning phase, participants conducted two learning condition retrieval tasks for word recognition and three recognition tasks for the source-monitoring of the referents. The correct answers for each recognition task were provided to participants after each trial. Although the correct answers in all conditions increased in both the recognition and learning condition retrieval tasks, there was no significant difference among conditions. In contrast, the response times of the correct trials in all recognition tasks and the first learning condition retrieval tasks were faster for the CP condition than the CJ condition. Additionally, in the second learning condition retrieval task, missed items in associative conditions (CP and CJ conditions) were judged to be learned items more often than unlearned items, whereas missed items in the non-associative condition (C condition) were judged to be unlearned items more than learned items. These findings suggest that pictures contribute to the recognition and retrieval speeds of associations between novel words in L2 and referents, and that associative learning of L2 words and referents could enhance more familiarity effects than the learning of L2 words only.

Two Factors in Face Recognition: Whether You Know the Person's Face and Whether You Share the Person's Race.

One of the best-known phenomena in face recognition is the other-race effect, the observation that own-race faces are better remembered than other-race faces. However, previous studies have not put the magnitude of other-race effect in the context of other influences on face recognition. Here, we compared the effects of (a) a race manipulation (own-race/other-race face) and (b) a familiarity manipulation (familiar/unfamiliar face) in a 2 × 2 factorial design. We found that the familiarity effect was several times larger than the race effect in all performance measures. However, participants expected race to have a larger effect on others than it actually did. Face recognition accuracy depends much more on whether you know the person’s face than whether you share the same race.

Effect of Branding and Familiarity of Soy Sauces on Valence and Arousal as Determined by Facial Expressions, Physiological Measures, Emojis, and Ratings.

Food experiences can be summarized along two main dimensions: valence and arousal, which can be measured explicitly with subjective ratings or implicitly with physiological and behavioral measures. Food experiences are not only driven by the food's intrinsic properties, such as its taste, texture, and aroma, but also by extrinsic properties such as brand information and the consumers' previous experiences with the foods. In this study, valence and arousal to intrinsic and extrinsic properties of soy sauce were measured in consumers that varied in their previous experience with soy sauce, using a combination of explicit (scores and emojis), implicit (heart rate and skin conductance), and behavioral measures (facial expressions). Forty participants, high- and low-frequency users, were presented with samples of rice and three commercial soy sauces without and with brand information that either matched or non-matched the taste of the soy sauce. In general, skin conductance and facial expressions showed relatively low arousal during exposure to the brand name and again lowest arousal during tasting. Heart rate was lowest during exposure to the brand name and increased during tasting probably resulting from the motor activity during chewing. Furthermore, the results showed that explicit liking and arousal scores were primarily affected by the taste of the specific soy sauce and by the participants' previous experience with soy sauces. These scores were not affected by branding information. In contrast, facial expressions, skin conductance, and heart rate were primarily affected by (1) the participants' level of experience with soy sauce, (2) whether or not branding information was provided, and (3) whether or not the branding information matched with the taste. In conclusion, this study suggests that liking scores may be most sensitive to the food's intrinsic taste properties, whereas implicit measures and facial expressions may be most sensitive to extrinsic properties such as brand information. All measures were affected by the consumers' previous food experiences.

Effects of compassion training on brain responses to suffering others.

Compassion meditation (CM) is a promising intervention for enhancing compassion, although its active ingredients and neurobiological mechanisms are not well-understood. To investigate these, we conducted a three-armed placebo-controlled randomized trial (N = 57) with longitudinal functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). We compared a 4-week CM program delivered by smartphone application with (i) a placebo condition, presented to participants as the compassion-enhancing hormone oxytocin, and (ii) a condition designed to control for increased familiarity with suffering others, an element of CM which may promote compassion. At pre- and post-intervention, participants listened to compassion-eliciting narratives describing suffering others during fMRI. CM increased brain responses to suffering others in the medial orbitofrontal cortex (mOFC) relative to the familiarity condition, p < 0.05 family-wise error rate corrected. Among CM participants, individual differences in increased mOFC responses positively correlated with increased compassion-related feelings and attributions, r = 0.50, p = 0.04. Relative to placebo, the CM group exhibited a similar increase in mOFC activity at an uncorrected threshold of P < 0.001 and 10 contiguous voxels. We conclude that the mOFC, a region closely related to affiliative affect and motivation, is an important brain mechanism of CM. Effects of CM on mOFC function are not explained by familiarity effects and are partly explained by placebo effects.

