A Psychophysical Approach to Dimensional Integrality

Abstract

The paper defines dimensional integrality and presents a theory of integrality that explains the manner and conditions under which integrality operates. Integrality is defined as a property of the mapping of a physical specification of complex stimulation into the multi-dimensional psychological characteristics of the stimulation as perceived. An experiment is presented that test this notion of integrality as psychophysical compatibility. Two qualitatively different types of multi-dimensional scaling solutions obtain for pair-wise similarity judgments of two sets of triangles. Both sets of stimuli are defined by two physically orthogonal dimensions, but in one set the physical specification is incompatible with the perceived characteristics, and in the other set the physical specification is compatible with the perceived characteristics. This definition of integrality is validated against data obtained from standard information processing tasks involving speeded classification.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Mar 01, 1980
Accession Number
ADA083012

Entities

People

  • Mary Hardzinski
  • Patricia Somers
  • Robert G. Pachella

Organizations

  • University of Michigan

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Biomedical
  • Human Systems

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Air Force
  • Behavioral Sciences
  • Biological Sciences
  • Biomedical Research
  • Engineering
  • Human Factors Engineering
  • Information Processing
  • Mental Processes
  • Military Research
  • Motor Skills
  • Naval Training
  • Navy
  • Operations Research
  • Psychology
  • Reaction Time
  • Shape
  • Systems Engineering

Fields of Study

  • Psychology

Readers

  • Electrical Engineering
  • Graph Algorithms and Convex Optimization.
  • Theoretical Analysis.