Showing papers in "Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition in 1996"

Reconfiguration of processing mode prior to task performance.

Abstract: Participants performed choice reaction time (RT) tasks on 2-dimensional stimuli such that each task was based on 1 stimulus dimension. A cue preceded the target stimulus and instructed the participant about which (randomly selected) task to perform. Shifting between tasks was associated with an RT cost, which was larger when the (randomly varying) cue-target interval was short as opposed to when it was long. Cue-target interval was not confounded with the remoteness from the previous trial. Hence, it affected the task-shift cost through preparation rather than by allowing carryover effects to dissipate. Similar results were obtained for 2 location tasks and for the object-based tasks (color and shape discrimination). They indicate a time-effort consuming process that operates after a task shift, precedes task execution, and presumably reflects the advance reconfiguration of processing mode.

Conceptual pacts and lexical choice in conversation.

Abstract: When people in conversation refer repeatedly to the same object, they come to use the same terms. This phenomenon, called lexical entrainment, has several possible explanations. Ahistorical accounts appeal only to the informativeness and availability of terms and to the current salience of the object's features. Historical accounts appeal in addition to the recency and frequency of past references and to partner-specific conceptualizations of the object that people achieve interactively. Evidence from 3 experiments favors a historical account and suggests that when speakers refer to an object, they are proposing a conceptualization of it, a proposal their addresses may or may not agree to. Once they do establish a shared conceptualization, a conceptual pact, they appeal to it in later references even when they could use simpler references. Over time, speakers simplify conceptual pacts and, when necessary, abandon them for new conceptualizations.

Words and voices: episodic traces in spoken word identification and recognition memory.

Abstract: Most theories of spoken word identification assume that variable speech signals are matched to canonical representations in memory. To achieve this, idiosyncratic voice details are first normalized, allowing direct comparison of the input to the lexicon. This investigation assessed both explicit and implicit memory for spoken words as a function of speakers' voices, delays between study and test, and levels of processing. In 2 experiments, voice attributes of spoken words were clearly retained in memory. Moreover, listeners were sensitive to fine-grained similarity between 1st and 2nd presentations of different-voice words, but only when words were initially encoded at relatively shallow levels of processing. The results suggest that episodic memory traces of spoken words retain the surface details typically considered as noise in perceptual systems.

Stroop performance in healthy younger and older adults and in individuals with dementia of the Alzheimer's type

Abstract: Components of the Stroop task were examined to investigate the role that inhibitory processes play in cognitive changes in healthy older adults and in individuals with dementia of the Alzheimer's type (DAT). Inhibitory breakdowns should result in an increase in Stroop interference. The results indicate that older adults show a disproportionate increase in interference compared with younger adults. DAT individuals show interference proportionate to older adults but a disproportionate increase in facilitation for congruent color-word trials, and an increased intrusion of word naming on incongruent color naming trials. An ex-Gaussian analysis of response time distributions indicated that the increased interference observed in older adults was due to an increase in the tail of the distribution. Application of the process dissociation analysis of the Stroop task (D.S. Lindsay & L.L. Jacoby, 1994) indicated that older adults showed increased word process estimates, whereas DAT individuals showed differences in both color and word process estimates. Taken together, the results are consistent with an inhibitory breakdown in normal aging and an accelerated breakdown in inhibition in DAT individuals.

Temporal discounting and utility for health and money

Abstract: In 3 experiments, choices for hypothetical amounts of future health and money showed that, contrary to normative discounted utility theory, the temporal discount rate, or annual percentage increase in value needed to offset a delay, differed for the 2 domains. Domain independence, defined as the low correlation between health and money discount rates relative to the consistency within each domain, was not due to different utility functions for health and money. Consistent with other research, these results suggest that decision domain affects the cognitive processes used. Despite this domain difference, there were some similarities between the 2 domains. Both health and money decisions revealed that discount rates were larger for short delays, small magnitudes, and gains as compared with losses.

Temporal structure of syntactic parsing: early and late event-related brain potential effects.

