Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Visual familiarity'

This thesis is an investigation of two different aspects of familiarity processes involved in visual word recognition. The first is how capitalisation influences visual word recognition. The second is the role played by onset, nucleus and coda in nonword recognition. A familiar aspect of proper names in English, is that they are printed with an initial capital letter. Two experiments investigated the effects of the capitalisation of the initial letter of nonwords. It was found that subjects generate fewer pronunciations for initially capitalised nonwords than for those which were not capitalised. I suggest that in English initial capitalisation acts as a cue strong enough to prompt readers to perceive unfamiliar strings of letters as belonging to the category of proper names. As a result, the phonological domain used to retrieve the pronunciation of initially capitalised strings becomes more restricted than that used for the non-capitalised unfamiliar strings. These results extend the applicability of Brennen's theory for proper names, which is based on the size of the set of plausible phonologies of a word. In a third experiment, pairs of nonwords had their familiar visual appearance manipulated in terms of first and last letter capitalisation, in a same-different matching task. Faster response times were obtained for those nonword pairs that kept a more familiar aspect (e.g., pairs in which the first letter was capitalised as opposed to others in which the last letter was capitalised). These results are explained in terms of Besner and Jonhston (1989) "orthographic familiarity route". I propose the transformation model as an explanation for the mechanisms by which this route operates. Nonwords are an important aspect of this thesis. A new algorithm was developed for the creation of monosyllabic nonwords in which the frequency of their onsets, nuclei and codas could be controlled carefully. This gave us the opportunity to study the influence of orthographic neighborhood in visual word recognition. The findings here are in agreement with previous studies which show the recognition of an item to be influenced by the presence of neighbours. It has been hypothesized that familiarity effects in visual word recognition can only be found in tasks where identification mechanisms are not implicated. Here, a new category of words, namely brand names, was used to test this hypothesis. There are many reasons why brand names are a more appropriate class of words than acronyms to be used in this type of investigation. The results obtained confirm the hypothesis above. Previously, acronyms had been the only class of words used to test this hypothesis. Finally, a computational assessment of the nature of the mappings from letterto- sound in British English was carried on. A program was developed to estimate the pronunciation of any string of English graphemes based on the probabilities of grapheme-phoneme correspondences. The algorithm was assessed by examining its behavior for nonwords. This was done by using a corpus of nonword transcriptions, collected in an experiment with trained phoneticians. The results confirm the fact that the statistical information about grapheme-phoneme correspondences alone is not sufficient to predict English pronunciation. Also, a method was developed that allows the quantification of the different orthographic depth for various languages.

The aim of the project is to investigate the influence of fa- miliarity on reading. Three new fonts were created in order to examine the familiarity of fonts that readers could not have seen before. Each of the new fonts contains lowercase letters with fa- miliar and unfamiliar skeleton variations. The different skeleton variations were tested with distance threshold and time thresh- old methods in order to account for differences in visibility. This investigation helped create final typeface designs where the fa- miliar and unfamiliar skeleton variations have roughly similar and good performance. The typefaces were later applied as the test material in the familiarity investigation. Some typographers have proposed that familiarity means the amount of time that a reader has been exposed to a typeface design, while other typographers have proposed that familiarity is the commonalities in letterforms. These two hypotheses were tested by measuring the reading speed and preference of partici- pants, as they read fonts that had either common or uncommon letterforms, the fonts were then re-measured after an exposure period. The results indicate that exposure has an immediate ef- fect on the speed of reading, but that unfamiliar letter features only have an effect of preference and not on reading speed. By combining the craftsmen’s knowledge of designing with the methods of experimental research, the project takes a new step forward towards a better understanding of how different type- faces can influence the reading process.

