Familiarity Hypothesis Research Articles

Friend or foe? Using eye-tracking technology to investigate the visual discrimination ability of giant pandas.

The role that visual discriminative ability plays among giant pandas in social communication and individual discrimination has received less attention than olfactory and auditory modalities. Here, we used an eye-tracker technology to investigate pupil fixation patterns for 8 captive male giant pandas Ailuropoda melanoleuca. We paired images (N = 26) of conspecifics against: 1) sympatric predators (gray wolves and tigers), and non-threatening sympatric species (golden pheasant, golden snub-nosed monkey, takin, and red panda), 2) conspecifics with atypical fur coloration (albino and brown), and 3) zookeepers/non-zookeepers wearing either work uniform or plain clothing. For each session, we tracked the panda's pupil movements and measured pupil first fixation point (FFP), fixation latency, total fixation count (TFC), and duration (TFD) of attention to each image. Overall, pandas exhibited similar attention (FFPs and TFCs) to images of predators and non-threatening sympatric species. Images of golden pheasant, snub-nosed monkey, and tiger received less attention (TFD) than images of conspecifics, whereas images of takin and red panda received more attention, suggesting a greater alertness to habitat or food competitors than to potential predators. Pandas' TFCs were greater for images of black-white conspecifics than for albino or brown phenotypes, implying that familiar color elicited more interest. Pandas reacted differently to images of men versus women. For images of women only, pandas gave more attention (TFC) to familiar combinations (uniformed zookeepers and plain-clothed non-zookeepers), consistent with the familiarity hypothesis. That pandas can use visual perception to discriminate intra-specifically and inter-specifically, including details of human appearance, has applications for panda conservation and captive husbandry.

Stigmatization in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic: a survey experiment using attribution theory and the familiarity hypothesis

BackgroundThe COVID-19 pandemic has created a global health crisis, leading to stigmatization and discriminatory behaviors against people who have contracted or are suspected of having contracted the virus. Yet the causes of stigmatization in the context of COVID-19 remain only partially understood. Using attribution theory, we examine to what extent attributes of a fictitious person affect the formation of stigmatizing attitudes towards this person, and whether suspected COVID-19 infection (vs. flu) intensifies such attitudes. We also use the familiarity hypothesis to explore whether familiarity with COVID-19 reduces stigma and whether it moderates the effect of a COVID-19 infection on stigmatization.MethodsWe conducted a multifactorial vignette survey experiment (28-design, i.e., NVignettes = 256) in Germany (NRespondents = 4,059) in which we experimentally varied signals and signaling events (i.e., information that may trigger stigma) concerning a fictitious person in the context of COVID-19. We assessed respondents’ cognitive (e.g., blameworthiness) and affective (e.g., anger) responses as well as their discriminatory inclinations (e.g., avoidance) towards the character. Furthermore, we measured different indicators of respondents’ familiarity with COVID-19.ResultsResults revealed higher levels of stigma towards people who were diagnosed with COVID-19 versus a regular flu. In addition, stigma was higher towards those who were considered responsible for their infection due to irresponsible behavior. Knowing someone who died from a COVID infection increased stigma. While higher self-reported knowledge about COVID-19 was associated with more stigma, higher factual knowledge was associated with less.ConclusionAttribution theory and to a lesser extent the familiarity hypothesis can help better understand stigma in the context of COVID-19. This study provides insights about who is at risk of stigmatization and stigmatizing others in this context. It thereby allows identifying the groups that require more support in accessing healthcare services and suggests that basic, factually oriented public health interventions would be promising for reducing stigma.

The familiarity hypothesis: Explaining the behavior of deep open set methods

In many object recognition applications, the set of possible categories is an open set, and the deployed recognition system will encounter novel objects belonging to categories unseen during training. Detecting such “novel category” objects is usually formulated as an anomaly detection problem. Anomaly detection algorithms for feature-vector data identify anomalies as outliers, but outlier detection has not worked well in deep learning. Instead, methods based on the computed logits of visual object classifiers give state-of-the-art performance. This paper proposes the Familiarity Hypothesis that these methods succeed because they are detecting the absence of familiar learned features rather than the presence of novelty. This distinction is important, because familiarity-based detection will fail in many situations where novelty is present. For example when an image contains both a novel object and a familiar one, the familiarity score will be high, so the novel object will not be noticed. The paper reviews evidence from the literature and presents additional evidence from our own experiments that provide strong support for this hypothesis. The paper concludes with a discussion of whether familiarity-based detection is an inevitable consequence of representation learning.

