Showing papers in "Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology in 1997"
TL;DR: This paper reported a set of objective norms derived in a large-scale study of British children's naming of 297 pictured objects (including 232 from the Snodgrass & Vanderwart, 1980, set).
Abstract: Studies of lexical processing have relied heavily on adult ratings of word learning age or age of acquisition, which have been shown to be strongly predictive of processing speed. This study reports a set of objective norms derived in a large-scale study of British children's naming of 297 pictured objects (including 232 from the Snodgrass & Vanderwart, 1980, set). In addition, data were obtained on measures of rated age of acquisition, rated frequency, imageability, object familiarity, picture-name agreement, and name agreement. We discuss the relationship between the objective measure and adult ratings of word learning age. Objective measures should be used when available, but where not, our data suggest that adult ratings provide a reliable and valid measure of real word learning age.
525 citations
TL;DR: In this article, independent measures of age of acquisition (AoA), name agreement, and rated object familiarity were obtained from groups of British subjects for all items in the Snodgrass and Vanderwart (1980) picture set with single names.
Abstract: Independent measures of age of acquisition (AoA), name agreement, and rated object familiarity were obtained from groups of British subjects for all items in the Snodgrass and Vanderwart (1980) picture set with single names. Word frequency measures, both written and spoken, were taken from the Celex database (Centre for Lexical Information, 1993). The line drawings were presented to a separate groupof participants in an object naming task, and vocal naming latencies were recorded. A subset of 195 items was selected for analysis after excluding items with, for example, low name agreement. The major determinants of picture naming speed were the frequency of the name, the interaction between AoA and frequency, and name agreement. (The main effect of the AoA of the name and the effect of the rated image agreement of the picture were also significant on one-tailed tests.) Spoken name frequency affects object naming times mainly for items with later-acquired names.
409 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examined the effect of number of letters on latency for naming high frequency words, low-frequency words, and nonwords, and concluded that the effect on nonword naming reflects a sequential, non-lexical reading mechanism.
Abstract: The issue addressed in this study is whether there are differential effects of number of letters on word and nonword naming latency. Experiment 1 examined the effect of number of letters on latency for naming high-frequency words, low-frequency words, and nonwords. Number of letters affected latency for low-frequency words and nonwords but did not affect latency for high-frequency words. Number of letters was also negatively correlated with number of orthographic neighbours, number of friends, and average grapheme frequency. Number of letters continued to affect nonword naming latency, but not low-frequency word naming latency, after the effects of orthographic neighbourhood size, number of friends, and average grapheme frequency had been accounted for. Experiment 2 found that number of letters had no effect on the latency of delayed naming of the same words and nonwords. It is concluded that the effect of number of letters on nonword naming reflects a sequential, non-lexical reading mechanism.
323 citations
TL;DR: This article found that bilinguals read in their second language at points in the sentence where their native language presented conicting lexical information, however, they performed in a manner similar to native speakers of the language.
Abstract: Bilinguals' reading strategies were examined in their native and second language via the recording of eye movements. Experiment 1 examined the processing of sentences that con- tained local syntactic ambiguities. Results showed that bilinguals reading in their second language tended to resolve these ambiguities in a different way from native readers. Bilin- guals tended to prefer to attach incoming information to the most recently processed con- stituent. However, this global strategy was inuenced by lexical information provided by the verb. Moreover, the combined analysis of both groups of readers revealed an inuence of verb subcategorization information on syntactic ambiguity resolution. Experiment 2 also examined syntactic ambiguity resolution in the native and second language, for sentences that were ambiguous in only one of the bilinguals' two languages. Results showed that bilinguals hesitated when reading in their second language at points in the sentence where their native language presented conicting lexical information. Following this localized effect of ``transfer'', however, bilinguals performed in a manner similar to native speakers of the language. In combination, these experiments demonstrate that bilinguals perform a complete syntactic parsing of sentences when reading in the second language, and they do so in a manner similar to native speakers. Although lexical information can apparently inuence parsing in the second language, our results do not provide strong evidence that it acts to override syntactic analysis based on structural principles. As most adults who have attempted to master a second language after early childhood would agree, reading in a second language is anything but an automatic process. The dif® culty associated with foreign-language reading is reected in the results of various bilingual studies of sentence processing using a wide variety of measurements, from simple reaction time (Mack, 1986), to on-line assignment of grammatical roles (Kilborn, 1989), to the recording of evoked potentials (Ardal, Donald, Meuter, Muldrew, & Luce, 1990). Unanimously, these studies have shown that not only is second-language process- ing slower than native-language processing, but the pattern of results observed for
245 citations
TL;DR: Traditional cognitive neuropsychology places a disproportionate emphasis on representational (competence) deficits, with processing (performance) deficits being relatively neglected, and methods for distinguishing these two kinds of impairment are discussed.
