Effects of familiarity and sequence length of analog matches in the simultaneous matching task

Compared the effects of string lengths and familiarity on reaction time (RT) to physical and analog matches in an attempt to determine the nature of a size variation process assumed to occur during analog matches. 16 undergraduates served as Ss. Results replicated prior findings that "same" RTs to familiar word strings were faster than to nonfamiliar strings, and that this advantage increased over string length. For nonfamiliar strings analog matches were slower, but this difference was not influenced by string length. Thus, adjusting for size did not seem to occur in the matching or decision stages which appeared to be sequential. However, same RTs to analog and physical matches did not differ when familiar stimuli were used. This suggests that, if size variation is to be postulated as an early processing stage, familiarity effects must also occur quite early. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved).