Abstract
Subjects responded “yes” if two equal-length strings of letters contained a common letter in a common position; otherwise they responded “no.” Thus, the task was to judge whether all or not all of the letters in one string differed from the letter occupying the corresponding position in the other string. Conversely, in “same”-“different” judgment, the task is to judge whether all or not all of the letters in one string match the corresponding letter in the other string. Thus, common-letter judgment and “same”-“different” judgment are symmetrically related with “no” analogous to “same” and “yes” analogous to “different.” The response “same” is often faster than the response “different.” However, in the common-letter task, “no” was slower than “yes.” More specifically, both the “yes” and “no” reaction times were consistent with a serial self-terminating search. This is precisely what would be expected from Bamber’s (1969) two-process model.
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Marcel. A. J.Sequential and parallel processing and the nature of the decisions in pattern recognition and classification. Expanded version (May 1970) of a paper presented at the meeting of the Experimental Psychology Society. London, January 1969.
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Bamber, D., Herder, J. & Tidd, K. Reaction times in a task analogous to “same”-“different” judgment. Perception & Psychophysics 18, 321–327 (1975). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03211207
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03211207