Bridging novelty and familiarity-based recognition memory: A matter of timing

ABSTRACT

Novelty detection is essential to adapt to changes. However, the relationship between novelty detection and visual recognition memory remains unclear. To characterize the temporal dynamics of novelty and its connection to familiarity, we probed early behavioural performance of novelty and familiarity in 31 participants using a speeded go/no-go recognition task with a 600-ms response deadline. Responses to familiarity and novelty produced symmetrical biases and correlated accuracies and biases, but novelty decisions were less accurate and had slower minimal reaction times (410 ms). These processes thus appear to be independent, as suggested by a more efficient system in the case of familiarity, but with common factors bringing overlapping contributions to both processes. This may possibly be explained by the more fluent processing of repeated stimuli, but with familiarity and novelty potentially relying on one decision criterion, as suggested by the correlated and remarkably symmetrical biases. This study supports models that conceptualize novelty and familiarity decisions as two partly overlapping processes.

KEYWORDS:

• Novelty detection
• familiarity
• visual recognition memory
• episodic memory
• minimal reaction time
• signal detection theory

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Emma Delhaye http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9224-267X

Notes

1 Alternative measure of bias of “relative criterion location” (c′), i.e., scaling the criterion location relative to performance, because with easier discrimination tasks, a more extreme criterion (as measured by c) would be needed to yield the same amount of bias, as specified in Macmillan and Creelman (2005, p.28).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Leonardo Da Vinci Program, the University of Liege, the Fonds Léon Frédéricq, SAO-FRA, the Wallonia–Brussels Federation Special Funds for Research [grant number #FSRC-14/11], the Wallonia-Brussels International Hubert Curien Program, and the Inter-University Attraction Pole P7/11.