Perceived stimulus complexity and food preference development

The importance of perceived complexity, a "collative property" as defined by [Berlyne, D. E. (1967). Arousal and reinforcement. In Nebraska symposium on motivation (pp. 1-110). University of Nebraska Press], to the dynamic development of preference was investigated. Eighty-six female and 82 male subjects rated their liking for and various collative properties of seven very similar orange drinks that differed only in perceived complexity as a result of adding small quantities of other flavours. This was done before and after giving each subject extended experience of one of the drinks, each being used equally often for this purpose. As predicted by the theory of [Dember, W. N., & Earl, R. W. (1957). Analysis of exploratory, manipulatory and curiosity behavior. Psychological Review, 64 (2), 91-96] exposure to a stimulus with a slightly higher complexity than an individual subject's optimally preferred level of perceived complexity, caused an upwards shift in that level, whereas exposure to a less complex stimulus had no such effect. Changes in the appreciation of the drinks predicted by the theory were also observed.     

Amount of stimulus exploration and preference as differential functions of stimulus complexity

Two sets of photographic slides, one made up of scenes from the geographic environment, the other of works of non-representational modern art, were scaled for complexity by obtaining judges’ ratings of amount of variation present on several specified stimulus attributes. Fourteen slides defining a sevenpoint scale of complexity were selected from each set and given to college students to obtain measures of (a) amount of exploratory behavior (number of times S chose to expose each slide briefly), and (b) preference (evaluative ratings on a seven-point scale). In accordance with prediction, the former measure emerged as a linearly increasing function of complexity, while the relationship between complexity and preference was curvilinear, reaching a maximum at an intermediate level of complexity. The results are related to Berlyne’s distinction between specific and diversive stimulus exploration, and implications for the study of aesthetics are discussed.     

Presentation-order effects for aesthetic stimulus preference

For preference comparisons of paired successive musical excerpts, Koh (American Journal of Psychology, 80, 171?C185, 1967) found time-order effects (TOEs) that correlated negatively with stimulus valence??the first (vs. the second) of two unpleasant (vs. two pleasant) excerpts tended to be preferred. We present three experiments designed to investigate whether valence-level-dependent order effects for aesthetic preference (a) can be accounted for using Hellstr?m??s (e.g., Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 5, 460?C477, 1979) sensation-weighting (SW) model, (b) can be generalized to successive and to simultaneous visual stimuli, and (c) vary, in accordance with the stimulus weighting, with interstimulus interval (ISI; for successive stimuli) or stimulus duration (for simultaneous stimuli). Participants compared paired successive jingles (Exp. 1), successive color patterns (Exp. 2), and simultaneous color patterns (Exp. 3), selecting the preferred stimulus. The results were well described by the SW model, which provided a better fit than did two extended versions of the Bradley?CTerry?CLuce model. Experiments 1 and 2 revealed higher weights for the second stimulus than for the first, and negatively valence-level-dependent TOEs. In Experiment 3, there was no laterality effect on the stimulus weighting and no valence-level-dependent space-order effects (SOEs). In terms of the SW model, the valence-level-dependent TOEs can be explained as a consequence of differential stimulus weighting in combination with stimulus valence varying from low to high, and the absence of valence-level-dependent SOEs as a consequence of the absence of differential weighting. For successive stimuli, there were no important effects of ISI on weightings and TOEs, and, for simultaneous stimuli, duration had only a small effect on the weighting.     

Working memory and inhibition across the adult life-span

Research has shown that age-related changes in cognitive performance are due mostly to the decline of general factors such as working memory and inhibition. The present study is aimed at investigating age-related changes in these mechanisms across the adult life-span from 20 to 86 years of age. Results indicate a linear relationship between each working memory measure and age, independently of the nature of the task, and a quadratic relationship between the single inhibitory measures and age. Moreover, hierarchical regression analyses show that inhibition accounts for a significant, but modest, part of the age-related variance in working memory. Taken together, these results suggest that inhibition is not as crucial a contributor of age-related changes in the functional capacity of working memory across the adult life-span as previously thought.     

Effects of task difficulty on subsequent preference for visual complexity.

Ss rated on a 1 to 13 Likert scale their preference for four environmental scenes which differed in complexity. Ss were then given 30 sec. to solve each of 10 3-, 5-, or 7-letter single-solution anagrams. Finally the Ss rated four new slides which were of the same complexity level as the slides seen during the first session. Change scores were calculated by subtracting the preference ratings at each complexity level during the first session from the rating at the corresponding complexity level during the second session. The Anagram Complexity X Slide Complexity interaction was significant: the complexity of the slides showing the most positive change scores was inversely related to the complexity of the anagrams attempted. The results were discussed in terms of optimal level of stimulation theories.     

