A comparison of verbal and non-verbal reports of fragmenting visual Images

Sixty-eight Ss voluntarily restrained head, eye and blinking movements while viewing a luminous “HB” figure in a darkened room. All Ss were told that voluntary fixation would cause parts of the pattern to disappear; they were to report the parts that remained intact. Half of the Ss reported their disappearances verbally. The other half traced their disappearances on an outline “HB” figure. Results showed that the verbal method significantly favored the reporting of elements from the set H, h, B, b, 1, 11, +. These data suggest that response bias rather than perceptual organization may be responsible for the preponderance of meaningful disappearances noted in previous research.     

A comparison of verbal and non-verbal reports of fragmenting visual images

Sixty-eight Ss voluntarily restrained head, eye and blinking movements while viewing a luminous “HB” figure in a darkened room. All Ss were told that voluntary fixation would cause parts of the pattern to disappear; they were to report the parts that remained intact. Half of the Ss reported their disappearances verbally. The other half traced their disappearances on an outline “HB” figure. Results showed that the verbal method significantly favored the reporting of elements from the set H, h, B, b, 1, 11, +. These data suggest that response bias rather than perceptual organization may be responsible for the preponderance of meaningful disappearances noted in previous research.     

Application of the verbal transformation effect with learning-disabled children

Verbal Transformations (VTs) are an illusory effect which results from hearing a tape recording consisting of one word repeated twice per second. VTs have been employed to ascertain auditory perceptual differences in normal subjects relative to chronological age. This research tested two groups of 10 male children (normal and learning disabled). Results showed a significant difference (p < .01) between the reported number of VTs per group, with normal subjects verbalizing more different words. LD results are compared to VT studies with geriatrics. A theory is presented to explain our findings based upon a defect in short-term memory.     

Developing correspondence between the non-verbal and verbal behavior of preschool children

Correspondence was developed between children's non-verbal and verbal behavior such that their non-verbal behavior could be altered simply by reinforcing related verbal behavior. Two groups of six children each were given food snack at the end of the day: for reporting use of a specific preschool material during free play (procedure A); and then only for reports of use which corresponded to actual use of that material earlier that day (procedure B). Initially, procedure A alone had little or no effect on the children's use of materials. Procedure B resulted in all of the children in one group actually using a specific material, and after repeating procedures A and B with this group across a series of different materials, procedure A alone was sufficient to significantly increase use of a specific material. Correspondence between verbal and non-verbal behavior was produced such that, in this group of 4-yr-old disadvantaged Negro children, "saying" controlled "doing" 22 or more hours later. In the second group, procedure B initially did not increase the use of a specific material; rather, the children's reports decreased so as to correspond to the intermittent use of the material. It appeared from subsequent procedures with this group that maintenance of a high level of reporting was crucial to the saying-then-doing correspondence seen in the first group.     

Consistency between verbal and non-verbal affective cues: a clue to speaker credibility

Listeners are exposed to inconsistencies in communication; for example, when speakers’ words (i.e. verbal) are discrepant with their demonstrated emotions (i.e. non-verbal). Such inconsistencies introduce ambiguity, which may render a speaker to be a less credible source of information. Two experiments examined whether children make credibility discriminations based on the consistency of speakers’ affect cues. In Experiment 1, school-age children (7- to 8-year-olds) preferred to solicit information from consistent speakers (e.g. those who provided a negative statement with negative affect), over novel speakers, to a greater extent than they preferred to solicit information from inconsistent speakers (e.g. those who provided a negative statement with positive affect) over novel speakers. Preschoolers (4- to 5-year-olds) did not demonstrate this preference. Experiment 2 showed that school-age children's ratings of speakers were influenced by speakers’ affect consistency when the attribute being judged was related to information acquisition (speakers’ believability, “weird” speech), but not general characteristics (speakers’ friendliness, likeability). Together, findings suggest that school-age children are sensitive to, and use, the congruency of affect cues to determine whether individuals are credible sources of information.     

