Abstract
IT is clear that subjects take longer to differentiate between two stimuli if they are closely similar than if they are widely separated along some continuum of difference1,2. Conditions such as poor contrast or dim illumination which tend to obscure differences between complex stimuli may be expected to have the same effect. Recent models for discrimination and recognition2,3 entail the assumption of some interaction between a factor of discriminability and the number of items to be differentiated. While data on reading-speed for various English vocabulary-sizes under dim illumination4 may be taken as support for this, a situation in which subjects make responses to complex stimuli presented one at a time has not been manipulated to demonstrate directly such an interaction. The two experiments summarized here show such interactions between size of stimuli, illumination-level, and the number of items between which discriminations are made.
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RABBITT, P. Information Load and Discriminability. Nature 197, 726 (1963). https://doi.org/10.1038/197726a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/197726a0
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