Showing papers in "Journal of Experimental Psychology: General in 1991"

A computational model of semantic memory impairment: modality specificity and emergent category specificity.

Abstract: It is demonstrated how a modality-specific semantic memory system can account for category-specific impairments after brain damage. In Experiment 1, the hypothesis that visual and functional knowledge play different roles in the representation of living things and nonliving things is tested and confirmed. A parallel distributed processing model of semantic memory in which knowledge is subdivided by modality into visual and functional components is described. In Experiment 2, the model is lesioned, and it is confirmed that damage to visual semantics primarily impairs knowledge of living things, and damage to functional semantics primarily impairs knowledge of nonliving things. In Experiment 3, it is demonstrated that the model accounts naturally for a finding that had appeared problematic for a modality-specific architecture, namely, impaired retrieval of functional knowledge about living things. Finally, in Experiment 4, it is shown how the model can account for a recent observation of impaired knowledge of living things only when knowledge is probed verbally.

Learning the structure of event sequences.

Abstract: How is complex sequential material acquired, processed, and represented when there is no intention to learn? Two experiments exploring a choice reaction time task are reported. Unknown to Ss, successive stimuli followed a sequence derived from a "noisy" finite-state grammar. After considerable practice (60,000 exposures) with Experiment 1, Ss acquired a complex body of procedural knowledge about the sequential structure of the material. Experiment 2 was an attempt to identify limits on Ss ability to encode the temporal context by using more distant contingencies that spanned irrelevant material. Taken together, the results indicate that Ss become increasingly sensitive to the temporal context set by previous elements of the sequence, up to 3 elements. Responses are also affected by priming effects from recent trials. A connectionist model that incorporates sensitivity to the sequential structure and to priming effects is shown to capture key aspects of both acquisition and processing and to account for the interaction between attention and sequence structure reported by Cohen, Ivry, and Keele (1990).

Specializing the operation of an explicit rule

Abstract: When dealing with a newly learned rule, one is often aware of relying on previous episodes of applying the rule. The specific materials or problems to which the rule was originally applied seem to have some privilege, particularly when the rule initially seems quite abstract. Understanding a difficult rule, or at least understanding how to apply it, seems to occur in terms of previous concrete applications. This impression is corroborated by Ross in his interesting work on remindings in problem solving (Ross, 1984, 1987, 1989; Ross & Kennedy, 1990). He demonstrated that performance while learning a word processing program or learning to solve simple probability problems is influenced by specific analogies with previously encountered problems. But what happens to these prior episodes of problem solving when the rule is not difficult, or when one has had sufficient practice to make it no longer seem difficult? Introspectively, the prior examples seem to disappear from active processing, a suggestion reflected in a wide variety of theories in cognitive psychology. In this article we argue that under common conditions, prior episodes retain an important role in helping apply the rule to new material, well after clear awareness of the prior episodes has disappeared. We make an ecological argument for the conditions under which episode-based knowledge has continued value.

Role of specific similarity in a medical diagnostic task.

Abstract: Three experiments are reported showing that diagnosis of skin disorders by medical residents and general practitioners was facilitated by similar cases previously seen in the same context. Diagnosis of similar cases was facilitated more than that of dissimilar cases in the same diagnostic category, demonstrating that facilitation was not solely due to activation of the diagnostic category as a whole. Because diagnosis was posed in a multiple-choice format that always included the correct diagnosis, the relative disadvantage of dissimilar items was not due to the unavailability of the category name. The similarity effect also occurred with 2-week delay between the initial case and the test cases. Variations in diagnostic procedure, ranging from giving a quick first impression to arguing for given alternative diagnoses before selection, did not interact with the effect of similarity. This result suggests that the similarity effect is not strongly dependent on a particular diagnostic strategy.

Abstract analogies and abstracted grammars : comments on Reber (1989) and Mathews et al. (1989)

Abstract: Reber (1969, 1989a) and Mathews et al. (1989), in experiments on learning artificial grammars, reported good transfer to letter strings consisting of letters not used in the training stimuli, provided that the same grammar generated both training and transfer strings. They concluded from this that the transfer predominantly relies on abstract knowledge. An experiment is reported that shows much of the transfer to changed letter-set strings is due to abstract similarity between test strings and specific training stimuli (i.e., a string such as MXVVVM could be seen as similar to BDCCCB without implying that regularities common to a large number of training items had been abstracted)

Depressive deficits in memory: focusing attention improves subsequent recall.