Congenital amusia: A short-term memory deficit for non-verbal,but not verbal sounds

Congenital amusia refers to a lifelong disorder of music processing and is linked to pitch-processing deficits. The present study investigated congenital amusics’ short-term memory for tones, musical timbres and words. Sequences of five events (tones, timbres or words) were presented in pairs and participants had to indicate whether the sequences were the same or different. The performance of congenital amusics confirmed a memory deficit for tone sequences, but showed normal performance for word sequences. For timbre sequences, amusics’ memory performance was impaired in comparison to matched controls. Overall timbre performance was found to be correlated with melodic contour processing (as assessed by the Montreal Battery of Evaluation of Amusia). The present findings show that amusics’ deficits extend to non-verbal sound material other than pitch, in this case timbre, while not affecting memory for verbal material. This is in line with previous suggestions about the domain-specificity of congenital amusia.     

Congenital amusia: A short-term memory deficit for non-verbal,but not verbal sounds

Congenital amusia refers to a lifelong disorder of music processing and is linked to pitch-processing deficits. The present study investigated congenital amusics’ short-term memory for tones, musical timbres and words. Sequences of five events (tones, timbres or words) were presented in pairs and participants had to indicate whether the sequences were the same or different. The performance of congenital amusics confirmed a memory deficit for tone sequences, but showed normal performance for word sequences. For timbre sequences, amusics’ memory performance was impaired in comparison to matched controls. Overall timbre performance was found to be correlated with melodic contour processing (as assessed by the Montreal Battery of Evaluation of Amusia). The present findings show that amusics’ deficits extend to non-verbal sound material other than pitch, in this case timbre, while not affecting memory for verbal material. This is in line with previous suggestions about the domain-specificity of congenital amusia.     

Auditory habituation in young and older adults: the verbal transformation effect

In 3 experiments, auditory massed repetition was used to examine age-related differences in habituation by means of the verbal transformation paradigm. Participants heard 10 words (5 high frequency and 5 low frequency), each presented 180 times, and they reported perceived changes in the repeated words (verbal transformations). In these experiments, older adults reported fewer illusory percepts than young adults. Older adults' loss of auditory acuity and slowing of processing, stimulus degradation (in young adults), and instructions biasing the report of these illusory percepts did not account for the fewer illusory percepts reported by the older adults. These findings suggest that older adults' reduced susceptibility to habituation arises from centrally located declines in the transmission of information within the word-recognition pathway. The discussion focuses on the implications that these age-related declines may have on word identification during on-line speech perception.     

The communication of friendly and hostile attitudes by verbal and non-verbal signals

Two experiments are reported here in which Ss were asked to rate videotapes of a performer reading friendly, neutral and hostile messages in a friendly, neutral or hostile non-verbal style. These messages and non-verbal styles had previously been presented independently to a separate group of Ss jor rating, in order to obtain an estimate of their individual strengths in terms of six rating scales, and thus permit a matching of verbal (messages) and non-verbal (styles) cues in the experiment where both types of cues were presented in combination. The results of both experiments indicate that non-verbal cues had a greater effect on ratings made on 7-point scales, such as hostile-friendly, than verbal cues. The magnitude of this greater effect of non-verbal cues, however, was dependent on the relative strength of non-verbal as opposed to verbal cues. In the first experiment, both types of cues were approximately equal in strength when ruted alone; here non-verbal cues accounted for 12.5 times us much variance us verbal cues, and produced 5.7 times as much shift on the ratitig scales. In the second experiment the verbal cues were much stronger than the non-verbal cues when rated alone. Here the relative effect of non-verbal cues in the second experiment was diminished; the ratio of non-verbal : verbal variance was now 1.67:1. When verbal and non-verbal signals were inconsistent, the performance was rated as insincere, unstable and confusing - which was not found in earlier experiments on the superior-inferior dimension.     

The effect of non-verbal information on the recall of negation

The influence of non-verbal information on storage of different versions of negated sentences was investigated in a one-trial learning experiment. The negation governed either the subject, the object, or the predicate of the sentence. One group was presented with the sentences together with pictures. Another group the sentences only. The picture which was shown with a sentence represented the sentence content with an alternative for the negated concept. It was found that pictorial information had an effect on the recall of the sentences and that this effect is different for the different sentence versions.     

