FAMILIARITY (Lat. /um ilia ritas, from familia ris, familiar, from familia, family, from famdas, OLat. famtd, servant). The traditional view of the process of recognition (q.v.) is rather an expression of a logical postulate than of a psychological analysis of the data furnished by consciousness. It has been assumed that recognition is possible only when the given ex perience is compared with the memory image of its former occurrence (called forth according to the laws of the association of ideas), and the judgment, "this is like to that," has been passed. Now in most of our recognitions this lengthy process of comparison is not performed. On the contrary, recognition is usually 'immediate,' i.e. the object is at once 'felt' to be familiar or known, without there being present any asso ciative links to 'mediate' the judgment. Ad mitting this immediacy of recognition, the an alytical psychologist seeks to discover whether ttie 'feeling or recognition,' the sudden glow of familiarity, can be subjected to further analysis, and whether its physiological substrate can be ascertained.
The modern problem of familiarity may be said to have arisen in the course of a controversy be tween Lehmann and Iliitfding. Lehmann admits that immediate recognition shows no conscious traces of the progress of association and com parison, hut, influenced apparently by the de mands of logic, assumes that memory images are always present, and that immediate 'recognition is complex, based upon a 'subliminal' associa tion, i.e. an association in •hieh the reproduced member is unconscious. IIiiffding, like Lehmann, approaches the problem of recognition from the facts of association, but goes a step further in saying that in certain canes (eases in which there is no conscious reference to the past; e.g. our recognition of a scent as familiar, al though we can neither name it nor recall when or where we have previously smelled it) , there is no explicit process of association. The memory image of the previous presentation of the object does not come into consciousness as a free and independent factor; it is merely called up as an 'implicate representation.' The presented object is simply and immediately characterized by a 'quality of kno•nness.' This 'familiarity' or 'thing-known' consciousness cannot be subjected to further analysis. It is difficult to tell whether means to explain it in terms of nascent ideas, or in terms of a 'feeling of ease,"all in creased facility of disposition among nervous elements' which conies with repetition. The for mer explanation is, of course, much like Leh maim's. The latter calls from Lehmann the objection that it is very doubtful whether ease of molecular movement in the cortex could furnish the substrate for a new conscious quality like that of familiarity. Lehmann furthermore urges that familiarity cannot be based upon a feeling tone, since simple stimuli, like odors, may be accompanied by quite varied feeling-tones, and yet, be equally recognized. This criticism is. however, invalidated if one assumes that the feeling of familiarity is unique.
Those psychologists who, like Knipe and Titehener, recognize two sorts of conscious I .1e ment4, sensations and affections, and who fur ther subdivide affection into but two qualities, pleasantness and unpleasantness, have before them the task of analyzing the recog,nitoty 'feel' of familiarity into its constituent elements.
Kiilpe says that it is not 'a peculiar attribute' (i.e. an unanalyzable quality of knownness) that stamps ideas as familiar. The real basis of the judgment of familiarity is found: "(1) in the especial effectiveness for central excitation of familiar impressions or memorial images; and (2) in the characteristic mood which they or dinarily induce, and which embraces both pleas urable (or at least comfortable) affective states and the corresponding organic sensations." Titehener says, similarly, that in the recognitory consciousness we have (1) the pm esented idea; (2) its centrally aroused supplements; and (3) the mood of 'feeling at home.' Immediate recog nition may exhibit all degrees of definiteness; e.g. "We pass some one on the street, and I say to my companion: 'I'm sure I know that face.' Ilere the familiarity mark consists of the word 'known' and the reeognitive mood." This posi tion has been criticised by Washburn, who, liko Lehmann, doubts the possibility of basing fa miliarity upon the affective reaction. The mood consists of a pleasantness. plus "a complex of organic sensations, set up by an easy bodily at titude" (Titchener). Now, since there is but one pleasantness, it cannot serve as the specific basis of familiarity; and the organic sensations are not sufficiently definite or uniform to supply the requisite substrate. A recognition may be made with a start of alarm quite in contrast to the easy bodily attitude demanded. This objection seems to have been foreseen ; for Titchener says expressly: "Every reeognitive consciousness is intrinsically pleasant. Its pleasantness may, however, be outweighed by the unpleasantness of the recognized idea ;" i.e. the total experience may be unpleasurable and the pleasantness of the organic sensations of the recognitive mood may be 'forced into the background of consciousness.' But Washburn further urges that the first of Kfilpe's items, 'effectiveness for central excita tion,' implies that a recognized experience tends to (-all up other processes, formerly associated with it. For direct recognition, this means simply ealling up the word 'known.' But by what law of association does a repeated experience call up a word that was absent from it at the first oc currence? Direct recognition cannot lie explained by the laws of association. The 'knownness' is something more simple. "The consciousness of familiarity . . . is an unanalyzable mental fact." We must simply assume it to be a "pe culiar property of centrally excited sensations" whose substrate is "not the actual process in the brain-centres themselves, but the process in which the nervous current is transferred from one brain centre to another." For Wundt, the familiarity-consciousness is a `feeling of recognition' (akin to pleasure, as its opposite. 'unexpectedness,' is akin to pain), due, perhaps, to the greater ease with which the nervous elements respond to a kind of excitation previonsly experienced. The feeling, however. im plies the presence of a background of ideational processes. Consult: Baldwin, Mental Develop ment in the Child and the Raec (New York, 1895) ; Hiffffding, Viertcljahrssehrift file leissen schaftliche Philosophic, sill., xiv. (Leipzig, 1S99-90) : Millie, Outlines of Psychology (trans. London, 1895) ; Titchener, Outlines of Psychology (New York, 1899).