The effects of learning instructions and cueing on free recall

Eighty unrelated high-imagery words were presented for free recall learning in groups of four words each. Learning instructions were varied, with one group told to relate the words in each input group by means of images, another group told to use verbal (sentence) mediators, and the control group not given specific learning instructions. During recall, list items were presented as retrieval cues in some conditions. In comparison with the control condition, imagery and verbal mediation instructions produced greater recall, more clustering, and a largez number of instances per group recalled. When the retrieval cues were selected such that one cue came from each of the input groups and when the strength of within-group organization was quite high, Ss recalled more words and a larger number of input groups. It was concluded that instructions and cueing conditions influenced different aspects of the free recall process. Instructions influenced the organization of individual words into units, and cueing affected the retrieval of specific units.     

The influence of cue type on backward inhibition

Backward inhibition is proposed as a process of lateral inhibition that operates during response selection in task switching, reducing interference caused by the most recently abandoned task set. The effect has been observed across a wide range of contexts but is eliminated by using spatial location to cue tasks (K. D. Arbuthnott & T. S. Woodward, 2002). The present studies replicated this finding, showing that spatial cues are also associated with greater response congruity than verbal cues, consistent with the lateral inhibition model. Spatial cues may introduce greater discriminability between competing category-response rules, reducing the need for lateral inhibition. However, when participants named the task before target presentation, backward inhibition was observed with spatial cues, suggesting that verbalization increased competition between sets, despite spatial localization.     

The effects of verbal cueing on implicit hand maps

The use of position sense to perceive the external spatial location of the body requires that immediate proprioceptive afferent signals be combined with stored representations of body size and shape. Longo and Haggard (2010) developed a method to isolate and measure this representation in which participants judge the location of several landmarks on their occluded hand. The relative location of judgements is used to construct a perceptual map of hand shape. Studies using this paradigm have revealed large, and highly stereotyped, distortions of the hand, which is represented as wider than it actually is and with shortened fingers. Previous studies using this paradigm have cued participants to respond by giving verbal labels of the knuckles and fingertips. A recent study has shown differential effects of verbal and tactile cueing of localisation judgements about bodily landmarks (Cardinali et al., 2011). The present study therefore investigated implicit hand maps measuring through localisation judgements made in response to verbal labels and tactile stimuli applied to the same landmarks. The characteristic set of distortions of hand size and shape were clearly apparent in both conditions, indicating that the distortions reported previously are not an artefact of the use of verbal cues. However, there were also differences in the magnitude of distortions between conditions, suggesting that the use of verbal cues may alter the representation of the body underlying position sense.     

The effects of cue distinctiveness on odor-based context-dependent memory

The distinctiveness of an ambient odor was examined in relation to its success as a cue in contextdependent memory. Distinctiveness was examined in terms of both cue novelty and contextual appropriateness. Two experiments were conducted in which three different ambient odors that varied in familiarity and contextual appropriateness were manipulated at an incidental word learning encoding session and at a free recall retrieval session 48 h later. Experiment 1 revealed that when a novel ambient odor (osmanthus) was the available context cue, word recall was better than in any other condition. Further, among familiar odor cues, recall was better with a contextually inappropriate odor (peppermint) than with a contextually appropriate odor (clean fresh pine). Experiment 2 confirmed that superior word recall with osmanthus and peppermint depended on the odor cue’s being available at both encoding and retrieval, and that the relation of an odor to the situational context is a key factor for predicting its effectiveness as a retrieval cue.     

Influence of display type and cue format on task-cuing effects: Dissociating switch cost and right-left prevalence effects

In previous studies of task switching and of the right-left prevalence effect, researchers have used a procedure in which the stimulus on each trial occurs in one of four quadrants, and responses are made by pressing one of two diagonally arranged response keys. Across these studies, discrepant effects of cuing interval have been reported. These discrepancies need clarification because cue-based preparation effects are frequently interpreted as reflecting cognitive control processes. In Experiment 1, we compared performance with display formats used by Meiran (1996; Meiran, Chorev, & Sapir, 2000; small display, cues located at sides of quadrants and displayed until response) to study task switching and by Proctor and colleagues (Proctor, Koch, & Vu, 2006; large display, cues located at center of display and shown until target onset) to study right-left prevalence. We found a decrease in task-switch cost with increasing cuing interval with the Meiran display, but not with the Proctor display, but the right-left prevalence effect was of similar size for the two display formats and was relatively unaffected by cuing interval. To determine the basis of the discrepant task-switch results, we used small and large displays in Experiments 2 and 3, respectively, with cue type and cue offset varied. With the side cues, the task-switch cost decreased in all cases at the longer cuing interval, but with the centered cues, it decreased only when the display size was small. Thus, the effects of cuing interval on switch costs are sensitive to variations of display characteristics, whereas cuing interval and display characteristics have little influence on the right-left prevalence effect, suggesting that prevalence effect is due to processes that are independent from those producing the switch cost.     

