Letter recognition: Effects of interitern similarity and report requirements

The effects. of auditory similarity, visual similarity, and position of letters within the Visual field upon letter recognition were investigated in two experiments. In Experiment 1, significant differences associated with visual, but not. auditory, similarity were found when Os were asked to report one, three, or all Items from five-item linear arrays. As report requirements increased left-right differences in report accuracy increased, although items in the center of the field were reported most accurately. In Experiment 2, either one or five items were requested from the arrays presented in Experiment 1 after a delay of 2 or 4 sec. Significant effects associated with both auditory and visual similarity were found, together with a tendency for items to the left of fixation to be reported most accurately. These results were discussed in terms of recent theories dealing with the encoding of visually presented material.     

Stimulus position functions in tachistoscopic identification tasks: Scanning,rehearsal, and order of report

Three experiments were conducted to investigate the locus of attentional control under the information-overload conditions stemming from tachistoscopic presentation of a horizontally arranged row of letters. In Experiment 1, left-right visual field accuracy differences were greater in a whole- than in a single-report task, reflecting a pronounced influence of report order bias effects. However, accuracy in the single-report task, which is relatively unaffected by report order biases, also declined from left to right across stimulus positions. In Experiment 2, single-report task requirements which provided an opportunity for rehearsal had negligible effects on the shape of the stimulus-position function. In Experiment 3, the leftright accuracy differences were observed to vary as a function of cue delay interval in a single-report visuospatial probe task. The degree of left-field superiority was negligible with a short delay interval, and much greater with longer delay intervals. The results are discussed in terms of a cognitive scanning operation.     

A developmental study of the effect of familiarity on short-term visual memory

An attempt was made to specify whether previously reported limitations on young children's full-report capacity lay in a smaller amount of available information, in a shorter trace duration of information in visual information storage (VIS), or in poorer coding of information into permanent storage. Five- and 8-year-olds and adults were shown an eight-item array of figures. followed at varying intervals by an indicator signaling the subject to report the figure to which the indicator had pointed. The effects of three levels of familiarity or “labelability” were examined. While no age differences were revealed in amount of information available nor in the trace duration of information in VIS, strong age differences emerged in coding of information into permanent storage. Data on latency to verbal labeling and familiarity suggested that verbal labeling could not account for the age trends. Rather, the differences seemed to lie in the use of organized visual coding and rehearsal strategies by adults and their relative lack of use by children.     

Developmental differences in intake and storage of visual information

A partial report technique was used to determine how much visual information subjects of four ages (ranging from 5-year-olds to adults) were capable of taking in and what the course of information loss was over a 1-sec time period. Subjects were tachistoscopically presented eight items followed by an indicator at variable intervals after array offset and were required to report that item in the indicated position. No reliable age differences were found at the earliest “memory point,” 50 msec. There were, however, age differences both before and after this point. Results suggested an absence of age differences in visual intake capacity, but important differences in other stages of processing.     

The development of letter processing efficiency

The development of efficiency in letter processing skills was studied using a letter search task. In two experiments, subjects searched for a target letter displayed with items varying in their visual featural or conceptual categorical similarity to the target. Accuracy and reaction time of search were evaluated for evidence of the visual search “category effect.” In order to determine if subjects could efficiently use knowledge of stimulus differences to facilitate search, conditions tested search time as a function of the amount of information to be processed both within the visual display and in short-term memory. In the two experiments, subjects of ages 6 years through adulthood showed the category effect; however, efficiency of letter processing was found to be related to the amount of information that had to be processed in memory. While there were drastic changes in search speed with increasing grade level, patterns of processing were consistent, leading to the conclusion that the knowledge required to process the letter information accurately is acquired very early. Results were discussed in terms of the distinctions among accuracy, automaticity, and efficiency of skill development and the relationship of these to general reading and intellectual development.     

