Effects of content on inclusive disjunction reasoning

An experiment is reported which establishes that inclusive disjunction arguments embedded in concrete content are not always easier to reason with than those involving abstract content. The subjects had to assess conclusions drawn from pairs of premises such as “Either Joan is intelligent or she is rich (or both); Joan is intelligent” or “Either Joan is intelligent or she is rich (or both); Joan is not intelligent”. The terms in the disjunctive premise were varied systematically across three content dimensions (i.e. compatible, abstract and contradictory). An analysis of variance revealed significant differences according to both principle of inference and type of content, and a significant interaction between these factors. The results demonstrated that semantically incompatible premise content had a marked influence on comprehension of inclusive disjunction reasoning schemes. The response patterns suggest that these reasoning schemes invited erroneous judgments based on other logical connectives.     

Bilingual comparative judgments: Evidence against the switch hypothesis

The notion that bilinguals possess a language-switching mechanism was examined. Subjects made comparative judgments about concrete concept pairs (e.g., cow-panther) and abstract concept pairs (e.g., joy-sorrow), which were presented either unilingually or in mixed language. There was no significant difference in latencies for unilingual and mixed language concept pairs, whether the pairs were concrete or abstract. The results substantiate neither the general switch hypothesis nor the notion that between-language and within-language associative networks have different transition probabilities.This research was based in part on the author's master's thesis, submitted to the University of Guelph.     

Construal level and temporal judgments of the past: the moderating role of knowledge

The vast majority of work in construal level theory has found a robust relationship between construal level and temporal judgments for future events: Distance is associated with the abstract, and nearness is associated with the concrete. Our work looks at the past and proposes a critical moderator that reverses this relationship: knowledge. Through experiments involving real news events, we demonstrate that people with less knowledge about events felt nearer to them when recalling them in a concrete mindset versus an abstract one. However, this relationship reverses for those with greater knowledge: They feel closer to past events when recalling them in an abstract mindset versus a concrete one. We provide evidence that this reversal stems from feelings of metacognitive ease that inform temporal judgments when knowledge (which drives what information is held available and accessible in memory) and construal mindset (which drives what information is sought from memory) coincide. Our findings suggest that in memory, there are instances where the abstract seems near and the concrete seems distant.     

Effects of concreteness and semantic relatedness on composite imagery ratings and cued recall

Day and Bellezza (1983) rejected a dual coding imagery explanation for the superior recall of concrete words because unrelated concrete pairs were rated lower in composite imagery but were still remembered better than related abstract pairs. We show that dual coding theory explains their results and our new findings using the same paradigm. In Experiment 1, 120 subjects rated imagery or relatedness for 108 pairs that varied in concreteness, pair relatedness, and associative strength. Incidental cued recall followed. Relatedness and strength affected imagery ratings, as did concreteness, and very low relatedness partly accounted for the low composite imagery ratings for unrelated concrete pairs. Concreteness and relatedness also affected recall, and suporior recall for unrelated concrete pairs occurred consistently under imagery but not under relatedness instructions. In Experiment 2, 40 subjects rated imagery value and recalled 24 pairs. Subsequent questioning indicated that composite images were retrieved better given stimuli from unrelated concrete than from related abstract pairs. These findings and Day and Bellezza’s original results are explained in terms of (1) imaginal and verbal associative processes, which jointly influence composite imagery ratings and recall, and (2) the critical role of stimulus concreteness during image retrieval and recall (i.e., the conceptual peg hypothesis).     

Category Use in Abstract Mental Comparisons

A recent model proposes that at least two processes are involved in mental comparisons; use of analogue and use of category information. The evidence that category information is used is not strong, however. It comes mainly from studies which had subjects overlearn the objects associated with arbitrary categories in the laboratory, and which used concrete dimensions. In the present study, two experiments were conducted to see if subjects spontaneously use natural categories from an abstract dimension (occupational status) in mental status comparisons. Subjects scaled occupations into status categories before each experiment and then compared the status of within-category and between-category occupation pairs. Within-category status comparisons reliably took longer than between-category ones of the same distance, suggesting that natural status categories were used.     

