Incidental retention of speaker’s voice

Geiselman and Bellezza (1976) concluded that any retention in memory of the sex of a speaker of verbal material is automatic. Two possible reasons for this were hypothesized: the voice-connotation hypothesis and the dual-hemisphere parallel-processing hypothesis. In Experiment 1, the to-be-remembered sentences contained either male or female agents. Incidental retention of sex of speaker did not occur. This result does not support the dual-hemisphere parallel-processing hypothesis, which indicates that retention of voice should be independent of sentence content. In Experiment 2, the sentences contained neutral agents and incidental retention of sex of speaker did occur. The results of Experiments 1 and 2 support the connotation hypothesis. The different results with regard to incidental retention of speakers’s voice found in Experiments 1 and 2 were replicated in Experiment 3 using a within-subjects design. Experimemt 4 was conducted to determine if a speaker’s voice does, in fact, influence the meaning of a neutral sentence. In agreement with the voice-connotation hypothesis, sentences spoken by a male were rated as having more “potent” connotations than sentences spoken by a female.     

Inhibition of the automatic storage of speaker’s voice

The voice-connotation hypothesis of Geiselman and Bellezza (1976, 1977) states that a speaker’s voice is sometimes remembered without intent because the connotation of the voice automatically influences the meaning of what is said. Results from the present experiment suggest that subjects have the option to prevent the speaker’s-voice attribute from being stored with the contents of what is said when such processing would interfere with other cognitive operations.     

The consequences for memory of imagining in another person’s voice

Subjects listened to and imagined words and then attempted to discriminate words they had heard from words they had imagined. Discrimination was better when subjects imagined themselves saying the words (Experiments 1 and 2) than when subjects imagined the words in the speaker’s voice. Subjects also had more difficulty discriminating imagined from perceived words when they imagined in the speaker’s voice than when they imagined words in a voice other than their own or the speaker’s (Experiment 1). The results are consistent with the idea that reality monitoring is affected by the degree of similarity in sensory characteristics of memories derived from perception and from imagination (Johnson & Raye, 1981).     

The relationship between preschoolers’ selective attention and memory for location strategies

Late and early preschoolers’ attention and spatial strategies were examined in response to instructions to recall relevant objects [Blumberg, F. C. & Torenberg, M. (2003). The impact of spatial cues on preschoolers’ selective attention. Journal of Genetic Psychology, 164, 42–53] and irrelevant objects [Blumberg, F. C. & Torenberg, M. (in press). The effects of spatial configuration on preschoolers’ selective attention and incidental learning. Infant & Child Development], and to spatial placement of objects within a multi-colored box. Sets of toy chairs or animals were designated as relevant or irrelevant and placed in each of the box's corners (corners condition), in the middle of its walls (walls condition), or in two corners and in the middle of two walls (control condition). Selective attention and spatial strategies were assessed via the removal sequence of items. Recall was assessed via correct relocations of relevant items. Older children and corners condition children showed significantly better recall than children in other conditions. Overall, most children used selective strategies, indicating that relevance of items, rather than their spatial categorization as corners or walls influenced strategy choice.     

Repeated writing facilitates children’s memory for pseudocharacters and foreign letters

In a logographic language culture,repeated (hand)writing is a common memory strategy for learning letters and Chinese characters. The purpose of this paper is to determine whether this strategy facilitates children’s memory for pseudologographic characters and foreign letters. It also explores which aspect of writing, the use of stroke orders or the writing action itself, is responsible for the effect. First, third, and fifth grade Japanese children participated in the study. Results showed that, for all the subjects, characters and letters were better recalled when learned by writing rather than by looking only (Experiments 1 and 4). The advantage of writing was decreased, however, when the proper writing action prevented (i.e., when subjects were instructed to trace or write without feedback; Experiments 3 and 4) but not when the proper stroke orders were prevented (i.e., when subjects were instructed to write in reverse or random orders; Experiment 2). The results indicate that the writing action, rather than the use of stroke orders, is responsible for the effect.     

Is memory for spatial location automatically encoded?

Naveh-Benjamin (1987, 1988) has shown that memory for spatial location does not meet the criteria for automatic encoding as claimed by Hasher and Zacks (1979). Age, intention, concurrent processing demands, practice, strategies, and individual differences affected memory for location. These variables should have affected effortful but not automatic processing. The experiments reported in the present paper, in which a different task was used, showed that intention, practice, and concurrent processing demands did not affect memory for location. I concluded that (1) the location task used by Naveh-Benjamin included effortful subtasks and also incidental cover or concurrent processing tasks that interfered directly with performance, and (2) the variables that he manipulated may not have affected the encoding of location. The need to differentiate processes from task performance in analyzing the automaticity issue is discussed. The dominant mode for remembering location is automatic, but such information may also be remembered voluntarily.     

When does generation enhance memory for location?

