Showing papers in "American Journal of Psychology in 2001"

Competition for working memory among writing processes.

Abstract: Narrative, descriptive, and persuasive texts were written by college students in longhand or on a word processor. Participants concurrently detected auditory probes cuing them to retrospect about whether they were planning ideas, translating ideas into sentences, or reviewing ideas or text at the moment the probes occurred. Narrative planning and longhand motor execution presumably were heavily practiced, freeing capacity for rapid probe detection. Spare capacity was distributed equally among all 3 processes, judging from probe reaction times, when planning demands were low in the narrative condition. When motor execution demands were low in the longhand condition, however, reviewing benefited more than planning. The results indicate that planning, translating, and reviewing processes in writing compete for a common, general-purpose resource of working memory.

Gestures maintain spatial imagery.

Abstract: Recent theories suggest alternatives to the commonly held belief that the sole role of gestures is to communicate meaning directly to listeners. Evidence suggests that gestures may serve a cognitive function for speakers, possibly acting as lexical primes. We observed that participants gestured more often when describing a picture from memory than when the picture was present and that gestures were not influenced by manipulating eye contact of a listener. We argue that spatial imagery serves a short-term memory function during lexical search and that gestures may help maintain spatial images. When spatial imagery is not necessary, as in conditions of direct visual stimulation, reliance on gestures is reduced or eliminated.

Is retrieval-induced forgetting an inhibitory process?

Abstract: Three experiments investigated memory performance in the retrieval practice paradigm (Anderson, Bjork, & Bjork, 1994; Anderson & Spellman, 1995). This paradigm produces a retrieval-induced forgetting effect, wherein practicing some members of a studied category decreases the recall of other members of that category relative to a baseline. Our findings indicate that the retrieval-induced forgetting effect is replicable but that previous findings supporting an inhibitory account of this phenomenon may not be.

A New Temporary Maintenance System, Working Cognition: A Construct to Incorporate Working Memory in Unified Theories of Cognition@@@Models of Working Memory: Mechanisms of Active Maintenance and Executive Control

Abstract: Preface Acknowledgements 1. Models of working memory: an introduction Priti Shah and Akira Miyake 2. Working memory: the multiple-component model Alan D. Baddeley and Robert H. Logie 3. An embedded-processes model of working memory Nelson Cowan 4. Individual differences in working memory capacity and what they tell us about controlled attention, general fluid intelligence and functions of the prefrontal cortex Randall W. Engle, Michael J. Kane and Stephen W. Tuholski 5. Modelling working memory in a unified architecture: an ACT-R perspective Marsha C. Lovett, Lynne M. Reder and Christian Lebiere 6. Insights into working memory from the perspective of the EPIC architecture for modelling skilled perceptual-motor and cognitive human performance David E. Kieras, David E. Meyer, Shane Mueller and Travis Seymour 7. The soar cognitive architecture and human working memory Richard M. Young and Richard L. Lewis 8. Long-term working memory as an alternative to capacity models of working memory in everyday skilled performance K. Anders Ericsson and Peter F. Delaney 9. Interacting cognitive subsystems: modelling working memory phenomena within a multiprocessor architecture Philip J. Barnard 10. Working memory in a multilevel hybrid connectionist control architecture (CAP2) Walter Schneider 11. A biologically based computational model of working memory Randall C. O' Reilly, Todd S. Braver and Jonathan D. Cohen 12. Models of working memory: eight questions and some general issues Walter Kintsch, Alice F. Healy, Mary Hegarty, Bruce F. Pennington and Timothy A. Salthouse 13. Toward unified theories of working memory: emerging general consensus, unresolved theoretical issues and future research directions Akika Miyake and Priti Shah Indexes.

Age-related differences and complexity of ongoing activities in time- and event-based prospective memory.

