Complexity, incongruity, pre-exposure and the familiarity effect in visual selection.

A consistent finding in the literature concerning visual selection is that subjects spend more time viewing unfamiliar stimuli than familiar stimuli. In the present investigation a procedure to measure competitive viewing times to familiar and unfamiliar stimuli was used. Results of the analyses of viewing times showed that the magnitude of the familiarity effect was a positive function of the duration of stimulus pre-exposure. In addition no differences were found in subjects' "preference" for familial and unfamiliar stimuli as measured by "like-disliked" ratings.