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Fluency is the ease of processing information, and is commonly seen as a component of familiarity. The major evidence that fluency is a basis for familiarity is a paradigm where fluency is manipulated by briefly priming participants with an item before asking them if they have previously encountered it, based on Jacoby and Whitehouse (1989). Four experiments were run to see if this effect occurs for pictures as well as words. Experiments 1 and 2 show that priming can increase judgments that an item was recently studied for obscure symbols and line drawings of common objects, respectively. Experiment 3 failed to show priming for pictures of faces. Finally, Experiment 4 manipulated study time and asked participants to make a Remember/Know judgment. Perceptual fluency is used as a basis for picture memory when participants are unable to use recollective cues.
