Familiarity acts as a reduction in objective complexity.

Familiarity acts as a reduction in objective complexity. Mem Cognit. 2020 Jun 03;: Authors: Zhang J, Liu XL, So M, Reder LM Abstract High-complexity stimuli are thought to place extra demands on working memory when processing and manipulating such stimuli; however, operational definitions of complexity are not well established, nor are the measures that would demonstrate such effects. Here, we argue that complexity is a relative quantity that is affected by preexisting experience. Experiment 1 compared cued-recall performance for Chinese and English speakers when the stimuli involved Chinese features that varied in the number of strokes or involved Ethiopic features unfamiliar to both groups. Chinese pseudocharacters (two radicals) had half the strokes of Chinese pseudowords (two characters). The response terms were English words familiar to both groups. English speakers performed equivalently with the Ethiopic and pseudocharacters, but much worse on the pseudowords. In contrast, Chinese speakers performed equivalently with pseudowords or pseudocharacters, but worse with Ethiopic cues. Experiment 2 showed that the lack of a complexity effect for Chinese speakers was not due to greater ease of rehearsal of pseudowords compared with pseudocharacters. Experiment 3 ruled out that Chinese speakers are just better at learning paired associates involving Mandarin by demonstrating that while complexity did not affect them, other features of ...
Source: Memory and Cognition - Category: Neuroscience Tags: Mem Cognit Source Type: research