Scene perception: A failure to find a benefit from prior expectancy or familiarity.
Biederman, Irving; Teitelbaum, Richard C.; Mezzanotte, Robert J.
[Article] Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition. 9(3):411-429, July 1983.

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Three experiments with 172 undergraduates examined whether expectancy and familiarity influence the perception of a scene. Priming Ss with a verbal descriptor of a scene did not reliably improve perception of that scene as assessed by the speed and accuracy of detecting an incongruity between an object and its setting (Exps I and II) or a specified target object (Exp III). Also, in attempting to perceive these scenes, Ss could not capitalize on the residue from prior exposures of a scene's background, even though those backgrounds had been processed to the point where semantic information had been extracted from them. Although these results are inconsistent with recent speculations on the role of frames in scene perception, they are compatible with the literature on the effects of set on perception, recent experiments on the perception of a scene from a single fixation, and film-editing practice with "flash cuts." Results indicate that the mechanisms for perceiving and interpreting nondegraded real-world scenes are so quick and efficient that conditions can readily be found in which priming and prior exposures of substantial portions of scenes are not helpful for perceiving and judging certain aspects of those scenes. (33 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved)

(C) 1983 by the American Psychological Association