Figural goodness and internal structure in perceptual discrimination

The time required for 24 Ss to sort four decks of cards composed of 5-dot figures (Garner & Clement, 1963) was measured. A deck consisted of 32 cards: 4 each of 8 patterns. There were 4 sets of figures: Sets A1 and A2 had identical amount and form of redundancy; so also did B1 and B2. Sets B1 and B2, having more uncertainty in simple contingencies and having negative interaction terms, required significantly more time to sort than Sets A1 and A2. All sets differed in mean ratings of figural goodness, (Garner & Clement, 1963). Even when amount and form of redundancy are held constant, the figural goodness of the individual figures constituting the set influence the discriminability. Sets consisting of good or simpler figures are easier to sort.     

Perceptual encoding efficiency in visual search

The authors present 10 experiments that challenge some central assumptions of the dominant theories of visual search. Their results reveal that the complexity (or redundancy) of nontarget items is a crucial but overlooked determinant of search efficiency. The authors offer a new theoretical outline that emphasizes the importance of nontarget encoding efficiency, and they test this proposal using dot pattern stimuli adapted from W. R. Garner and D. E. Clement (1963). The results provide converging support for the importance of nontarget encoding efficiency in accounting for visual search performance.     

Symmetry, repetition, and figural goodness: an investigation of the weight of evidence theory

Considerable evidence has accumulated on the superiority of symmetry over repetition in the study of figural goodness. The Weight of Evidence theory of figural goodness (WoE) provides a mathematically rigorous, elegant, and testable account of how factors like symmetry and repetition affect figural goodness. In this study we investigate implications of the WoE approach. More specifically, we examine (1) embedded patterns versus simple elements, (2) the number of elements in a pattern, and (3) long-range dependencies within a pattern. Data from two experiments illustrate cases in which figures made of simple repetitions have higher figural goodness than some kinds of symmetrical patterns; thus, the generality of the symmetry over repetition phenomenon is questioned. We discuss our results with respect to WoE and suggest ways to further develop the theory.     

Figurai vs. configural effects in the filled duration illusion

Patterns varying in form goodness and size were presented for 15, 30, and 45 msec. The experiment included three independent groups of subjects. Half of the first group were presented size variations with good figures, while the other half were shown size variations with poor figures. Half of the second group were presented goodness variations with small figures, while the other half were shown goodness variations with large figures. A third group experienced variations in both goodness and size. The major findings were: (1) poor figures and large figures were judged “longer” than good or small figures when varied within a session; (2) this effect vanished when the different levels of size or goodness were presented to separate groups of subjects; (3) the magnitude of the difference in temporal estimation was the same for size and goodness when each was varied in isolation; (4) when size and form goodness were varied orthogonally in the same session, both dimensions produced reliable changes in temporal estimation. These data are discussed in light of current theoretical explanations of the filled duration illusion.     

Nonholistic processing in mental rotation: Some suggestive evidence

A series of experiments, using a modification of the Shepard and Metzler mental rotation task, was performed to investigate Shepard’s “holistic rotation” hypothesis. Effective figural complexity was manipulated in the experiments in two distinct ways. In one manipulation, blocks were added to the standard 10-blockfigures. In the other manipulation, the figures used and the direction of angular rotation were restricted so that some featural information in the figures was redundant, that is, unnecessary for the discrimination task at hand. There were two major conclusions. First, when figural complexity is effectively manipulated, it has a powerful effect on the “speed of mental rotation,” as measured by the slope of the curve relating reaction time to angular disparity. Second, it is possible, by ignoring featural redundancy, to construct experimental paradigms in which “complexity” of figures is apparently manipulated but has no effect on speed of mental rotation. This fact provides a possible explanation of why some previous experiments have failed to find a complexity effect in mental rotation.     

Individual pattern representations are context independent, but their collective representation is context dependent.

We studied context dependency of the representations underlying perceptual "goodness". Three experiments used a same-different task with classical Garner 5-dot patterns presented with an interstimulus interval (ISI) of 500 ms. Same patterns were allowed to be rotated or reflected versions of each other. Pattern goodness was varied according to rotation and reflection equivalence, using Garner's equivalence set size (ESS) measure. The ESS of both first and second patterns affected reaction time and accuracy. A model based on assumptions that Garner's equivalence sets constitute the generic representation of these patterns and that items within these sets are accessed serially was fitted to the data. Excellent fits were obtained, which were robust against frequency-induced bias at the level of the individual pattern, but sensitive to such bias at the level of the equivalence set. It was concluded that individual pattern representations are context independent, whereas their collective representations are context dependent. Simplicity and likelihood principles, therefore, seem to apply to different levels of a representation hierarchy.     

