Common Coding of Samples Associated with the Same Comparison: The Nature of the Common Representation

Abstract

In many-to-one matching, emergent relations can be shown to develop between samples associated with the same comparison. There is also evidence that the emergent relations may involve the common representation of one pair of samples in terms of the other. For example, when samples of food and a red hue are associated with one comparison, and samples of no-food and a green hue are associated with the other, the retention functions found when delays are inserted between the samples and the comparisons suggest that red samples are coded as food and green samples are coded as no-food. The present research extended the generality of this common coding by using all nonhedonic samples—yellow and a dark key as the present–absent sample pair and two shapes (or line orientations) as the other sample pair. Results of retention tests suggest that the basis for the common codes was the yellow hue and either the dark key or the shape (or line orientation) associated with the other comparison. Furthermore, the presence of the shape (or line-orientation) samples altered the coding of the presence/absence-hue samples from the more typical single-code/default coding pattern to a dual code pattern in which one pair of commonly represented samples was generally retained better than the other.