Abstract: Ss diagnosed as depressed, recovered from depression, or without a history of depression performed an unintentional learning task, followed by tests of free and forced recall. In the learning task, Ss decided whether a series of nouns sensibly completed corresponding sentence frames that varied in decision difficulty. For half of the Ss, the focus of attention was unconstrained by the demands of this task. The others, however, were required to repeat the targeted noun at the end of the trial as a means of focusing their attention on the task. Depressed Ss in the unfocused condition subsequently recalled fewer words than did both control groups, but this deficit disappeared in the focused condition. These results suggest that depression might not fundamentally impair the resources required for good performance on such tasks. The results' relevance to resource-allocation, initiative, and inhibition accounts of depressive deficits in memory is discussed.

Does Word Identification Proceed From Spelling to Sound to Meaning

Abstract: Six experiments addressed the role of phonological information in visual word recognition using a semantic-decision task. Experiment 1 replicated Van Orden's (1987) finding that Ss make more false-positive errors on homophone foils than on spelling controls, indicating phonological activation of meaning. Experiment 2 showed that only lower frequency words yield this effect when broader categories are used. In Experiments 3 and 4, the homophony effect for lower frequency words remained, even though the stimuli included a large proportion of homophones, suggesting that activation of phonological information cannot be strategically inhibited. Experiments 5 and 6 examined effects of homophony on targets that were correct category exemplars and yielded similar results. These studies indicate that in skilled readers, phonological information

On the Very Long-Term Retention of Knowledge Acquired Through Formal Education: Twelve Years of Cognitive Psychology

Abstract: Former students (N=373) of a course in cognitive psychology (CP), conducted between 1978 and 1989, completed memory tests to assess retention of CP. Memory for proper names of researchers, concepts, and conceptual relations varied with retention interval (RI), and memory performance declined over the first 36 months of retention and then stabilized at above-chance levels for the remainder of the retention period. Memory for general facts from the course and research methods did not, however, vary with RI and remained at the same above-chance level across all RIs sampled. The recall and recognition of proper names showed a more rapid decline than the recall and recognition of concepts

Predicting similarity and categorization from identification.

Abstract: In this article, the relation between the identification, similarity judgment, and categorization of multidimensional perceptual stimuli is studied. The theoretical analysis focused on general recognition theory (CRT), which is a multidimensional generalization of signal detection theory. In one application, 2 Ss first identified a set of confusable stimuli and then made judgments of their painvise similarity. The second application was to Nosofsky's (1985b, 1986) identificationcategorization experiment. In both applications, a GRT model accounted for the identification data better than Luce's (1963) biased-choice model. The identification results were then used to predict performance in the similarity judgment and categorization conditions. The GRT identification model accurately predicted the similarity judgments under the assumption that Ss allocated attention to the 2 stimulus dimensions differently in the 2 tasks. The categorization data were predicted successfully without appealing to the notion of selective attention. Instead, a simpler GRT model that emphasized the different decision rules used in identificatio n and categorization was adequate. The perceptual processes involved when subjects identify, categorize, or judge the pairwise similarity of multidimensional perceptual stimuli are closely related (e.g., Ashby & Perrin, 1988; Getty, Swets, Swets, & Green, 1979; Nosofsky, 1986; Shepard & Chang, 1963; Shepard, Hovland, & Jenkins, 1961). Roughly speaking, as the similarity between a pair of stimuli increases, so too does the probability that one will be misidentified as the other and the probability that they will be assigned to the same category. This observation suggests a possible close relationship between these three tasks. During the past several years, a number of theories have been developed that attempt to simultaneousl y account for data from all three of these tasks. Such theories are important because they represent attempts to integrate a broad spectrum of psychological data within one theoretical framework. In this article, we (a) explore the empirical relation between identification, categorization, and similarity judgment and (b) examine the ability of the more powerful of these theories to predict categorization performance and judgments of perceived similarity from the confusions that subjects make in an identification task. The models that we focus most heavily on are derived from general recognition theory (GRT; Ashby & Gott, 1988; Ashby & Perrin, 1988; Ashby & Townsend, 1986). They assume that the perceptual effect associated with each presentation of a stimulus can be represented as a point in a multidimensional space but that perceptual noise causes the percept to vary over trials. Thus, GRT assumes that a distribution of percepts is the appropriate perceptual representation of a stimulus. During identification or categorization, the subject is assumed to

Lifetime maintenance of high school mathematics content.

Abstract: An analysis of life span memory identifies those variables that affect losses in recall and recognition of the content of high school algebra and geometry courses.

Toward an understanding of age-related memory and visual search effects.