Abstract: Cognitive neuropsychology provides a theoretical framework and methods that can be of value in the study of developmental disorders, but the “dissociation” logic at the centre of this approach is not well suited to the developmental context. This is illustrated with examples from specific language impairment. Within the developing language system there is ample evidence for interaction between levels of representation, with modularity emerging in the course of development. This means that one typically is seeking to explain a complex pattern of associated impairments, rather than highly selective deficits. For instance, a selective impairment in auditory processing can have repercussions through the language system and may lead to distinctive syntactic deficits that are seen in written as well as spoken language. Changes in the nature of representations and in the relationships between components of a developing system mean that cross-sectional data at a single point in development may be misleading indic...
224 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors investigated the planning and problem-solving abilities of normal adult subjects using a complex version of Shallice's (1982, 1988) Tower of London (TOL) task.
Abstract: This paper investigates the planning and problem-solving abilities of normal adult subjects using a complex version of Shallice's (1982, 1988) Tower of London (TOL) task. Subjects were required to plan a fluent solution to a range of 5-disc TOL puzzles and then execute their formulated plans as fast as possible. The number of errors and the times taken to prepare the most efficient solutions increased monotonically with the number of chunks of subgoal moves. A subgoal move is a move that is essential for the solution of the puzzle, but which does not place a disc into its goal position. A subgoal chunk is a consecutive series of subgoal moves that all transfer discs to and from the same pegs. Furthermore, preparation time was found to be sensitive to a manipulation that increased the number of competing alternative choices, at critical steps in move selection. When subjects planned their action sequences “on-line”, analyses of individual moves and individual move latencies suggested that planning TOL solu...
181 citations
TL;DR: This article investigated whether incremental interpretation applies to interclausal relationships and found that comprehension of diagnostic sentences occurred well before the end of the second clause, while causal sentences were processed incrementally.
Abstract: An eye-tracking experiment investigated whether incremental interpretation applies to interclausal relationships. According to Millis and Just's (1994) delayed-integration hypothesis, interclausal relationships are not computed until the end of the second clause, because the processor needs to have two full propositions before integration can occur. We investigated the processing of causal and diagnostic sentences (Sweetser, 1990; Tversky & Kahneman, 1982) that contained the connective because. Previous research (Traxler, Sanford, Aked, & Moxey, 1997) has demonstrated that readers have greater difficulty processing diagnostic sentences than causal sentences. Our results indicated that difficulty processing diagnostic sentences occurred well before the end of the second clause. Thus comprehenders appear to compute interclausal relationships incrementally.
139 citations
TL;DR: A bimanual circle drawing task was employed to elucidate the dynamics of intralimb and interlimb coordination and revealed distortions of movement trajectories, transient departures from the target pattern of coordination, and phase wandering that suggested loss of stability.