Spatial coding and oblique discrimination by children

Children from five to eight years of age learned to discriminate between mirrorimage oblique lines more readily when cards bearing the obliques were presented vertically than when they were presented horizontally. The difference in performance between the vertical and horizontal planes could not be accounted for by differences in either the external visual context or the availability of asymmetrical body information (e.g., left vs right hand). The superiority of the vertical plane was attributed to the congruence of objective, bodily, and retinal vertical axes for the vertical, but not the horizontal plane, It was concluded, on this basis, that at least part of children's difficulty discriminating between mirror-image obliques is due to their difficulty establishing the internalized vertical axis necessary for the left-right spatial coding of the obliques.     

Mental representation of length and weight series and transitive inferences in young children

Forty-eight second graders (8 years of age) were trained on length or weight relationships between adjacent members of a five-term series of colored objects. Feedback was visual and of either minimal or strong salience. Differences in weight were assessed by either a balance scale or a spring scale. Results showed that more salient visual feedback reduced the learning effort for length but not for weight comparisons. After training children were tested on all possible object pairs. Children's comparisons of items by length were very accurate in contrast to their comparisons by weight. An explanation for these findings is suggested by the data from a group of 6-year-olds who were trained on two independent pairs of a four-term series. Test results showed that subjects spontaneously encoded absolute lengths but tended to ignore information about the absolute weight of objects. It is suggested that high test accuracy depends on stimulus material for which the absolute values of the relevant dimension are encoded. The implications for taking test performance as an indicator of “transitive reasoning” ability are discussed.     

Memory factors in age-related differences in simple reasoning

Adults in their 50s were compared with adults in their late teens or 20s in the accuracy of relatively simple reasoning decisions involving varying amounts of information. Because the magnitude of the age differences in decision accuracy was independent of the amount of information relevant to the decision, it was suggested that adults in their 20s and 50s do not differ in the effectiveness of integrating information across multiple premises. However, the 2 groups differed in the accuracy of trials involving only a single relevant premise, and thus it was inferred that 1 factor contributing to reasoning differences within the age range from 20 to 60 may be a failure to encode, or retain, relevant information.     

The Effect of Information Quantity on Distinctive Accuracy and Normativity of Personality Trait Judgments

Information quantity is an important moderator of personality judgment accuracy. Some evidence suggests that the amount of available information is positively related to accuracy. The current study utilized the social accuracy model to investigate the effects of differences in thin slices of information quantity on the distinctive accuracy and normativity of personality trait judgments. It was hypothesized that distinctive accuracy and normativity would increase as information quantity increased. Participants were 431 individuals who participated in an online study that varied the length of stimulus target observations (30 seconds, 1 minute, 3 minutes, and 5 minutes), after which judges rated targets using other‐report measures of the Big Five personality traits. For all traits combined, significant levels of accuracy were found for all observation lengths, but distinctive accuracy and normativity did not increase as video length increased. Findings varied for individual traits. For distinctive accuracy, there was a linear increase with information quantity for Extraversion and a non‐linear relationship for Conscientiousness, while there was a linear decrease for Openness. For normativity, there was a linear increase with information quantity for Agreeableness and a non‐linear relationship for Conscientiousness. There are important differences in how observation length affects distinctive accuracy and normativity for different personality traits. © 2019 European Association of Personality Psychology     

Accounting for age differences on the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test: decreased working memory, not inflexibility

Two experiments examined the role of cognitive inflexibility and reduced working memory in age-related declines on the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test. Both standard scoring procedures and newly developed scores were used to measure each construct, and modifications of the test further evaluated the role of working memory. Results indicated that age differences are not due to cognitive inflexibility but that for a subset of older adults errors are associated with a reduction in the amount of information that can be stored or processed in working memory. These age differences disappear, however, when visual cues provide information about the immediately preceding sort. The authors conclude by proposing a decline in updating working memory as the explanation that can best account for the entire pattern of age differences on this test.     

