Abstract
To determine the effect of various kinds of internal representations of a stimulus upon its perceived clarity, six Ss were shown five flashes of single letters under each of six conditions. In five of them, S was told the letter before the first flash and then asked to visualize it during the flashes, to subvocalize it, to visualize another letter falso told to him), to subvocalize another letter, or to do nothing. The sixth condition provided no prior knowledge of the letter to be flashed. Exposures were set just above threshold, so that on the first flash, only minimal clarity was achieved. The results showed that clarity increased over the five repetitions for all six conditions at the same rate. The greatest clarity occurred when S imagined (in either manner) the letter being presented and the least when he imagined a different letter. Prior knowledge alone was not different from no prior knowledge, and both of these conditions fell between the other two sets of conditions. Thus, prior knowle ge apparently does not affect perceptual clarity directly but only by permitting visual and auditory imagery to occur during presentation. These results were taken to support a model of perceptual recognition offered by Haber (1969).
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Standing, L., Sell, C., Boss, J. et al. Effect of visualization and subvocalization on perceptual clarity. Psychon Sci 18, 89–90 (1970). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03335711
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03335711