Associative Organization of a Figure

A list of 8 figures each consisting of 4 consecutive line segments was presented 1 by 1 on a memory drum according to a constant order. After every 4 such presentations, S saw a fragment of the figure, and he had to recall the entire figure. The fragment was the initial or the final 0, 1. 2, or 3 line segments. Since a stimulus fragment of the whole figure can be reasonably assumed to resemble it in such a way that the more parts of the whole the stimulus fragment contains the greater is the similarily, generalization gradients were obtained along the dimension of fragment size. The fragment position did not have a significant effect on recall, supporting the hypothesis that, with these simple figures, the obtained generalization gradients were largely spatial in character.