Abstract
Before viewing an ambiguous picture which could be perceived into alternatives, an auditory stimulus was presented to undergraduates to effect perceptual set. It was found that both relevant verbal description and music recording were effective in affecting subjects’ responses. A short taped message, discussing the body dimensions and life conditions of various rats, generated significantly more rat responses in the experimental group where the rat/man drawing was shown. A horror music recording was also found effective in significantly increasing the old woman response of Leeper’s wife/mother-in-law ambiguous drawing. There seems to exist a relationship between the nature of a drawing and the effectiveness of a set. In order to effectively influence the perception of a drawing like the rat/man picture, a nondetailed yet related message is needed. The function of the auditory sets was interpreted to be the establishment of ill-defined categories which are powerful aids to perception-recognition.
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The author wishes to thank Jeff S. Topping, who sponsors this paper and takes full editorial responsibility for it. Thanks are also due Patrick Griffin for his assistance and Cynthia Ford for her help with the data collection in Experiment II.
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Liu, AY. Cross-modality set effect on the perception of ambiguous pictures. Bull. Psychon. Soc. 7, 331–333 (1976). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03337206
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03337206