Avoidance of repetition of judgments across sense modalities
Abstract
Experimental evidence is presented which shows that judgments on material presented in one sense modality predispose subjects to avoid the repetition of the same category in making judgments on material presented in another modality. This proves that the general tendency to avoid repetition of judgments cannot be attributed to changes in the sensory processes themselves. By requiring the subjects to give alternating comparisons in two modalities, stipulating that the report in the first modality be given in one set of terms and the report in the second modality in a second set of terms, it was further shown that the avoidance tendency was not dependent upon the mechanism involved in the giving of the response words themselves.