Similarity ratings and confusability of lipread consonants compared with similarity ratings of auditory and orthographic stimuli.

Similarity ratings of pairs of lipread consonants were obtained using a 5-point scale. Matrices were constructed showing mean similarity ratings and confusions among stimuli. Both the similarity and the confusion data provide normative data useful for researchers in many areas. Lipread data collected here are compared with similarity ratings of orthographically and auditorily presented consonants collected by Manning (1977). These comparisons provide information about how stimulus similarity both within and between presentation formats may affect information processing of the three types of stimuli. These data are of special interest to researchers studying the visual processing of speech and the effect of format of presentation on recall.     

Phonemic confusability,precategorical acoustic storage,and the suffix effect

Ss attempted ordered recall of acoustically presented strings of seven consonant-vowel syllables. In a control condition, each string was followed by a tone in presentation, while in the experimental (suffix) conditions, a verbal syllable followed the last to-be-remembered item. The independent variable was the phonemic similarity between the verbal suffix and the memory stimuli Although the verbal syllables produced a large suffix effect as compared with the control condition, and although more errors were made overall when similarity was high, the degree to which the verbal suffix items reduced the recency advantage at the end of the series was independent of their phonemic similarity to the stimuli. This independence was taken as support for a distinction between acoustic and articulatory coding.     

Hemispheric competence and perceptual confusability

Hemispheric competence in performing easy and difficult letter classification was examined in an exact replication of a previous experiment by Jonides (1979). The present experiment failed to confirm Jonides's finding of right visual field advantage in conditions of perceptual confusability and left visual field superiority when the stimuli were easily discriminable. The results showed a trend in the opposite direction, but no significant interaction. This divergence is discussed with respect to existing evidence and methodological procedures.     

Visual and acoustic confusability a visual search task

Visual and acoustic confusability between a target item and background items was varied in a visual search task. Visual confusability was a highly significant source of difficulty while acoustic confusability had no effect. The results do not seem to be interpretable within a theory which assumes compulsory auditory encoding of visual information.     

Visual and acoustic confusability a visual search task

Visual and acoustic confusability between a target item and background items was varied in a visual search task. Visual confusability was a highly significant source of difficulty while acoustic confusability had no effect. The results do not seem to be interpretable within a theory which assumes compulsory auditory encoding of visual information.     

Estimation and visualization of confusability matrices from adaptive measurement data

We present a simple but effective method based on Luce’s choice axiom [Luce, R.D. (1959). Individual choice behavior: A theoretical analysis. New York: John Wiley & Sons] for consistent estimation of the pairwise confusabilities of items in a multiple-choice recognition task with arbitrarily chosen choice-sets. The method combines the exact (non-asymptotic) Bayesian way of assessing uncertainty with the unbiasedness emphasized in the classical frequentist approach.We apply the method to data collected using an adaptive computer game designed for prevention of reading disability. A player’s estimated confusability of phonemes (or more accurately, phoneme-grapheme connections) and larger units of language is visualized in an easily understood way with color cues and explicit indication of the accuracy of the estimates. Visualization of learning-related changes in the player’s performance is considered.The empirical validity of the choice axiom is evaluated using the game data itself. The axiom appears to hold reasonably well although a small systematic violation is observable for the smallest choice-set sizes.     

Why positive information is processed faster: the density hypothesis

The authors postulate and show a speed advantage in the processing of positive information and hypothesize that this advantage is caused by the higher density of positive information in memory: Positive information is more similar to other positive information, in comparison with the similarity of negative information to other negative information. This "density" hypothesis is supported by multidimensional scaling of evaluative stimuli and response latency experiments. The relevance and explanatory power of the hypothesis is demonstrated by secondary data analyses of prior research in the evaluative priming paradigm. The final discussion is concerned with further theoretical implications of the density hypothesis, its generality and limitations, and its relation to other theoretical conceptions and applications.     

Similarity, kernels, and the triangle inequality

Similarity is used as an explanatory construct throughout psychology and multidimensional scaling (MDS) is the most popular way to assess similarity. In MDS, similarity is intimately connected to the idea of a geometric representation of stimuli in a perceptual space. Whilst connecting similarity and closeness of stimuli in a geometric representation may be intuitively plausible, Tversky and Gati [Tversky, A., & Gati, I. (1982). Similarity, separability, and the triangle inequality. Psychological Review, 89(2), 123-154] have reported data which are inconsistent with the usual geometric representations that are based on segmental additivity. We show that similarity measures based on Shepard’s universal law of generalization [Shepard, R. N. (1987). Toward a universal law of generalization for psychologica science. Science, 237(4820), 1317-1323] lead to an inner product representation in a reproducing kernel Hilbert space. In such a space stimuli are represented by their similarity to all other stimuli. This representation, based on Shepard’s law, has a natural metric that does not have additive segments whilst still retaining the intuitive notion of connecting similarity and distance between stimuli. Furthermore, this representation has the psychologically appealing property that the distance between stimuli is bounded.     

