Stimulus-specific processing consequences of pattern goodness

Abstract

Two issues concerning the effects of visual pattern goodness on information processing time were investigated: the role of memory vs. encoding and the role of individual stimulus goodness vs. stimulus similarity. A sequential "same-different" task was used to provide differentiation of target item or memory effects from display item or encoding effects. Experiment 1 used four alternative stimuli in each block of trials. The results showed that good patterns were processed faster than poor patterns for both "same" and "different" responses. Furthermore, the goodness of the target item had a greater effect on reaction time than did the goodness of the display item, indicating that memory is more important than encoding in producing faster processing of good stimuli. Effects of interstimulus similarity on processing time were minimal, although isolation of good stimuli in a similarity space could explain many of the results. Experiment 2 replicated the results of Experiment 1, despite the fact that differences in similarity space had been minimized by using only two alternative stimuli in each block. In addition, the speed of processing a "same" pair was essentially independent of the particular alternative stimulus in a block. These results suggest that in this task, there is a processing advantage for good stimuli that is stimulus specific, with the effect operating primarily in memory.It is widely recognized that the structure of visual objects affects phenomenal experience, although the precise nature of that effect is not fully known. The Gestalt psychologists made substantial progress in understanding these experiences by enumerating characteristics of patterns that made them perceptually "good." More recently, Garner (1962) indicated how such goodness might be related to stimulus information and redundancy. He suggested that for a given pattern, the number of equivalent patterns provided a useful index of what constitutes a good figure: The fewer the number of equivalent patterns, the better the given pattern will be.For experimental purposes, rotations and reflections serve as one useful specification of equivalent patterns. If rotating and/or reflecting a pattern yields the same pattern, the number of equivalent patterns is one and the pattern is good; if rotating or reflecting a pattern yields several different patterns, the number of equivalent patterns is larger and the pattern is poorer. Garner and Clement (1963) showed that this definition was highly correlated with the way people rate goodness, thus providing a well-defined means of specifying a good or a poor pattern independent of subjective ratings. Processing Consequences of GoodnessUsing a variety of information processing tasks, it has been found that good patterns are processed more efficiently than poor patterns, as measured by time or by errors. Since it has been shown that there exists a reliable processing advantage for good patterns, recent research has been primarily concerned with establishing the nature of that effect. In particular, t...

Physical and cognitive dimensions in stimulus comparison

“…In both experiments, some stimulus pairs were consistently easy to process regardless of whether a "same" or a "different" response was required, a result that would not be expected if discriminability were the only factor deter-PHYSICAL AND COGNITIVE DIMENSIONS 521 mining speed of processing. In this respect, the results are like those of Sebrechts and Garner (1981), who showed that configurally good patterns were processed faster than poor patterns with both "same" and "different" responses. On the other hand, insofar as discriminability does seem to be a determining factor in speed of processing, Experiment 1 indicated that it was more so for the Physical Identity rule for sameness or for the physical dimension of Length.…”

How high is visual short-term memory capacity for object layout?

“…The element was present in the first display but moved to a new location in the second tures is well established in visual memory (see, e.g., Enns, 1987;Hollingworth, Hyun, & Zhang, 2005;Irwin, 1991;Jiang et al, 2000;Sebrechts & Garner, 1981). Thus, in layout memory, several proximal objects could be encoded as a single complex object, reducing the total number of objects represented in memory (Miller, 1956).…”

Is it really search or just matching? The influence of Goodness, number of stimuli and presentation sequence in same–different tasks

“…This result was later criticized for possibly probing into different encoding requirements, as the task was reproduction rather than comparison (Pomerantz, 1977). Sebrechts and Garner (1981) seemed convinced by the evidence by Bell and Handel (1976), but suggested that the influence of Goodness on encoding is relatively small compared to that on memory.…”

“…Due to the long ISI, it may be assumed that encoding of the first stimulus is complete before the onset of the second stimulus, and should therefore not influence response times. This approach was taken by Sebrechts and Garner (1981) who found faster response times when both the first and the second stimulus were good than when both stimuli were poor. For unequal stimuli ('non-match' in our experiments), the second stimulus Goodness only marginally influenced response times, whereas the Goodness of the first stimulus had a strong influence, leading to the conclusion that memory, but not encoding, is influenced by Goodness.…”

“…Several previous studies using the Garner dot pattens (Garner & Clement, 1963) have attempted to distinguish between the influences of stimulus encoding and memory search (Bell & Handel, 1976;Checkosky & Whitlock, 1973;Clement & Varnadoe, 1967;Garner & Sutliff, 1974;Pomerantz, 1977;Sebrechts & Garner, 1981). One approach taken was to use the Sternberg (1969) methodology (the 'additive factor method') in which separate processes are assumed when two factors are shown to influence response times independently as demonstrated by a non-significant interaction in an analysis of variance.…”