Reliability of judgments of stuttering-related variables: The effect of language familiarity

Previous studies demonstrate mixed results and some methodological limitations regarding judges’ ability to reliably assess stuttering-related variables in an unfamiliar language. The present study examined intra- and inter-rater reliability for percent syllables stuttered (%SS), stuttering severity (SEV), syllables per minute (SPM), and speech naturalness (NAT) when English-speaking judges viewed speech samples in English and in a language with which they had no or minimal familiarity (Spanish). Over two time periods, 21 judges viewed eight videos of four bilingual persons who stutter. Data were analyzed for relative and absolute intra- and inter-rater reliability as well as for an effect of language on time period differences. Intra- and inter-rater relative reliability were good or excellent for all measures in both languages, with the exception of inter-rater relative reliability for NAT in both languages and %SS in Spanish. Intra-rater absolute reliability was acceptable in both languages for NAT and SEV and unacceptable in both for SPM and %SS. Inter-rater absolute reliability in both languages was unacceptable for all measures, even with judges with the same training. There was a clinically significant effect of language on %SS scores, but, despite a statistically significant effect of language for SPM and SEV, the differences were not clinically significant. Results indicate that reliability across and within languages varies by measure and is impacted by intra- vs. inter-rater reliability, relative vs. absolute reliability, and language familiarity. Modifications in training may be able to address some of the limitations found, particularly with regard to SPM and NAT.

Word class and word frequency in the MMN looking glass

The effects of lexical meaning and lexical familiarity on auditory deviance detection were investigated by presenting oddball sequences of words, while participants ignored the stimuli. Stimulus sequences were composed of words that were varied in word class (nouns vs. functions words) and frequency of language use (high vs. low frequency) in a factorial design with the roles of frequently presented stimuli (Standards) and infrequently presented ones (Deviants) were fully crossed. Deviants elicited the Mismatch Negativity component of the event-related brain potential. Modulating effects of lexical meaning were obtained, revealing processing advantages for denotationally meaningful items. However, no effect of word frequency was observed. These results demonstrate that an apparently low-level function, such as auditory deviance detection utilizes information from the mental lexicon even for task-irrelevant stimuli.

中?O2O的服?品??消?者再使用意?的影?的?究 -以服????例-

Currently, many clothing brands have started to open their own apps, with unified prices and the styles of clothing between online and offline. Apparel companies use their own apps to enhance communication with customers, push all kinds of wanted information and discount information to customers according to their needs. Customers can also use mobile apps to check their favorite clothing. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship among several factors including online APP service quality, offline service quality, and analysis of satisfaction and reuse intention based on the TAM model. This study investigated 512 consumers who had used O2O to purchase clothing. For the data analysis, the SPSS 23.0 and AMOS 23.0 program were used and various statistical techniques were used including frequency analysis, exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, Second-order confirmatory factor analysis, path analysis, mediation effect analysis, and regulation effect analysis. The results of this paper are as follows: First, APP service quality has a positive impact on usefulness and ease of use. Second, the quality of offline services has a positive impact on usefulness and ease of use. In the relationship between usefulness and satisfaction, the innovation tendency showed a significant moderating effect, and it was verified that the innovation tendency increased the positive influence of the usefulness and satisfaction. The higher the consumer’s inclination to innovate, the higher the perceived usefulness of O2O services. In addition, the moderating effect of familiarity was verified in the relationship between usability and satisfaction. The higher the familiarity of consumers, the lower the usability of O2O service.

Effects of dialect-specific features and familiarity on cross-dialect phonetic convergence

Talkers imitate the speech of others through phonetic convergence. The current study examined the influence of dialect-specific features and dialect familiarity on the extent and perceptibility of phonetic convergence. Talkers with Mid-Atlantic and General American dialects repeated words after model talkers with Mid-Atlantic and General American dialects in a shadowing task. Half of the target words contained phonetic variables differing between the two dialects, including /ɔ/, /æɹ/, and word-initial /stɹ/, and half contained no distinguishing dialect features. In an AXB task, listeners from the Mid-Atlantic region with greater exposure to the Mid-Atlantic dialect and listeners from the Midwestern United States with less exposure to the Mid-Atlantic dialect assessed the perceptual similarity of the two shadowing productions to the original productions of the model talkers. Together, acoustic analyses of the shadowing productions and the results of the AXB task revealed that dialect-specific features facilitated phonetic convergence. This facilitation was stronger for Mid-Atlantic shadowers and model talkers, suggesting that dialect familiarity increases the magnitude of convergence in speech production. However, no differences were observed between listener groups, indicating that greater experience with a dialect may not affect the perception of phonetic convergence.

