Abstract
In a replication and extension of a previous study, designed to investigate the "attentional" effects of three physical properties of visual patterns, 48 Ss viewed a series of 32 nonrepresentational patterns varying in 5 physical dimensions: Number of Components, Angular Variance (AV), Number of Turns, Border Width (BW), and Dissimilarity of Border Width. The construction of the patterns, the apparatus, and the procedure were exactly as in the earlier study. Verifying the earlier results, an analysis of variance of the viewing times showed that (a) patterns containing 18 components were viewed longer than those with 3 components (P < .001), (b) patterns containing components of high AV were viewed longer than those with components of low AV (P < .001), and (c) time spent viewing patterns containing 12-angled components did not differ from that spent viewing patterns with triangular components. In addition, the BW of the components failed to affect viewing time; however, patterns containing components differing in BW elicited longer viewing than those with components of similar BW (P < .005). It was noted that the latter finding serves to rule out an explanation of viewing-time data based solely on time required to scan contours.
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