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THE EFFECT OF SET ON ACCURACY OF AUDITORY PERCEPTION
Author(s) -
TALLAND GEORGE A.
Publication year - 1958
Publication title -
british journal of psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.536
H-Index - 92
eISSN - 2044-8295
pISSN - 0007-1269
DOI - 10.1111/j.2044-8295.1958.tb00647.x
Subject(s) - psychology , perception , stimulus (psychology) , expectancy theory , set (abstract data type) , cognitive psychology , communication , social psychology , audiology , computer science , neuroscience , programming language , medicine
Two complementary experiments are reported which compare the facilitatory effects of ( a ) sets established in various ways, and ( b ) different conditions of confirmation, on accurate recognition of words presented aurally, and on systematic distortion of words incongruent with the set. Sets, whether explicitly established by instruction, or implicitly arrived at from cues embedded in the test material, significantly increase the incidence of accurate perception. The presence of incongruent stimuli does not noticeably reduce the facilitatory effect of a set, not even when confirmation is considerably delayed. Wide spacing of confirmatory stimuli is least conducive to the maintenance of a set. While one set is in operation, and facilitates veridical perception, another set is unlikely to develop, even though conditions for its emergence are furnished by the stimulus material. However, if an initially established and subsequently confirmed set ceases to facilitate correct perception, it will be replaced by another appropriate set; more rapidly if only some of the words presented were congruent with it, more gradually if all were confirmatory. Explicit sets elicit the highest incidence of distortion in accordance with expectancy, more particularly if confirmation is delayed or intermittent. In facilitating accurate perception, double sets are less effective than single sets, whether all stimuli are confirmatory or some are incongruent. The differential effect cannot be attributed to the heterogeneous composition of the stimulus material, nor is it manifested in a manner consistent with a model of reciprocal inhibition exerted by the two sets on one another. The results agree with an inhibitory theory of set according to which sets operate by raising the thresholds of perception for all that is incongruent. The relative lowering of thresholds for the congruent would thus be a secondary effect, as distinct from the hypothetical neural model which accounts for this psychological law in terms of short‐circuiting of pathways.