Abstract: Aging is presumed to disrupt self-initiated processing, and a time-based prospective memory task (i.e., action to be performed at a particular time) entails more self-initiated activities than an event-based prospective memory task (i.e., action to be performed to a critical event). Accordingly, older participants are predicted to be particularly bad in a time-based prospective memory task. However, the prediction is not always confirmed. Self-initiated activities entail central executive functioning. We therefore predicted the age deficit to emerge more clearly when the performance on the ongoing task also involved more central executive functioning. Time-based prospective memory among older adults collapsed when the complexity of the ongoing task increased. However, an age deficit was also obtained when the pacing of the event-based prospective memory task was high because of the general slowing of functioning by older adults.

Dreaming souls : sleep, dreams, and the evolution of the conscious mind

Abstract: What, if anything do dreams tell us about ourselves? What is the relationship between types of sleep and types of dreams? Does dreaming serve any purpose? Or are dreams simply meaningless mental noise-'unmusical fingers wandering over the piano keys'? With expertise in philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience, Owen Flanagan is uniquely qualified to answer those questions. And in Dreaming Souls he provides both an accessible survey of the latest research on sleep and dreams and a compelling new theory about the nature and function of dreaming. Flanagan argues that while sleep has a clear biological function and adaptive value, dreams are merely side effects, 'free-riders', irrelevant from an evolutionary point of view. But dreams are hardly unimportant. Indeed, Flanagan argues that dreams are self-expressive, the result of our need to find or create meaning, even when we are sleeping. Rejecting Freud's theory of manifest and latent content-of repressed wishes appearing in disguised form-Flanagan shows how brainstem activity during sleep generates a jumbled profusion of memories, images, thoughts, emotions, and desires, which the cerebral cortex then attempts to shape into a more or less coherent story. Such dream narratives range from the relatively mundane worries of non-REM sleep tot he fantastic confabulations of deep REM that resemble pyschotic episodes in their strangeness. But, however bizarre these narratives may be, they can shed light on our mental life, our well being, and our sense of self. Written with clarity, lively wit, and remarkable insight, Dreaming Souls offers a fascinating new way of apprehending one of the oldest mysteries of mental life.

Controlled variables: psychology as the center fielder views it.

Abstract: Perceptual control theory (PCT) views behavior as the control of perception. The central explanatory concept in PCT is the controlled variable, which is a perceived aspect of the environment that is brought to and maintained in states specified by the organism. According to PCT, understanding behavior is a matter of discovering the variables that organisms control. But the possible existence of controlled variables has been largely ignored in the behavioral sciences. One notable exception occurs in the study of how baseball outfielders catch fly balls. In these studies it is taken for granted that the fielder gets to the ball by controlling some visual aspect of the ball's movement. This article describes the concept of a controlled variable in the context of research on fly ball catching behavior and shows how this concept can contribute to our understanding of behavior in general.

Establishing the experimenting society: the historical origin of social experimentation according to the randomized controlled design.

Abstract: This article traces the historical origin of social experimentation. It highlights the central role of psychology in establishing the randomized controlled design and its quasi-experimental derivatives. The author investigates the differences in the 19th- and 20th-century meaning of the expression "social experiment." She rejects the image of neutrality of social experimentation, arguing that its 20th-century advocates promoted specific representations of cognitive competence and moral trustworthiness. More specifically, she demonstrates that the randomized controlled experiment and its quasi-experimental derivatives epitomize the values of efficiency and impersonality characteristic of the liberal variation of the 20th-century welfare state.

Separated twins and the genetics of personality differences: a critique.

Abstract: This article discusses studies of separated twins, with special emphasis on the Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart (MISTRA), to determine whether they support the existence of an important genetic component in behavioral and personality differences. The methods and conclusions of the MISTRA team are discussed in the context of earlier studies of separated identical twins. I argue that volunteer-based studies are biased toward greater twin similarity. In addition, the MISTRA research team did not publish or share raw data and case history information. Reared-together and reared-apart monozygotic twins share important environmental similarities not controlled for by comparing personality correlations. I propose an alternative control group consisting of biologically unrelated pairs of strangers matched on all environmental factors common to pairs of separated monozygotic twins. I conclude that the evidence from studies of twins reared apart does not support the role of genetic factors in personality and behavioral differences.

