Problem Passing an Array to a Function

Content

I have an array of strings variable defined as:

        "searchCriteriaValues": {
            "type": "string[]"
        }

I am passing the array to a function as part of an action chain (see image)

The function below is accepting the array.  However, in the very first step where I am displaying "searchCriteria.length", I am not getting back the number of entries in the array.  I am getting back the length of the contents of the first element in the array.  For example, if my array contains {"yellow", "blue"}, instead of getting back 2, I am getting back 6 for the length of the color yellow.

Ideally, I don't even want to pass an array of strings.  I need to pass an array of an object, but I was having the same issue, so I parred it down to simply pass an array of strings.  I still can't seem to get it to work.