Judgments of similarity and difference of visual stimuli and the impact of alignability

Abstract

The purpose of the present research is to determine whether humans use ratio or absolute number of shared features in judgments of similarity and difference. The current study is divided into three separate experiments investigating the relationship between using differences in ratio of shared features and differences in absolute number of shared features when judging visual similarity and difference. Experiments 1 and 2 do this with judgments of similarity using complex (see Figure 8) and simple (see Figure 15) stimuli, respectively. Experiment 3 does this with judgments of difference using simple stimuli only. We will begin by first providing some historical background on the various approaches to studying judgments of similarity. From there we will go on to describe our experimental methods and predictions, as well as how these predictions relate to the models reviewed earlier in the paper.