Pattern uncertainty and the discrimination of visual patterns

Sixty Ss individually sorted eight decks of 50 cards each. A deck contained 25 cards each of two stimulus patterns. The patterns were drawn from different sets of five-dot patterns judged to be equivalent. The eight decks represented pairs of patterns drawn (a) from the same equivalence set, (b) from different equivalence sets of the same size, and (c) from different equivalence sets of different sizes. Sorting times were shown to increase with increasing size of equivalence set, and were shown to be greater for patterns drawn from within the same equivalence set than for patterns drawn from different equivalence sets. Ratings of pattern goodness were found to be useful predictors of sorting time only in their capacity to discriminate between equivalence sets of different sizes. The results were interpreted as supporting the importance of equivalence set membership in a discrimination task where the S logically does not have to consider stimuli other than the given criterion stimuli.     

Criterion adjustment and probability matching

Twenty subjects made all possible (136) pairwise-comparison judgments of pattern goodness between 17 five-dot patterns. Using multidimensional scaling and hierarchical clustering analyses, a two-dimensional representation was judged the most appropriate for the derived pattern space. The interpreted structure of the spatial-hierarchical configuration strongly supported previous findings that pattern redundancy is the most salient dimension underlying pattern goodness judgments and that patterns can be partitioned on this dimension according to the size of their equivalence sets, i.e., the number of patterns resulting from rigid rotations in 90-deg increments or reflection. A psychological mechanism that accounts for the effect of pattern redundancy on judged goodness was proposed.     

A further investigation of apparent size and retinal size as determinants of the figural after-effect

A figure which is more distant from the eye than another but subtends the same visual angle is usually seen as the larger. This phenomenon is called perceptual size constancy. Experiments have been reported which show that sometimes the apparent and sometimes the retinal sizes of the stimulus figures determine the direction of the figural after-effect. These experiments are reviewed and two further experiments are reported. In the first experiment two types of stimulus figure (discs and annuli) which subtended a visual angle of 1° 36' resulted in figural after-effects, the direction of which would have been predicted by the retinal sizes of the figures. In the second experiment larger figures were used which subtended a visual angle of about 4° and which were the same as those used by Sutherland (1954). In this experiment the after-effects were generally in a direction which would have been expected if apparent size determined the direction of the after-effect. In the interpretation of the results attention is drawn to the “Central Tendency Effect” which has been observed in size judgements of stimulus figures of varying size. Two hypotheses are suggested; one is that the true figural aftereffect has been obscured by the “Central Tendency Effect” in successive judgements, and the other is that time error in successive judgements of size is essentially a figural aftereffect. Some supportive evidence for the latter hypothesis is reported. It is concluded that apparent size is not a critical determinant of the figural after-effect.     

Distribution of visual attention over space

Subjects viewed 3 X 3 grids in which different subsets of the nine squares were designated as "figure," either by physical shading of those squares or by a verbal instruction to imagine those squares as shaded. The time taken by participants to respond "on" or "off" the figure was measured for single or multiple probe dots, which all appeared on or off the figural subset together, and which had already been shown to be equally detectable against shaded or unshaded squares and in all nine locations within the grid. In contrast to the set-size effect generally found in experiments on memory scanning, reaction time did not necessarily increase with the number of squares in the figural subset. Instead, the critical variable, which in previous research may often have adventitiously covaried with set size, was the spatial compactness of the subsets (as indexed by square-root-area over perimeter): Probes of less compact figures required more time to classify correctly. Subjects were evidently more successful in confining their attention to sets of mutually proximal items. Reasons are given for believing that this principle may also apply in the more abstract representational or semantic spaces that determine reaction times and errors in various other cognitive tasks.     

Are Line Lengths Critical to the Discrimination of Axisymmetric Pairs of Figures from Disoriented Identical Pairs?