Abstract: Young and old Ss were tested in 3 experiments conducted to explore factors leading to age-related performance differences in consistent mapping (CM) and varied mapping (VM) search tasks. The separate and combined influences of memory scanning and visual search on age-related search effects were examined. In both CM letter and CM semantic category search, age interacted with comparison load in visual and hybrid memory-visual search conditions, whereas differential age effects were not present in pure memory search. For VM search, age effects were present only in pure memory search. These data support the view that the separation of type of search training (CM and VM) as well as memory and visual search components is critical for predicting age-related performance differences. The dissociation of the pattern of age effects in memory and visual search suggests that memory and visual search involve different processing mechanisms.

Immediate and delayed transfer of training effects in statistical reasoning

Abstract: Ss were trained on the law of large numbers in a given domain through the use of example problems. They were then tested either on that domain or on another domain either immediately or after a 2-week delay. Strong domain independence was found when testing was immediate. This transfer of training was not due simply to Ss' ability to draw direct analogies between problems in the trained domain and in the untrained domain. After the 2-week delay, it was found that (a) there was no decline in performance in the trained domain and (b) although there was a significant decline in performance in the untrained domain, performance was still better than for control Ss. Memory measures suggest that the retention of training effects is due to memory for the rule system rather than to memory for the specific details of the example problems, contrary to what would be expected if Ss were using direct analogies to solve the test problems.

Age effects may be global, not local: comment on Fisk and Rogers (1991)

Abstract: A series of analyses of variance on target search times allowed Fisk and Rogers (1991) to reject the null hypothesis that age had a uniform, additive effect across search conditions It does not, however, follow that age affected some conditions in an exceptional way, as Fisk and Rogers concluded Age may have had a uniform but nonadditive effect across conditions In this article, it is shown that age had a uniform linear, or perhaps slightly curvilinear, effect on search times This "null hypothesis" adequately accounted for the age effects in all 27 search conditions Indeed, it accounted for the age effects in 107 conditions abstracted from other visual search studied and for the age effects in 154 conditions abstracted from a miscellaneous collection of nonsearch processing-time studies The only variation in age outcomes across studies was consistent with sampling error, given the known variance in response times It is concluded that age is experienced as a generalized slowing of the central nervous system uniformly affecting all information processes

Implicit acquisition of abstract knowledge about artificial grammar: Some methodological and conceptual issues.

Abstract: ion May be Postponed Until the Transfer Phase Throughout this discussion, we have tacitly assumed that the abstract knowledge revealed in transfer tasks is elaborated during the study phase. Alternatively, however, subjects may simply encode specific items during the study phase, store them in memory, and perform abstractive operations on their reminded representations in the presence of new transfer items. For example, subjects asked for a grammaticality judg- ment about DJDMJJ in the transfer phase may retrieve study items such as CVCPVV, SCPTVV, and so on, and then abstract a common feature: Repetitions of letters occur at the end of the items in all cases. This alternative bears on the distinction between early and late computation models of categorization (Estes, 1986). Although early computation models, in which full analysis of study exemplars takes place in the encoding phase, are implicit in traditional frameworks, there is a growing body of evidence for the late, or "in line" (Smith, 1989), computation model, in which at least some processing occurs while subjects are dealing with new stimuli (e.g., Brooks, 1990; Medin & Ross, 1990). This alternative is obviously of crucial importance to the issue at hand. If researchers aim at eliciting implicit processing in the study phase (although unsatisfactorily, as stressed above), they have never controlled the nature of the processing occurring in the test phase. Typically, subjects at the beginning of the test phase are informed that the study strings were generated by a complex set of rules and that they should now assess the well-formedness of new items with regard to these rules. These instructions inevitably shift subjects to a rule discovery mental set. Mathews et al. (1989) did not mention the rule-based structure of items, but their test procedure remained explicit in nature insofar as their subjects were instructed to make direct comparison between the study and test items. 2 Thus, clear evidence for a model in which abstrac- tion is performed during the transfer task would be highly damaging to the claim that performance in artificial grammar settings testifies to implicit abstraction. The recent Mathews et al. (1989) experiments were not designed to tackle this issue but nevertheless provided data suggesting that at least some rules are abstracted in the transfer phase. For instance, above-chance grammaticality judgments for items made up of new letters did not appear immediately after letter change but rather after some feedback trials. This result is consonant with the idea that subjects do not generate ready-to-use abstract rules in study phase but rather build them when given a problem that prompts rule elaboration. In the same vein, abstract verbalization was apparentlymthe Mathews et al. (1989) article is not entirely clear on this point--produced only on request in the instructions.