The effects of advance location cueing on latencies in a single-letter recognition task

Summary This study investigates facilitating effects of foreknowledge of position in single-letter recognition tasks with latency as the dependent variable. Three kinds of cue are used: symbolic cues, location cues and neutral cues. For the effects of symbolic and location cues the following predictions are derived from the literature: increasing benefits with increasing SOAs for symbolic cues and constant benefits with increasing SOAs for location cues.Cue-detection times and letter-recognition times with the different cues were determined in three experiments. In the experiments the same general paradigm was used. In Experiment 1 cue-detection times appeared to differ as a function of cue eccentricity; in Experiments 2 and 3 cues were adjusted in such a way that cue-detection times were about the same. Cues reliably indicated the target position in Experiments 1 and 2; in Experiment 3 cue validity was reduced to 50%.The cueing results conformed partly to the predictions. All experiments suggested a small benefit under symbolic cueing and a larger benefit under location cueing. Except for the smallest SOA used, for both types of cue benefits were invariant over SOAs. The implications of these results in relation to other single-letter recognition studies are briefly discussed.     

The effects of slowed speech on auditory comprehension in aphasia

The present study investigates the effects of slowed speech on auditory comprehension in aphasia. Specifically, an attempt was made to isolate the effects of added time on comprehension at the language processing stages of auditory perception, by increasing the duration of the vowel segments in each word; word recognition and semantic analysis, by adding silences between words; and syntactic analysis, by adding silences at constituent phrase boundaries. Sentences were also read at a slow rate to see the effects of naturally slowed speech on sentence comprehension. Test sentences consisted of simple active and passive declarative sentences, and complex sentences with embedded medial and final relative clauses. Sentences were either semantically reversible or nonreversible. Thirty-four aphasic patients who varied in both severity and type of aphasia were tested on a picture verification task. Results indicated that slowing facilitated language comprehension significantly only in the syntactic condition. Neither syntactic complexity nor semantic reversibility interacted with slowed speech to facilitate auditory language comprehension. Further, it was only the Wernicke's aphasics who showed significant improvement with time added at constituent boundaries. These results suggest that time alone does not facilitate language comprehension in aphasia, but that rather it is the interaction of time with syntactic processing which improves comprehension.     

The effects of cue reliability on infants' manual search.

Nine-month-old babies were presented a manual search problem in which toys were hidden in one of two containers, and then the containers were transposed. Over a series of training trials either two, one, or no cues were perfectly correlated with the location of the toy. The infants' first searches became more accurate over training trials in conditions with consistent container and/or position cues. In the final training trial block search performance was best with two cues, intermediate with one cue, and least accurate in the no-cue condition. In a subsequent reversal procedure, in which the toy was placed in the previously unused hiding place, the number of correct first searches also differed according to the nature of cues available across hidings. The implications for learning the concept of object permanence are discussed.     

The effects of spatial uncertainty and cue predictability on visual orienting in children

Visual orienting was studied using a task that required participants to respond to stimuli at various locations that were either accurately or inaccurately cued. Orienting abilities of children ages 6 to 8 years, and young adults (21 years) were tested under conditions of spatial uncertainty (i.e., multiple possible target locations), and variable cue predictability (i.e., variable proportion of validly cued targets). The results indicate that children orient their attentional resources automatically to abrupt visual onsets, and do so under conditions when it is not beneficial to overall performance. Adults, on the other hand, are able to control their orienting in such a way that it is limited to conditions where it improves their task efficiency. There appears to be developmental change in the ability to assess the utility of a location cue and/or to moderate responses in accordance with the utility of a cue. This finding is discussed in terms of the development of attentional control and inhibitory processes in children.     

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.     

Successes and failures in producing attentional object-based cueing effects

Over 30?years of research using Posner's spatial cueing paradigm has shown that selective attention operates on representations of spatial locations, leading to space-based theories of attention. Manipulations of stimuli and methods have shown this paradigm to be sensitive to several types of object-based representations-providing evidence for theories incorporating object-based attentional selection. This paper critically evaluates the evidence demanding object-based explanations that go beyond positing spatial representations alone, with an emphasis on identifying and interpreting successes and failures in obtaining object-based cueing effects. This overview of current evidence is used to generate hypotheses regarding critical factors in the emergence and influence of object representations-their generation, strength, and maintenance-in the modulation of object-based facilitatory and inhibitory cueing effects.     