Thesis advisor: Sean MacEvoy
Humans can pay attention both to particular locations in space (“space-based attention”) and to specific objects (“object-based attention”). The goal of this study was to understand the role of object familiarity and complexity in the control of object-based attention. We used a well-known manifestation of object-based attention known as same-object advantage (SOA) to test this. In SOA, participants are faster at detecting a target event that takes place in a cued object than one that takes place in an uncued object, even when the distance between cue and target is kept fixed. To control shape familiarity, objects in the current study were randomly-generated irregular polygons known as Attneave shapes. Experiment 1 showed that SOA exists for these irregular shapes, even when participants are unfamiliar with them. In Experiment 2, participants first underwent training designed to familiarize them with a subset of the Attneave shapes used in Experiment 1. Again there was a significant SOA. If object-based attention is dependent upon object familiarity, we hypothesized that SOA, measured in terms of reaction time, should be greater in Experiment 2 than Experiment 1. Although there was a numerical increase in the reaction time signature of SOA in Experiment 2, this effect was not significant. While this does not strictly support our hypothesis, several aspects of this study suggest that object familiarity does play some role in mediating object-based attention
Thesis (BS) — Boston College, 2013
Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences
Discipline: Psychology Honors Program
Discipline: Psychology

This thesis analyses eighteenth-century portraiture within the context of 'norms' propagated in contemporary prescriptive and fictional literature, 'norms' which overlay a heterogeneous reality. The aspirant portraitist had to accord with the desire of sitters to be depicted in a manner that would receive approbation. Thus, disparate relationships were pictorially subsumed within affectionate ideals that burgeoned in the mid eighteenth century, stimulated by the cult of sensibility and disseminated through an expanding body of literature to an expanding readership. However, these did not displace more 'traditional' concerns, but appeared alongside continuing pictorial emphases on patriarchy, hierarchy and dynastic continuity. The introduction outlines the historiography and methodology and provides a detailed summary of each chapter. Chapter one examines the emergence of the companionate marital portrait, together with pictorial condemnations of arranged and romantic unions. Chapter two argues that this new emphasis on affection did not displace patriarchy. Pendants continued to demarcate masculine and feminine domains whilst double portraits emphasised those domains as complementary, but unequal. Chapter three discusses the pictorial and literary sentimentalisation of motherhood and argues that condemnations of female display were acknowledged in portraits of engrossed and self-effacing mothers. Chapter four counters that the sentimentalisation of the patriarch was limited by a continuing preoccupation with his pre-eminence and that later images of playful children maintained earlier concerns with age and gender hierarchies and 'futurity'. Chapter five argues that both an emphasis on heirs and anxiety over the implications of high infant mortality for dynastic succession remained constant. The contextualisation of portraits within the home also reveals an emphasis on unbroken lineage. Chapter six examines satires of transgressions of ideal familial relations by members of a supposedly debauched aristocracy. However, these aristocrats sometimes countered such attacks with portraits emphasising status and domestic virtue. The conclusion summarises the arguments and discusses their implications for debates over class.

The perirhinal cortex (PRC) is a medial temporal lobe (MTL) structure known to be involved in assessing whether an object is familiar (i.e., meaningful) or novel. Recent evidence shows that the PRC is sensitive to the familiarity of both whole object configurations and their parts, and suggests the PRC may modulate part familiarity responses in V2. Here, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we investigated age-related decline in the PRC's sensitivity to part/configuration familiarity and assessed its functional connectivity to visual cortex in young and older adults. Participants categorized peripherally presented silhouettes as familiar ("real-world") or novel. Part/configuration familiarity was manipulated via three silhouette configurations: Familiar (parts/configurations familiar), Control Novel (parts/configurations novel), and Part-Rearranged Novel (parts familiar, configurations novel). "Real-world" judgments were less accurate than "novel" judgments, although accuracy did not differ between age groups. The fMRI data revealed differential neural activity, however: In young adults, a linear pattern of activation was observed in left hemisphere (LH) PRC, with Familiar > Control Novel > Part-Rearranged Novel. Older adults did not show this pattern, indicating age-related decline in the PRC's sensitivity to part/configuration familiarity. A functional connectivity analysis revealed a significant coupling between the PRC and V2 in the LH in young adults only. Older adults showed a linear pattern of activation in the temporopolar cortex (TPC), but no evidence of TPC-V2 connectivity. This is the first study to demonstrate age-related decline in the PRC's representations of part/configuration familiarity and its covariance with visual cortex.

