The Role of Stimulus Ambiguity and Degree of Response Restriction in the Recognition of Distorted Letter Patterns

摘要

The present study, fourth in a series designed to explore the basic operation of perceptual “set” as response restriction, sought to broaden the generalization derived from the earlier experiments. New stimulus material was employed, letters of the alphabet rendered ambiguous by contour distortion. The subject's task was to identify single distorted letters. Three variables were investigated: (1) degree of response restriction; (2) level of stimulus distortion, hence response uncertainty; (3) temporal position of the cuing information (response restriction) relative to presentation of the ambiguous stimulus.