Abstract: A bimanual circle drawing task was employed to elucidate the dynamics of intralimb and interlimb coordination. Right-handed subjects were required to produce circles with both hands in either a symmetrical (mirror) mode (i.e. one hand moving clockwise, the other counter-clockwise) or in an asymmetrical mode (i.e. both hands moving clockwise or counter-clockwise). The frequency of movement was scaled by an auditory metronome from 1.50 Hz to 3.25 Hz in 8 (8-sec) steps. In the asymmetrical mode, distortions of the movement trajectories, transient departures from the target pattern of coordination, and phase wandering were evidence as movement frequency was increased. These features suggested loss of stability. Deviations from circular trajectories were most prominent for movements of the left hand. Transient departures from the required mode of coordination were also largely precipitated by the left hand. The results are discussed with reference to manual asymmetries and mechanisms of interlimb and intersegmental coordination.
127 citations
TL;DR: This paper conducted an eye-tracking experiment in French with sentences of the form “N V N1ofN2 who …” and found that French readers prefer early closure (and are garden-pathed when the sentence turns out to be a late-closure attachment).
Abstract: An eye-tracking experiment was conducted in French with sentences of the form “N V N1of-N2 who …” Example: “A journalist approachedthe barrister (male) of the singer (female) who seemed more confident (masculine or feminine gender) than (s)he ought to be.” The results are consistentwiththose of Cuetos and Mitchell(1988).French readers,like Spanish readers, prefer early closure (and are garden-pathed when the sentence turns out to be a late-closure attachment). This effect was exhibited by first-pass reading times that are usually assumed to reflect initial syntactic commitments. These results are discussed in relation to Frazier and Clifton's recent proposals concerning attachment mechanisms in the case of “non-primary” relationships such as relative clauses, and more precisely the notion that early-closure attachments observed in cross-linguistic studies are determined by relatively late processes.
111 citations
TL;DR: The focus of the current study was to determine whether spatial coupling occurs in individual parameters of the actions, or whether the shapes per se undergo accommodation, and to suggest the need for further investigation of the spatial domain of complex coordinated action.
Abstract: The majority of investigations on coordinated action have focused on temporal constraints in movements. Recent studies have demonstrated spatial constraints when the hands produce different traject...
105 citations
TL;DR: The results suggest that transfer in this simple memory task is mediated at least to some extent by abstract knowledge.
Abstract: Four experiments explored the extent to which abstract knowledge may underlie subjects' performance when asked to judge the grammaticality of letter strings generated from an artificial grammar. In Experiments 1 and 2 subjects studied grammatical strings instantiated with one set of letters and were then tested on grammatical and ungrammatical strings formed either from the same or a changedletter-set.Evenwith a change ofletter-set, subjects were found to be sensitive to a variety of violations of the grammar. In Experiments 3 and 4, the critical manipulation involved the way in which the training strings were studied: an incidental learning procedure was used for some subjects, and others engaged in an explicit code-breaking task to try to learn the rules of the grammar. When strings were generated from a biconditional (Experiment 4) but not from a standard finite-state grammar (Experiment 3), grammaticality judgements for test strings were independent of their surface similarity to specific studied stri...
TL;DR: The present experiments directly manipulated the phonological similarity of the irrelevant speech background and the to-be-remembered visual items to present a strong challenge to the phonology store hypothesis while offering some support to the changing state hypothesis.
Abstract: Irrelevant background speech disrupts immediate recall of visually presented items. Salame and Baddeley (1982) found that increasing the phonological similarity between the irrelevant speech and th...
TL;DR: It is argued that the disrupting effects reflect not a specifically spatial interference, but a central executive involvement in the rehearsal process in serial spatial memory.
Abstract: Interference in serial spatial memory was investigated in six experiments. Experiment 1 replicated Experiment 2 by Smyth and Scholey (1994) in showing that listening to tones that originated from different directions interfered with spatial memory. Experiment 2 showed, however, that the effect of mere listening was not observed when this was the only interference condition experienced by the subject. In Experiment 3, a binary pitch discrimination task performed on spatially separated tones impaired recall performance to the same extent as did left-right decisions. The same disrupting effect was also observed when the tones were presented from the same direction in the pitch discrimination task (Experiment 4) as well as in a binary loudness discrimination task (Experiment 5). Finally, repeating heard words did not interfere, whereas pitch discrimination performed on these same words disrupted recall (Experiment 6). It is argued that the disrupting effects reflect not a specifically spatial interference, but a central executive involvement in the rehearsal process in serial spatial memory.