The relation between visual imagery mediators and recall

Three hypotheses are discussed as explanations for the result that pairs of concrete nouns are more easily remembered than are pairs of abstract nouns: the imagery hypothesis, the familiarity hypothesis, and the concreteness hypothesis. Two experiments are reported in which the degree of visual imagery associated with the components of paired associate items was not indicative of the degree of visual imagery experienced during their learning or with the accuracy with which they were recalled. It was found that pairs of related abstract nouns were rated higher in imagery and familiarity than were pairs of unrelated concrete nouns, but recall of the higher imagery pairs was poorer. The concreteness hypothesis is discussed as the best explanation for the results. The concreteness hypothesis proposes that people learn to associate the labels of concrete objects by using their real-world knowledge of the potential relations between categories of objects. Dual coding theory and schema theory are also discussed as explanations for mediation learning, and the issue of visual imagery as an epiphenomenon is addressed.     

Further experiments on the perception of growth in three dimensions

Mark and Todd (1983) reported an experiment in which the cardioidal strain transformation was extended to three dimensions and applied to a three-dimensional (3-D) representation of the head of a 15-year-old girl in a direction that made the transformed head appear younger to the vast majority of their subjects. The experiments reported here extend this research in order to examine whether subjects are indeed detecting cardioidal strain in three dimensions, rather than detecting changes in head slant or making 2-D comparisons of the shape of the occluding contour. Three-dimensional surfaces were obtained by measuring a real head manually (Experiment 1) and with a laser scanner (Experiment 2), and transformed to different age levels using the 3-D strain transformation described by Mark and Todd (1983). There were no statistically significant differences in the accuracy with which relative age judgments could be made in response to pairs of profiles, pairs of 3/4 views, or pairs of mixed views (profile plus 3/4 view), suggesting that subjects can indeed extract the cardioidal strain level of the head in three dimensions. However, an additional effect that emerged in these studies was that judgments were crucially affected by the instructions given to subjects, which suggests that factors other than cardioidal strain are important in making judgments about rich data structures.     

Array models for category learning

A family of models for category learning is developed, all members being based on a common memory array but differing in memory access and decision processes. Within this framework, fully controlled comparisons of exemplar-similarity, feature-frequency, and prototype models reveal isomorphism between models of different types under some conditions but empirically testable differences under others. It is shown that current exemplar-memory models, in which categorization judgments are based on similarities of perceived and remembered category exemplars, can be interpreted as generalized likelihood models but can be modified in a simple way to yield pure similarity models. Distance-based exemplar models are formulated that provide means of investigating issues concerning deterministic versus probabilistic decision rules and links between categorization and properties of perceptual dimensions. Other theoretical issues discussed include aspects of similarity, the role of memory storage versus computation in category judgments, and the limits of applicability of array models.     

Speaking of pain in Greek: Implications for the cognitive permeation of emotions

ABSTRACT

Although item-memory for emotional information is enhanced, memory for associations between items is often impaired for negative, emotionally arousing compared to neutral information. We tested two possible mechanisms underlying this impairment, using picture pairs: 1) higher confidence in one’s own ability to memorise negative information may cause participants to under-study negative pairs; 2) better interactive imagery for neutral pairs could facilitate associative memory for neutral pairs more than for negative pairs. Tested with associative recognition, we replicated the impairment of associative memory for negative pairs. We also replicated the result that confidence in future memory (judgments of learning) was higher for negative than neutral pairs. Inflated confidence could not explain the impairment of associative recognition memory: Judgements of learning were positively correlated with associative memory success for both negative and neutral pairs. However, neutral pairs were rated higher in their conduciveness to interactive imagery than negative pairs, and this difference in interactive imagery showed a robust relationship to the associative memory difference. Thus, associative memory reductions for negative information are not due to differences in encoding effort. Instead, interactive imagery may be less effective for encoding of negative than neutral pairs.     

Very short term recognition memory for odors

An investigation of very short term olfactory recognition memory was made with odors of low familiarity to subjects. The experimental procedure was that currently used to make qualitative similarity judgments on odors delivered in paired succession. Subjects made similarity judgments in a yes/no recognition paradigm on odors that were either identical or different. The dependence of recognition performance upon the degree of qualitative similarity was assessed by using two sets of dissimilar odor pairs: slightly dissimilar pairs (S1) and very dissimilar pairs (S2). Performance in terms of correct judgments (hits, correct rejections) was rather good for identical pairs in both sets and was nearly perfect for very dissimilar pairs with a delay of 2–300 sec, suggesting no effect of time or similarity on performance. However, for slightly dissimilar pairs, false alarms increased in number, thereby indicating a dependence of the recognition score on the qualitative distance between odors. In addition, false alarms tended to increase with the lengthening of the retention interval. It was suggested that the subjects based their responses on their capability to detect differences between odors rather than recognizing their similarities. Correct identifications were thus preserved at the cost of increasing false alarms when the discrimination task was made more difficult by closer similarity between odors (S1) or by the fading of memory traces with time. Studying the congruence between the similarity judgments and the kind of evocations associated with paired odors gives some support to the view that recognition performances had some cognitive/semantic basis.     