Evidence of learning walks related to scorpion home burrow navigation.

ABSTRACTThe navigation by chemo-textural familiarity hypothesis (NCFH) suggests that scorpions use their midventral pectines to gather chemical and textural information near their burrows and use this information as they subsequently return home. For NCFH to be viable, animals must somehow acquire home-directed ‘tastes’ of the substrate, such as through path integration (PI) and/or learning walks. We conducted laboratory behavioral trials using desert grassland scorpions (Paruroctonus utahensis). Animals reliably formed burrows in small mounds of sand we provided in the middle of circular, sand-lined behavioral arenas. We processed overnight infrared video recordings with a MATLAB script that tracked animal movements at 1–2 s intervals. In all, we analyzed the movements of 23 animals, representing nearly 1500 h of video recording. We found that once animals established their home burrows, they immediately made one to several short, looping excursions away from and back to their burrows before walking greater distances. We also observed similar excursions when animals made burrows in level sand in the middle of the arena (i.e. no mound provided). These putative learning walks, together with recently reported PI in scorpions, may provide the crucial home-directed information requisite for NCFH.

Object agreement in Hungarian

AbstractThis paper contributes another round in the debate over how to analyze object agreement in Hungarian, a form of differential object marking that is found among other Uralic languages as well. I have previously argued that the choice of conjugation is determined not by the syntactic category of the object, but rather on the basis of semantic factors, primarily: on the Lexical Familiarity Hypothesis (LFH), selected lexical items are assigned a definiteness feature in virtue of a certain type of familiarity presupposition that they carry. Subsequent work has raised challenges for the LFH. This paper considers what would be necessary in order for these challenges to be met. I conclude that the LFH can be defended, if supplemented by a certain set of independently-motivated assumptions. In fact, this theory enjoys certain advantages over the most recent alternative.

Public Stigma Toward Female and Male Opium and Heroin Users. An Experimental Test of Attribution Theory and the Familiarity Hypothesis.

Drug abuse and addiction exist around the world. People addicted to drugs such as opium or heroin often encounter dehumanizing discriminatory behaviors and health-care systems that are reluctant to provide services. Experiencing discrimination often serves as a barrier to receiving help or finding a home or work. Therefore, it is important to better understand the mechanisms that lead to the stigmatization of drug addiction and who is more prone to stigmatizing behaviors. There is also a dearth of research on whether different patterns of stigma exist in men and women. Therefore, this study investigated factors affecting gender-specific stigmatization in the context of drug addiction. In our vignette study (NMensample = 320 and NWomensample = 320) in Iran, we experimentally varied signals and signaling events regarding a person with drug addiction (i.e., NVignettes = 32 per sample), based on Attribution Theory, before assessing stigmatizing cognitions (e.g., blameworthiness), affective responses (e.g., anger), and discriminatory inclinations (e.g., segregation) with the Attribution Questionnaire. We also tested assumptions from the Familiarity Hypothesis by assessing indicators of respondents' familiarity with drug addiction (e.g., knowledge about addiction). Results, for example, show higher stigma if the person used “harder” drugs, displayed aggressive behavior, or had a less controllable drug urge. Self-attributed knowledge about addiction or prior drug use increased some forms of stigma, but diminished others. These findings only partially converged between men and women. We suggest that anti-stigma initiatives should consider information about the stigmatized person, conditions of the addiction, and characteristics of stigmatizers.