TL;DR: Two experiments testing the use of working memory components during reasoning with temporal and spatial relations in four-term series problems found effects of all three secondary tasks on reasoning accuracy, which supports the hypothesis that the subjects construct spatial representations of the premise information with the support of visuo-spatial resources ofWorking memory.
Abstract: The present article reports two experiments testing the use of working memory components during reasoning with temporal and spatial relations in four-term series problems. In the first experiment four groups of subjects performed reasoning tasks with temporal and with spatial contents either without (control) or with a secondary task (articulatory suppression, visuospatial suppression or central executive suppression). The second experiment tested the secondary task effects in a within-subjects design either on problems with a spatial content or on problems with a temporal content, and within each content domain either under conditions of self-paced or of fixed presentation of the premises. Both experiments found effects of all three secondary tasks on reasoning accuracy. This supports the hypothesis that the subjects construct spatial representations of the premise information with the support of visuo-spatial resources of working memory. The second experiment also showed that during premise intake, only...
TL;DR: Analysis of studies investigating mood-state-dependent retrieval identifies methodological problems that may have contributed to the controversy surrounding the reliability of the effect—in particular, the possible confounding of encoding and retrieval in previous studies.
Abstract: Analysis of studies investigating mood-state-dependent retrieval identifies methodological problems that may have contributed to the controversy surrounding the reliability of the effect—in particu...
TL;DR: The authors found that earlier exposure to the identical voice sample (as compared to a different voice sample from the same person) caused a considerable bias towards responding “famous”, and they investigated whether this priming effect is voice-specific or whether it is related to post-perceptual processes in person recognition.
Abstract: Two experiments examined repetition priming in the recognition of famous voices. In Experiment 1, reaction times for fame decisions to famous voice samples were shorter than in an unprimed condition, when voices were primed by a different voice sample of the same person having been presented in an earlier phase of the experiment. No effect of voice repetition was observed for non-famous voices. In Experiment 2, it was investigated whether this priming effect is voice-specific or whether it is related to post-perceptual processes in person recognition. Recognizing a famous voice was again primed by having earlier heard a different voice sample of that person. Although an earlier exposure to that person's name did not cause any priming, there was some indication of priming following an earlier exposure to that person's face. Finally, earlier exposure to the identical voice sample (as compared to a different voice sample from the same person) caused a considerable bias towards responding “famous”—i.e. perfor...
TL;DR: This article investigated the tendency of high-anxiety individuals to interpret ambiguous information in a threatening fashion, and found that high anxiety subjects named target words confirming threats faster than low anxiety subjects, relative to non-threat words.
Abstract: Three experimentsinvestigated the tendency of high-anxiety individuals to interpretambiguous information in a threatening fashion. Priming ambiguous sentences (concerned with ego-threat, physical-threat, or non-threat events) were presented, followed by a disambiguating sentence in which a target word either confirmed or disconfirmed the consequence implied by the priming context. The sentences were presented word-by-word at a predetermined pace. Subjects read the sentences and pronounced the target word (naming task), which appeared either 500 msec or 1,250 msec after the onset of the last word (pre-target word) in the priming context. Results indicated that high-anxiety subjects named target words confirming threats faster than low-anxiety subjects, relative to non-threat words. Furthermore, this interpretative bias is: (a) strategic, rather than automatic, as it occurred with a 1,250-msec SOA, but not with a 500-msec SOA; (b) temporary, as it was found under evaluative stress conditions increasing stat...
TL;DR: It would be remarkable if the inversion effects demonstrated with the abstract categories used in the experiments reported here were not implicated in the inversions effects found with other classes of stimuli, whilst conceding that the analogy is not complete, particularly in the case of faces.
