title: The role of part-whole information in reasoning about relative size.
abstract: Models of comparative judgment have assumed that relative magnitude is computed from knowledge about absolute magnitude rather than retrieved directly. In Experiment 1, participants verified the relative size of part-whole pairs (e.g., tree-leaf) and unrelated controls (e.g., tree-penny). The symbolic distance effect was much smaller for part-whole pairs than for unrelated controls. In two subsequent experiments, participants determined either which of two objects was closer in size to a third object or which of two pairs had a greater difference in the size of its constituents. In contrast to the paired comparison task in Experiment 1, judgments of part-whole items were more sensitive to the influence of symbolic distance than were unrelated controls. The fact that the part-whole relation attenuates the effects of symbolic distance in a paired comparison task but not in tasks that require an explicit comparison of size differences suggests that the part-whole relation provides a source of information about relative magnitude that does not depend on knowledge about absolute magnitude.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Lehman College, City University of New York, NY 10468-1589, USA.ksailor@alpha.lehman.cuny.edu
authors.forename: K M
authors.initials: KM
authors.lastname: Sailor
authors.forename: E J
authors.initials: EJ
authors.lastname: Shoben
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D003210:Concept Formation; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall; D010153:Paired-Associate Learning; D011340:Problem Solving; D012858:Size Perception