Trading Up or Trading Down? How Home Country Corruption Affects Cross-Border R&D Investments

Prior research has demonstrated that corruption has largely negative effects on incoming international investments. What is less clear, however, is to what extent these negative effects are a product not of a host country’s absolute level of corruption, but of the relative distance to the home country’s degree of corruption. We define the Directional Corruption Distance (DCD) as the arithmetic difference between two countries’ corruption levels. Avoiding distorted FDI measures, we analyze the change in Research & Development Stock (RDS) representing more than 10,000 R&D centers of 500 technology-intensive MNCs taken from the Fortune 1000 list. Qualifying earlier research employing FDI as a dependent variable, we observe that countries of lower corruption are preferred destinations (Trading Up Hypothesis), but only under certain conditions. We further show that developed countries with lower degrees of corruption tend to prefer investments in other low-corruption countries (Comfort Hypothesis). High- corruption countries, conversely, do not exhibit this behavior and appear more open towards investment in other high-corruption countries (Familiarity Hypothesis). These findings underscore the influence of contextualizing variables in the origin of investments, and suggest extended research using firm-level field data to compensate for potential bias and flaws in FDI data.

The Development of Context-Sensitive Attention Across Cultures: The Impact of Stimulus Familiarity.

Across cultures, there are marked differences in visual attention that gradually develop between 4 and 6 years of age. According to the social orientation hypothesis, people in interdependent cultures should show more pronounced context sensitivity than people in independent cultures. However, according to the differential familiarity hypothesis, the focus on the salient object should also depend on the familiarity of the stimulus; people will focus more on the focal object (i.e., less context sensitivity), if it is a less familiar stimulus. To examine the differences in visual attention between interdependent and independent cultures while taking into account stimulus familiarity, this study used an eye-tracking paradigm to assess visual attention of participants between 4 and 20 years who came from urban middle-class families from Germany (n = 53; independent culture) or from Nso families in a rural area in Cameroon (n = 50; interdependent culture). Each participant saw four sets of stimuli, which varied in terms of their familiarity: (1) standard stimuli, (2) non-semantic stimuli, both more familiar to participants from Germany, (3) culture-specific matched stimuli, and (4) simple stimuli, similarly familiar to the individuals of both cultures. Overall, the findings show that mean differences in visual attention between cultures were highly contingent on the stimuli sets: In support of the social orientation hypothesis, German participants showed a higher object focus for the culture-specific matched stimuli, while there were no cultural differences for the simple set. In support of the differential familiarity hypothesis, the Cameroonian participants showed a higher object focus for the less familiar sets, namely the standard and non-semantic sets. Furthermore, context sensitivity correlated across all the sets. In sum, these findings suggest that the familiarity of a stimulus strongly affects individuals’ visual attention, meaning that stimulus familiarity needs to be considered when investigating culture-specific differences in attentional styles.

Perception of drone related risks in Czech society

The article examines perception of drone connected risks and the approval of the various purposes of the drone technology employment (rescue, traffic, security, private etc.) in Czech Republic and the opinion differences between drone users and non-users. Familiarity hypothesis, implying lower risk expectation and higher approval in the group of users, is tested in an online panel survey, concluding that user experience influences risk perception by broadening the scope of perceived possible events and contributes to the ability to evaluate risks. Further, five scenarios of precepted possible events are identified as espionage/spying, business rivalries, ideological attack, blackmailing, unintentional accident. The approval of individual modes of use is then found to be divided into two groups pattern - unlimited use and the use for public good. This division does not correspond with the users, non-users group.

Survival and growth of northern bobwhite offspring post‐translocation

ABSTRACTContinual population declines in northern bobwhites (Colinus virginianus) have prompted the use of population restoration techniques in conjunction with habitat management to restore their populations. We tested the site familiarity hypothesis to determine if translocation to new environments affected offspring survival and growth rates of bobwhites. We used bobwhites from north Florida and translocated them to a study site in Brunswick County, North Carolina, USA, and monitored birds during April−October 2016 and April−October 2017. We used the corral capture method and modified‐suture technique to capture and radio‐tag chicks to evaluate offspring growth and survival rates of resident and translocated bobwhites. Offspring survival varied by year and age. We did not find any difference in offspring survival rates of resident and translocated individuals, lending no support to the site familiarity hypothesis with regards to survival. Offspring of resident bobwhites did not grow at a faster rate than offspring of translocated bobwhites, indicating a lack of support for the site familiarity hypothesis in terms of physiological development. Survival, however, is a more important metric for determining post‐translocation population dynamics, and our results indicated that translocated bobwhites can reproduce and raise offspring similar to resident counterparts, but both had low survival. © 2019 The Wildlife Society.