Question answering in the context of stories

Abstract: In this study a model of question answering (called QUEST) is tested in the context of short stories. College students first read a story and then judged the quality of answers to questions about episodes in the story. The model could account for the goodness-of-answer judgments and decision latencies for 5 caterogies of questions : why, how, when, enablement, and consequence. QUEST specifies the information sources that are activated during question answering; the content of each information source is structured according to a theory of knowledge representation. QUEST specifies the convergence processes that dramatically narrow down the set of possible answers (activated from the information sources) to a small set of good answers to a question

Partial knowledge of word meanings

Abstract: Partial knowledge of word meanings was investigated in 7 experiments. For each S, words were classified depending on whether they could be defined (known), checked as familiar (frontier), or mistakenly considered to be nonwords (unknown)

Testing a queue hypothesis for the processing of global and local information.

Abstract: To test whether the advantage for global features in visual perception is stationary throughout the course of processing or is superseded by a local advantage, 6 experiments were conducted in which subjects responded to auditorially presented letter names, while viewing compound visual stimuli. The consistencies of the 2 levels of the compound letters with the auditory stimuli were varied. The requirement with respect to the visual stimulus was manipulated between experiments. The onset asynchrony (SOA) between the visual stimulus and the auditory one was randomized within blocks. Interaction of SOA with consistency of either of the globality levels with the auditory stimulus would indicate lack of stationarity. No such indication was found. Several findings suggest global advantage. The results hold across 3 exposure durations. Findings support the hypothesis of global precedence as well as the claim that it is stationary.

Knowledge and processing speed as determinants of associative learning.

Abstract: : In five experiments with over 2,500 subjects, we examined the hypothesis that cognitive processing variables measuring breadth of declarative knowledge and information processing speed were related to learning outcomes on a paired-associates task. Experiments 1 and 2 compared recall with recognition tests, Experiment 3 assessed the effect of study-block size, Experiment 4 examined the effect of mnemonic strategy, and Experiment 5 tested the effect of mixing study times and presenting words versus nonsense syllable stimuli. Across all experiments, breadth of verbal knowledge was found to be a strong predictor of retention overall, and a strong predictor in increment in retention benefit due to increases in study time. Mnemonic strategy training improved retention but also served to enhance the relationship between knowledge and retention. Memory search speed also predicted retention, but primarily under conditions of high information flow, either as a result of short (5 seconds per pair) study or time-sharing pressure (mixed study-time blocks). High-knowledge subjects and Fast Memory-Search subjects were also quicker at retrieving the answer, when they knew the answer; but High-Knowledge subjects took longer in retrieving an answer under conditions of uncertainty. Results are discussed in terms of a general model of associative learning in which encoding is viewed as a process of generating links by constructing elaborations of the terms studied. Keywords: Cognition, Cognitive ability, Computerized testing, Individual differences, Learning, Learning ability.

Awareness, false recognition, and the Jacoby-Whitehouse effect.

Abstract: Replication is made of Jacoby and Whitehouse's (1989) findings that short duration context stimuli induced false recognition of test stimuli when the 2 events matched one another, but that the reserve was true of longer duration context stimuli (i.e., matching led to fewer false―as well as true―old responses). Although they claimed their results supported unconscious perception, short exposure in this article was clearly supraliminal, that is, subjects judged the relation between context and test stimuli far in excess of chance

The Forgetting Algorithm: How Fragmentary Knowledge of Exemplars Can Abstract Knowledge

Abstract: The position of Perruchet and Pacteau (1990, 1991) concerning what is retained about past exemplars when subjects implicitly learn an artificial grammar oscillates between two extremes (bigram information versus intact exemplars) On the other hand, THIYOS, the model proposed by Mathews, Druhan, and Roussel (1989), on the basis of classifier systems, is capable of finding optimal sets of features to retain through rule competition It is argued that people implicitly generate abstract rules that cannot be explained in terms of retention of bigrams or larger chunks without retention of spatial information and that THIYOS integrates findings associated with prototype and exemplar models of induction

Why idioms mean what they do

Abstract: This reply to Kreuz and Graesser (1991) expands on some of the theoretical and empirical issues discussed in an article on idiom interpretation by Nayak and Gibbs (1990). Specifically addressed are (a) the generality of Nayak and Gibbs's earlier findings on emotion idioms to idioms representative of other conceptual categories, (b) Nayak and Gibbs's characterization of the dead metaphor theory of idiomaticity, (c) the need for a componential analysis of idioms, and (d) a problem in the design and interpretation of one of Nayak and Gibbs's experimental studies

Focused attention and depressive deficits in memory.

Abstract: Hertel and Rude (1991) investigated the effects of depression on memory for words in a sentence completion task. They found that depressive deficits in memory can be eliminated by procedures that increase depressed Ss' focused attention to the task. Three areas are considered in this article: irrelevant thoughts, distraction, and inhibition.