Allocating attention in the visual field: the effects of cue type and target-distractor confusability

In the present study I compared the effect of colour and location cues on the selection of a target. Two questions were in focus. First, can both colour and location cues trigger and mediate attentional selection, and if they can, which of them is more effective? Second, does physical distinctiveness between a target and a distractor have to be taken into account? In two experiments, in which the most likely target colour or location was cued, both colour cues and arrow-like location cues produced cue-validity effects. The relative effectiveness of feature cues and location cues appeared, to some extent, to be dependent on target-distractor confusability. Taken together, the results support the post-categorical filter theory, in which different cues can be used to trigger the feedback loop that is used to address relevant identity information via location.     

Similarity,multiple estimations,and the anchoring effect

This paper compares the Selective Accessibility and Scale Distortion theories of anchoring as explanations for anchoring tasks involving (1) perceived dissimilarity between comparison and estimation objects and (2) successive estimation tasks. We begin by describing the two theories of anchoring and what each would predict for these conditions. Two studies are presented in which multiple estimates are made following a single comparison task and the effect sizes of these estimates are correlated to operationalizations of similarity. In the first study, the stimuli varied with respect to how well they fit within an existing category reasonably familiar to the participant population: aircraft. In the second study, the stimuli varied with respect to external features that did not define the category: the brand and location of hotels. In both studies, we find that the anchoring effect size has a positive correlation with the semantic similarity between the comparison and estimation objects, a finding consistent with Selective Accessibility.     

Similarity, feature discovery, and the size principle

In this paper we consider the “size principle” for featural similarity, which states that rare features should be weighted more heavily than common features in people’s evaluations of the similarity between two entities. Specifically, it predicts that if a feature is possessed by n objects, the expected weight scales according to a 1/n law. One justification of the size principle emerges from a Bayesian analysis of simple induction problems ( [Tenenbaum and Griffiths, 2001a] and [Tenenbaum and Griffiths, 2001b]), and is closely related to work by Shepard (1987) proposing universal laws for inductive generalization. In this article, we (1) show that the size principle can be more generally derived as an expression of a form of representational optimality, and (2) present analyses suggesting that across 11 different data sets in the domains of animals and artifacts, human judgments are in agreement with this law. A number of implications are discussed.     

Comprehension,selective imitation,and the CIP hypothesis

The role of comprehension training in the selective imitation of indirect-direct object sentences was assessed for six preschool children. A modeling condition resulted in normal usage of indirect-direct object sentences for five of six subjects, but reversed usage was not obtained when modeling was reversed. Subsequent receptive comprehension training on normal and reversed forms of indirect-direct object sentences resulted in generalization to the productive mode. These results were related to an hypothesis about language acquisition in which selective imitation is a function of comprehension.     

Evaluation apprehension,hypothesis awareness,and the weapons effect

The present study was designed to extend Turner and Simons' (1974) investigation of possible experimental artifacts in aggression research. Employing a 2 × 2 × 2 factorial design, 60 male subjects were given either a low or high evaluation apprehension treatment, and then were either exposed or not exposed to weapons in an otherwise close replication of the seven shock-unassociated weapons condition of Berkowitz and LePage (1967). Based on an objectively worded postexperimental questionnaire, subjects were classified as being aware or not aware that the procedures were designed to make them give more shock to their partners. The findings, which were consistent with the analysis of Berkowitz (1974) and Turner and Simons (1974), indicated that the weapons-no weapons comparison was significant only for non-apprehensive, nonaware subjects. The results were interpreted as suggesting that evaluation apprehension, hypothesis awareness, and sophistication in aggression experiments may produce inhibitions which can modify the effects of experimental manipulations.     

Eye movements of prereaders to pseudowords containing letters of high and low confusability

Children were required to make same-different judgments about matched and unmatched pseudoword pairs containing middle letters of either high confusability (e.g.. ZPR.W or low confusability (e.g., EROI). Differential eye-movement patterns were observed between matched and unmatched low-confusion pairs. This finding would be predicted from a features analysis of the visual characteristics of the letters of the pseudowords. Low-confusion pseudowords contain more different visual features than high-confusion pseudowords. Therefore, in making a matching judgment. low-confusion pairs should require more eye movements; however, detection of a mismatch should be facilitated due to the greater availability of distinctive features.