Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 

About: Journal of Experimental Psychology: General is an academic journal published by American Psychological Association. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Psychology & Medicine. It has an ISSN identifier of 0096-3445. Over the lifetime, 2724 publications have been published receiving 314045 citations. The journal is also known as: Journal of experimental psychology. General.

Attention and the detection of signals.

Abstract: Detection of a visual signal requires information to reach a system capable of eliciting arbitrary responses required by the experimenter. Detection latencies are reduced when subjects receive a cue that indicates where in the visual field the signal will occur. This shift in efficiency appears to be due to an alignment (orienting) of the central attentional system with the pathways to be activated by the visual input. It would also be possible to describe these results as being due to a reduced criterion at the expected target position. However, this description ignores important constraints about the way in which expectancy improves performance. First, when subjects are cued on each trial, they show stronger expectancy effects than when a probable position is held constant for a block, indicating the active nature of the expectancy. Second, while information on spatial position improves performance, information on the form of the stimulus does not. Third, expectancy may lead to improvements in latency without a reduction in accuracy. Fourth, there appears to be little ability to lower the criterion at two positions that are not spatially contiguous. A framework involving the employment of a limited-capacity attentional mechanism seems to capture these constraints better than the more general language of criterion setting. Using this framework, we find that attention shifts are not closely related to the saccadic eye movement system. For luminance detection the retina appears to be equipotential with respect to attention shifts, since costs to unexpected stimuli are similar whether foveal or peripheral. These results appear to provide an important model system for the study of the relationship between attention and the structure of the visual system.

Depth of processing and the retention of words in episodic memory.

Abstract: SUMMARY Ten experiments were designed to explore the levels of processing framework for human memory research proposed by Craik and Lockhart (1972). The basic notions are that the episodic memory trace may be thought of as a rather automatic by-product of operations carried out by the cognitive system and that the durability of the trace is a positive function of "depth" of processing, where depth refers to greater degrees of semantic involvement. Subjects were induced to process words to different depths by answering various questions about the words. For example, shallow encodings were achieved by asking questions about typescript; intermediate levels of encoding were accomplished by asking questions about rhymes; deep levels were induced by asking whether the word would fit into a given category or sentence frame. After the encoding phase was completed, subjects were unexpectedly given a recall or recognition test for the words. In general, deeper encodings took longer to accomplish and were associated with higher levels of performance on the subsequent memory test. Also, questions leading to positive responses were associated with higher retention levels than questions leading to negative responses, at least at deeper levels of encoding. Further experiments examined this pattern of effects in greater analytic detail. It was established that the original results did not simply reflect differential encoding times; an experiment was designed in which a complex but shallow task took longer to carry out but yielded lower levels of recognition than an easy, deeper task. Other studies explored reasons for the superior retention of words associated with positive responses on the initial task. Negative responses were remembered as well as positive responses when the questions led to an equally elaborate encoding in the two cases. The idea that elaboration or "spread" of encoding provides a better description of the results was given a further boost by the finding of the typical pattern of results under intentional learning conditions, and where each word was exposed for 6 sec in the initial phase. While spread and elaboration may indeed be better descriptive terms for the present findings, retention depends critically on the qualitative nature of the encoding operations performed; a minimal semantic analysis is more beneficial than an extensive structural analysis. Finally, Schulman's (1974) principle of congruity appears necessary for a complete description of the effects obtained. Memory performance is enhanced to the extent that the context, or encoding question, forms an integrated unit with the word presented. A congruous encoding yields superior memory performance because a more elaborate trace is laid down and because in such cases the structure of semantic memory can be utilized more effectively to facilitate retrieval. The article concludes with a discussion of the broader implications of these data and ideas for the study of human learning and memory,

Effect size estimates: Current use, calculations, and interpretation.

Abstract: The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (American Psychological Association, 2001, American Psychological Association, 2010) calls for the reporting of effect sizes and their confidence intervals. Estimates of effect size are useful for determining the practical or theoretical importance of an effect, the relative contributions of factors, and the power of an analysis. We surveyed articles published in 2009 and 2010 in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, noting the statistical analyses reported and the associated reporting of effect size estimates. Effect sizes were reported for fewer than half of the analyses; no article reported a confidence interval for an effect size. The most often reported analysis was analysis of variance, and almost half of these reports were not accompanied by effect sizes. Partial η2 was the most commonly reported effect size estimate for analysis of variance. For t tests, 2/3 of the articles did not report an associated effect size estimate; Cohen's d was the most often reported. We provide a straightforward guide to understanding, selecting, calculating, and interpreting effect sizes for many types of data and to methods for calculating effect size confidence intervals and power analysis.