Autoshaped responding: A baseline for studying stimulus preference

In an autoshaping procedure with pigeons, trials consisted of the illumination of two keys, each with a different color, and then a response-independent feeder operation. Over successive conditions, all key-color pairs were arranged from the set of amber, red, green, and blue lamps. During sessions with a given pair, the left-right configuration of the colors varied irregularly, and the two colors alternated in illuminating the feeder. With one red and one green key, for example, red appeared sometimes on the left and sometimes on the right, and the feeder was alternately lit red or green on successive trials. Both total pecks and proportion of trials with at least one peck on a key of a given color were generally greater for red and amber than for green and blue, and relations among preferences were generally transitive across different color pairs. Repeating the procedure with decreased red and amber intensities and increased green and blue intensities reduced red and amber pecking relative to green and blue pecking, implying that differences in responding were determined more strongly by intensive than by chromatic properties of the stimuli.     

Rated preference and complexity for natural and urban visual material

In order (1) to study the relationship between complexity and preference for slides of the physical environment and (2) to test the hypothesis that the content of slides (in particular, whether nature or urban) will influence preference, independent of the rated complexity, 88 Ss were asked to rate 56 slides, both for preference and for complexity. Based on dimensional analyses, a nature and an urban dimension were identified. Three major results were obtained: (1) Nature scenes were greatly preferred to urban scenes (p < .001). (2) Complexity predicted preference within the nature domain (r = .69) and within the urban domain (r = .78). (3) Complexity did not account for the preference for nature over urban slides; the greatly preferred nature slides were, in fact, judged on the average less complex than the urban slides. The possibility is raised that the domain-specific character of the preference/complexity relationship found in this study may be general; that is, it may not be a special property of environmentally generated arrays.     

Visual complexity and stimulus pacing in chicks

Two groups were tested for spontaneous alternation using massed and spaced trials but alternation rate was not above chance level. Two experiments then examined the use of visual stimuli as pacers for an approach response. The results indicate that subjects responded to complexity and that complexity may be a more effective pacer than novelty.     

Differences in Hand Test responses of healthy females across the life-span.

The Hand Test was administered to 175 females ranging from 17 to 72 years. Subjects were all "community-living," within normal range of hearing and vision, in good health, and had a modal education level of high school graduate. Results were consistent with previous findings using projective techniques with the elderly, in that a depletion and constriction of personality appears to be concomitant with the normal aging process.     

Effects of stimulus complexity on mental rotation rate of polygons

Both spatial and propositional theories of imagery predict that the rate at which mental images can be rotated is slower the more complex the stimulus. Four experiments (three published and one unpublished) testing that hypothesis found no effect of complexity on rotation rate. It is argued that despite continued methodological improvements, subjects in the conditions of greater complexity may have found it sufficient to rotate only partial images, thereby vitiating the prediction. The two experiments reported here are based on the idea of making the discriminative response sufficiently difficult so as to force the rotation of complete images. The first one scaled the similarity between standard polygons and certain systematically mutated versions. From the ratings so obtained, two levels of perceived similarity, high and low, were defined and served as separate conditions in a response-time, image rotation experiment. The second experiment tested the complexity hypothesis by examining the effect of similarity on rotation rates and its interaction with levels of complexity. The results support the complexity hypothesis, but only for the highly similar stimuli. Rotation times were also generally slower for high as compared with low similarity. It is argued that these results arise because subjects rotate incomplete images when the stimuli are not very similar.     

Effects of irrelevant spatial S-R compatibility depend on stimulus complexity

Summary Choice-reaction time is known to depend on the spatial correspondence of stimulus and response, even if the stimulus location is irrelevant to the task (Simon effect). An experiment investigated whether this effect depends on stimulus complexity — i. e., on whether properties of the stimulus render stimulus discrimination easy or difficult. It was hypothesized that high demands on discrimination slow down the processing of stimulus identity in relation to location, so that the facilitating or conflicting location code has more time to decay, thus losing impact on response selection. In fact, the results revealed an effect of irrelevant spatial S-R correspondence with easy, but not with difficult, stimulus discrimination. This finding resolves an apparent contradiction between the results of several previous experiments on the Simon effect.The other central argument rests on findings of Stoffer (1991) obtained with a single frame. These, however, have recently been challenged by Hommel (1993 b).     

Note on stimulus error and the experienced subject in psychophysical research

Experienced subjects participate in some psychophysical research. While they may be more responsive to experimental stimuli than naive subjects, they may not be immune from stimulus error, the tendency for subjects to bias their responses given known physical characteristics of the stimulus. A brief examination of the literature concerning processing of changing sound-level and visual spatial frequency may support this contention.