Abstract: Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded from participants listening to or reading sentences that were correct, contained a violation of the required syntactic category, or contained a syntactic-category ambiguity. When sentences were presented auditorily (Experiment 1), there was an early left anterior negativity for syntactic-category violations, but not for syntactic-category ambiguities. Both anomaly types elicited a late centroparietally distributed positivity. When sentences were presented visually word by word (Experiment 2), again an early left anterior negativity was found only for syntactic-category violations, and both types of anomalies elicited a late positivity. The combined data are taken to be consistent with a 2-stage model of parsing, including a 1st stage, during which an initial phrase structure is built and a 2nd stage, during which thematic role assignment and, if necessary, reanalysis takes place. Disruptions to the 1st stage of syntactic parsing appear to be correlated with an early left anterior negativity, whereas disruptions to the 2nd stage might be correlated with a late posterior distributed positivity.

Selection of Procedures in Mental Addition: Reassessing the Problem Size Effect in Adults

Abstract: Adults' solution times to simple addition problems typically increase with the sum of the problems (the problem size effect). Models of the solution process are based on the assumption that adults always directly retrieve answers to problems from an associative network. Accordingly, attempts to explain the problem size effect have focused either on structural explanations that relate latencies to numerical indices (e.g., the area of a tabular representation) or on explanations that are based on frequency of presentation or amount of practice. In this study, the authors have shown that the problem size effect in simple addition is mainly due to participants' selection of nonretrieval procedures on larger problems (i.e., problems with sums greater than 10). The implications of these results for extant models of addition performance are discussed. Twenty years of research on mental arithmetic has shown that problems involving larger numbers (e.g., 9 + 6) are solved more slowly than problems involving smaller numbers (e.g., 3 + 4). Surprisingly, in spite of the wealth of empirical data and the extensive theoretical development on mental arithmetic, the problem size effect has eluded satisfactory explanation (Ashcraft, 1992; McCloskey, Harley, & Sokol, 1991; Widaman & Little, 1992). The goal of the present research was to test an explanation of the problem size effect in adults that has been used to account for the arithmetic performance of children (Ashcraft, 1992; Siegler, 1987). We hypothesized that variability in the selection of procedures to solve simple addition problems has a major impact on solution latencies and may account for a substantial portion of the problem size effect.

Artificial grammar learning depends on implicit acquisition of both abstract and exemplar-specific information.

Abstract: The contributions of exemplar-specific and abstract knowledge to artificial grammar learning were examined in amnesic patients and controls. In Experiment 1, grammatical rule adherence and chunk strength exerted separate effects on grammaticality judgments. Amnesic patients exhibited intact classification performance, demonstrating the same pattern of results as controls. In Experiment 2, amnesic patients exhibited impaired declarative memory for chunks. In Experiment 3, both amnesic patients and controls exhibited transfer when tested with a letter set different than the one used for training, although performance was better when the same letter sets were used at training and test. The results suggest that individuals learn both abstract information about training items and exemplar-specific information about chunk strength and that both types of learning occur independently of declarative memory.

Studies of directed forgetting in older adults.

Abstract: Younger and older adults were compared in 4 directed forgetting experiments. These varied in the use of categorized versus unrelated word lists and in the use of item by item versus blocked remember-forget cueing procedures. Consistent with L. Hasher and R. T. Zacks's (1988) hypothesis of impaired inhibitory mechanisms in older adults, a variety of findings indicated that this age group is less able than yoimger adults to suppress the processing and retrieval of items designated as to be forgotten (TBF). Specifically, in comparison with younger adults, older adults produced more TBF word intrusions on an immediate recall test (Experiments 1A and 1B), took longer to reject TBF items (relative to a neutral baseline) on an immediate recognition test (Experiment 3), and recalled (Experiments 1A, 1B, and 2) and recognized (Experiments 1B and 2) relatively more TBF items on delayed retention tests in which all studied items were designated as targets. In this article, we present four experiments comparing the performance of younger and older adults on directed forgetting tasks. In this type of task (e.g., see Bjork, 1989), participants are presented items to study, some of which they are told to remember and others of which they are told to forget. Because the cueing as to which items are to be remembered (TBR items) and which are to be forgotten (TBF items) occurs after the items have been presented for study, participants must pay some attention to each item as it is presented. Thus, the directed forgetting paradigm investigates the ability to forget some inputs that one has recently attended to while at the same time remembering others presented in the same context and near the same time. To the degree that one is successful at this task, as younger adults generally are, the following trends are seen: The presence of TBF items on a list does not reduce recall or recognition of TBR items; there are few intrusions of TBF items when participants are asked to report only TBR items; and performance on TBF items is relatively poor when, on a later retention test, participants are asked to report TBF as well as TBR items.