Generation is thought to enhance both item-specific and relational processing of generated targets as compared with read words (M. A. McDaniel & P. J. Waddill, 1990). Generation facilitates encoding of the cue-target relation and sometimes boosts encoding of relations across list items. Of interest is whether generation can also increase the encoding of target-location associations. Because the literature on this point is mixed, 3 procedural differences between 2 studies (E. J. Marsh, G. Edelman, & G. H. Bower, 2001; N. W. Mulligan, 2004) were identified and manipulated. A positive generation effect was found for location memory, but this effect was reduced when subjects wrote down the study words and when the filler task involved generation. Generation can enhance location memory in addition to item memory but only if the experimental parameters do not interfere with the processing benefits of generation.     

Whose picture is this? Children's memory for item and source information

Children aged 3½ to 6½ years viewed pictures of common objects presented either once or three times on one of two consecutive days. A different hand puppet was used to present the pictures on each day, providing both perceptual and temporal cues to source. At test, old (studied) and new (non‐studied) pictures were presented for item recognition and source identification. Results showed that both item and source accuracy were higher for older (M = 5; 9 years) than younger children (M = 4; 6 years). Significant interactions between Age and Day of study were found for both item and source accuracy. For younger children, accuracy was higher for pictures studied on Day 1 than Day 2 (significant for source identification but not item recognition), whereas older children showed the opposite pattern: Higher accuracy for Day 2 than Day 1 (significant for item recognition but not source identification). Results are interpreted with respect to proactive interference and response bias. The utility of signal detection theory measures in determining the basis of age differences in performance of source identification is discussed.     

What’s in a voice? Dolphins do not use voice cues for individual recognition

Most mammals can accomplish acoustic recognition of other individuals by means of “voice cues,” whereby characteristics of the vocal tract render vocalizations of an individual uniquely identifiable. However, sound production in dolphins takes place in gas-filled nasal sacs that are affected by pressure changes, potentially resulting in a lack of reliable voice cues. It is well known that bottlenose dolphins learn to produce individually distinctive signature whistles for individual recognition, but it is not known whether they may also use voice cues. To investigate this question, we played back non-signature whistles to wild dolphins during brief capture-release events in Sarasota Bay, Florida. We hypothesized that non-signature whistles, which have varied contours that can be shared among individuals, would be recognizable to dolphins only if they contained voice cues. Following established methodology used in two previous sets of playback experiments, we found that dolphins did not respond differentially to non-signature whistles of close relatives versus known unrelated individuals. In contrast, our previous studies showed that in an identical context, dolphins reacted strongly to hearing the signature whistle or even a synthetic version of the signature whistle of a close relative. Thus, we conclude that dolphins likely do not use voice cues to identify individuals. The low reliability of voice cues and the need for individual recognition were likely strong selective forces in the evolution of vocal learning in dolphins.     

Linear representation of temporal location and Stevens’s law

Ss were asked to indicate points 1 week, 7 months, 3 years, and 9 years in the past and future on two time lines representing birth to present and present to death. Data for 90 college-age Ss fit a psychophysical power function following Stevens’s law. with negatively accelerated growth indicating proportionately greater linear representation of periods nearer to the present. Variability was greater for the representations of the future than of the past, with monotonic increases in variability as distance from the present increased.     

Children’s memory for sentences and word strings in relation to reading ability

A previous study of recall of letter strings by good and poor beginning readers IShankweiler, Liberman, Mark, Fowler, & Fischer, 1979 revealed that the performance of good readers was more severely penalized than that of poor readers when the letter names rhymed. To determine whether the differences in susceptibility to phonetic interference extend to materials that more closely resemble actual text, we designed an experiment to test recall of phonetically controlled sentences and word strings. As in the case of letter recall, we found that, although good readers made fewer errors than poor readers when sentences or word strings contained no rhyming words, they did not excel when the materials contained many rhyming words. In contrast to manipulations of phonetic content, systematic manipulations of meaningfulness and variations in syntactic structure did not differentially affect the two reading groups. We conclude that the poor readers’ inferior recall of phonetically nonconfusable sentences, word strings, and letter strings reflects failure to make full use of phonetic coding in working memory.     

The road to understanding is paved with the speaker’s intentions: Cues to the speaker’s attention and intentions affect pronoun comprehension

A series of experiments explore the effects of attention-directing cues on pronoun resolution, contrasting four specific hypotheses about the interpretation of ambiguous pronouns he and she: (1) it is driven by grammatical rules, (2) it is primarily a function of social processing of the speaker’s intention to communicate, (3) it is modulated by the listener’s own egocentric attention, and (4) it is primarily a function of learned probabilistic cues. Experiment 1 demonstrates that pronoun interpretation is guided by the well-known N1 (first-mention) bias, which is also modulated by both the speaker’s gaze and pointing gestures. Experiment 2 demonstrates that a low-level visual capture cue has no effect on pronoun interpretation, in contrast with the social cue of pointing. Experiment 3 uses a novel intentional cue: the same attention-capture flash as in Experiment 2, but with instructions that the cue is intentionally created by the speaker. This cue does modulate the N1 bias, demonstrating the importance of information about the speaker’s intentions to pronoun resolution. Taken in sum, these findings demonstrate that pronoun resolution is a process best categorized as driven by an appreciation of the speaker’s communicative intent, which may be subserved by a sensitivity to predictive cues in the environment.     

