The locus of the semantic congruity effect in comparative judgments.

Abstract

This paper describes and tests a two-stage model for a congruity in comparative judgments. This effect is illustrated in present experiments: When subjects were asked to choose or lower of two balloons tethered at ends of strings, they were faster at choosing of two. But when asked to choose or lower of two yo-yos hanging at ends of strings, they were faster at choosing lower one. By hypothesis, this occurred because balloons were coded at a first perceptual stage in terms of highness, and yo-yos, in terms of lowness; then, at second linguistic stage, perceptual codes that matched instructional codes (choose higher or the lower) resulted in faster judgments. The present two experiments demonstrated that (a) two stages are sequential, since changes in pairwise stimulus discriminability and in instructions had additive effects on total reaction time, and (b) presence of semantic congruity effect depended on actual perceptual codes applied to stimuli.