Effect of the amount of the irrelevant disparity on <I>different</I> reaction times

Abstract

The effects of the amount of the irrelevant disparity on RTs in the different trials were examined. In the experiment, six subjects (undergraduate students) were instructed to report same or different according to a relevant dimension, trying to ignore an irrelevant dimension. There were six task-conditions to each of which one of six possible combinations of one relevant and one irrelevant dimensions selected from form, size, and orientation were allocated. It was found that in the combination of size and orientation, RTs in different trials decreased with the amount of the irrelevant disparity while in the other combinations, RTs in the different trials were not influenced by the amount of the irrelevant disparity. A two-stage model that had been suggested by Watanabe (1988) could well explain these results, according to which the degree of integrality between dimensions was one of the factors that determined RTs in the different trials.