Perceptual fluency, semantic familiarity and recognition-related familiarity: an electrophysiological exploration

Scalp recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) were used to examine the neuronal activity associated with perceptual fluency, semantic familiarity and recognition-related familiarity. We assume that ERP differences between first and second presentations of non-famous faces in an implicit memory condition reflect perceptual fluency, ERP differences between first presentations of famous and non-famous faces reflect semantic familiarity (i.e., familiarity arising from semantic memory retrieval), and early ERP differences between first and second presentations of non-famous and famous faces in an explicit recognition memory task reflect recognition-related familiarity. Semantic familiarity elicited a broadly distributed effect between 200 and 300 ms after stimulus onset, possibly representing the activation of face recognition units. Between 300 and 450 ms, frontal effects were observed for semantic familiarity and recognition-related familiarity, while perceptual fluency was associated with a centro-parietally focused effect. Thus, familiarity arising from the retrieval of semantic information and recognition-related familiarity depend at least partly on the same neuronal circuits, while these are dissociable from those mediating perceptual fluency.