Relation of the verbal transformation and the phonemic restoration effects

This study examined the relationship between illusory changes of repeated words (“verbal transformations” or VTs) and illusory presence of phonemes replaced by noise (“phonemic restorations” or PhRs). Separate groups of 20 subjects were each presented with one of four taped variations of the repeated stimulus word “magistrate”: stimulus intact (MAGISTRATE); speech sound “s” removed and replaced with a silent gap (MAGI TRATE); speech sound “s” removed and replaced with a louder extraneous sound (MAGI¹TRATE); syllable “gis” removed and replaced with a louder extraneous sound (MA⁷¹TRATE). The stimuli MAGI¹TRATE and MA⁷¹TRATE evoked PhRs, and with these stimuli, the phonetic changes corresponding to VTs were concentrated at the perceptually restored portions of the word. It is suggested that both PhRs and VTs are related directly to perceptual processes employed normally for the correction of errors and resolution of ambiguities in speech. Other effects of PhRs upon VTs are described and implications of these findings for mechanisms underlying speech perception are discussed.     

Right-left confusion in the adult: A verbal labeling effect

Directional judgments are typically slower when relative location is described by the words “east” and “west” or “right” and “left” than when described by the words “north” and “south” or “up” and “down.” A series of experiments are reported that disentangle verbal from perceptual encoding explanations for right-left difficulty. Overall, our results support a verbal encoding explanation for right-left confusion in the adult. Experiments 1-3 demonstrate that in a response-differentiation task, it is response to the labels “north,” “east,” “south,” and “west” that is responsible for right-left confusion. In addition, Experiments 4-6 demonstrate that right-left difficulty in a mirror image discrimination task is contingent on the use of directional labels. (The data also suggest that it may be more difficult to deal with “up,” “down,” “left,” and “right” than with “north,” “south,” “east,” and “west”) The data are interpreted as inconsistent with a bilateral symmetry explanation for right-left confusion.     

A modality congruency effect in verbal false memory

The involvement of working memory sub-systems in syllogistic reasoning problems was assessed by dual task methods. Effects of skill level and training on working memory involvement in syllogistic reasoning were examined. In Study 1, participants were pre-selected into groups of High and Low skill at syllogistic reasoning on the basis of a pencil-and-paper screening test. Six separate High and Low skill groups completed syllogistic reasoning tasks in control conditions and each group was also tested under one of the following six dual task conditions: articulatory suppression, unattended speech, verbal random generation, spatial random generation, tapping in a simple pattern, unattended pictures. The results indicated that the more skilled participants were generally following a high demand strategy, which loaded the central executive, phonological loop and imagery sub-systems, but that lower skill participants were generally following a less demanding strategy which did not load working memory components so heavily. In two Pilot Studies a training procedure was assessed and validated. In Study 2, participants were selected, on the basis of a screening test, as being unskilled at solving syllogisms but as performing above guessing level. These participants underwent the training regime validated in the Pilot Studies. Following training, separate groups of participants carried out syllogistic tests with and without one of the following four secondary tasks: articulatory suppression, unattended pictures, spatial random generation, and verbal random generation. The pattern of results indicated that training had induced high demand strategies (often logic-equivalent), which loaded the central executive and to a lesser extent the phonological loop.     

A precedence effect in the processing of verbal information.

When a brief sound is monitored in a sound-reverberating room, it is immediately followed by numerous echoes bounced off the walls and ceiling. Only the first sound to arrive at the ears appears to be used in its localization. This is generally referred to as the precedence effect. If the processing of verbal information is seen as a reverberating system (after Hebb) and rehearsal as the manifestation of the echoes, then an analogous precedence effect can be empirically demonstrated. Such an analogy not only helps explain previously uninterpretable data but also generates a very unique prediction that was confirmed by experimental data. The theoretical implications of the analogy are also discussed.