Anticipating partners’ responses: Examining item and source memory following interactive exchanges

Within the context of an interactive anagram-solving task, the present studies tested predictions about the role of cognitive anticipation in both source and item memory. After working in pairs to solve anagram problems, participants were surprised by a source-monitoring test focused on the source of solutions (self vs. partner, Experiment 1) or a standard recognition test focused on the solutions themselves (Experiment 2). With the intention of affecting the opportunity to anticipate partners' solutions, two variables were manipulated: anagram difficulty (easy vs. hard) and the delaybetween the presentation of an anagram problem and theprompt tha t designated one member of each pair as the anagram solver. Consistent w i th predictions, asthe opportunity t oanticipate partners'solutions increased, there was a decrease in source accuracy suggesting increased confusion about whether the solution had been self- or partner-generated. Generation-effect failures were observed in item memory. However, these failures reflected increases in item memory for partners' responses rather than decreases in memory for self-generated ones. These studies suggest that when opportunities to anticipate partners' responses are available, self-generative activities may be associated with both self-and partner-generated items, influencing the expression of the generation effect.     

Individual and age-related differences in children’s working memory

The purpose of this study was to investigate the degree to which age-related and individual differences in children’s working memory (WM) are due to a general or task-specific capacity system. Experiment 1 correlated children’s (N=146; age range 5–19 years) verbal and visual-spatial working memory performance with various intelligence and achievement measures. The results supporting a general system were that (1) visual-spatial and verbal WM measures were significantly intercorrelated with and without age partialed out and (2) both verbal and visual-spatial WM measures were significantly correlated with diverse achievement and intelligence measures. Experiment 2 compared three age groups (N=192; 7-, 10-, and 13-year-olds) on working-memory performance tasks under initial, enhanced (cued), and maintenance conditions. The results supporting a general capacity system were that (1) age-related performance differences in WM were found on all conditions and not isolated to specific processes, (2) the maintenance measures (high-load condition) predicted the variance better in age-related performance than process measures, and (3) although individual differences in WM performance reflected two independent operations, these operations produced similar correlations to achievement within age groups. Overall, the results support a general capacity explanation of age-related and individual differences in children’s WM performance.     

Children’s memory for counting-out rhymes: A cross-language comparison

In English, counting-out rhymes, such as “Eenie Meenie,” vary little over retellings. Recall is not rote but is sensitive to the structure of the genre. To test the generality of this finding, a sample of Romanian rhymes was collected. Although there was no overlap with the English rhymes, the corpus of rhymes collected had similar structure in terms of number of lines, repeating words, rhyme, alliteration, and the inclusion of nonsense words. Variation within rhymes preserved the poetic structure of the genre. The results suggest that verbatim recall can be schema driven if there is sufficient structure.     

Robert Hooke’s model of memory

In 1682 the scientist and inventor Robert Hooke read a lecture to the Royal Society of London, in which he described a mechanistic model of human memory. Yet few psychologists today seem to have heard of Hooke’s memory model. The lecture addressed questions of encoding, memory capacity, repetition, retrieval, and forgetting—some of these in a surprisingly modern way. Hooke’s model shares several characteristics with the theory of Richard Semon, which came more than 200 years later, but it is more complete. Among the model’s interesting properties are that (1) it allows for attention and other top-down influences on encoding; (2) it uses resonance to implement parallel, cue-dependent retrieval; (3) it explains memory for recency; (4) it offers a single-system account of repetition priming; and (5) the power law of forgetting can be derived from the model’s assumptions in a straightforward way.     

Comments on “Measuring memory for source: Some theoretical assumptions and technical limitations”

Researchers must consider limitations and assumptions inherent in their measure of source monitoring when drawing conclusions, an important point raised by Murnane and Bayen (1998). However, the issues they raise do not invalidate the conclusions we draw from the findings reported in Henkel and Franklin (1998). Issues regarding conclusions about source monitoring performance, the relation between recognition and source accuracy, and the use of empirical and multinomial analyses are discussed.     

Thomas and Legge’s matching hypothesis for

Thomas and Legge have proposed amatching hypothesis for two-alternative detection and recognition tasks. Given symmetric payoff, S is supposed to match his unconditional response probabilities to the presentation probabilities. More generally, even when payoff is asymmetric, S is supposed to keep his unconditional response probabilities constant across different discriminability levels. Time series analysis is applied here to the response sequences from two auditory amplitude recognition tasks to test both hypotheses. Experiment I obtains a single sequence from each of 16 Ss. Experiment II obtains two sequences at different discriminability levels from each of 24 Ss. Departures from the matching hypothesis are extremely gross in both cases. In addition, Experiment II shows clear changes in the response probabilities across discriminability conditions, though these are not systematic in direction across Ss.