Familiarity and relational preference in the understanding of noun-noun compounds

When people are presented with noun-noun compounds, they tend to produce two main types of interpretation: relational and property interpretations. One theory of compounding maintains that relational interpretations are preferred over property ones. However, many of the studies supporting this relational preference hypothesis appear to be vitiated by a failure to control for the familiarity of compounds. A rating study on so-called "novel" compounds used in previous studies is reported, which shows that many can be considered to be familiar. Then two experiments in which familiarity is controlled are presented, to test the relational preference hypothesis, using a sensibility judgment task (Experiment 1) and a comprehension judgment task (Experiment 2). The results show that familiarity has a clear effect on the ease of understanding of noun-noun compounds but that there is no hard evidence for relational preference. The implications of these results for the empirical literature and for current theories are discussed.     

Effects of probability mode on preference reversal.

Six analysts estimated verbally and numerically the chances that specific events will occur. Sixty decision makers used each type of estimate to make binary-choice decisions and to bid for lotteries based on the events. The usual reversal of preference between choice and bidding procedures was found in the numerical condition, but the frequency of preference reversals was significantly reduced in the verbal condition. This reduction occurred because risk aversion was reduced in choice when verbal estimates were given, whereas bidding was unaffected by presentation mode. The pattern of results was predicted by and supports the hypothesis that the relative importance given to the dimensions of a prospect depends on the form in which the information is displayed.     

Short-term recognition memory for pitch: Effect of a priori probability on response times and error rates

A previous finding (Bindra, Williams, & Wise, 1965) that Ss respond “different” more quickly than “same” when comparing the pitch of two tones was confirmed. It was found that this effect could be enhanced by making same trials less frequent and that the effect could be reversed by making same trials more frequent. The experimental treatment also affected the error rates of the two responses. Error and latency results are discussed in terms of a model of R T based upon a sequential-sampling and decision procedure, and are shown to be compatible with such a model. A decision bias towards the response “different” must be taken into account when the model is applied. This bias appears to be influenced by the size of the interstimulus interval used.     

Familiarity and word recognition

Word recognition was examined for physics and non-physics students after a single visual presentation of a series of sixty words. Physics words likely to be familiar only to physics subjects were used to vary the prior familiarity of the two groups with the inspection material and the ratio of physics to common words (salience) was varied for each of the three inspection series. Common words, which were expected to have greater salience than physics words in one of the inspection series, were not found to be recognized better than the control pairings of physics words by either group of subjects. The absence of differences between physics and non-physics students in the number of inspection list words (positive instances) correctly identified supports the view that prior familiarity is not a critical variable when all inspection items are presented in a recognition test. Physics students made fewer errors than non-physics students in identifying both physics and common words in the the recognition test which were not in an inspection series (negative instances). It is suggested that the correct identification of negative instances involves a scanning of a subject's “internal store” of previously experienced inspection items and that this is more efficient when the meaning of all the items in this “store” is known.     

Familiarity and free recall

Using stimulus material drawn from a single category, it is shown that formal recognition tests yield superior performance to recall when the category cannot be completely enumerated by the subjects, but not otherwise. Furthermore, within these categories recognition is superior only if unfamiliar items are selected as stimuli. These findings fit the theory that when recalling subjects attempt to scan the relevant category and “recognize” those items employed as stimuli.     

Choice behavior in transition: development of preference for the higher probability of reinforcement.

Ten acquisition curves were obtained from each of 4 pigeons in a two-choice discrete-trial procedure. In each of these 10 conditions, the two response keys initially had equal probabilities of reinforcement, and subjects' choice responses were about equally divided between the two keys. Then the reinforcement probabilities were changed so that one key had a higher probability of reinforcement (the left key in half of the conditions and the right key in the other half), and in nearly every case the subjects developed a preference for this key. The rate of acquisition of preference for this key was faster when the ratio of the two reinforcement probabilities was higher. For instance, acquisition of preference was faster in conditions with reinforcement probabilities of .12 and .02 than in conditions with reinforcement probabilities of .40 and .30, even though the pairs of probabilities differed by .10 in both cases. These results were used to evaluate the predictions of some theories of transitional behavior in choice situations. A trial-by-trial analysis of individual responses and reinforcers suggested that reinforcement had both short-term and long-term effects on choice. The short-term effect was an increased probability of returning to the same key on the one or two trials following a reinforcer. The long-term effect was a gradual increase in the proportion of responses on the key with the higher probability of reinforcement, an increase that usually continued for several hundred trials.     

