TY - JOUR

T1 - Dimensional models for the perception of rectangles

AU - Borg, Ingwer

AU - Leutner, Detlev

N1 - This work was supported by Grant Bo S97/S from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft DFG.

PY - 1983/5/1

Y1 - 1983/5/1

N2 - Krantz and Tversky (1975), Takane (1981), Wender (1971), and others have suggested that it is impossible to explain similarity judgments for rectangles by a simple dimensional model of the Minkowski distance type, because the psychologically compelling dimensions are not independent and interact. For reasons never made explicit, the relevant dimensions were assumed to be area and shape, rather than width and height. Reanalyses show, however, that the latter dimensions, appropriately scaled, eliminate interaction effects. To test these conclusions empirically, an experiment was carried out with two sets of rectangles. Each set was a complete 4×4 design, one in width × height coordinates, and one in area × shape coordinates. For each stimulus set, 21 subjects judged the dissimilarities of all pairs of rectangles twice. All subjects were reliable. Apart from one extreme subject in each group, all data lead to very similar MDS solutions. These solutions correspond closely to the predictions, that is, they can be well approximated with physical width and height coordinates rescaled such that the units decrease increasingly as one moves away from the origin. No interaction effects are found, but some indications for a more complicated composition rule are observed. © 1983 Psychonomic Society, Inc.

AB - Krantz and Tversky (1975), Takane (1981), Wender (1971), and others have suggested that it is impossible to explain similarity judgments for rectangles by a simple dimensional model of the Minkowski distance type, because the psychologically compelling dimensions are not independent and interact. For reasons never made explicit, the relevant dimensions were assumed to be area and shape, rather than width and height. Reanalyses show, however, that the latter dimensions, appropriately scaled, eliminate interaction effects. To test these conclusions empirically, an experiment was carried out with two sets of rectangles. Each set was a complete 4×4 design, one in width × height coordinates, and one in area × shape coordinates. For each stimulus set, 21 subjects judged the dissimilarities of all pairs of rectangles twice. All subjects were reliable. Apart from one extreme subject in each group, all data lead to very similar MDS solutions. These solutions correspond closely to the predictions, that is, they can be well approximated with physical width and height coordinates rescaled such that the units decrease increasingly as one moves away from the origin. No interaction effects are found, but some indications for a more complicated composition rule are observed. © 1983 Psychonomic Society, Inc.

KW - Psychology

KW - Form Perception

KW - Humans

KW - Judgment

KW - Models, Psychological

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=0020818685&partnerID=8YFLogxK

UR - https://www.mendeley.com/catalogue/a66bb8ff-25fa-30f8-8ea8-e2b0a0827217/

U2 - 10.3758/BF03202954

DO - 10.3758/BF03202954

M3 - Journal articles

C2 - 6646968

AN - SCOPUS:0020818685

VL - 34

SP - 257

EP - 267

JO - Perception & Psychophysics

JF - Perception & Psychophysics

SN - 0031-5117

IS - 3

ER -