It was found that in the same-different task when a participant has to answer whether several presented stimuli are identical or different, the participants can apply two stimuli comparison strategies - holistic or analytic. In the present investigation, it was attempted to assess if the manifestation of such individual differences can depend on the stimuli presentation procedure - successive or simultaneous. The psychophysical experiments of same-different task were carried out in which figures, irregular polygons of various degree of similarity, were presented in pairs simultaneously or successively. In the case of successive presentation of figures, the participants were divided into two groups: for the majority of participants, same-different discrimination had an inverse relationship on the degree of similarity - the more two figures were similar, the lower was the accuracy and the longer response time; for the other participants, same-different discrimination did not depend on the similarity of figures. In the case of simultaneous presentation, the participants clearly did not differ by the pattern of the task performances.
The focus of the study was fantasy-reality distinction of emotional stimuli in early childhood. Several factors were examined, including age differences, children’s wishes, and local context. The research was conducted on a sample of 71 three to five-year-olds. Children were shown images depicting fantastic and real events and figures that elicited several emotions. Then they reported whether each event or figure could occur in real life, stated their wishes regarding its occurrence in real life, and rated their emotional reaction to the image. The results revealed age related improvements in children’s fantasy-reality distinction and positive correlations between children’s reality status evaluations and their wishes, as well as variations in judgment based on emotional content of presented stimuli. Children were more likely to report that neutral and happy stimuli could occur in real life and that frightening and angry stimuli could not occur in real life.
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