Lateral preference profiles and right shift attempt histories of consistent and inconsistent left-handers

Differences in abilities and preferences exist between left-handers who both write and throw with their left hands (consistent left-handers) and those who write with their left hand but prefer to throw with their right (inconsistent left-handers). It is also known that many left-handers are pressured to switch to right-hand writing, and that these pressures can lead to a right shift attempt. The present study is the first to explore the joint effects of the consistent/inconsistent left-handedness dichotomy, right shift attempt history, and lateral preference profiles. Testing 379 Canadian adults between the ages of 18 and 94 indicated that, while both types of left-handers were equally likely to experience a right shift attempt, the inconsistent left-handers were more likely to successfully switch to right-hand writing. Further analyses revealed that throwing hand was more associated than writing hand with the direction of sidedness for a lateral preference index based upon eye, foot, and ear preferences. More specifically, right-hand throwers were much more likely to have a rightward lateral preference score than were left-hand throwers, regardless of current preferred writing hand. Overall, the results support an hypothesis that the left-handers who are least likely to submit to rightward switch pressures are those with the strongest, most consistent left-sided lateral preference profile.     

熟悉性与回想分离的新证据

人们常常发现自己对某一情景有些熟悉, 但又想不起以前有关的经历。对这种熟悉感的理论解释, 一种观点认为熟悉感来自一种较弱的记忆形式, 与有回忆情况下的再认属于同一加工过程(single-process models, SPM)。另一种观点则认为, 熟悉感来自一种基于熟悉性的再认, 与基于回想的再认相互独立(dual-process theories, DPT)。在实验室, 评估熟悉性与回想是否相互独立的基本方法是寻找两者分离的证据。本文尝试梳理无线索回忆再认(recognition without cued recall, RWCR)范式的研究, 结果显示：熟悉性对某种特殊的概念加工和整体特征的知觉加工要比回想更加敏感, 并没有支持SPM关于回想和熟悉性各自对意义加工和局部特征的知觉加工更加敏感的推断。而且RWCR研究还观测到熟悉性与回想在行为和神经成像方面的实验性分离, 支持了DPT关于熟悉性与回想相互独立的推断。最后, 本文从熟悉性的深层机制和中英文材料对RWCR的不同影响出发, 对未来研究提出展望。     

Familiarity enhances visual working memory for faces

Although it is intuitive that familiarity with complex visual objects should aid their preservation in visual working memory (WM), empirical evidence for this is lacking. This study used a conventional change-detection procedure to assess visual WM for unfamiliar and famous faces in healthy adults. Across experiments, faces were upright or inverted and a low- or high-load concurrent verbal WM task was administered to suppress contribution from verbal WM. Even with a high verbal memory load, visual WM performance was significantly better and capacity estimated as significantly greater for famous versus unfamiliar faces. Face inversion abolished this effect. Thus, neither strategic, explicit support from verbal WM nor low-level feature processing easily accounts for the observed benefit of high familiarity for visual WM. These results demonstrate that storage of items in visual WM can be enhanced if robust visual representations of them already exist in long-term memory.     

Memory for vocal tempo and pitch

Two experiments examined the ability to remember the vocal tempo and pitch of different individuals, and the way this information is encoded into the cognitive system. In both studies, participants engaged in an initial familiarisation phase while attending was systematically directed towards different aspects of speakers’ voices. Afterwards, they received a tempo or pitch recognition task. Experiment 1 showed that tempo and pitch are both incidentally encoded into memory at levels comparable to intentional learning, and no performance deficit occurs with divided attending. Experiment 2 examined the ability to recognise pitch or tempo when the two dimensions co-varied and found that the presence of one influenced the other: performance was best when both dimensions were positively correlated with one another. As a set, these findings indicate that pitch and tempo are automatically processed in a holistic, integral fashion [Garner, W. R. (1974). The processing of information and structure. Potomac, MD: Erlbaum.] which has a number of cognitive implications.     

Familiarity and pop-out in visual search

In this paper, we report that when the low-level features of targets and distractors are held constant, visual search performance can be strongly influenced by familiarity. In the first condition, a was the target amid as distractors, and vice versa. The response time increased steeply as a function of number of distractors (82 msec/item). When the same stimuli were rotated by 90° (the second condition), however, they became familiar patterns— and —and gave rise to much shallower search functions (31 msec/item). In the third condition, when the search was for a familiar target, (or ), among unfamiliar distractors, (or ), the slope was about 46 msec/item. In the last condition, when the search was for an unfamiliar target, (or ), among familiar distractors, s (or s), parallel search functions were found with a slope of about 1.5 msec/item. These results show that familiarity speeds visual search and that it does so principally when the distractors, not the targets, are familiar.