Classifying faces by race : the structure of face categories

Abstract: This article explored the finding that cross-race (CR) faces are more quickly classified by race than same race (SR) faces. T. Valentine and M. Endo (1992) modeled this effect by assuming that face categories can be explained on the basis of node activations in a multidimensional exemplar space. Therefore, variations in exemplar density between and within face categories explain both facilitated classification of CR faces and the relationship between typicality and classification RT within face categories. The present findings from classification and visual search tasks suggest that speeded classification of CR faces is instead caused by a quickly coded race feature that marks CR but not SR faces. Also, systematic manipulations of facial typicality cause no variation in classifiability aside from slowed classification of very distinctive faces. These results suggest that the exemplar model cannot explain important aspects of face classification. Although face perception is usually studied from the standpoint of our amazing ability to differentiate a large number of faces, representations of face categories are also important. The process of categorizing individual faces has a number of implications both for general models of classification and for understanding face identification. The focus here is on the apparently paradoxical finding that participants are faster to classify faces they have difficulty recognizing. In the present case, this means that White participants classify Black or Asian faces faster than White faces (Levin, 1989; Valentine & Endo, 1992). In attempting to understand facilitated classification of cross-race faces (hereinafter referred to as the CR [cross-race] classification advantage), the present research considers explanations for the CR classification advantage as they relate to the basic structure of face categories, both in terms of discrimination between categories and in terms of their internal structure. Three explanations for the CR classification advantage are tested here. The first, stemming from Valentine's (1991) multidimensional space framework, places the advantage in the context of an exemplar model of face classification and recognition. This model uses simple assumptions based on

Processing Narrative Time Shifts

Abstract: This study examined how the chronological distance between 2 consecutively narrated story events affects the on-line comprehension and mental representation of these events. College students read short narrative passages from a computer screen and responded to recognition probes. The results of 4 experiments consistently demonstrated that readers used temporal information to construct situation models while comprehending narratives. First, sentence reading times increased when there was a narrative time shift (e.g., as denoted by an hour later) as opposed to when there was no narrative time shift (e.g., as denoted by a moment later). Second, information from the previously narrated event was less accessible when it was followed by a time shift than when it was not. Third, 2 events that were separated by a narrative time shift were less strongly connected in long-term memory than 2 events that were not separated by a narrative time shift. The results suggest that readers use a strong iconicity assumption during story comprehension.

Mood, reasoning, and central executive processes.

Abstract: How positive induced mood states affect reasoning was investigated in three experiments. In Experiment 1, consistent with resource allocation theory (H. C. Ellis & P. W. Ashbrook, 1987), both positive and negative mood suppressed performance on a deontic version of Wason's selection task (P. W. Cheng & K. J. Holyoak, 1985)—participants confirmed where they normally falsify. Experiment 2 revealed the same confirmatory responses for participants performing a concurrent distracter task, indicating that induced mood states suppress reasoning by depleting central executive resources. This hypothesis was directly tested in Experiment 3. Participants in a positive, but not in a negative, mood state showed suppressed performance on the Tower of London task (T. Shallice, 1982)—the classical central executive task. The robust positive mood effects and the confirmation effects are discussed in terms of the D. A. Norman and T. Shallice (1986) model of central executive function and recent accounts of selection task performance (L. Cosmides, 1989; K. I. Manktelow & D. E. Over, 1991; M. Oaksford & N. Chater, 1994).

