Differential weighting of common and distinctive components

We investigated possible explanations of the finding that the relative weight (W) of common components in similarity judgments is higher for verbal than for pictorial stimuli. A serial presentation of stimulus components had no effect on verbal stimuli; it increased the impact of both common and dis...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of experimental psychology. General Vol. 119; no. 1; p. 30
Main Authors Ritov, I, Gati, I, Tversky, A
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States 01.03.1990
Subjects
Adult
Attention
Concept Formation
Discrimination Learning
Form Perception
Humans
Orientation
Pattern Recognition, Visual
Psychophysics
Reading
Serial Learning
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Summary:We investigated possible explanations of the finding that the relative weight (W) of common components in similarity judgments is higher for verbal than for pictorial stimuli. A serial presentation of stimulus components had no effect on verbal stimuli; it increased the impact of both common and distinctive components of pictorial stimuli but did not affect their relative weight. On the other hand, W was increased by manipulations that reduced the cohesiveness of composite pictures, such as separating, scrambling, and mixing their components. Furthermore, W was decreased by manipulations that enhanced the cohesiveness of composite verbal stimuli by imposing structure on their components. Verbal and pictorial representations of the same stimuli yielded no systematic differences in W.
ISSN:0096-3445
DOI:10.1037/0096-3445.119.1.30