Perceptual manifestations of an analytic structure: the priority of holistic individuation.
Properties that make items perceptually distinctive may not be represented in the dimensional structure used by subjects for analysis. In a classification task, a single dimensional structure, actually used by subjects when analyzing, occurred in several perceptual forms. Two types of perceptual variation were compared: (a) feature individuation, whether a feature occurs in a unique form in different items and (b) holistic individuation, the extent to which an item's features cohere into an individuated whole. These types of individuation had separate effects on exemplar-based classification. However, holistic individuation had priority in that the presence of individuated features did not produce exemplar-based transfer if the item's holistic properties were altered. This priority of holistic individuation occurred whether the subjects had been given the classification rule or had attempted to discover it.
Regehr
G
G
Department of Psychology, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
Brooks
L R
LR
D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention; D003210:Concept Formation; D004193:Discrimination Learning; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D011340:Problem Solving; D014163:Transfer, Psychology