Figure assignment entails competition between object properties on opposite sides of borders. The figure is perceived on the side of the border that wins the competition. Ample evidence indicates that configural familiarity is among the competing object properties. We investigated whether priming the semantics of a familiar object suggested along one side of a border can increase its likelihood of winning the competition. To prime the semantics, we presented brief masked exposures of object names before brief masked exposures of displays where a portion of a familiar object was suggested on one side of a central border separating two equal-area, black-and-white regions. Participants reported whether the figure lay on the left or right side of the central border and were unaware of the presence of the word prime. These experimental primes named either the Same Object (SO) or a Different Object (DO) as the familiar object suggested in the display. In the DO condition, the word named an object either in the Same Category (DO-SC) or a Different Category (DO-DC) as the familiar object suggested in the display, where superordinate category was defined as natural versus artificial objects. We also used non-words as control primes. We hypothesized that, if semantic activation influences figure assignment, participants in the SO and DO-SC conditions should be more likely than participants in the DO-DC condition to perceive the figure on the side where the familiar object lies following experimental primes than control primes. We did not observe differences between experimental and control prime in any condition. However, we did obtain a Prime Context Effect, in that participants were more likely to perceive the figure on the familiar side of the border in the SO and DO-SC conditions than in the DO-DC condition. The Prime Context Effect shows that participants discerned the relationship between the masked word prime and the semantics of the familiar object suggested in the display, and this led them to change their strategy on both experimental and control trials. We also found that behavior changed over the course of the experiment: Participants in the DO-DC condition perceived the figure on the familiar side of the border more often in the second half of the experiment, on both experimental and control trials. This pattern suggests that over the course of the experiment, they learned to rely more on information from the display than from the prime, perhaps by restricting their attention to the time when the figure-ground display appeared. Participants in the DO-SC condition perceived the figure on the familiar side of the border more often on experimental trials in the second half of the experiment, whereas their performance on control trials did not differ in the first and second half. We hypothesize that participants in the DO-SC condition learned to match the superordinate semantics of the experimental prime and the display, leading to semantic priming. Taken together, these results show that (1) participants can quickly learn the relationship between experimental primes and target displays and can change their strategy accordingly, and (2) semantic activation can affect figure assignment.

Purpose - The purpose of this research was to study millennial consumers' attention to online advertisements published by streetwear companies on social media. The aim was to investigate differences between consumers' attention to familiar products and unfamiliar products. Three hypotheses were constructed to test whether product familiarity affects consumers´ attention to advertisements: H1: Consumers who are familiar with the products are more likely to look at them in advertisements than consumers who are unfamiliar with the products. H2: Consumers who are familiar with the products will spend more time looking at them in advertisements than consumers who are unfamiliar with the products. H3: Consumers who are familiar with the products will find them faster from advertisements than consumers who are unfamiliar with the products. Method - The study applied between-subjects design by dividing 40 participants in two matched groups based on their gender. Both groups had 10 male and 10 female participants. During the eye-tracking experiment, participants in Group 1 were shown three product photos for two seconds and three advertisements containing the same products for four seconds. Participants in Group 2 were only presented with three advertisements for four seconds. The results of the study are presented in two parts. Firstly, heatmaps give an illustrative overview of the findings and Statistical analysis presents the results of statistical tests. Chi-square test was performed to test the first hypothesis and independent-samples t-tests were performed to test the second and third hypotheses. Results - The results of the study show that people who were familiar with the products were more likely to look at them in advertisements than consumers who were unfamiliar with the products. Also, people who were familiar with the products spent more time looking at them compared to people who were unfamiliar with the products. However, previous exposure to products did not result in faster identification of the products from advertisements.