I examined whether the lack of a difference in line lengths made the discrimination of axisymmetric (Ax) pairs of figures from disoriented identical (Idr) pairs difficult. Three basic pair types were prepared: Idr, Ax, and nonidentical/nonaxisymmetric (Nd) pairs. To avoid confusion arising from structural differences, all pairs of figures were set to be mutually isomorphic. Two figures of a pair were controlled to have the same line lengths of respective figural components (Experiment 1) or the same lengths of individual line segments (Experiment 2) in experiments where participants decided if the figures were the same/different. Experiment 1 showed longer latencies for Ax pairs than for Nd pairs, indicating that these feature values alone did not cause difficulty in discrimination. Experiment 2 showed that only Nd pairs with all line segments having the same lengths for the two figures had the same latencies as Ax pairs. The sameness of individual line segments in simple pairs of figures made discrimination difficult.     

Temporal characteristics of the effects of visual pattern redundancy on encoding and storage processes: evidence from rapid serial visual presentation

Pattern redundancy is a key concept for representing the amount of internal mental load (encoding efficiency) needed for pattern perception/recognition. The present study investigated how pattern redundancy influences encoding and memory processes in the visual system using a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) paradigm. With RSVP, it is well known that participants often fail to detect repetitions of words (repetition blindness, RB). We used this phenomenon as an index of the encoding and storage of visual patterns. In three experiments, we presented patterns with higher and lower redundancy, as defined by Garner’s equivalent set size (ESS). The results showed that RB occurred more frequently for higher redundancy patterns when the temporal distance between the targets was less than 500 ms; this tendency was reversed with longer temporal distances of over 500 ms. Our results suggest that pattern redundancy modulates both the early encoding and subsequent memory processes of a representation.     

Sex differences in symbol-digit substitution task performance

Estes (1974) proposed that the superior performance of women over men on the Digit-Symbol Substitution subtest of the Wechsler scales was due to their greater ability to encode symbols verbally. Three forms of a symbol-digit substitution task were administered to 62 female and 96 male college students. The symbol sets of the three forms differed in the relative amount of figural and spatial orientational information. Women performed better than men on the form which used the Wechsler symbol set in which all symbols are figurally different and, presumably, most easily coded verbally. Men performed better than women on the form which had the greatest amount of spatial orientational information. Estes' hypothesis is supported by these findings.     

Helping children apply their knowledge to their behavior on a dimension-switching task

To investigate why 3-year-olds have difficulty in switching sorting dimensions, children of 3 and 4 years were tested in one of four conditions on Zelazo's card sort task: standard, sleeve, label and face-up. In the standard condition, children were required to sort blue-truck and red-star cards under either a blue-star or red-truck model card, first by color or shape, and then by the other dimension. Here 3-year-olds sorted correctly until the dimension changed; they continue to sort by the initial dimension. The sleeve condition (placing the sorting cards in an envelope prior to sorting) had little effect. In the label condition, the child labeled the relevant sorting dimension on each trial. Most 3-year-olds succeeded; evidently their labeling helped them refocus their attention, overcoming ‘attentional inertia’ (the pull to continue attending to the previously relevant dimension). In the face-up condition, attentional inertia was strengthened because sorted cards were left face-up; 4-year-olds performed worse than in the standard condition. We posit that attentional inertia is the core problem for preschoolers on the card sort task.     

Visual pattern matching: Effects of size ratio, complexity, and similarity in simultaneous and successive matching

An experiment on mental transformation of size, in pairwise comparison of simultaneously or successively presented figures with respect to shape, is reported. Regardless of type of presentation (simultaneous vs. successive), figural complexity, and similarity within pairs of different-shaped figures, median latencies of both same and different responses were approximately linearly increasing functions of the linear size ratio between the patterns to be compared. The slopes of the functions showed significant effects of figural complexity and similarity for simultaneous but not for successive matching. The results suggest that successive matching was done by encoding a subpattern of the first stimulus in a pair as a mental image, transforming the image to the size format of the other stimulus, and then testing for a match; in simultaneous matching the process of encoding, transformation, and comparison appeared to be executed several times for each pair of figures. The interpretation was illustrated by a random walk model, which provided a good fit to the results. Received: 31 March 1998 / Accepted: 22 August 1998     

Sex differences and the role of figural complexity in determining the rate of mental rotation