Abstract: This paper reports two experiments that investigate the extent to which it is plausible to suppose that an associatively based mechanism for perceptual learning acts as the basis for the effects of inversion on identification, recognition, matching and discrimination of faces (and certain other stimuli rendered familiar by expertise, e.g. gundogs). In the first experiment, an inversion effect that is contingent both on familiarity with a category and on the category possessing prototypical structure is demonstrated using discrimination learning of chequerboard stimuli. The second experiment demonstrates that the inversion effect found in Experiment 1 can generalize to a recognition paradigm as well. These results are discussed within the framework provided by associative learning theory, and a parallel is drawn with models employing a norm-based coding in similarity space. The conclusion is that it would be remarkable if the inversion effects demonstrated with the abstract categories used in the experimen...
TL;DR: The authors suggest that well-formedness judgements in conjunction with L.L. Jacoby's (1991) process dissociation procedure and an appropriate measurement model can be used to obtain measures of implicit an...
Abstract: We suggest that well-formedness judgements in conjunction with L.L. Jacoby's (1991) process dissociation procedure and an appropriate measurement model can be used to obtain measures of implicit an...
TL;DR: It is suggested that background visual information is used to evaluate the velocity of the aiming cursor, and that this perceived velocity is fed back to the control system, which uses it for on-line corrections.
Abstract: It is well known that dynamic visual information influences movement control, whereas the role played by background visual information is still largely unknown. Evidence coming mainly from eye movement and manual tracking studies indicates that background visual information modifies motion perception and might influence movement control. The goal of the present study was to test this hypothesis. Subjects had to apply pressure on a strain gauge to displace in a single action a cursor shown on a video display and to immobilize it on a target shown on the same display. In some instances, the visual background against which the cursor moved was unexpectedly perturbed in a direction opposite to (Experiment 1), or in the same direction as (Experiment 2) the cursor controlled by the subject. The results of both experiments indicated that the introduction of a visual perturbation significantly affected aiming accuracy. These results suggest that background visual information is used to evaluate the velocity of th...
TL;DR: In this paper, a new paradigm, the teaching-by-examples paradigm, was used to shed new light on the process of category acquisition, and high agreement between participants on the teaching sequences was found across conditions, and a typical sequence was identified for each category structure.
Abstract: A new paradigm, the “teaching-by-examples” paradigm, was used to shed new light on the process of category acquisition. In four experiments (n = 90, 90, 115, 117), manipulating the variables of category structure, status of non-target category, learning mode, and teaching mode, participants first learned a category and then taught it to someone else. High agreement between participants on the teaching sequences was found across conditions, and a typical sequence was identified for each category structure. The typical participant-produced sequences startedwith several ideal positive cases, followed by anideal negative case and then borderline cases. The efficiency of such sequences for teaching was tested in another experiment (n = 60), in which they were compared with sequences emphasizing category borders and sequences emphasizing each dimension separately. The typical participant-produced sequences induced the most efficient learning. It is proposed that the pattern of performance may provide a rich sou...
TL;DR: In this paper, an extension of Naatanen's readiness model was proposed to account for the effects of response probability on response force and response probability decreased as response probability increased, while the dependence of response force on response probability was insensitive to foreperiod length and to the use of loud auditory response signals.
Abstract: Response force (RF) was measured in a simple reaction time (RT) experiment varying response uncertainty by cuing the probability of the response on each trial. In all cases, RF decreased as response probability increased. The dependence of RF on response probability was insensitive to foreperiod length and to the use of loud auditory response signals, although the dependence of RT on response probability was sensitive to both of these manipulations. In combination with previous findings, these results provide evidence that RT and RF can be dissociated. We describe an extension of Naatanen's readiness model that can account for the effects of response probability on RF and RT. According to this model, the distance between motor activation and a threshold for action is relatively large when subjects are unprepared, and a large increment is needed to exceed this threshold, resulting in slow but foreceful responses. A possible neurophysiological implementation of this model is suggested.
