Human pattern recognition: evidence for a switching between strategies in analyzing complex stimuli

In a preceding multidimensional scaling experiment, with "size" and "brightness" as parameters, subjects were found to use individually different strategies in processing compound stimuli: Most subjects adhered to either the Euclidean or the City-block metric (Ronacher and Bautz, 1985). In the experiment reported here, participants of the previous study were induced - by a manipulative instruction - to modify their strategy. With 5 out of 10 subjects a switching to another strategy occurred, which manifested itself in a drastic shift of the respective best metric (e.g. from Euclidean to City-block or vice versa). The extent and speed of changes as well as - in some instances - the stability of estimation accuracy show that subjects were not forced by the instruction to develop a new strategy. Results rather suggest that adult subjects have easily available two, or perhaps even more, alternative processing modes, the decision for one of them being a matter of a subject's preferences rather than of individually different abilities.