Abstract
It is argued that the nature of the stimulus must be understood before we can ask meaningful questions about human information processing since it is the stimulus that determines the nature of the information to be processed. As one example, it is shown that redundant stimulus dimensions provide an improvement in information processing only if the dimensions combine to produce in effect a new dimension; and such dimensions are termed integral. And as a second example, inadequate performance may occur because stimuli are process-limited in that inadequate differentiation of stimuli occurs, or they may be state-limited in that inadequate energy is available for the stimulus to be represented in the organism.
Reprinted from American Psychologist, vol. 25, No. 4, April 1970.
This article is the text of an invited address delivered to the Division of Experimental Psychology at the meeting of the American Psychological Association, Washington, D. C., September 1969. The research was supported by Grant MH 14229 from the National Institute of Mental Health to Yale University. Robert Crowder and Richard Gottwald made valuable comments about an earlier version of the paper.
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© 1974 D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht-Holland
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Garner, W.R. (1974). The Stimulus in Information Processing. In: Moskowitz, H.R., Scharf, B., Stevens, J.C. (eds) Sensation and Measurement. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-2245-3_7
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