GORDON, GREGORY PETER

A "same-different" reaction time paradigm was used to
investigate the influence of context on the perception of
multiple object scenes consisting of "real-world" objects.
The relationships among these objects were manipulated to
compose four different contextual arrangements. This enabled
an investigation of three aspects of context: familiarity, physical plausibility, and belongingness.
Differences in reaction time between the four levels of context
were significant for both same and different responses.
Furthermore, a correlational analysis indicated individual
differences in the use of contextual effects. Those subjects
who were most influenced by whether or not the objects
belonged together, were least influenced by the disruption
of the rules of physical plausibility, and vice versa. Correlational analyses concerned with the relationship
between individual differences in context effects and emphasis
on structural versus analytic processing (Hock, 1973) were
insignificant, though in the predicted direction.