Aging effects in sequential modulations of poorer-strategy effects during execution of memory strategies

In this study, we asked young adults and older adults to encode pairs of words. For each item, they were told which strategy to use, interactive imagery or rote repetition. Data revealed poorer-strategy effects in both young adults and older adults: Participants obtained better performance when executing better strategies (i.e., interactive-imagery strategy to encode pairs of concrete words; rote-repetition strategy on pairs of abstract words) than with poorer strategies (i.e., interactive-imagery strategy on pairs of abstract words; rote-repetition strategy on pairs of concrete words). Crucially, we showed that sequential modulations of poorer-strategy effects (i.e., poorer-strategy effects being larger when previous items were encoded with better relative to poorer strategies), previously demonstrated in arithmetic, generalise to memory strategies. We also found reduced sequential modulations of poorer-strategy effects in older adults relative to young adults. Finally, sequential modulations of poorer-strategy effects correlated with measures of cognitive control processes, suggesting that these processes underlie efficient trial-to-trial modulations during strategy execution. Differences in correlations with cognitive control processes were also found between older adults and young adults. These findings have important implications regarding mechanisms underlying memory strategy execution and age differences in memory performance.     

Symbolic comparisons of objects on color attributes

Symbolic comparisons of object brightness and color were investigated in two experiments using words and outline drawings as stimuli. Both experiments yielded orderly symbolic distance effects. Contrary to prediction, no reliable picture advantages emerged. For color comparison, individual differences in word fluency and color memory predicted decision time with word stimuli. These results contrast sharply with those of previous comparison studies involving concrete dimensions. The results are discussed in terms of dual-coding theory and the role of verbal mechanisms in memory for object color.     

A reexamination of the role of imagery in learning and memory

Five experiments were conducted to examine whether the superior recall of concrete over abstract words might be better accounted for in terms of relative differences in the processing of relational and distinctive information rather than redundant verbal and imaginal memory codes. Concrete and abstract word pairs were presented in the standard paired-associated learning task or under conditions intended to affect the nature and extent of relational processing between pair members. Concreteness effects were attenuated or eliminated when relational processing was prevented at encoding (Experiments 3, 4, and 5) or when the use of encoded relations within pairs was prevented at recall (Experiments 1, 2, and 3). The results indicated the viability of an account of concreteness effects in paired-associate learning based on the joint functions of distinctive and relational information. They also remove theoretical constraints imposed on imagery theories by the incorrect assumption of a uniform presence of concreteness effects in memory for word lists.     

Similarity and proximity: When does close in space mean close in mind?

People often describe things that are similar as close and things that are dissimilar as far apart. Does the way people talk about similarity reveal something fundamental about the way they conceptualize it? Three experiments tested the relationship between similarity and spatial proximity that is encoded in metaphors in language. Similarity ratings for pairs of words or pictures varied as a function of how far apart the stimuli appeared on the computer screen, but the influence of distance on similarity differed depending on the type of judgments the participants made. Stimuli presented closer together were rated more similar during conceptual judgments of abstract entities or unseen object properties but were rated less similar during perceptual judgments of visual appearance. These contrasting results underscore the importance of testing predictions based on linguistic metaphors experimentally and suggest that our sense of similarity arises from our ability to combine available perceptual information with stored knowledge of experiential regularities.     

The distinctiveness of emotion concepts: a comparison between emotion, abstract, and concrete words

Are the concepts represented by emotion words different from abstract words in memory? We examined the distinct characteristics of emotion concepts in 3 separate experiments. The first demonstrated that emotion words are better recalled than both concrete and abstract words in a free recall task. In the second experiment, ratings of abstract, concrete, and emotion words were compared on concreteness, imageability, and context availability scales. Results revealed a difference between all 3 word types on each of the 3 scales. The third experiment investigated priming in a lexical decision task for homogeneous (abstract-abstract and emotion-emotion) and heterogeneous (abstract-emotion and emotion-abstract) associated word pairs. Priming occurred only for the homogeneous and heterogeneous abstract-emotion word pair conditions. Possible explanations for these findings are discussed in terms of the circumplex, hierarchical, and semantic activation models. The results are most consistent with the predictions of the semantic activation model.     

IS THE SELF-CONCEPT A HABITUAL REFERENT IN JUDGMENTS OF SIMILARITY?

