Gail McKoon

Bio: Gail McKoon is an academic researcher from Ohio State University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Priming (psychology) & Lexical decision task. The author has an hindex of 62, co-authored 125 publications receiving 14952 citations. Previous affiliations of Gail McKoon include DePaul University & Dartmouth College.

The Diffusion Decision Model: Theory and Data for Two-Choice Decision Tasks

Abstract: The diffusion decision model allows detailed explanations of behavior in two-choice discrimination tasks. In this article, the model is reviewed to show how it translates behavioral data—accuracy, mean response times, and response time distributions—into components of cognitive processing. Three experiments are used to illustrate experimental manipulations of three components: stimulus difficulty affects the quality of information on which a decision is based; instructions emphasizing either speed or accuracy affect the criterial amounts of information that a subject requires before initiating a response; and the relative proportions of the two stimuli affect biases in drift rate and starting point. The experiments also illustrate the strong constraints that ensure the model is empirically testable and potentially falsifiable. The broad range of applications of the model is also reviewed, including research in the domains of aging and neurophysiology.

Inference during reading.

Abstract: Most current theories of text processing assume a constructionist view of inference processing. In this article, an alternative view is proposed, labeled the minimalist hypothesis. According to this hypothesis, the only inferences that are encoded automatically during reading are those that are based on easily available information, either from explicit statements in the text or from general knowledge, and those that are required to make statements in the text locally coherent. The minimalist hypothesis is shown to be supported by previous research and by the results of several new experiments. It is also argued that automatically encoded minimalist inferences provide the basic representation of textual information from which more goal-directed, purposeful inferences are constructed.

A retrieval theory of priming in memory.

Abstract: and the familiarity of this compound cue is determined by the strengths of connections between the cue and items in memory. The familiarity of the compound cue is assessed by direct access or by parallel comparisons to all items in memory (depending on the way the theory is implemented), and it is assumed that the greater the familiarity, the faster the response time (specific models for latency assumptions are described below). In this article, the retrieval theory is applied to priming phenomena and is shown to be capable of explaining the same empirical findings as spreading activation theories. Two new experiments are also presented in which data are successfully predicted by the retrieval model but that require modification of current models of spreading activation. In the latter part of this article, implementation of the compound cue mechanism for priming within several different models is evaluated.

Connectionist and diffusion models of reaction time.

Abstract: Two connectionist frameworks, GRAIN (J. L. McClelland, 1993) and brain-state-in-a-box (J. A. Anderson, 1991), and R. Ratcliff's (1978) diffusion model were evaluated using data from a signal detection task. Dependent variables included response probabilities, reaction times for correct and error responses, and shapes of reaction-time distributions. The diffusion model accounted for all aspects of the data, including error reaction times that had previously been a problem for all response-time models. The connectionist models accounted for many aspects of the data adequately, but each failed to a greater or lesser degree in important ways except for one model that was similar to the diffusion model. The findings advance the development of the diffusion model and show that the long tradition of reaction-time research and theory is a fertile domain for development and testing of connectionist assumptions about how decisions are generated over time.

Conceptualizing, measuring, and managing customer-based brand equity

Abstract: The author presents a conceptual model of brand equity from the perspective of the individual consumer. Customer-based brand equity is defined as the differential effect of brand knowledge on consu...

A Solution to Plato's Problem: The Latent Semantic Analysis Theory of Acquisition, Induction, and Representation of Knowledge.

Abstract: How do people know as much as they do with as little information as they get? The problem takes many forms; learning vocabulary from text is an especially dramatic and convenient case for research. A new general theory of acquired similarity and knowledge representation, latent semantic analysis (LSA), is presented and used to successfully simulate such learning and several other psycholinguistic phenomena. By inducing global knowledge indirectly from local co-occurrence data in a large body of representative text, LSA acquired knowledge about the full vocabulary of English at a comparable rate to schoolchildren. LSA uses no prior linguistic or perceptual similarity knowledge; it is based solely on a general mathematical learning method that achieves powerful inductive effects by extracting the right number of dimensions (e.g., 300) to represent objects and contexts. Relations to other theories, phenomena, and problems are sketched.

Remembering. A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology, Cambridge (University Press) 1964.

Abstract: Part I. Experimental Studies: 2. Experiment in psychology 3. Experiments on perceiving III Experiments on imaging 4-8. Experiments on remembering: (a) The method of description (b) The method of repeated reproduction (c) The method of picture writing (d) The method of serial reproduction (e) The method of serial reproduction picture material 9. Perceiving, recognizing, remembering 10. A theory of remembering 11. Images and their functions 12. Meaning Part II. Remembering as a Study in Social Psychology: 13. Social psychology 14. Social psychology and the matter of recall 15. Social psychology and the manner of recall 16. Conventionalism 17. The notion of a collective unconscious 18. The basis of social recall 19. A summary and some conclusions.

Understanding and using the Implicit Association Test: I. An improved scoring algorithm.

Abstract: In reporting Implicit Association Test (IAT) results, researchers have most often used scoring conventions described in the first publication of the IAT (A.G. Greenwald, D.E. McGhee, & J.L.K. Schwartz, 1998). Demonstration IATs available on the Internet have produced large data sets that were used in the current article to evaluate alternative scoring procedures. Candidate new algorithms were examined in terms of their (a) correlations with parallel self-report measures, (b) resistance to an artifact associated with speed of responding, (c) internal consistency, (d) sensitivity to known influences on IAT measures, and (e) resistance to known procedural influences. The best-performing measure incorporates data from the IAT's practice trials, uses a metric that is calibrated by each respondent's latency variability, and includes a latency penalty for errors. This new algorithm strongly outperforms the earlier (conventional) procedure.

Toward a model of text comprehension and production.

Abstract: The semantic structure of texts can be described both at the local microlevel and at a more global macrolevel A model for text comprehension based on this notion accounts for the formation of a coherent semantic text base in terms of a cyclical process constrained by limitations of working memory Furthermore, the model includes macro-operators, whose purpose is to reduce the information in a text base to its gist, that is, the theoretical macrostructure These operations are under the control of a schema, which is a theoretical formulation of the comprehender's goals The macroprocesses are predictable only when the control schema can be made explicit On the production side, the model is concerned with the generation of recall and summarization protocols This process is partly reproductive and partly constructive, involving the inverse operation of the macro-operators The model is applied to a paragraph from a psychological research report, and methods for the empirical testing of the model are developed