Showing papers by "David L. Strayer published in 1995"

Training for attentional control in dual task settings: A comparison of young and old adults

Abstract: The authors examined whether the learning and performance of dual tasks by young and old adults could be enhanced through training. Adults were trained with either a fixed-priority or variable-priority training strategy on a monitoring task and an alphabet-arithmetic task and then transferred to a scheduling and a paired-associates running memory task. Participants in the variable priority condition learned the monitoring and alphabet-arithmetic tasks more quickly and achieved a higher level of mastery on these tasks than did those in the fixed-priority condition. Moreover, participants trained with the variable priority technique showed evidence of the development of automatic processing and a more rapid rate of learning and higher level of mastery of the transfer tasks than did the fixed-priority participants. These results are discussed in terms of the mechanisms that underlie learning and performance of dual tasks and with respect to potential applications.(PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved) Keywords: Driver distraction; Language: en

Effect of stimulus repetition on positive and negative identity priming

Abstract: Most negative-priming experiments have used a limited number of stimuli that are repeated many times throughout the experiment. We report five experiments that examine in greater detail the role of stimulus repetition in negative priming. Subjects were presented with displays consisting of two or more words, and were required to name the word printed in red. On attended repetition (AR) trials, the target word was the same as the target word on the preceding trial. On ignored repetition (IR) trials, the target word was the same as the distractor word on the preceding trial. Experiments 1 and 2 used novel words, and obtained positive priming on AR trials, but no negative priming on IR trials. Experiments 3 and 4 used repeated words, and obtained negative priming on IR trials, but no positive priming on AR trials. In Experiment 5, both novel and repeated words were intermixed, and negative priming was observed for repeated, but not novel, IR conditions, whereas positive priming was observed for novel, but not repeated, AR conditions. Together, Experiments 1-5 demonstrate that positive and negative identity priming are modulated by stimulus repetition and are stimulus specific.

An endemic groundwater fauna in unglaciated eastern north america

Abstract: Invertebrates specialized for life in groundwater (stygobionts) are diverse and widely distributed in Europe but poorly known in North America. A survey of the invertebrate fauna at 14 sites in eastern North America shows that unglaciated ancient terrain in eastern North America contains a rich fauna of stygobionts. Several groups of stygobionts (the polychaete Troglochaetus sp., an undescribed genus of aphanoneuran annelid, a possibly undescribed family of oligochaetes, bathynellacean crustaceans, and microcerberid isopods) are reported for the first time from eastern North America. Stygobionts are infrequent north of the glacial border, suggesting that they have not yet been able to disperse into glaciated terrain. The extraordinarily slow dispersal rates implied by these distributions have important ecological ramifications. The few stygobionts found north of the glacial border may have survived glaciation in subglacial refugia.