Abstract: The study of feelings of familiarity has greatly developed in recent years. After Jacoby et al. proposed the fluency-priming hypothesis according to their study in memory of recognition, Whittlesea et al. put forward a new argument of the occurrence of familiarity, namely, the discrepancy-attribution hypothesis, through a great amount of experiments. This article aimed at reviewing the main ideas of this hypothesis, its far-reaching significance to the field of metacognition and its still existing shortcomings, so that further research will be easier.

Key words: feelings of familiarity, discrepancy, discrepancy-attribution, the discrepancy -attribution hypothesis