Showing papers in "Journal of Experimental Psychology in 1974"

Depth of processing pictures of faces and recognition memory

Abstract: These studies ask whether S remembers a picture better the greater the "depth of processing" he allots to it. Depth of processing pictures of faces was varied according to judgments of sex ("superficial") or judgments of likableness or honesty of the person pictured. Performance on a later recognition memory test was high for pictures judged for likableness or honesty, and low for pictures judged for sex. This ordering held as'true for intentional learners as for incidental learners. A final experiment showed that face recognition memory was not materially affected by a context manipulation: an old test picture was remembered at a level determined by its original depth of processing and independently of how it was tested—either alone, along side an old picture it had been studied with, or with a new picture. In a recent paper, Craik and Lockhart (1972) argued that "depth of processing" of stimulus material is a direct determinant of how well that material will be remembered. The underlying assumption in their approach is that a stimulus is processed through a series of stages with different kinds of information being extracted from or triggered off by the stimulus at successive stages. Sensory features of the stimulus are presumably extracted first, whereas associative information (such as the name or meaning of a grapheme) becomes available later. In support of their depth of processing hypothesis, Craik and Lockhart review studies showing higher incidental learning for words which 5s had processed for meaning than for items processed for physical attributes. For instance, Hyde and Jenkins (1969) oriented 5s to answer different questions with respect to a word, either counting the number of letters in it or the number of es, or rating it for pleasantness. Those 5s who did the pleasantness judgments recalled the words later much better than did the other 5s. Similarly, Johnston and Jenkins (1971) showed that 5s required to think of an adjective appropriate to a presented

Intrusion of a thematic idea in retention of prose.

Abstract: Two implications of Bartlett's theory of memory were tested: (a) that prose passages are stored in schematic form, and (ft) that thematic assimilation increases with the passage of time. The 5s read brief biographical passages about either a famous or a fictitious person (e.g., Adolph Hitler vs. Gerald Martin). Recognition memory for individual sentences was tested after intervals of either 5 rnin. or 1 wk. As expected, passages with a famous main character yielded more false positive errors. In addition, the errors in this condition depended on the thematic relatedness of the recognition foil. The further prediction on thematic assimilation was also upheld: Thematic effects were relatively greater at the longer retention interval.

The nonadditivity of personality impressions.

Abstract: Ratings of the hkableness of persons described by 2 adjectives showed consistent violations of additive and constant-weight averaging models The effect of either adjective varied directly with the Hkableness of the other adjective Monotonic rescaling could remove the interactions, raising the theoretical question of whether interactions were due to nonlineanty in the rating scale or to nonadditive integration of the information Four experiments illustrate new methods for distinguishing these interpretations The fit of the subtractive model for ratings of differences in hkableness between 2 adjectives supported the validity of the response scale, in addition, ratings of homogeneous combinations were linearly related to subtractive model scale values Judgments of differences in hkableness between pairs of hypothetical persons, each person described by 2 adjectives, were ordmally inconsistent with additive models, confirming the interpretation that the interactions are \"real\" and should not be scaled away Theoretical and methodological implications are discussed

Effect of Noise on the Stroop Test

Abstract: : Noise increases the interference between colours and conflicting colour names. The interference increases with the time spent in the noise. This could be due to the overarousal produced by the noise, or to the perceptual isolation which the noise also produces. (Author)

Sensory and verbal coding strategies in subjects with absolute pitch.

Abstract: The performance of six absolute‐pitch and six control subjects was examined in three studies involving recognition memory for tone frequency. When the standard and comparison were 1/10 semitone apart, absolute‐pitch subjects reported using a sensory coding strategy and did not differ from the controls in overall performance or rate of forgetting. When the stimulus difference was 3/4 semitone, absolute‐pitch subjects shifted to a verbal coding strategy, and their memory for pitch was significantly better than the controls. With a one‐semitone difference, the absolute‐pitch group showed no significant forgetting over a 15‐sec retention interval filled with interference tones. These findings support the hypothesis that possessors of absolute pitch show superior pitch memory only when they can differentially label the stimuli with musical‐note names.

Perceptual units in speech recognition.

Abstract: ]The size of the sound stimulus employed in the first stage of speech processing was investigated in an attempt to determine the perceptual unit of analysis in speech recognition. It is assumed that the perceptual unit is held in a preperceptual auditory image until its sound pattern is complete and recognition has occurred. Vowels and consonant-vowel syllables were employed as test items in a recognition-masking task. The results show that recognition performance improved up to 200-250 msec, after presentation of the speech sound. The results were interpreted as evidence that the preperceptual auditory storage and perceptual processing of a speech sound does not exceed 250 msec., implying that some transformation of the speech signal must occur about every J sec. Since the stimulus within this time period must function as a perceptual unit, perceptual units appear to be of roughly syllabic length. The primary purpose of this study was to determine the size of the sound stimulus employed in the first stage of speech recognition. A listener has recognized (identified) a stimulus when he has determined that one of a possible set of alternatives was presented. Recognition of a stimulus is possible only if the information in the stimulus is sufficient to distinguish that stimulus from other possible stimulus alternatives, Recognizing speech continuously implies that each small portion of the sound-wave pattern uniquely determines a stimulus alternative. However, small portions of the acoustic input are not unique; there is no one-to-one mapping of stimulus to percept. Since the sound pattern must contain enough information for a consistent stimulus-percept mapping, larger chunks of the acoustic input are necessary for