Methods for Determining the Locus of Context Effects in Judgment

Abstract Contextual effects are proposed to occur at any of five stages of processing: sensory encoding, lexical encoding, propositional/categorical encoding, dimensional analysis, and response translation. Methods for locating the effects of contextual stimuli on judgments within this five stage model are described. Response-oriented methods, which center on the type of responses made to contextual and target stimuli, appear best suited to determine whether these effects are located at the response translation stage. Process-oriented approaches, which either alter the sequencing of processes or introduce new judgmental operations, provide a finer grain analysis. Although more research is needed, the reviewed evidence indicates that contextual contrast for psychophysical judgment occurs during dimensional analysis and effects of priming on social judgments can occur during propositional/categorical encoding.

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