Musical scales and evaluations of happiness and awkwardness: effects of pitch, direction, and scale mode.

Abstract: Participants rated the perceived happiness, brightness, awkwardness, pitch velocity, and tempo change of ascending and descending musical scales in four modes (natural, melodic, and harmonic minor modes and the major mode). Only minor differences between ratings of natural, harmonic, or melodic minor scales or between ratings of parallel and relative major scales were found. Ascending scales were rated as happier, brighter, and more accelerating than were descending scales; ascending minor scales were rated as faster and more awkward than were descending minor scales. Musical keys in each mode were compared, and significant differences were found. Musical keys that started on a higher pitch were rated as happier, brighter, and faster and as speeding up more than were keys that started on a lower pitch. The data were consistent with previous findings and suggest that pitch and direction (contour), rather than mode or key, influence listeners' judgments of musical stimuli.

Confidence in word detection predicts word identification: implications for an unconscious perception paradigm.

Abstract: The present experiments extend the scope of the independent observation model based on signal detection theory (Macmillan & Creelman, 1991) to complex (word) stimulus sets. In the first experiment, the model predicts the relationship between uncertain detection and subsequent correct identification, thereby providing an alternative interpretation to a phenomenon often described as unconscious perception. Our second experiment used an exclusion task (Jacoby, Toth, & Yonelinas, 1993), which, according to theories of unconscious perception, should show qualitative differences in performance based on stimulus detection accuracy and provide a relative measure of conscious versus unconscious influences (Merikle, Joordens, & Stoltz, 1995). Exclusion performance was also explained by the model, suggesting that undetected words did not unconsciously influence identification responses.

Memory of action events: The role of objects in memory of self-and other-performed tasks

Abstract: Encoding action phrases by enactment produces better recall than hearing or reading the action phrase. This study examined whether enactment enhances memory relative to observing another perform the same action. Theories of the enactment effect suggest that the complexity of the action, here manipulated by varying the number of objects involved in an action, may determine whether enactment enhances memory relative to observation. The results revealed a consistent subject-performed task advantage across all object conditions; the size of the effect did not vary with increasing task complexity. Additionally, items that included the use of an object were recalled better than those without objects. The results are consistent with the views of Engelkamp and Zimmer (1997) and Backman, Nilsson, & Kormi-Nouri (1993), who argued that the SPT effect is due to motor and/or sensory encoding.

Semantic satiation and lexical ambiguity resolution.

Abstract: This study examines the effects of semantic satiation on lexical ambiguity resolution. On a given trial, participants were presented with a word triad. The first word (e.g., HEART) was presented on average 2.5, 12.5, or 22.5 times, and then participants received 2 new words for relatedness judgments. The first of the two new words was always a homograph (e.g., "ORGAN") and the other word was a related or unrelated pairmate (e.g., "KIDNEY"). In Experiment 1, when blocks of trials were intermixed with concordant (e.g., "HEART-ORGAN-KIDNEY"), discordant (e.g., "PIANO-ORGAN-KIDNEY"), and neutral (e.g., "CEILING-ORGAN-KIDNEY") trials, participants did not produce evidence of semantic satiation. In a second experiment in which only concordant and neutral trials were presented, however, participants did produce evidence of semantic satiation in the concordant condition. Taken together, Experiments 1 and 2 indicate that semantic satiation of the context-appropriate meaning of a homograph may impede ambiguity resolution.

Memory of psychodiagnostic information: biases and effects of expertise.

Abstract: Problem-solving expertise has been associated with enhanced memory of domain-specific information. This enhanced memory is thought to play an important role in expert decisions. Meanwhile, research on psychodiagnostic decision making has found consistent limitations in experienced clinicians' ability to make optimal decisions. To what extent are these limitations associated with suboptimal memory processes? We compared memories of expert clinicians and novice graduate students for information learned while viewing a videotaped psychodiagnostic interview. Results of 3 tests suggest that expert clinicians exhibit enhanced memory that is flexible, selective, and accurate but with limitations that might contribute to poor decisions. Experts exhibited superior memory of personal criteria and disconfirmatory information. However, a framing manipulation induced performance in experts consistent with suboptimal decision making, and both groups needed exhaustive prompts for optimal memory search. Implications of these findings for expertise models are discussed.