Roles of Visual Information for Control of Reaching Movements in Children

What visual information do children normally require for the control of reaching movements? How is performance affected when children do not have access to the preferred mode of perceptual information? These questions were studied in 28 children who were tested on 3 occasions: at 6, 7, and 8 years of age. The task was to pick beads, 1 at a time, from 1 cup and carry them to another cup. With the aid of a mirror arrangement and a curtain, the amount of visual information was manipulated with regard to both the target and the performing hand. The movements were monitored with an optoelectronic device (SELSPOT II) and analyzed in terms of transport and object-handling phases. Results showed that object handling required visual information on both hand and target. For the transport phase of the movement, visual information on the spatial location of the target was sufficient, and sight of the hand did not improve performance. In contrast to adult subjects, when children did not have access to the required visual information, their performances deteriorated markedly. These results indicate that from the age of 6, children use visual information for control of arm movements in a manner like that of adults, although with less accuracy and speed. However, even 8-year-old children are limited in their ability to use alternative perceptual strategies for movement control, and they therefore become less flexible and more dependent on visual information.     

Limitations on children's short-term memory for left-right orientation

The time course of kindergarten children's memory for left-right orientation during the first $\text{2}\text{1}\text{2}\text{sec}$ after receptor stimulation was investigated by means of a successive matching-to-sample task with tachistoscopically presented abstract figures. The first study indicated that young children have difficulty encoding left-right orientation into short-term memory and treat left-right orientation as low-priority information that is likely to be lost when there is an information overload. A second study indicated that kindergarten children who are able to encode left-right orientation do so more slowly than adults. An unexpected finding occurring in both studies was that the presentation of the comparison figures appeared to terminate initial processing of the standard figure. It is argued that this effect was due to cognitively based visual masking.     

Getting the Picture: Effects of Sketch Plans and Photographs on Children's,Adolescents' and Adults' Eyewitness Recall

We compared the effects of three types of visual aid on free recall across three age groups in an eyewitness paradigm. Child, adolescent and adult participants (N = 144) viewed a short film depicting a non‐violent crime and, following a brief delay, gave a free‐recall account. Participants then described the event once again, with the aid of their own sketch plan, a provided sketch plan or photograph, or with no visual aid. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and coded for the type and accuracy of information reported. Across all age groups, relative to the control condition, all three visual aids increased the amount of new information reported during the second free‐recall account and helped participants to maintain accuracy. All three visual aids therefore had a positive effect on participants' performance; in a forensic setting, however, witnesses' own sketch plans are likely to be the safest, most easily applied and most time effective.Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The effects of symmetry and contour on recognition memory in children

Children in prekindergarten, kindergarten, and second grade were tested on a delayed match-to-sample task using abstract visual patterns. The patterns varied both in type of visual organization (unstructured, diagonally symmetrical, vertically symmetrical, and horizontally symmetrical) and in amount of contour. Following the initial memory task, we attempted to train half of the children at each grade by directing their attention to axes of symmetry; the other half of the children received a control task. Subsequently, the subjects were given a second delayed match-to-sample test. On both pre- and post-training trials, structure influenced performance, especially in the two younger groups. Vertical and horizontal symmetry generally facilitated performance in the prekindergarteners, while all three types of symmetry facilitated performance in the kindergarteners. In addition, children generally responded more accurately to patterns with lower levels of contour. They also made more like-contour than unlike-contour confusions, indicating that quantitative aspects of patterns were encoded. Group differences suggested that both processing capacity and memory increase during the age range studied. Finally, there was no indication that training improved performance at any age.     

