Korean Journal of Cognitive Science (인지과학)

The Korean Society for Cognitive Science (한국인지과학회)
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Effects of familiarity on the construction of psychological distance

친숙감이 심리적 거리에 미치는 영향

  • Bae, Heekyung (Yonsei University, Department of Psychology) ;
  • Kim, Kyungmi (Yale University, Department of Psychology) ;
  • Yi, Do-Joon (Yonsei University, Department of Psychology)
  • Received : 2014.03.06
  • Accepted : 2014.05.03
  • Published : 2014.06.30
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Abstract

Psychological distance refers to the perceived gap between a stimulus and a person's direct experience and its activation influences the decisions and actions that the person makes towards the stimulus. We investigated whether the level of familiarity affects the construction of psychological distance. Specifically, we hypothesized that a familiar stimulus, relative to an unfamiliar stimulus, is perceived to be psychologically closer to the observer and so its perception might be modulated by the perceived spatial distance. The familiarity of stimuli was manipulated in terms of preexposure frequency and preexposure perceptual fluency. In experiments, participants were first exposed with three nonsense words in a lexical decision task. The nonsense words were presented in nonword trials with different levels of frequency (frequent vs. rare, Experiment 1) or with different levels of visibility (less blurred vs. more blurred, Experiment 2). Participants then performed a distance Stroop task with the most familiar and the least familiar nonwords. Each of them appeared in either proximal or distant spatial locations in scenes with clear depth cues. The results showed a significant interaction between the word familiarity and the spatial distance: the familiar word was judged faster in proximal locations but slower in distant locations relative to the unfamiliar word. The current findings suggest that metacognitive evaluation of familiarity could be one of the critical factors that underlie the construction of psychological distance.

관찰자가 대상이나 상황에 관해 느끼는 주관적인 간극을 심리적 거리라고 한다. 심리적 거리는 개인이 그 대상과 상황에 대해 취하는 의사결정과 행위에 영향을 끼친다. 본 연구는 친숙감의 수준이 심리적 거리의 형성에 끼치는 효과를 탐색하였다. 친숙한 자극이 덜 친숙한 자극에 비해 심리적으로 더 가깝게 느껴진다면, 자극이 유발하는 친숙감 수준이 자극의 지각된 공간적 거리와 상호작용할 것으로 예상하였다. 각 실험에서 참가자들은 먼저 사전 노출 단계에서 세 개의 무의미 단어를 경험하였다. 선행연구들에 따르면 친숙감은 자극의 노출 횟수와 지각적 유창성(perceptual fluency)의 영향을 받는다. 따라서 참가자들이 단어 판단 과제를 수행하는 동안, 무의미 단어들은 각기 다른 수준의 빈도(실험 1)와 선명도(실험 2)로 제시되었다. 그 다음 단계에서 참가자들은 가장 친숙한 무의미 단어와 가장 덜 친숙한 무의미 단어를 가지고 거리 스트룹 과제를 수행하였다. 각각의 단어들은 깊이 단서가 분명한 장면 사진들 속에서 지각적으로 가깝거나 먼 장소에 출현하였다. 그 결과, 두 실험 모두에서 단어의 친숙감과 공간적 거리 간 상호작용이 유의미하였다. 친숙한 단어는 가까운 위치에서 제시되었을 때 빠른 판단반응을 유발하였고 상대적으로 덜 친숙한 단어는 먼 위치에서 제시되었을 때 빠른 판단 반응을 유발하였다. 이러한 결과는 친숙감에 대한 상위인지적 평가(metacognitive evaluation)가 심리적 거리의 형성을 뒷받침하는 주요 요인임을 의미한다.

Keywords

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