Judging the pleasantness of form-color combinations.

Abstract: The way people with various degrees of aesthetic expertise integrate form and color information in a pleasantness judgment was investigated in 2 experiments. Participants were asked to assign an overall pleasantness value to combinations of forms and colors. In Experiment 1, the factors manipulated were form and color inside the form. In Experiment 2, they were form and color of the ground. In judging the pleasantness of form-color combinations, participants applied a complex rule in which the weight attributed to one element depends on the value of the other element. When the value of an element is medium (when it is neither liked nor disliked), its weight is lower than when its value is low (when it is disliked). As a result, the weight of the other element is proportionally altered. The data support a nonequal averaging combination rule. Very few differences between experts and nonexperts were observed. This result supports the view that the pleasantness judgments were based largely on automatic reactions.

A disruptive effect of bizarreness on memory for relational and contextual details of self-performed and other-performed acts.

Abstract: We examined recognition memory for relational and contextual details of bizarre and common acts that were either self-performed or performed by another. The results support previous findings that bizarreness disrupts memory for relational details and provide evidence that bizarreness also disrupts memory of the general context in which objects of actions occurred. The disruptive effects of bizarreness were found in memory for both self-performed and other-performed acts. Although parts of bizarre events are remembered well, information about the context in which the remembered part occurs and relationships among remembered parts are not remembered well.

Altering the balance of recollection and familiarity influences the revelation effect.

Abstract: The revelation effect occurs when recognition test probes are more likely to be called "old" if they are preceded by a verbal processing task. Two experiments examined the role of familiarity and recollection in producing this effect. Each experiment tested the hypothesis that decreasing recollection would heighten the magnitude of the revelation effect. In Experiment 1, the revelation effect increased by delaying the recognition test. In Experiment 2, the revelation effect increased when the presentation rate of the study words was reduced. These results are discussed in terms of the variables that produce the revelation effect in episodic and nonepisodic memory judgments.

The Self-Organizing Dynamics of Intentions and Actions@@@Dynamics in Action: Intentional Behavior as a Complex System

Abstract: When dealing with hierarchical systems that are selfreferential and display inter-level effects, the notion of causality must be reconceptualized in terms other than that of the billiard ball, collision conception that is the legacy of mechanism. Understanding all cause as collision like, and the explanatory ideal as deduction from deterministic laws, are part of a trend that has characterized the history of philosophy for over 2,000 years: the progressive elimination of time and context from metaphysics and epistemology. Aristotle had insisted that formal deduction from universal premises is the logic of reasoning proper to science. Noting that human behavior is temporally and contextually embedded, Aristotle made it the central concern of practical wisdom. Unlike deduction, wisdom varies “as the occasion requires.” Modern philosophy, by contrast, insists that (ideally) all explanation is fundamentally deductive in form. In Plato’s dialogue Phaedo, which takes place while Socrates is awaiting execution, Socrates worries that earlier philosophers made air, ether,

The roles of attention and awareness in the false recognition effect

Abstract: Jacoby and Whitehouse (1989) reported that masked words can unconsciously bias memory judgments. Others suggest that these results cannot be taken as evidence that words are perceived without awareness, as Jacoby and Whitehouse claimed. In the present experiments, participants' ability to attend to briefly presented context words was manipulated by masking the context words and by an instructional manipulation. In Experiment 1, masked context words increased false recognitions. Different from Jacoby and Whitehouse's results, nonmasked context words showed a similar pattern. In Experiment 2, these effects were replicated and an attended condition was added in which participants read the context words aloud and tried to remember them. False recognition was increased in both masked and unmasked conditions and decreased in the attended condition. These results suggest that the condition for increase or decrease in false recognition is not whether a stimulus is seen or not but whether a stimulus is attended. They suggest that the qualitative difference criterion proposed by Jacoby and Whitehouse is insufficient for determining whether participants are aware of masked presentations.

