Electrophysiological correlates associated with contributions of perceptual and conceptual fluency to familiarity

The present research manipulated the fluency of unstudied items using masked repetition priming procedures during an explicit recognition test. Based on fluency-attribution accounts, which posit that familiarity can be driven by multiple forms of fluency, the relationship between masked priming-induced fluency and familiarity was investigated. We classified pictographic characters into High-Meaningfulness (High-M) and Low-Meaningfulness (Low-M) categories on the basis of subjective meaningfulness ratings and identified the distinct electrophysiological correlates of perceptual and conceptual fluency. The two types of fluency differed in associated ERP effects: 150–250 ms effects for perceptual fluency and FN400 effects for conceptual fluency. The ERPs of Low-M MP-same (items that were preceded by matching masked items) false alarms were more positive than correct rejections during 150–250 ms, whereas the ERPs of High-M MP-same false alarms were more positive than correct rejections during 300–500 ms. The topographic patterns of FN400 effects between High-M MP-same false alarms and Low-M MP-same false alarms were not different from those of High-M hits and Low-M hits. These results indicate that both forms of fluency can contribute to familiarity, and the neural correlates of conceptual fluency are not different from those of conceptual priming induced by prior study-phase exposure. We conclude that multiple neural signals potentially contribute to recognition memory, such as numerous forms of fluency differing in terms of their time courses.