Two experiments were conducted to investigate the effects of figural complexity on the rate of mental rotation of 3-dimensional figures and to compare the performance of men and women. Complexity was manipulated in three ways: by changing the number of blocks in the figure (7 or 10), by altering the number of turns (2 or 3), and by using outline or solid figures. In the first study, these factors were manipulated between groups of subjects. Women showed steeper slopes than men, but none of the complexity variables affected either slope or intercept for the mental rotation function. In the second study, number of turns and number of blocks were manipulated within-subjects, using only the solid figures. There were significant sex differences in both slope and intercept, and the number of blocks affected the slope of the rotation function. In both studies, a small percentage of the subjects showed nonlinear functions relating angular rotation to response time. Although the women consistently showed slower rotation functions, rate of rotation did not relate either to figural complexity or to nonlinearity. The results suggest that the rate of mental rotation is not affected by figural complexity, at least at the levels used in the present study, and that men and women employ essentially similar strategies.     

Internal consistency of the object relations and social cognition scales for the Thematic Apperception Test.

We examined 8 data sets to determine whether it is possible to attain acceptable levels of internal consistency (coefficient alpha) reliability for the 4 Object Relations and Social Cognition scales (ORSC; Westen, Lohr, Silk, Kerber, & Goodrich, 1989) for the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT; Murray, 1943) when cards are considered as items in a scale. Number of cards used in the data sets ranged from 4 to 10, and the Spearman-Brown prophecy formula was applied to estimate the number of cards that would be required to attain alpha levels of different magnitudes. The two more structural subscales (Complexity of Representations and Understanding of Social Causality) have somewhat higher consistencies than the two more affective ones (Affect Tone and Capacity for Emotional Investment and Moral Standards). The results suggest that the use of 10 to 12 cards provides internal consistencies of alpha > or = .70 across each of the 4 ORSC scales.     

Effects of hue,brightness, contrast with background,and observation time on figural dominance in ambiguous patterns

Ambiguous patterns composed of two alternate crosses of different hues and brightness on two different brightness backgrounds were viewed for 120 sec by 10 female college students. Each subject observed 92 pattern presentations (23 patterns, each pattern presented in 2 orientations and on each of 2 backgrounds). Effects of hue and brightness contrast with background were clearly demonstrated: blue was the most dominant, red the least, and green and yellow located in between. Brightness contrast of patterns with background accentuated figural dominance of the darker figures. The number of alternations increased over the observation time for hues of equal brightness; however, the relation of this measure to total duration of seeing a figure in studies of figural dominance is unclear. Theories of neural satiation, fatigue, and interaction were used in interpreting the results.     

Gift Cards and Mental Accounting: Green‐lighting Hedonic Spending

In three studies, we examine the mental accounting rules that govern how gift cards are used. We predicted that their identity as gift cards would shift consumption from utilitarian to hedonic goods even in contexts where both types of goods are available and the consumer's needs are unchanged. In Study 1a, participants were asked to imagine that they had both a gift card and a specified amount of cash and needed to purchase both a hedonic item and a utilitarian item. When asked which currency they would use to buy which item, respondents were significantly more likely to say they would use the gift card to buy the hedonic item. Study 1b replicated this result and found that it was tied to participants' beliefs how different types of money should be used. In Study 2, we found that participants who were required to spend a certain amount of their compensation in a laboratory store spent more on hedonic goods if their payment was in the form of a gift card. In Study 3, we analyzed transactions at a campus bookstore and found that shoppers tended to spend disproportionately on hedonic goods when using their gift cards than when making credit card purchases. Taken together, these studies indicate that people tend to assign the monetary value of a gift card to a hedonic mental account and spend it accordingly. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Which is more critical in identification of random figures,endpoints or closures?1

The present study intended to examine the criticality of the presence of endpoints and its complementary state, the presence of closures, in early figural identification. Three experiments used a same/different judgment task for simultaneously presented pairs of random figures. Rigorous control over the selections of stimulus figures containing closures and endpoints was ensured. Latencies predicted by six explanations of figural identification (i.e. parallel and the presence of endpoint detection; parallel and closure detection; serial, exhaustive and endpoint detection; serial, exhaustive and closure detection; serial, self‐terminating and endpoint detection; and serial, self‐terminating and closure detection) were evaluated by the obtained patterns of latencies. The experiments persistently indicated that serial, self‐terminating feature detections were executed as the means of the identification. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that closures were detected faster than endpoints. Experiment 3 further suggested that multiple closures were detected faster than a single closure.