Visual memory for novel shapes: implicit coding without attention.

Abstract: Implicit memory for novel shapes was explored with a negative priming paradigm. The results show that representations of shapes, formed in a single trial and without attention, can last without decrement across 200 intervening trials and with temporal delays of up to a month. No explicit memory of the shapes was available, either immediately or after a delay. There were consistent individual differences in the amount of negative priming shown, and some participants showed only facilitation. There was a trend toward increased facilitation across time, as if the memory of the shape survived longer than an "action tag" attached to it, which specified whether it should be attended or ignored. The results demonstrate a surprising combination of plasticity and permanence in the visual system and suggest that the roles of both attention and repetition may be to ensure voluntary retrievability rather than to form a lasting memory.

Spatial attention and implicit sequence learning: evidence for independent learning of spatial and nonspatial sequences.

Abstract: This research investigated whether regular spatial orienting sequences can be learned implicitly and independently of response requirements. In a new version of a serial response task introduced by M. J. Nissen and P. Bullemer (1987) participants had to discriminate between objects that could occur at different locations. Independent sequences determined the succession of locations and objects. Even participants who were not aware of any regularities exhibited evidence for learning of both sequences (Experiment 1). Experiment 2 showed that the joint learning of spatial and object sequences was as efficient as learning of single sequences and that it even occurred when learning required memory for past sequence elements and attention was blocked through a secondary tone-counting task. Results are consistent with the idea that independent systems may exist for the implicit acquisition of spatial and nonspatial regularities.

Perceptual effects on remembering : recollective processes in picture recognition memory

Abstract: In 3 experiments, the effects of perceptual manipulations on recollective experience were tested. In Experiment 1, a picture-superiority effect was obtained for overall recognition and Remember judgements in a picture recognition task. In Experiment 2, size changes of pictorial stimuli across study and test reduced recognition memory and Remember judgements. In Experiment 3, deleterious effects of changes in left-right orientation of pictorial stimuli across study and test were obtained for Remember judgements. An alternate framework that emphasizes a distinctiveness-fluency processing distinction is proposed to account for these findings because they cannot easily be accommodated within the existing account of differences in conceptual and perceptual processing for the 2 categories of recollective experience: Remembering and Knowing, respectively (J. M. Gardiner, 1988; S. Rajaram, 1993).

Calibration and diagnosticity of confidence in eyewitness identification: Comments on what can be inferred from the low confidence-accuracy correlation

Abstract: The relationship between eyewitness confidence and accuracy as measured by the psi point-biserial correlation has been described as poor or even nonexistent in the literature on lineup identificati ...

No enemies in the neighborhood: absence of inhibitory neighborhood effects in lexical decision and semantic categorization.

Abstract: The effect of neighborhood density on visual word recognition was found to be facilitatory for words but inhibitory for nonwords in 3 lexical-decision experiments However, the facilitation virtually disappeared when the task was changed to semantic categorization (animal vs nonanimal), despite the presence of a strong frequency effect None of these experiments showed a consistent inhibitory effect of a higher frequency neighbor The absence of inhibitory effects suggests that competition does not play a key role in visual word recognition The data also suggest that the neighborhood density effect is not an access effect but is a task-dependent effect instead Language: en

Comparing direct and indirect measures of sequence learning

Abstract: Comparing the sensitivity of similar direct and indirect measures is proposed as the best way to provide evidence for unconscious learning. The authors apply this approach, first proposed by E. M. Reingold and P. M. Merikle (1988), to a choice reaction-time task in which the material is generated probabilistically on the basis of a finite-state grammar (A. Cleeremans, 1993). The data show that participants can learn about the structure of the stimulus material over training with the choice reaction-time task, but only to a limited extent - a result that is well predicted by the simple recurrent network model of A. Cleeremans and J. L. McClelland (1991). Participants can also use some of this knowledge to perform a subsequent generation task. However, detailed partial correlational analyses that control for knowledge as assessed by the generation task show that large effects of sequence learning are exclusively expressed through reaction time. This result suggests that at least some of this learning cannot be characterized as conscious.