Abstract— People typically provide higher similarity ratings in response to the question "How similar is the typical preppie to you?" than to the question "How similar are you to the typical preppie?" Observed asymmetries in comparisons of the self and person prototypes have been offered as evidence that the self-concept acts as a habitual reference point in social judgment However, such a task does not test the habitual placement of a concept in the referent position of a comparison. In this study, participants judged the similarity between the self and person prototypes in response to linguistic (forced directional) queries or to spatial (nonforced) queries in which the self was positioned above or below the person concept Participants also rated pairs of familiar and unfamiliar countries in a similar manner, to replicate and extend the work of Tversky (1977) Expected asymmetries were observed in forced comparisons. The self and the familiar country were seen as more similar to other people and less familiar countries, respectively, when the former concepts served as the referent of a comparison than when they served as the subject Asymmetries were not observed in the nonforced conditions, and mean similarity in these conditions was of the same magnitude as in the forced condition in which the more familiar stimulus was the referent of the comparison. This result provides the first direct evidence that the self serves as a habitual referent in similarity judgments     

The influence of memory for prior instances on performance in a conflict detection task

In 3 experiments, the authors examined the role of memory for prior instances for making relative judgments in conflict detection. Participants saw pairs of aircraft either repeatedly conflict with each other or pass safely before being tested on new aircraft pairs, which varied in similarity to the training pairs. Performance was influenced by the similarity between aircraft pairs. Detection time was faster when a conflict pair resembled a pair that had repeatedly conflicted. Detection time was slower, and participants missed conflicts, when a conflict pair resembled a pair that had repeatedly passed safely. The findings identify aircraft features that are used as inputs into the memory decision process and provide an indication of the processes involved in the use of memory for prior instances to make relative judgments.     

Temporal binding of auditory spatial information across dynamic binaural events

Simultaneity judgments were used to measure temporal binding windows (TBW) for brief binaural events (changes in interaural time and/or level differences [ITD and ILD]) and test the hypothesis that ITD and ILD contribute to perception via separate sensory dimensions subject to binding via slow (100+ ms)—presumably cortical—mechanisms as in multisensory TBW. Stimuli were continuous low-frequency noises that included two brief shifts of either type (ITD or ILD), both of which are heard as lateral position changes. TBW for judgments within a single cue dimension were narrower for ITD (mean = 444 ms) than ILD (807 ms). TBW for judgments across cue dimensions (i.e., one ITD shift and one ILD shift) were similar to within-cue ILD (778 ms). The results contradict the original hypothesis, in that cross-cue comparisons were no slower than within-cue ILD comparisons. Rather, the wide TBW values—consistent with previous estimates of multisensory TBW—suggest slow integrative processing for both types of judgments. Narrower TBW for ITD than ILD judgments suggests important cue-specific differences in the neural mechanisms or the perceptual correlates of integration across binaural-cue dimensions.     

Neural correlates of evaluation associated with promotion and prevention regulatory focus

Higgins (1997, 1998) proposed two self-regulatory or motivational systems—one sensitive to gains (promotion) and one sensitive to losses (prevention). To examine the interaction of motivation and cognition, participants made good/bad or abstract/concrete judgments about concepts during fMRI scanning. After scanning, participants rated the extent to which each stimulus was good and bad and completed a questionnaire that measured promotion/prevention orientation. For each participant, contrast maps were generated representing the association between neural processing and stimulus valence (good/bad), and these factors were then regressed against participants’ promotion and prevention focus scores. For the good/bad but not for the abstract/concrete task, promotion focus was associated with greater activity in the amygdala, anterior cingulate, and extrastriate cortex for positive stimuli, and prevention focus was associated with activity in the same regions for negative stimuli; these results are consistent with the hypothesis that the way in which evaluative information is processed is influenced by individual differences in self-regulatory focus.     

差距知觉的泛化效应：我和你之间的差距有多大?

当知晓自己和他人的表现,即自己与他人在某方面表现上的差距已经明确时,人们对自我-他人差异的知觉准确吗?本研究发现了差距知觉的泛化效应：人们将自身的绝对表现(自己的表现与零相比的结果)泛化到对自身相对表现(自己与他人相比的结果)的判断上。在7个研究中, 被试(N = 2766)得知自己的绝对表现和相对于他人的表现,并判断自己与他人之间的差距。结果显示,绝对获益时,人们在相对获益时感知到的自我-他人差距大于相对损失时;绝对损失时,人们在相对获益时感知到的自我-他人差距小于相对损失时;当泛化难以进行时,上述效应消失。研究揭示了差距知觉的泛化效应及其联结机制。