Congruity and the perceptual comparison task.
The effects of congruity between comparatives and the relative magnitudes of to-be-compared stimuli were investigated in six perceptual comparison experiments. Experiments 1-5 failed to obtain congruity effects in purely perceptual tasks even when subjects had extensive practice with a relatively small stimulus set. Experiment 6 obtained a congruity effect with perceptual stimuli but only when the stimuli were described as representing real-world objects. All of the results indicated that congruity effects occur only in tasks that include major symbolic or memorial components; a review of the perceptual comparison literature reveals consistent support for this position. These findings are discussed in terms of expectancy and semantic coding interpretations of the congruity effect.
D004193:Discrimination Learning; D005556:Form Perception; D006801:Humans; D007092:Imagination; D011930:Reaction Time; D012660:Semantics; D012858:Size Perception; D013067:Speech Perception