Un mot est mieux reconnu lorsqu'il est présenté dans le champ visuel droit (CVD) que dans le gauche. La supériorité du CVD peut être expliquée par le rôle de l'hémisphère gauche en lecture et par le sens de lecture pour les langues se lisant de gauche à droite. Cependant la comparaison entre les systèmes d'écriture gauche-droite et droite-gauche ne fournit pas de différences claires et systématiques. Le premier but de ce travail de thèse était de préciser les effets du sens de lecture sur la supériorité du CVD en lecture et d'évaluer si l'influence de l'écriture « environnementale » pouvait modifier les stratégies attentionnelles des lecteurs. Nous avons présenté des mots français et hébreux à des participants bilingues, mais de langue maternelle française ou hébreu, vivant en France ou en Israël. Les résultats ont montré une supériorité du CVD plus importante en français qu'en hébreu dans tous les groupes sauf chez les israéliens vivant en Israël. Il y aurait donc bien un effet de la langue et de l'écriture environnementale sur la supériorité du CVD. Avec d'autres expériences, nous avons également pu évaluer l'effet du contexte expérimental (confrontation des deux langues dans un même bloc d'essais) et de la familiarité linguistique (mots vs pseudomots)
A word is better identified when displayed in the right visual field (RVF) than in the left. The RVF superiority might be explained by the role of the left hemisphere in reading and by reading direction in left-to-right scripts. However the comparison between left-to-right and right-to-left scripts do not provide systemactic and clear differences. The primary goal of this dissertation was to determine the effects of reading direction on the RVF superiority in reading, and assess whether the influence of "environmental" writing could alter the attentional strategies of the readers. French and Hebrew words were displayed to bilingual participants but whose native language was French or Hebrew, living in France or in Israel. Results showed a larger RVF superiority in French than in Hebrew for all groups except among the Israeli group living in Israel. So there would have an effect of language, and environmental writing on the RVF superiority. With further experiments, we were also able to evaluate the effect of experimental context (confrontation of the two languages in the same block of trials) and linguistic familiarity (words vs pseudowords)

Decision making for fast-moving consumer goods involves a choice between numerous similar alternatives. Under such demanding circumstances, a decision is made for one product. The decision is dependent on the interaction between the environment and the mind of the consumer, both of which are filled with information that can influence the outcome. The aim of this dissertation is to explore how the mind and the environment guides attention towards considered and chosen products in consumer decision making at the point-of-purchase. Consumers are equipped with several effort reduction strategies to simplify complex decision making. The selection of strategies can be conscious or automatic and driven by information in the environment or the mind of the decision maker. The selected decision strategy reduces the set of options to one alternative in an iterative process of comparisons that are fast and rely on perceptual cues to quickly exclude irrelevant products. This thesis uses eye-tracking to explore this rapid processing that lacks conscious access or control. The purpose is to explore how product packaging and placement (as in-store factors), and recognition, preferences, and choice task (as out-of-store factors) influence the decision-making process through visual attention. The results of the 10 experiments in the five papers that comprise this thesis shed new light on the role of visual attention in the interaction between the environment and the mind, and its influence on the consumer. It is said that consumers choose with their eyes, which means that unseen is unsold. The results of this thesis show that it is just as important to be comprehended as it is to be seen. In split-second decision making, the ability to recognize and comprehend a product can significantly impact preferences. Comprehension stretches beyond perception as consumers infer value from memory structures that influence attention. Hence, the eye truly sees what the mind is prepared to comprehend.

