Contextual determinants of visual recognition with verbal and nonverbal stimuli

Abstract

Two experiments were conducted to determine whether the presence of a meaningful non-verbal context (i.e., a schematic face) facilitates the recognition of an element (i.e., a facial feature) embedded in that context. Verbal stimuli (i.e., letters as elements and words as contexts) were also presented to provide a direct comparison of the context effects with the two types of stimuli. Although the verbal stimuli did not exhibit a context facilitation effect (i.e., letters presented in the context of a word were not recognized more accurately than letters presented alone), a significant interaction of Stimulus Type by Presentation Form resulted in both experiments because the nonverbal stimuli exhibited a context impairment effect (i.e., facial features presented in the context of a face were recognized less accurately than facial features presented alone).