Effects of familiarity level and repetition on recognition accuracy.

Abstract: Theories of recognition memory based on signal detection theory posit that a recognition decision is similar to a psychophysical judgment. Like a judgment of stimulus brightness or loudness, a recognition judgment is based on the value of a unidimensional signal computed for the test item. This signal has been called the strength or familiarity value. One prediction of these models is that the ability to discriminate between a studied and nonstudied test item depends on the ability to detect the difference in their familiarities. This ability in turn is influenced by the items' familiarity levels; discrimination should become more difficult as the familiarity of both items increases. This prediction was supported in 3 experiments using a forced-choice procedure. Also, accuracy was higher when the list contained repeated items rather than a comparable number of distinct items.

A constraint on eliminating semantic priming by repeating a prime.

Abstract: Repeated semantic primes have been shown to generate an additive semantic priming effect when those primes are different words, but repetition priming of the prime seems to eliminate semantic priming of lexical decisions for reasons that are not clear. These studies replicated this effect but also showed that repetition priming of the prime does not eliminate semantic priming with a longer lag between the repeated primes. The implications of these results for understanding the basic effect are discussed.

Recognizing the component tones of a major chord.

Abstract: Listeners judged whether a target tone was contained within a previously or subsequently presented major chord, and targets consisted of either the root, third, fifth, or tritone of the scale based on the root of the chords. Chord position influenced the relative recognition of targets, but listeners exhibited greater recognition of the fifth regardless of chord position (root, first inversion, second inversion). The data were not consistent with notions of root tracking or melody tracking. The data were broadly consistent with the notion that different chord positions may be harmonically equivalent (i.e., that listeners may recognize components of a chord regardless of chord position), with notions of analytic set and the importance of an instantiation of musical context for chord processing, and with the importance of the fifth in harmonic progression.

The first memory drum.

Abstract: For most of the 20th century, the memory drum was the standard American apparatus for memory research. The first memory drum dates from 1887 in the work of G. E. Muller and Frederich Schumann, and an illustration of their device appeared 16 years later. This device apparently was invented to resolve the difficulties created by Ebbinghaus's method. The memory drum was a kymograph used to control the display of learning materials. Cattell used something similar for his dissertation with Wundt, though not for verbal material. From Muller's writings, images of this device and kymographs contemporary to Muller's innovation, characteristics, aspects, and difficulties of the development of this drum are presented in the context of its use to resolve the difficulties created by Ebbinghaus's method. An improved device was offered by instrument makers Diederichs in Gottingen and Zimmermann in Leipzig, both in 1894. Surprisingly, from 1903 Zimmermann offered only the original, unimproved device, mistakenly portraying it as appropriate for paired-associate learning procedures.

Euclidean metric representations of haptically explored triangles.

Abstract: This study explored whether people create Euclidean representations of 2-dimensional right triangles from touch and use them to make spatial inferences in accord with Euclidean distance axioms. Blindfolded participants who were instructed to form visual images of triangles felt the vertical and horizontal sides of right triangles, then estimated the lengths (but not the angles) of the 3 triangle sides. In these 3 experiments, length estimates conformed closely to the Euclidean metric when evaluated on application of the Pythagorean theorem. Participants who used a visual imaging strategy were accurate more often than those who used visual imagery less often. In Experiments 2 and 3, a hypotenuse inference was as accurate as a direct haptic judgement of the hypotenuse. These results demonstrated similar accuracy of the hypotenuse judgments when participants made verbal rather than haptic estimates. The findings indicate that participants can form Euclidean representations under certain conditions from felt 2-dimensional right triangles based on visual images.

Induced false memories of having heard the unspoken: a demonstration.

Abstract: In a mock public survey situation, many students who had been led to expect to be asked to name their academic majors or home towns later declared that they had been asked for that information even though they had not. Such illusory memories were even more common among subjects who had spontaneously volunteered the unasked-for information during the interview. Both results have important implications for reality-monitoring processes and errors.