Le propos de ce travail de thèse est d’examiner le développement de la formation de catégories de visages, par l’étude des préférences visuelles des nourrissons dans la première année de vie. Nous avons cherché à préciser les mécanismes de formation des préférences visuelles en les intégrant dans le cadre théorique développé par Valentine (1991), le face-space. Nous avons proposé de lier ces préférences à la manière dont l’expérience perceptive des nourrissons avec différentes catégories de visages va structurer l’espace de représentation des visages. De manière générale, nous avons postulé que les nourrissons présenteront des préférences pour les visages proches de la tendance centrale (i.e., prototype) du face-space. Nous avons mis en évidence une tendance des nourrissons de 0 à 6 mois à présenter un biais pour des visages d’adultes par rapport à des visages de nourrissons (Etudes 1 et 2), les premiers correspondant à une catégorie de visages prépondérante de l’environnement des nourrissons, là où les seconds correspondent à une catégorie de visages peu rencontrée. Ce biais pour la familiarité s’est avéré disparaitre à 9 et 12 mois (Etude 3). Ces préférences liées à la familiarité pourraient être liées à une forme de fausse reconnaissance du visage des proches des nourrissons, issue de la surreprésentation de ces visages dans le quotidien des nourrissons. Ce pattern de préférences n’a en revanche pas été retrouvé lorsque des nourrissons de 3 à 12 mois ont été confrontés à des visages d’enfants ou de nourrissons (Etudes 4 et 5), les résultats montrant plutôt une préférence pour les visages les moins familiers, relativement à l’expérience des nourrissons. Nous avons ensuite étudié les capacités de catégorisation de nourrissons de 9 et 12 mois pour des visages de différentes catégories d’âges, i.e., adulte, enfant, nourrisson (Etude 6). Les nourrissons de 12 mois ont formé des catégories discrètes des visages d’adulte et de nourrissons d’une part, et d’enfants et de nourrissons d’autre part. Les nourrissons de 9 mois en revanche ont montré un pattern plus asymétrique en ce qu’ils ont formé une représentation des visages d’enfants excluant un nouveau visage de nourrisson, et une représentation des visages de nourrissons incluant un nouveau visage d’enfant. Les nourrissons ayant tous une expérience de la crèche, donc des visages de nourrissons, cette asymétrie pourrait être liée à une influence de la connaissance de cette catégorie de visage. Dans une dernière étude (Etude 7) nous avons cherché à montrer plus directement le lien entre préférences visuelles et proximité par rapport au prototype, chez des nourrissons humains de 12 mois et des nourrissons macaques de 3 mois (Macaca mulatta). La mise en évidence de préférences liées à la distance par rapport au prototype chez ces deux populations suggère la présence d’un mécanisme commun aux deux espèces conduisant à la formation de préférences visuelles pour les visages
The purpose of this work is to examine of the development of face category formation using infants’ visual preferences. We investigated the mechanisms leading to differential face preferences by integrating them in the theoretical framework developed by Valentine (1991), the face-space. We proposed that the way perceptual experience shape the structure of the face-space is a determinant of infants’ face preferences. We postulated that faces close to the central tendency of the face-space (i.e., prototype) will be preferred. We first reported a bias to look more toward adult faces than infant faces from birth to 6 month of age (Studies 1 and 2). Adult faces correspond to a frequently encountered category while infant faces represent a less frequently encountered category. We also showed a downturn of this familiarity bias as infants grow older (Study 3). The preferences showed by younger infants might be linked to a form of false recognition of the caregivers’ faces, due to the massive exposure to these faces. This pattern of preferences was not found in 3-to 12-month-olds presented with child and infant faces (Studies 4 and 5). Conversely, infants showed a tendency to prefer the less familiar faces, depending on their perceptual experience. We then studied 9- and 12-month-olds’ abilities to form categories of faces differing by age, i.e., adult, child, and infant faces, (Study 6). Twelve-month-olds formed discrete categories of adult and infant faces in one hand, and of child and infants faces on the other hand. Nine month-olds showed an asymmetric pattern of behavior, forming categories of child faces that exclude a new infant face, and categories of infant faces that include a new child face. All these infants being exposed to infant faces via nursery, the asymmetry might stem from the influence of the knowledge of this category of faces. In the last study (Study 7), we tried to provide more direct evidences of the link between face preferences and the distance from the prototype in two different populations: 12-month-old human infants, and 3-month-old macaque infants (Macaca mulatta). Preferences for faces close to the prototype in both species suggest a common mechanism leading to face preferences

