Mere exposure effect for amodally completed faces A Tomita, S Matsushita, K Morikawa |
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School of Human Sciences, Osaka University, Japan
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| The mere exposure effect (MEE) refers to the phenomenon where repeated exposure to a stimulus results in an increased liking for that stimulus. When a shape is partially occluded, observers usually perceive the contours to be continuous (i.e. amodally completed) behind the occluders. This study investigates whether the MEE would generalize to amodally completed perceptual representations. We used line drawings of faces as stimuli, which were overlaid with square-wave grating occluders (i.e. stripes). During the exposure phase, 50%-occluded faces were repeatedly presented to observers. During the rating phase, the observers rated the likability of the same 50%-occluded faces, non-occluded faces, and faces occluded by gratings which were half-cycle shifted. The result indicated a significant MEE for the same 50%-occluded faces and the non-occluded faces. Therefore, the MEE generalizes to amodally completed perceptual representations. However, when the faces were inverted, the MEE did not generalize to non-occluded faces. These results indicate that face-specific processing helps the MEE to generalize to amodally completed representations. Moreover, no observer was aware that the grating occluders were half-cycle shifed in some stimuli. The present study suggests that even when observers cannot consciously distinguish similar stimuli, the visual system can at the level of affective preference. |
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