Ej. Wisniewski et M. Bassok, What makes a man similar to a tie? Stimulus compatibility with comparison and integration, COG PSYCHOL, 39(3-4), 1999, pp. 208-238
We argue and show that different properties of stimuli are compatible with
different types of processing, Specifically, object pairs from the same tax
onomic category (e.g., chair-bed) tend to be alignable and thus compatible
with comparison, whereas object pairs that play different roles in thematic
relations (e.g., chair-carpenter) tend to be nonalignable and compatible w
ith integration. Using object pairs that varied orthogonally in alignabilit
y and thematic relatedness, we demonstrated that stimulus compatibility mod
ulates processing and affects the outcomes of tasks that are currently beli
eved to involve only comparison (similarity ratings, Experiment I; listing
commonalities and differences, Experiment 2) or only integration (thematic
relatedness ratings, Experiment 3). Our findings and others that we have re
viewed suggest that: (1) many cognitive tasks involve both comparison and i
ntegration, and (2) the relative influence of each process is modulated by
an interplay between the task-appropriate and the stimulus-compatible proce
ss. We believe that single-process models should be extended to take this i
nterplay into account. (C) 1999 Academic Press.