La mémoire de reconnaissance visuelle (MRV) est atteinte précocement dans la maladie d'Alzheimer (MA). Or, elle reposerait sur deux processus: la familiarité (simple sentiment d'avoir déjà rencontré un item) et la recollection (récupération de détails associés à l'item lors de son encodage). Si la recollection est clairement atteinte au début de la MA, les résultats concernant la familiarité sont à ce jour contradictoires. Supposée plus rapide que la recollection, la familiarité devrait pouvoir être évaluée directement par une approche temporelle. Son atteinte dans la MA pourrait alors être mieux comprise. Pour tester ces hypthèses, la procédure comportementale SAB (Speed and Accuracy Boosting) a été créée. Permettant d'étudier les propriétés de la MRV (sa vitesse-limite, (Articles 1 et 2, ou sa nature "bottom-up", Article 3) ainsi que l'hypothèse que la familiarité serait plus rapide que la recollection, cette méthode s'est montrée évaluer majoritairement la familiarité (Article 1). Chez des patients à risque de MA, une dissociation inattendue au sein de la familiarité a alors pu être révélée, avec une atteinte des signaux tardifs de familiarité (utilisés lors d'un jugement classique), mais une préservation des premiers signaux (supportant la détection rapide évaluée en SAB) (Article 4). En outre, la segmentation manuelle d'images IRM du lobe temporal interne (premières régions cérébrales touchées dans la MA, et clés pour la MRV) a été appliquée à la problématique connexe de l'effet de l'âge au début de la MA (Article 5). Indépendamment, ces méthodes ont permis de mieux comprendre la MRV et son atteinte au début de la MA ; leur combinaison s'annonce très prometteuse.

While the role of photography in enforcing hegemonic ideologies has been amply studied, this thesis addresses the under-researched topic of how photography undermined dominant narratives in specific historical circumstances. I argue that, in the later part of the long nineteenth century, photographs were used to represent the natural world in contexts where their functions were uncertain and their capacities not clearly defined, and that these hesitations allowed for the expression of resistances to dominant social attitudes towards nature. I analyse how these divergences were articulated through three independent case studies, each addressing a corpus of photographs which has been marginalised in scholarly discourse. The case studies all concern photographs of vegetation. The first one discusses photographs produced around Fontainebleau during the Second French Empire, commonly understood as auxiliary materials for Barbizon painters, and argues that they were in fact autonomous representations, reflecting marginal modes of experiencing nature which resisted its prevailing construction as spectacle. The second case study examines a photographic series depicting Amazonian vegetation, published between 1900 and 1906, and shows how, in attempting to satisfy conflicting ideological demands, these photographs undermined the hierarchies enforced upon the natural world by colonial science. The third case study analyses photographs from an early twentieth-century environmentalist treatise, and demonstrates how, while the author's discourse seemingly complied with conventional attitudes towards nature, the photographs instituted an ethical stance opposed to early conservation's aesthetic focus and anthropocentrism. Throughout the case studies, I argue that the photographs were consubstantial to the emergence of these resistances; that dissenting representations stemmed from a tension between their producers' lived experience and the ideological frameworks which informed each context; and that this process engendered remarkable formal innovations, which are not usually associated to non-artistic images. I contend that radical renewals of visual expression occur in all representational contexts, as image producers adapt their tools or forge new ones according to circumstances, and that more attention must be paid to such visual innovations outside the field of artistic production.

碩士
國立中正大學
心理學研究所
99
Recent studies have shown that people can store a greater number of familiar (celebrity) faces than stranger faces in visual working memory (VWM) (Jackson & Raymond, 2008; Jackson & Raymond, 2006). Here in three experiments we investigated whether faces of acquired familiarity can also increase the storage capacity of VWM. In Experiment 1, we used a change-detection task to assess the VWM capacity of faces and replicated the previous finding that famous faces exhibited greater VWM capacity than stranger faces did. In Experiments 2A and 2B, stranger faces were familiarized by two different levels of repeated exposure, coupled with variation in facial expression. Results showed that, compared to novel faces, faces with acquired familiarity can yield greater VWM capacity provided there was sufficiently frequent exposure and expression variation. In Experiment 3, VWM capacity of faces with acquired familiarity was compared with that of celebrity faces. Results showed no difference in VWM capacity between faces with sufficiently strong acquired familiarity and celebrity faces. In conclusion, these findings not only demonstrate acquired familiarity can indeed increase VWM capacity of faces but also have implications for how stranger faces can be transformed into familiar ones.

