RECOGNITION AND IDENTIFICATION OF COMPLEX VISUAL FORMS AS A FUNCTION OF THE LABELING SYSTEM EMPLOYED

摘要

This report describes two experiments conducted to explore variables affecting the ability of human observers to learn to recognize_and identify previou3ly_unfamiliar complex vlsual forms. In both experiments the effect upon subsequent recognition skill of giving subjects practice in the use of irrelevant labels as discriminating responses before they learned to associate them with a set of unfamiliar stimulus forms was systematically studied. The results suggested that labeling practice can have a double function. It can have the function first of forcing subjects to differentiaten. a set of stimulus forms, and can provide also a denotative process whereby subjects organize and identify the stimulus aspects differentiated by practice. This latter process occurs only with the use of larger sets of labels following practice in their use as identifying responses. The denotative use of labels appeared to have one possible concomitant deleterious effect. Subjects who had learned to associate practiced labels with a set of nonsense forms were significantly more willing, following such practice, to accept as familiar new forms of similar construction. That is, they showed significantly less - accuracy in rejecting forms which were similar to those labeled in practice but not identical to any of them