Base rates in category learning.

Abstract: Previous researchers have discovered perplexing inconsistencies in how people appear to utilize category base rates when making category judgments. In particular, D.L. Medin and S.M. Edelson (1988) found an inverse base-rate effect, in which participants tended to select a rare category when tested with a combination of conflicting cues, and M.A. Gluck and G.H. Bower (1988) reported apparent base-rate neglect, in which participants tended to select a rare category when tested with a single symptom for which objective diagnosticity was equal for all categories. This article suggests that common principles underlie both effects: First, base-rate information is learned and consistently applied to all training and testing cases. Second, the crucial effect of base rates is to cause frequent categories to be learned before rare categories so that the frequent categories are encoded by their typical features and the rare categories are encoded by their distinctive features. Four new experiments provide evidence consistent with those principles. The principles are formalized in a new connectionist model that can rapidly shift attention to distinctive features.

Semantic ambiguity effects in word identification

Abstract: The influence of semantic ambiguity on word identification processes was explored in a series of word naming and lexical-decision experiments. There was no reliable ambiguity effect in 2 naming experiments, although an ambiguity advantage in lexical decision was obtained when orthographically legal nonwords were used. No ambiguity effect was found in iexical decision when orthographically illegal nonwords were used, implying a semantic locus for the ambiguity advantage. These results were simulated by using a distributed memory model that also produces the ambiguity disadvantage in gaze duration that has been obtained with a reading comprehension task. Ambiguity effects in the model arise from the model's attempt to activate multiple meanings of an ambiguous word in response to presentation of that word's orthographic pattern. Reasons for discrepancies in empirical results and implications for distributed memory models are considered. Any comprehensive theory of mental representation and process must accommodate the complex means by which concepts are communicated through language. Through the course of history, humans have developed tools of communication that facilitate the relaying of ideas and concepts, such as a writing system or orthography. This mapping of concepts to orthography is not entirely one to one, however, resulting in some words that correspond to multiple concepts, which are known as semantically ambiguous words. When reading text, the context provided by preceding words and sentences provides a means of disambiguating such words. As a result, we may not even notice the ambiguity in words that we are reading in context. If, on the other hand, semantically ambiguous words are presented in isolation, their alternative meanings are readily accessible, and thus their ambiguous nature is noticed. In the research reported in this article, we compare performance on semantically ambiguous words with that of semantically unambiguous words in isolated word identification tasks and describe simulations of the empirical effects within the framework of a distributed memory architecture (Masson, 1995). The effect of semantic ambiguity on isolated word identification has usually been determined by comparing performance on unambiguous words (which are associated with only one

Summation of activation: Evidence from multiple primes that converge and diverge within semantic memory.

Abstract: Six experiments addressed the combinatorial influence of multiple related primes in naming, lexical decision and relatedness judgment performance. Primes either converged on a single semantic representation (e.g., LION-STRIPES-TIGER) or diverged onto distinct semantic representations (e.g., KIDNEY-PIANO-ORGAN). The facilitatory influence of 2 related primes was well predicted by the sum of the influences from the single-related-prime conditions (a) for both convergent and divergent primes, (b) in lexical-decision and naming, (c) across varying prime-target stimulus onset asynchronies, and (d) under target-degradation conditions that increased the priming effects. The relatedness-judgment task yielded an additive pattern of priming for convergent prime conditions; however, an underadditive pattern of priming was found for divergent prime conditions. Discussion focuses on the role of attentional systems that modulate the type of information used to perform a given task.

Reliability of prosodic cues for resolving syntactic ambiguity.

Abstract: Although previous research has shown that listeners can use prosody to resolve syntactic ambiguities in spoken sentences, it is not clear whether naive, untrained speakers in experimental situations ordinarily produce the prosodic cues necessary for disambiguating such sentences. In a series of experiments, the authors found that neither professional nor untrained speakers consistently produced such prosodic cues when simply reading ambiguous sentences in a disambiguating discourse context. Speakers who were aware of the ambiguities and were told to intentionally pronounce the sentences with one meaning of the other, however, did produce sufficient prosodic cues for listeners to identify the intended meanings.