O presente estudo foi conduzido com o intuito de avaliar a complexidade de um conjunto de imagens afectivas do International Affective Picture System (IAPS) e analisar a relação da complexidade com as respostas emocionais e a familiaridade. A amostra compreendeu 59 participantes, 32 do sexo feminino e 27 do sexo masculino, solicitados a avaliar um conjunto de 23 imagens do IAPS, reportando o modo como se sentiam perante cada imagem e avaliando a sua complexidade num conjunto de parâmetros distintos (contraste figura-fundo; organização; quantidade de elementos; heterogeneidade de elementos; heterogeneidade de cores/tonalidade; compreensão dos elementos), bem como a familiaridade com a imagem. Os resultados revelaram que o conceito complexidade apresenta uma estrutura bidimensional, e que os parâmetros encontrados se correlacionam, em parte, com as emoções e a familiaridade. Assim, pode concluir-se que o construto de complexidade pode ser avaliado de acordo com parâmetros estruturais e parâmetros abstractos, sendo que os parâmetros estruturais revelaram ser os mais adequados para avaliar a complexidade de estímulos visuais afectivos.
This study was conducted to evaluate the complexity of a set of emotional images from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS) and analyze the relationship of complexity with emotional responses and familiarity. The sample included 59 participants, 32 female and 27 male, that were asked to evaluate a set of 23 images from the IAPS by reporting how they felt before each image and by evaluating the complexity of a set of distinct parameters (contrast figure background, organization, number of elements, heterogeneity of elements, heterogeneity of color/tone; understanding of the elements) as well as familiarity. The results revealed that complexity concept is bidimensional, and that the parameters were correlated in part with emotions and familiarity. Thus, it can be concluded that the construct of complexity can be evaluated according to structural parameters and abstract parameters, and the structural parameters proved to be the most appropriate to assess the complexity of affective visual stimuli.

To date, the investigation of consumers’ visual attention in real-life shopping environments has been limited to supermarket and department store retail settings. The current study aimed to expand on this knowledge by investigating the visual attention of shoppers in a different retail environment type – a pub – characterised by a range of unique features. The project tested the elements of visual attention theory in a novel environment, focusing on the influence of top-down factors (venue familiarity and shopping goals) on visual attention, and the association between visual attention and choice. The visual attention of 178 pub visitors intending to purchase beer was recorded using eye-tracking equipment. Consumers’ venue familiarity, shopping goals and brand choice together with visual attention to the pub environment and beer pump-clips at the point of purchase were used to assess the theory of visual attention in a novel environment. The results demonstrated that pub familiarity did not influence the visual attention of shoppers to its environment. However, greater familiarity significantly reduced the proportion of pump clips noticed by the shoppers and their fixation duration on the brands at the point of purchase, as well as total fixation duration on the chosen item. Similarly, having a specific goal significantly reduced shoppers’ visual attention to the point of purchase. Consumers with a specific goal looked at fewer pump clips and had a lower total fixation duration; they also made fewer fixations before noting the chosen item and overall looked less at it. The results also indicated that the chosen items received longer fixation duration and more visits. The order in which consumers noticed the brands significantly and positively influenced choice. Overall, these findings provide further support for the theory of visual attention in a novel environment, with a range of theoretical and practical implications.

