Form recognition: Individual strategies in multivariate cue utilization

Twenty-five Ss were each presented 1,250 trials in a form-recognition task requiring S to find a form among 25 other forms on each trial. Fifty different eight-sided randomly derived polygons were used as stimuli, each presented in 25 different problems. Factors based on physical measures of the stimuli were correlated with observed latencies using multiple regression to assess cue-utilization strategies, while beta-weight profiles and intercorrelations of the Ss’ predicted latencies were used as indices of individual differences. Multiple correlations of physical-factor scores with observed latencies accounted for a significant proportion of the variance for all Ss, while between-S correlations of predicted latencies were never below .90. By all criteria employed, use of stimulus information was highly consistent among Ss. Replication of the experiment for one S revealed good reliability and nearly identical strategies.