THE ROLE OF IDENTICAL COMPONENT INFORMATION IN VISUAL TASKS

Information about structure and relationships among
components is an important part of representation.
Simple types of relationships may be available at a
perceptual level. The role of component and
relational information is explored across form
comparison tasks, and tasks involving multiple item
displays. Stimulus comparisons were designed that
shared primitive physical components, primitive
and relational components, or neither type of
component. Participants were asked to make
similarity judgments or same-different judgments of
items designed to differ in either primitive
component or relational information. Participants
were asked to locate or detect a different region or
element in multi-element displays. Relational
components were more important than primitive
components across the range of perceptual tasks
studied, although shared primitive components also
had an impact. This is consistent with previous
research suggesting early availability of some types
of relational information,and suggests a need to
look at the types of structural information that may
be available in different types of tasks or contexts.

Autorentext

Mary Jo Carnot completed a B.A. Psychology at Carroll College in
Waukesha, WI, and a M.A. and Ph.D. in Cognitive/Experimental
Psychology at The Ohio State University, Columbus,OH. She has
worked at the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition in
Florida and is currently an Associate Professor at Chadron State
College in Nebraska.

Klappentext

Information about structure and relationships among
components is an important part of representation.
Simple types of relationships may be available at a
perceptual level. The role of component and
relational information is explored across form
comparison tasks, and tasks involving multiple item
displays. Stimulus comparisons were designed that
shared primitive physical components, primitive
and relational components, or neither type of
component. Participants were asked to make
similarity judgments or same-different judgments of
items designed to differ in either primitive
component or relational information. Participants
were asked to locate or detect a different region or
element in multi-element displays. Relational
components were more important than primitive
components across the range of perceptual tasks
studied, although shared primitive components also
had an impact. This is consistent with previous
research suggesting early availability of some types
of relational information,and suggests a need to
look at the types of structural information that may
be available in different types of tasks or contexts.