TL;DR: In this paper, the effects of case marking and word order on syntactic parsing in Finnish were examined by registering readers' eye fixation patterns while they read single sentences for comprehension, and the results showed a facilitation effect in sentence parsing due to case marking.
Abstract: Effects of case marking and word order on syntactic parsing in Finnish were examined by registering readers' eye fixation patterns while they read single sentences for comprehension. Target nouns appearing towards the beginning of the sentence took one of three grammatical roles: subject, object, or adverbial. The subject phrase in the sentence-initial position is the canonical order in Finnish, but the two other word orders are less frequent. In one experimental condition, the grammatical role of the target noun was signalled by a case inflection attached to the preceding adjective modifier; in the second condition this was not the case. The results showed a facilitation effect in sentence parsing due to case marking. Similarly, there was an effect of word order, where the canonical SVO order was associated with greater processing ease than were non-canonical word orders. The two factors interacted so that there was no effect of case marking for the SVO order, but a significant case marking effect for th...
TL;DR: Three experiments examined transfer across form (words/pictures) and modality (visual/ auditory) in written word, auditory word, and pictorial implicit memory tests, as well as on a free recall task, which revealed an asymmetric pattern of transfer across modality.
Abstract: Three experiments examined transfer across form (words/pictures) and modality (visual/ auditory) in written word, auditory word, and pictorial implicit memory tests, as well as on a free recall task. Experiment 1 showed no significant transfer across form on any of the three implicit memory tests,and an asymmetric pattern of transfer across modality. In contrast, the free recall results revealed a very different picture. Experiment 2 further investigated the asymmetric modality effects obtained for the implicit memory measures by employing articulatory suppression and picture naming to control the generation of phonological codes. Finally, Experiment 3 examined the effects of overt word naming and covert picture labelling on transfer between study and test form. The results of the experiments are discussed in relation to Tulving and Schacter's (1990) Perceptual Representation Systems framework and Roediger's (1990) Transfer Appropriate Processing theory.
TL;DR: This article examined the hypothesis that a specific goal leads to implicit learning, whereas a nonspecific task leads to explicit learning, even though the pattern to be learnt is non-salient.
Abstract: We examine the hypothesis that a specific goal leads to implicit learning, whereas a nonspecific goal leads to explicit learning, even though the pattern to be learnt is non-salient. Subjects learned a dynamic control task (Berry & Broadbent, 1984). One group of subjects had a specific control goal, the second group had a non-specific pattern-search goal, and the third group had both goals. On measures of learning (control performance, prediction, and general questions), the non-specific group learnt explicitly, outperforming the other two groups on all learning measures. The specific group performed next best on control performance and prediction questions but performed very poorly on general questions. The dual-goal group performed poorly on all measures. Non-specific subjects predicted well on both familiar and unfamiliar situations. Specific-goal subjects predicted well on familiar situations, regardless of whether their previous response had been correct or incorrect. Dual-goal subjects predicted wel...
TL;DR: Covert orienting in audition is demonstrated both for stimuli requiring an overt response and also for stimuli that did not require a behavioural response, suggesting that this attentional selection is located at intermediate stages of information processing, rather than at peripheral stages such as basic sensory-specific processing or response selection.
Abstract: The present study examines mechanisms of endogenous covert spatial orienting in audition as revealed by event-related brain potentials (ERPs) and reaction times (RTs). In one experimental condition, subjects were instructed to respond to any target tone irrespective of whether it was presented in a valid (spatially predictive cue), neutral (uninformative cue), or invalid (misleading cue) trial. In another experimental condition, only target tones presented at a cued position required a response—that is, subjects could completely ignore tones presented at the uncued ear. Cue validity had an effect on RT, which consisted in benefits for valid trials and in costs for invalid trials relative to the RTs in neutral trials. There were also distinct ERP effects of cue validity in the 100–300 msec time range. These ERP effects were enlarged in the condition in which uncued tones could be ignored. The effects of cue validity on RTs and ERPs demonstrated covert orienting in audition both for stimuli requiring an overt response and also for stimuli that did not require a behavioural response. It is argued that this attentional selection is located at intermediate stages of information processing, rather than at peripheral stages such as basic sensory-specific processing or response selection.