Problems of the salient-features coding hypothesis: comment on weeks and proctor

Abstract: The finding that stimulus-response (S-R) effects can be obtained also with orthogonal S-R sets (i.e., above-below stimuli paired with right-left responses) seems difficult to reconcile with a translation-based account of spatial S-R compatibility. Weeks and Proctor (1990) have shown that the translation process operates on the basis of a salient-features coding principle. The purpose of this discussion is to outline some problems of Weeks and Proctor's proposal. In particular, it is argued that the salient-features coding hypothesis (a) does not take into consideration those spatial S-R compatibility effects that occur in an irrelevant stimulus dimension, (b) likely applies only to codes that are verbal in nature, and (c) lacks the simplicity that is an important characteristic of the original translation hypothesis. An alternative explanation of orthogonal S-R compatibility effects is presented

Composites, compromises, and CHARM: what is the evidence for blend memory representations?

Abstract: Metcalfe's (1990) distributed memory model simulates many misinformation effects by assuming representations that superimpose information from multiple sources. In the present article, two types of evidence are reviewed for such "blend" representations: composite recollections, including items from both the original and postevent sources (e.g., a previously seen intersection is remembered with a subsequently suggested stop sign), and compromise recollections, including features that cannot be exclusively associated with either source (e.g., a green car that was later suggested to be blue is remembered as bluish green). The considerable evidence for composite recollections provides little support for blend representations. Compromise recollections, though seemingly more persuasive, are both rare and interpretable without postulating blend representations. Speculation is made about potential findings that would support blend representations.

CHARMed, but not convinced: Comment on Metcalfe (1990).

Abstract: Metcalfe (1990) proposed her Composite Holographic Associative Recall Model (CHARM) as a model of eyewitness suggestibility. CHARM has many appealing properties and performed well in simulations of suggestibility. Most important, CHARM provides a formal mechanism by which suggestions impair memory without affecting performance on McCloskey and Zaragoza's (1985a) Modified Tests. Nonetheless, a number of shortcomings limit CHARM's usefulness as a model of suggestibility: (a) in the simulations, control terms differ from those in human studies; (b) the model makes a counterintuitive prediction about performance on a recognition pair composed of an event detail and its control term; (c) CHARM models association, not remembering; and (d) most of the intelligence in the simulations lies in the programmer rather than in CHARM itself, which limits the model's constraint on memory blending

Evidence for asymmetrical hemispheric priming using known and unknown warning stimuli in two language-trained chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes).

Abstract: In this article results are reported from 3 warning stimulus-priming experiments that assessed hemisphere-specific activation and lateralization in 2 language-trained chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). Results from Experiment 1 indicated a right visual field advantage in priming for meaningful warning stimuli presented in blocks of 36 trials. In Experiments 2 and 3, randomized presentations of meaningful, familiar, and meaningless stimuli resulted in right visual field advantages for meaningful warning stimuli. No visual half-field differences were found for familiar or meaningless warning stimuli. The findings are similar to those found in human subjects using known-unknown symbol paradigms; they suggest that basic phylogenetic neuropsychological systems related to activation and priming processes may link nonhuman primate and human studies of lateralization.

Are names ever mapped onto preexisting categories

Abstract: Support for Mervis's (1987) proposal that youngsters map new common nouns onto attribute cluster categories was obtained. In 3 studies, preschoolers interpreted a novel noun as if it designated a preexposed category. Experiment 3 included a group of adults who behaved similarly. Mapping was independent of the tendency to generalize according to shape. Neither age group mapped onto preexisting categories when making object similarity judgments, but preexposure did bias their naming of the objects' colors. Those who had examined sets containing 2 colors, both of which covaried with other bivalent dimensions, used more distinctive names for these hues than those preexposed to sets containing 6 colors, none of which covaried with bivalent dimensions.

Recognizing differences in recognition tasks: A reply to Lassiter and Slaw.

Abstract: Hanson and Hirst (1989) recently provided evidence that parsing strategies affect Ss' ability to recall but not to recognize episodic information. This finding conflicts with results obtained by Lassiter (1988) and Lassiter, Stone, and Rogers (1988) as noted by Lassiter and Slaw (1991). On the basis of a meta-anaiysis combining data from the Hanson and Hirst and the Lassiter experiments, Lassiter and Slaw argued that the discrepancy in findings across studies is \"more illusory than real\" (p. 81). In this article, four critical differences between the Hanson and Hirst study and the two Lassiter studies are outlined. It is argued that these factors must be considered when drawing conclusions about the effect of parsing strategies on recognition performance.