Are children’s memory illusions created differently from those of adults? Evidence from levels-of-processing and divided attention paradigms

In two experiments, we investigated the robustness and automaticity of adults’ and children’s generation of false memories by using a levels-of-processing paradigm (Experiment 1) and a divided attention paradigm (Experiment 2). The first experiment revealed that when information was encoded at a shallow level, true recognition rates decreased for all ages. For false recognition, when information was encoded on a shallow level, we found a different pattern for young children compared with that for older children and adults. False recognition rates were related to the overall amount of correctly remembered information for 7-year-olds, whereas no such association was found for the other age groups. In the second experiment, divided attention decreased true recognition for all ages. In contrast, children’s (7- and 11-year-olds) false recognition rates were again dependent on the overall amount of correctly remembered information, whereas adults’ false recognition was left unaffected. Overall, children’s false recognition rates changed when levels of processing or divided attention was manipulated in comparison with adults. Together, these results suggest that there may be both quantitative and qualitative changes in false memory rates with age.     

Selective deficits in episodic feeling of knowing in ageing: A novel use of the general knowledge task

Failure to recall an item from memory can be accompanied by the subjective experience that the item is known but currently unavailable for report. The feeling of knowing (FOK) task allows measurement of the predictive accuracy of this reflective judgement. Young and older adults were asked to provide answers to general knowledge questions both prior to and after learning, thus measuring both semantic and episodic memory for the items. FOK judgements were made at each stage for all unrecalled responses, providing a measure of predictive accuracy for semantic and episodic knowledge. Results demonstrated a selective effect of age on episodic FOK resolution, with older adults found to have impaired episodic FOK accuracy while semantic FOK accuracy remained intact. Although recall and recognition measures of episodic memory are equivalent between the two age groups, older adults may have been unable to access contextual details on which to base their FOK judgements. The results suggest that older adults are not able to accurately predict future recognition of unrecalled episodic information, and consequently may have difficulties in monitoring recently encoded memories.     

Age Inequalities in Recognition Memory: Effects of Stimulus Presentation Time and List Repetitions

It has been suggested that age-related slowing in the execution of mental operations in time-limited visual information processing tasks can affect subsequent memory performance. To investigate this proposal, recognition memory for Chinese symbols displayed in rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) was assessed in 30 young adults and 33 older adults. The effects of presentation times (500, 1000, 2000, 2500, 3000, and 6000 ms) on target recognition were examined across six study-test trials for each participant. Recognition accuracy was higher for young adults than for older adults, especially at the shorter stimulus durations. Analysis of the time-accuracy functions describing the stimulus durations and amount of repetitions required to equate the performance of younger and older adults indicated that a limited-time mechanism provided an incomplete account for age-related differences in memory for rapidly presented information.     

Cognitive impenetrability of memory for orientation

This research produced evidence that an aspect of visual long-term memory--memory for lateral orientation of pictures--is constrained by a viewer-centered or egocentric reference frame. Subjects in Experiment 1 verbally encoded and then verbally recalled the locations of objects within scenic pictures. Recall of locations in terms of left-right directions (using a viewer-centered frame) exceeded recall of locations in terms of relative proximities to features of the room (using an environmental frame), even if the relative proximities had been verbalized at input. Subjects in Experiment 2 viewed half of a list of pictures directly and the remainder, reflected in a mirror. They then took a test in which they classified old pictures--all viewed directly--as "same-orientation" or "reversed". Performance was much better with a viewer-centered definition of same orientation (Does the picture appear the same way around?) than with an environmental definition (Is the picture the same way around on the screen?), even with forewarning of an environmental orientation test.     

Competition-induced visual field differences in search

Do visual field effects point to differences in cortical representation, or do they reflect differences in the way these representations are used by other brain regions? This study explored three attributes of visual search that provide strong evidence in favor of differences in use. Competition refers to the finding that visual field differences in search efficiency are larger in whole- than in half-field displays (both left-right and upper-lower half-fields). Task specialization refers to the finding that some tasks favor one hemisphere whereas other tasks favor the other hemisphere, even though the same stimulus displays are used in both tasks. Anatomical alignment refers to the finding that competition effects are altered if the quadrants of the visual display are not aligned with the cortical quadrants of the observer. We propose that visual field specialization in search is the result of a competition involving limited access to cortical visual representations by the extended neural networks of attention.