Open AccessEffects of feature types on proportion discrimination
Author(s) -
TOKITA MIDORI,
ISHIGUCHI AKIRA
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
japanese psychological research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.392
H-Index - 30
eISSN - 1468-5884
pISSN - 0021-5368
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-5884.2009.00389.x
Subject(s) - asymmetry , pattern recognition (psychology) , mathematics , feature (linguistics) , dominance (genetics) , statistics , symmetry (geometry) , artificial intelligence , computer science , physics , geometry , biology , linguistics , philosophy , biochemistry , quantum mechanics , gene
We investigated the effects of feature types on statistical description of relative frequency by testing the accuracy and precision in a proportion discrimination task. We used search symmetry pairs and search asymmetry pairs as the elements for comparison. In Experiment 1, we used sets of red and green dots and sets of parallel lines and converging lines as search symmetry pairs, and we used sets of circles and circles with lines as a search asymmetry pair. The results demonstrated that the proportion of pop‐out elements in the asymmetry pair was overestimated and that precision of proportion discrimination differed between pairs. In Experiment 2, to eliminate the possibility that the overestimation found in Experiment 1 was due to quantitative dominance, we used sets of circles with gaps and circles. In Experiment 3, we tested the effect of the exposure duration on the performance of proportion discrimination to determine the source of bias and of difference in precision. Overall, the findings show that the performance of the proportion discrimination depended on the types of features being compared.