Invariance of perceptual spaces and perceptual separability of stimulus dimensions.

This article reports an extension of a paradigm for studying processing of perceptual dimensions. The paradigm is the complete identification task with a feature-complete factorial design (FCFD) of stimuli providing data for multidimensional signal detection analyses. The extension uses blocks of trials with subsets of the FCFD stimulus set, allowing estimation of various d's for inferring perceptual separability (PS) of dimensions and for disambiguating stimulus configurations when PS fails. Results of 4 experiments found the following: PS of arc curvature and line orientation in a discrimination task (Experiment 1), increasing PS failure in detection of horizontal and vertical lines (Experiment 2a), 45 degrees and 135 degrees (Experiment 2b), and 50 degrees and 60 degrees oblique lines (Experiment 2c). In each experiment, corresponding d's remained equivalent across blocks with different stimulus subsets.