Language Familiarity Hypothesis and Delayed Auditory Feedback: A Study on Speech Disruptions in Typical Kannada (L1)-English (L2) Bilinguals

배경 및 목적: 본 연구는 칸나다어(Kannada, L1)-영어(L2) 이중언어 아동에게서 나타나는 구어붕괴에 대해 언어친숙성 가설이 미치는 영향을 지연청각역입기(delayed auditory feedback, DAF)를 이용하여 알아보고자 하였다. 방법: 14명의 참여자를 L2 숙달도에 따라 숙달도가 높은 군과 낮은 군으로 나누었다(각 7명씩). 150...

Neither Cue Familiarity nor Semantic Cues Increase the Likelihood of Repeating a Tip-of-the-Tongue State

Psycholinguistic and metacognition researchers mostly disagree on what constitutes a tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) state. Psycholinguists argue that TOT states occur when there is a transmission of activation failure between the lemma and phonology levels of word production (e.g., Burke, MacKay, Worthley, & Wade, 1991). Metacognition researchers argue that the TOT state is better described as a subjective experience caused by a mechanism that assesses the likelihood of recall from memory. One sub-hypothesis of the metacognitive account of TOT states is the cue familiarity hypothesis, which suggests that a TOT state may occur when cues elicit a feeling of familiarity (Metcalfe, Schwartz, & Joaquim, 1993). We conducted three experiments to evaluate the cue familiarity hypothesis of TOT state etiology. Experiment 1 included a test-retest TOT task with identical definitions (i.e., cues that should elicit familiarity) versus alternative definitions. TOTs were as likely to repeat for alternative definitions across test and retest as identical definitions, which is inconsistent with the cue familiarity hypothesis. Experiment 2 included the same task layout as Experiment 1, but we used very different cues (pictures versus descriptions for famous people). Again, we found that TOTs tended to repeat regardless of whether or not prompts were identical. In Experiment 3, we presented either a picture and description simultaneously or a description only on the first test, followed by a description only on retest. We found that giving participants an extra semantic cue did not change the probability of repeating a TOT state. These findings suggest that repeated TOT states do not occur due to cue familiarity nor is the locus of the TOT state at the semantic level of the word production/word recall system. Therefore, we argue that the results point towards a success of lemma access, but then failure of the lemma-to-phonology mappings.

Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder:How Corruption Distance Affects R&D Investment Flows

Prior research has demonstrated that corruption has largely negative effects on incoming international investments. What is less clear, however, is to what extent these negative effects are a product not of a host country’s absolute level of corruption, but of the relative distance to the home country’s degree of corruption. We define the Directional Corruption Distance (DCD) as the arithmetic difference between two countries’ corruption levels. Avoiding distorted FDI measures, we analyze Research & Development Inflows (RDIF), as they represent critical MNE activities. Our RDIF dataset portrays all published R&D centers of 500 technology-intensive MNCs taken from the Fortune 1000 list. In accordance with previous research employing FDI as a dependent variable, we observe that RDIF flows towards countries of lower corruption (Trading Up Hypothesis). We further show that developed countries with lower degrees of corruption tend to prefer investments in other low- corruption countries (Comfort Hypothesis). High-corruption countries, conversely, do not exhibit this behavior and appear more open towards RDIF in high-corruption countries (Familiarity Hypothesis). These findings underscore the influence of contextualizing variables in the origin of investments, and suggest extended research using firm-level field data to compensate for potential bias and flaws in FDI data.

