Abstract
Ss were asked to make two forced-choice discriminations on each trial: in Experiment I, they had to tell on which side of the display a latter pair appeared and whether or not its members were identical; in Experiment II, to say where the pair appeared and whether it consisted of Xs or Os; in Experiment III, to say where a letter appeared and whether it rhymed with E; and in Experiment IV, to say whether a letter pair was presented and whether it was a word. In Experiment III, and for some Ss in Experiment I, the second discrimination was dependent on the first; that is, when the S was wrong on the first, he performed at chance level on the second. In Experiment IV, when Ss indicated that nothing was presented (with confidence), they performed at chance level on the recognition task; thus, recognition was dependent upon some information about the detection task. It is argued that perceptual dependence implies that a threshold state, a state in which the S has no information, exists for the dependent discrimination. One explanation of dependence assumes mediation of the dependent discrimination by a processing stage which succeeds stages mediating the other task.
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David H. Krantz has contributed substantially to the development of the ideas in this paper, although he does not necessarily approve of their present form of presentation. Irwin Pollack’s considerate editorial handling is much appreciated. He. Saul Sternberg, two anonymous referees, and Corinne Day also made a number of very helpful comments. Financial support was provided by a grant from the National Research Council of Canada.
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Baron, J. Perceptual dependence: Evidence for an internal threshold. Perception & Psychophysics 13, 527–533 (1973). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03205815
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03205815