Target familiarity and visual working memory do not influence familiarity effect in visual search

Familiarity effect refers to the phenomenon that searching for a novel target among familiar distractors is more efficient than that searching for a familiar target among novel distractors. While the familiarity of distractors is considered as a key role on familiarity effect, the familiarity of targets contribute to this asymmetric visual search is unclear. The present study investigated how target familiarity influences visual search efficiency from the perspective of perceptual load. Experiment 1 using two similar Chinese characters (“甲” and “由”) suggested that searching for a familiar target from familiar distractors is an inefficient search process in Chinese context. Experiment 2 adopted a dual-task paradigm with a visual working memory task to increase the perceptual load and attempt to affect the efficiency of searching a novel target (mirrored “舌”) from familiar distractors (“舌”). Results demonstrated no difference in the search efficiency between single and dual-task conditions. The present study suggests that the familiarity of target does not influence the search efficiency with familiar distractors when involving semantic processing of Chinese characters. Additionally, the interference of extra working memory load would not impair the efficiency of searching target among familiar distractors, supporting the critical effect of distractor familiarity on the efficiency of visual search.

Environmental Marketing Strategy and Customer Citizenship Behavior: An Investigation in a Café Setting

ABSTRACT This study investigates the role that environmental marketing strategy plays in enhancing customer citizenship behavior (CCB) – directly, indirectly, and interactively with brand familiarity. Drawing on data collected from 439 Starbucks customers in Lebanon, the findings of the study support the exists of a positive relationship between environmental marketing strategy and two forms of CCB – namely, the policing of other customers and the helping of other customers. Evidence indicated that corporate reputation plays a mediating role in the relationship between environmental marketing strategy and CCB. Moreover, brand familiarity served as a moderator factor that positively influences the relationship between environmental marketing strategy and CCB. Further, the conditional indirect effect of brand familiarity on the relationship between environmental marketing strategy and CCB through corporate reputation indicated a significant positive impact.

Robots Asking for Favors: The Effects of Directness and Familiarity on Persuasive HRI

As robots work in increasingly collaborative settings with humans, scenarios will arise where robots need to successfully request favors to be effective. Communication directness and familiarity have been shown to be important factors to persuasion. However, these two critical factors have not yet been jointly investigated in human-robot interaction (HRI). This letter explores how they can be used by social robots to request favors from people. We present a social HRI study that uniquely investigates the effects of a robot's communication directness and its familiarity on persuasiveness, trustworthiness, and a person's willingness to help the robot. In the study, we present participants with scenarios where two different robots (one familiar, one unfamiliar) ask participants for favors using either direct or indirect requests. Our results show that a familiar robot is more persuasive, trustworthy, and people are more willing to help it. Furthermore, indirect requests are perceived to be more trustworthy and encourage greater willingness to help than direct requests, regardless of the robot's familiarity. Further discussions of these results highlight key considerations for collaborative social robots, particularly when robots request assistance or favors from people.

On musical interval perception for complex tones at very high frequencies.

Listeners appear able to extract a residue pitch from high-frequency harmonics for which phase locking to the temporal fine structure is weak or absent. The present study investigated musical interval perception for high-frequency harmonic complex tones using the same stimuli as Lau, Mehta, and Oxenham [J. Neurosci. 37, 9013-9021 (2017)]. Nine young musically trained listeners with especially good high-frequency hearing adjusted various musical intervals using harmonic complex tones containing harmonics 6-10. The reference notes had fundamental frequencies (F0s) of 280 or 1400 Hz. Interval matches were possible, albeit markedly worse, even when all harmonic frequencies were above the presumed limit of phase locking. Matches showed significantly larger systematic errors and higher variability, and subjects required more trials to finish a match for the high than for the low F0. Additional absolute pitch judgments from one subject with absolute pitch, for complex tones containing harmonics 1-5 or 6-10 with a wide range of F0s, were perfect when the lowest frequency component was below about 7 kHz, but at least 50% of responses were incorrect when it was 8 kHz or higher. The results are discussed in terms of the possible effects of phase-locking information and familiarity with high-frequency stimuli on pitch.

Testing the reliability of the Fiorillo bone surface abrasion scale

The dominant method for measuring taphonomic abrasion on bone surfaces is the ‘Fiorillo scale’, an ordinal qualitative scale based on a subjective visual assessment. Despite wide use, the Fiorillo scale has not been formally validated. The absence of procedural detail and inconsistent application by citing authors suggest results from this method may be unreliable. This study applies an inter-rater reliability design, involving ‘early-stage’ raters, experienced nonspecialists, and specialist raters, to test the degree of rater agreement. The results reflect the scale’s capacity to generate consistent results on abraded bone material. Agreement coefficient values indicate the inter-rater reliability (IRR) of data generated using the Fiorillo scale is fair. Unexpectedly, experienced nonspecialist raters exhibited the greatest within-group reliability. The IRR of specialist raters was low, and not significantly different from that of early-stage raters. The generation of a high-quality comparative scale may improve reliability among specialists, whose results are likely influenced by individual experience. The reliability of early-stage raters improved over time, indicating the influence of familiarity effects. It is recommended that early-stage raters complete a training session prior to collecting abrasion data to improve rating consistency. Further investigation of the reliability of widespread systematic subjective methods in taphonomy is warranted.