Brilliant-thighed poison frogs do not use acoustic identity information to treat territorial neighbours as dear enemies

Some territorial animals recognize familiar neighbours and are less aggressive to established neighbours than they are to strangers. This form of social recognition produces a ‘dear enemy’ effect, which may allow animals to reduce the costs of territory defence. The dear enemy effect is thought to reflect either the decreased threat posed by neighbours relative to strangers (the relative threat hypothesis) or the decreased need for escalation with increasing familiarity between neighbours (the familiarity hypothesis). We tested for a vocally mediated dear enemy effect in male brilliant-thighed poison frogs, Allobates femoralis. In this species, the familiarity hypothesis predicts a dear enemy effect, because males defend long-term stable territories and should be familiar with the calls of their neighbours. In contrast, the relative threat hypothesis does not predict a dear enemy effect, because neighbours and strangers both represent competitors for mates and likely pose equivalent threats. Acoustic analyses showed that males produce individually distinctive advertisement calls. Two playback experiments were conducted to determine whether territorial males respond less aggressively to neighbours' calls than to strangers' calls based on this acoustic identity information. In the first experiment, males pursued acoustically simulated neighbours and strangers to similar distances when calls were played both from the direction of the neighbour's territory and from a direction with no neighbours. In the second experiment, males responded aggressively to neighbours' and strangers' calls at similar threshold amplitudes and pursued these calls to similar distances. Hence, two different playback experiments failed to find evidence of a vocally mediated dear enemy effect. Our results support the hypothesis that territorial animals respond to the relative threat posed by neighbours and strangers regardless of their level of familiarity with neighbours.

Exploring the chemo-textural familiarity hypothesis for scorpion navigation

The navigation by scene familiarity hypothesis provides broad explanatory power for how bees and ants navigate from the hive to distant food sources and back. The premise is that the visual world is decomposed into pixelated matrices of information that are stored and readdressed as the insects retrace learned routes. Innate behaviors in these insects (including learning walks/flights and path integration) provide the important goal-directed views to allow the initial retracing (i.e., the insect must learn the scene while moving toward the goal because everything looks different while moving away). Scorpion navigation may use a similar premise, with the chemical and textural features of the environment substituting for visual input. Scorpion pectines support thousands of chemo- and mechano-sensitive units called peg sensilla, each containing at least 10 energetically expensive sensory neurons. We have long wondered why pectines have so many pegs and associated neurons. Many sand scorpions emerge onto the surface from their home burrows at night to pursue insect prey and somehow find their way back to their burrows. Based on the measured resolution of peg sensilla, we have calculated that sufficient information exists in sand's texture to enable scorpions to retrace previously experienced paths with little to no chance of confusion. Preliminary evidence of learning walks and path integration in scorpions is also congruent with the navigation by chemo-textural familiarity hypothesis.

Does reassessment of risk improve predictions? A framework and examination of the SAVRY and YLS/CMI.

Although experts recommend regularly reassessing adolescents' risk for violence, it is unclear whether reassessment improves predictions. Thus, in this prospective study, the authors tested 3 hypotheses as to why reassessment might improve predictions, namely the shelf-life, dynamic change, and familiarity hypotheses. Research assistants (RAs) rated youth on the Structured Assessment of Violence Risk in Youth (SAVRY) and the Youth Level of Service/Case Management Inventory (YLS/CMI) every 3 months over a 1-year period, conducting 624 risk assessments with 156 youth on probation. The authors then examined charges for violence and any offense over a 2-year follow-up period, and youths' self-reports of reoffending. Contrary to the shelf-life hypothesis, predictions did not decline or expire over time. Instead, time-dependent area under the curve scores remained consistent across the follow-up period. Contrary to the dynamic change hypothesis, changes in youth's risk total scores, compared to what is average for that youth, did not predict changes in reoffending. Finally, contrary to the familiarity hypothesis, reassessments were no more predictive than initial assessments, despite RAs' increased familiarity with youth. Before drawing conclusions, researchers should evaluate the extent to which youth receiving the usual probation services show meaningful short-term changes in risk and, if so, whether risk assessment tools are sensitive to these changes. (PsycINFO Database Record

Persistence of overconfidence in young children: Factors that lead to more accurate predictions of memory performance