Au cours de la dernière décennie, plusieurs études ont montré que le traitement des mots est influencé par leurs caractéristiques orthographiques, lexicales et sémantiques. Les valeurs élevées des variables sémantiques, telles que la familiarité conceptuelle, l’imageabilité, la concrétude et l’expérience sensorielle, sont généralement associées à un traitement plus rapide et plus précis des mots lors d’une tâche de décision lexicale sur présentation écrite. Cependant, les normes relatives à l’une des variables sémantiques cruciales, comme la familiarité conceptuelle, et à une autre nouvelle variable, celle de la force perceptuelle d’une modalité spécifique, ne sont pas disponibles pour une large base de données francophones. Cette thèse présente des normes de familiarité conceptuelle, de force perceptuelle visuelle et auditive pour 3 596 mots en français. Ces normes ont été collectées auprès de 313 participants franco-canadiens, âgés entre 18 et 35 ans. Des statistiques descriptives et des analyses corrélationnelles ont été conduites sur ces normes et sur d’autres variables subjectives déjà publiées (âge d’acquisition, imageabilité, concrétude) et objectives (nombre de lettres, fréquence objective). Les analyses de corrélation ont révélé la nature sémantique de nos variables. Plus spécifiquement, les estimations de la force perceptuelle visuelle et auditive ont montré une relation forte avec les variables sémantiques, d’où l’importance du rôle de l’expérience perceptuelle dans la représentation conceptuelle des mots. Nous avons ensuite démontré l'utilité de ces nouvelles normes, de familiarité conceptuelle et de force perceptuelle, en évaluant leur contribution aux temps de réponse dans une tâche de décision lexicale. En utilisant des analyses de régression par étapes, nous avons démontré l’apport indépendant de la familiarité conceptuelle et de la force perceptuelle au-delà d’autres variables psycholinguistiques bien connues, telles que la longueur des mots, la fréquence, l’imageabilité, l’âge d’acquisition et la concrétude. Nos résultats procurent des données probantes en français sur la connaissance des caractéristiques psycholinguistiques et leurs impacts dans le traitement des mots. Les banques de données développées dans ces études constituent un apport significatif sur les études futures qui éclaireront davantage l'interaction entre les systèmes linguistique, sémantique et perceptuel. Ces études aideront les chercheurs à sélectionner des stimuli en français avec des caractéristiques psycholinguistiques spécifiques pour des expériences dans lesquelles la familiarité conceptuelle et la force perceptuelle doivent être prises en compte. Ces normes auront également un large domaine d’utilisation, comme la recherche sur les sciences humaines de la santé et la création de matériel didactique et des tests d’évaluation du langage.
Over the past decade, research has shown that word processing is influenced by the orthographic, lexical, and semantic features of words. High values of semantic variables, such as conceptual familiarity, imageability, concreteness and sensory experience, are usually associated with faster and more accurate word processing as, for instance, measured with a written lexical decision task. However, norms for crucial semantic variables, such as conceptual familiarity, and another new variable of modality specific perceptual strength, are not available for a large set of French words. This thesis presents norms for conceptual familiarity, visual and auditory perceptual strength for 3,596 French words. We collected these norms from approximately 300 healthy participants, all French-Canadian native speakers, between 18 and 35 years of age. Descriptive statistics and correlational analyses were conducted on these norms and on other known subjective variables (age of acquisition, imageability, concreteness) and objective variables (number of letters, objective frequency). Correlation analyzes revealed the semantic nature of our variables. More specifically, values of visual and auditory perceptual strength have shown a strong relationship with semantic variables. This highlights the importance of the role of perceptual experience in the conceptual representation of words. We then demonstrated the usefulness of these new norms of conceptual familiarity and perceptual strength by evaluating their impact on latencies in a written lexical decision task. Using stepwise regression models, conceptual familiarity and perceptual strength demonstrated independent contribution to latencies, beyond the contribution of other well-known psycholinguistic variables, such as word length, frequency, imageability, age of acquisition and concreteness. The databases developed in these studies are a meaningful contribution to future studies that will shed further light on the interaction between the linguistic, semantic and perceptual systems. These studies will help researchers to select French stimuli with specific psycholinguistic characteristics for experiments in which conceptual familiarity and perceptual strength must be taken into account. These norms will also have a broad area of use, such as research in human health sciences and the creation of teaching materials and language assessment tests.