TL;DR: Two experiments are reported that draw an analogy between experiments on verbal memory and experiments on tacit learning, and reveal a close relation between the information underlying both recognition memory and classification judgements.
Abstract: Two experiments are reported that draw an analogy between experiments on verbal memory and experiments on tacit learning. Rules that experimenters use to select words for memory experiments, such as frequency, length, and grammatical class, produce consistencies to which subjects can become sensitive. Replicating the key results from the tacit learning literature, subjects in our experiments discriminated new words consistent with the experimenters' selection rules from inconsistent words, even when they could not describe those rules. The results also reveal a close relation between the information underlying both recognition memory and classification judgements. In particular, a "mirror effect" (Glanzer & Bowles, 1976) is found with both tasks. Implications for research on memory and learning are discussed.
TL;DR: This paper argued that associative learning theory is capable of explaining much of the behavior of animals and pointing precisely to the ways in which that behaviour is complex, and under some circumstances, at least, the behaviour of people mirrors that of other animals and is equally amenable to associative analysis.
Abstract: Fifty years ago, learning theory, whose principles were derived from experiments on conditioning in animals, was a central focus of much of experimental psychology. But the cognitive revolution that swept through human experimental psychology in the 1960s, especially when it was taken up by many animal psychologists themselves, seemed to consign traditional learning theory to the scrap heap. Liberation from the shackles of old-fashioned behaviourism, however, should not be bought at the price of dismissing associative learning theory. Suitably modified and extended, associative theory is capable of explaining much of the behavior of animals and of pointing precisely to the ways in which that behaviour is complex. And under some circumstances, at least, the behaviour of people mirrors that of other animals and is equally amenable to an associative analysis.
TL;DR: A sequence of auditory stimuli interpolated between the initial presentation of a tone and a comparison tone impairs recognition performance, and the relative immunity of recognition performance to the interpolation of unprocessed digit sequences is not explained wholly by such coherence.
Abstract: A sequence of auditory stimuli interpolated between the initial presentation of a tone and a comparisontone impairs recognition performance.Notably, the impairment is much lesswith interpolated speech than with tones. Six experiments converge on the conclusion that this pattern ofimpairment isdue more to the organization of the interpolated sequence than to its similarity to the to-be-remembered standard. Factors that contribute to the coherence of the interpolated sequence into a stream distinct from the initial tone are primary determinants of the level of impairment. This is demonstrated by manipulating factors that contribute to the coherence of the interpolated sequence by the action of temporal, spatial, timbral, and tonal attributes. However, the relative immunity of recognition performance to the interpolation of unprocessed digit sequences is not explained wholly by such coherence.
TL;DR: The results suggest that the basic-level advantage is subject to the effects of context, but the effects are not as strong as the context effects on other aspects of categorization behaviour (e.g. rating typicality of a category member).
Abstract: Four experiments were conducted to investigate the effects of prior processing episodes on people's preference for categorizing objects at the basic level (e.g. dog) relative to their preference for categorizing at the superordinate (e.g. animal) and the subordinate (e.g. Dalmation) levels. The prior processing episode in Experiment 1 was designed to induce subjects to activate representations at the superordinate level, and those in the remaining experiments were designed to induce subjects to differentiate objects at the subordinate level. After the prior processing episodes, subjects performed either a free naming or a picture categorization task that required them to decide whether an illustrated object belonged to a specified category. Results showed that prior processing episodes modestly reduced the superiority of basic level to superordinate level and subordinate level in categorization but not in free naming. The results suggest that the basic-level advantage is subject to the effects of context,...