The effects of time pressure on judgment in multiple cue probability learning

This experiment used multiple-cue probability learning to study the effects of time pressure on judgment. Undergraduate students were trained to use cues with linear or curvilinear function forms to predict a criterion. Subsequent to training, performance under time pressure was compared with selfregulated performance. Lens model analyses indicated that cognitive control deteriorated under time pressure while cognitive matching remained unchanged. This effect was limited to complex cue-criterion environments containing curvilinear function forms. The results suggest that the time pressured individual tends to be erratic even while implementing correct policy.     

The effects of cue distinctiveness on infants' manual search

Nine- and sixteen-month-old infants were repeatedly presented a manual search problem in which a toy was hidden in one of two containers, which were then moved into reach. The distinctiveness of the containers or their closeness during the movement was varied in different conditions. Overall, the older infants performed better than younger infants, performance improved across trials, and there were more correct searches when the containers or trajectories were distinctive. Analyses of visual orienting indicated that infants learned to restrict their looking to the hiding place. The ability to maintain attention to discriminative cues may be instrumental to progress in delayed-reaction and object permanence tasks.     

The effects of implementation intention strategies on prospective memory cue encoding

Implementation intentions, which include a structured verbal statement and mental imagery, improve prospective memory performance (i.e. remembering to execute delayed intentions). To investigate whether, and how, implementation intention strategies affect encoding processes we had participants complete a thought probe procedure immediately after forming the intention to remember to press Q when seeing fruit words. In Experiment 1, an implementation intention verbal statement (relative to control statement) significantly increased generation of high typicality exemplars (apple, banana, orange). In Experiment 2, an implementation intention imagery procedure (relative to control imagery) produced similar outcomes. In Experiment 3, combining the statement and imagery components of the implementation intention (relative to control statement and imagery) demonstrated even more potent effects (e.g. three-fold increase in fruit exemplars generated). In Experiment 4, we tested whether the control statement versus control imagery procedure differentially affected encoding, but these control procedures showed no significant differences. An interesting, unanticipated finding was that there was significantly less mind wandering in the implementation intention conditions relative to the control conditions. The current experiments provide novel information on the processes operating during intention encoding, and support the classic view that implementation intentions increase the encoding of specific retrieval cues.     

The effects of search criteria and retrieval cue availability on memory for words

The effects of search criteria upon recall performance following a word classification task were investigated. Rival hypotheses were tested, one based on the number of cues available at retrieval and the other on the amount of processing carried out during classification. After being presented with two-component category names, subjects classified words on the basis of either category membership or the number of semantic components the words shared with a target category, and then they received an unexpected recall test. Experiment 1 favored an amount-of-processing explanation, but it was felt that redundancy in the stimulus materials might invalidate this conclusion. Experiment 2 confirmed this suspicion and clearly supported an explanation in terms of retrieval cue availability. The notion of partial semantic processing of words is discussed, and it is argued that the number of congruent encodings formed during classification can be used as an index of elaboration and subsequent memory performance.     

The effects of cueing and constraint instructions on children's free recall performance

The performance of nursery school children was investigated in two experiments involving cued and constrained free recall. Under constrained instructions, subjects were required to recall items by category. Under cued instructions subjects could recall items in any order they wished but the organized nature of the lists was identified and subjects were told that they would remember more if they recalled things from the same category together. No effects of cueing instructions were obtained in either Experiment I or Experiment II. Constrained recall instructions led to enhanced recall and category clustering. However, the beneficial effects were not maintained on later trials with the same list or on a transfer list when the constraints on recall were dropped. In addition, the introduction of constrained recall instructions had identical effects whether they were introduced early or late in practice. The results were discussed in terms of the influences of variables which affect the subjects' use of retrieval strategies and the development of memory.     

The effects of a discriminative cue and an incompatible activity on generalized imitation

Four noncompliant retardates were observed in a generalized imitation study. Two variables were studied: provision of a competing reinforced activity, and use of a cue to aid discrimination between reinforced and nonreinforced imitations. Both variables were found to increase the rate of discrimination between the two sets of stimuli. Greatest discrimination occurred when both cue and alternative task were present. Discrimination decreased when the variables were removed. Results are interpreted as implying that imitation of nonreinforced cues in generalized imitation procedures varies with the degree to which reinforcement is available for other activity, as well as with the complexity of the discrimination problem. These results help indicate conditions under which the generalized imitation effect may be observed in more naturalistic settings.