Mapping conceptual to spatial relations in visual reasoning

Abstract: In 3 experiments, the authors investigated the impact of goals and perceptual relations on graph interpretation when people evaluate functional dependencies between continuous variables Participants made inferences about the relative rate of 2 continuous linear variables (altitude and temperature) The authors varied the assignments of variables to axes, the perceived cause-effect relation between the variables, and the causal status of the variable being queried The most striking finding was that accuracy was greater when the slope-mapping constraint was honored, which requires that the variable being queried be assigned to the vertical axis, so that steeper lines map to faster changes in the queried variable The authors propose that graphs provide external instantiations of intermediate mental representations, enabling people to move from visuospatial representations to abstractions through the use of natural mappings between perceptual and conceptual relations

Effects of lexical frequency and syntactic complexity in spoken-language comprehension: Evidence from the auditory moving-window technique.

Abstract: In 2 experiments, a new technique called the auditory moving window was used to investigate aspects of spoken-language processing. Participants paced their way through spoken sentences divided into word or wordlike segments, and their processing time for each segment was recorded. The 1st experiment demonstrated that high-frequency words in spoken sentences require less time to process than do low-frequency words. The 2nd experiment demonstrated that words in syntactically demanding contexts (i.e., the disambiguating word of so-called garden-path sentences) are processed longer than the same words in syntactically simpler contexts. Helpful prosodic information appeared to facilitate reanalysis of garden-path structures but did not seem to prevent the misanalysis. The implications of these findings for issues in spoken-language comprehension are discussed. The authors conclude that the auditory moving-window technique provides a useful tool for addressing largely unexplored issues in spoken-language comprehension.

Generalizing Solution Procedures Learned From Examples

Abstract: Three experiments tested the hypothesis that when learners are led to group steps from example solutions, they will be more likely to learn subgoals that can be transferred to novel problems, thereby improving problem solving. The results from each experiment suggest that a label serves as a cue for grouping by demonstrating that a relatively meaningless label in an example solution is as effective as a meaningful label in helping learners transfer to novel problems. Experiments 2 and 3 provide converging evidence for subgoal learning by demonstrating that participants studying example solutions with a label were more likely to segment the solution as a function of the label, to mention the corresponding subgoal in their self-explanations while studying the examples, and to mention the subgoal in their descriptions of how to solve problems after they studied the examples.

Word frequency effects on recall, recognition, and word fragment completion tests.

Abstract: In 3 experiments, the effect of word frequency on an indirect word fragment completion test and on direct free-recall and Yes-no recognition tests was investigated. In Experiment 1, priming in word fragment completion was substantially greater for low-frequency words than for high-frequency words, but free recall was unaffected. Experiment 2 replicated the word fragment completion result and showed a corresponding effect in recognition. Experiment 3 replicated the low-frequency priming advantage in word fragment completion with the set of words that P.L. Tenpenny and E.J. Shoben (1992) had used in reporting the opposite pattern in word fragment completion. Using G. Mandler's (1980) dual-process theory, the authors argue that recognition and word fragment completion tests both rely on within-item integration that influences familiarity, whereas recall hinges on elaboration that influences retrievability.

Explicit and implicit learning of event sequences: evidence from event-related brain potentials

Abstract: Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded during a serial reaction time (RT) task, where single deviant items seldom (Experiment 1) or frequently (Experiment 2) replaced 1 item of a repeatedly presented 10-item standard sequence. Acquisition of sequence knowledge was reflected in faster RTs for standard as compared with deviant items and in an enhanced negativity (N2 component) of the ERP for deviant items. Effects were larger for participants showing explicit knowledge in their verbal reports and in a recognition test. The lateralized readiness potential indicated that correct responses were activated with shorter latencies after training. For deviant items, participants with explicit knowledge showed an initial activation of the incorrect but expected response. These findings suggest that the acquisition of explicit and implicit knowledge is reflected in different electrophysiological correlates and that sequence learning may involve the anticipatory preparation of responses.