Sequential Effects in the Garner Tasks

Abstract

The distinction between integral and separable dimensions is of central importance to understanding how humans integrate information from multiple stimulus sources. One approach to characterizing stimulus integrality is through a set of speeded categorization tasks most closely associated with the work of Wendell Garner. These tasks demonstrate that integral dimensions result in marked speed up or slow down in responding when there is correlated or irrelevant variation, respectively, compared with a baseline task. Little, Wang & Nosofsky (2016) recently found that the slow down or interference can be largely explained by a reduction in the number of direct repetitions in a modified Garner filtering task. In this paper, we examine a large sample of subjects tested on either separable or integral dimensions to determine the extent of and individual differences in the overall and sequential effects in the standard Garner tasks.


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