Young children are typically overconfident regarding both cognitive abilities. This overconfidence may be due to development underpinnings. Previous research has demonstrated that children exhibit robust and persistent overconfidence in a simple memory-recall task. Two experiments investigated this overconfidence in 1st–4th and 4th–6th grade students. In the first experiment, we explored both the development of accurate predictions of recall and young students’ confidence in their memory performance predictions. It was found that not until 4th grade did students’ overconfidence begin to wane. In the second experiment, we investigated a condition under which 4th–6th graders might make more accurate predictions of their ability to recall simple stimuli, specifically, when the items to be remembered were unfamiliar to the students. The results confirmed our overconfidence in familiarity hypothesis. We discuss these findings in the context of metacognition.

East or west, home is best: The birthplace bias of individual investors

Abstract We examine whether there is birthplace bias in addition to local bias in the portfolio choice of individual investors. We find that, on average, individual investors who live in their birthplace invest almost three times more of their portfolio capital in local firms than other locals. A bias toward birthplace firms persists for a long time after moving elsewhere and increases significantly for “homecomers.” Our detailed analysis suggests that individual investors’ proximity bias is largely an urban phenomenon, which is explained neither by the information hypothesis nor by the familiarity hypothesis. We find that more sophisticated investors, in terms of portfolio diversification, earn, on average, abnormal portfolio returns, but they do this regardless of their portfolio distortion. Thus, attention ought to be directed toward whether individual investors are financially sophisticated rather than whether they are proximity biased.

Autonomous Visual Navigation of an Indoor Environment Using a Parsimonious, Insect Inspired Familiarity Algorithm.

The navigation of bees and ants from hive to food and back has captivated people for more than a century. Recently, the Navigation by Scene Familiarity Hypothesis (NSFH) has been proposed as a parsimonious approach that is congruent with the limited neural elements of these insects’ brains. In the NSFH approach, an agent completes an initial training excursion, storing images along the way. To retrace the path, the agent scans the area and compares the current scenes to those previously experienced. By turning and moving to minimize the pixel-by-pixel differences between encountered and stored scenes, the agent is guided along the path without having memorized the sequence. An important premise of the NSFH is that the visual information of the environment is adequate to guide navigation without aliasing. Here we demonstrate that an image landscape of an indoor setting possesses ample navigational information. We produced a visual landscape of our laboratory and part of the adjoining corridor consisting of 2816 panoramic snapshots arranged in a grid at 12.7-cm centers. We show that pixel-by-pixel comparisons of these images yield robust translational and rotational visual information. We also produced a simple algorithm that tracks previously experienced routes within our lab based on an insect-inspired scene familiarity approach and demonstrate that adequate visual information exists for an agent to retrace complex training routes, including those where the path’s end is not visible from its origin. We used this landscape to systematically test the interplay of sensor morphology, angles of inspection, and similarity threshold with the recapitulation performance of the agent. Finally, we compared the relative information content and chance of aliasing within our visually rich laboratory landscape to scenes acquired from indoor corridors with more repetitive scenery.

Trial-level information for individual faces in the fusiform face area depends on subsequent memory

Previous research has shown that face-sensitive brain regions, such as the fusiform face area (FFA) and anterior inferior temporal lobe (aIT), not only respond selectively to face stimuli, but also respond uniquely to individual faces. A common factor in the existing literature is that face stimuli in these experiments are highly familiar to participants, usually by design. We set out to investigate to what extent familiarity correlates with the emergence of face-specific information in face-sensitive regions by testing novel faces with only a single repetition. Our results, consistent with a familiarity hypothesis, demonstrate that the FFA and aIT show face-specific information only when participants demonstrate subsequent memory for those faces. Functionally-defined regions that are not believed to process faces holistically showed no face-specific information, regardless of subsequent memory. To our knowledge, this is the first demonstration of face-specific information in face-sensitive regions for stimuli that were not highly familiar. These results contribute to our understanding of how individuating information comes to be represented in face-sensitive regions and suggest that this process can take place even after a single repetition of a particular face.