Retrieving names in old age: Short- and (very) long-term effects of repetition

Two experiments are reported that examine the effects of repetition on name retrieval in younger adults (in their 50s and 60s) and older adults (in their 70s and 80s). In Experiment 1, the subjects were asked to name a set of famous faces four times over the course of a 1-h session. Younger subjects produced significantly more correct responses than did older subjects. There was significant improvement with repeated attempts at naming, with younger and older subjects benefiting equally in terms of increasing numbers of correct responses across the session. In contrast, there was a highly significant age deficit in picture recognition over a similar retention interval. A qualitative analysis of naming responses (full name vs. part of the name) provided support for the view that aging and nonrecent use have equivalent effects on retrieval. In Experiment 2, younger subjects (but not older subjects) were significantly more likely to correctly name famous faces that they had seen 22 months previously than to correctly name new famous faces. In contrast, older subjects (but not younger subjects) were significantly more likely to produce erroneous names to famous faces that they had seen 22 months previously than to new famous faces. It is concluded that repetition priming may be relatively unaffected by aging over short retention intervals (Experiment 1) but not over a very long retention interval (Experiment 2).     

Stimulus probability and same-different classification

Three experiments investigated the effect of stimulus probability on same-different classification time. In Experiments I and II, subjects made same responses on the basis of name matches of simultaneously presented letters. Half of the same trials involved letters that were also physically identical. Experiment I showed that the presentation probability of specific letters affected name matches and different responses, but not physical matches. Experiment II varied stimulus contrast as well as probability. Contrast had a main effect but did not interact with probability at any level of processing. In Experiment III, subjects were switched to the physical level of processing. Stimuli that now had the same name but differed in case were called different. In this condition, the probability effects obs(irved in Experiment II disappeared. These results are interpreted as demonstrating that stimulus probability has its effect during the process that derives the name of the stimulus from the visual representation. This process takes place before the name comparison is made, and the name comparison process precedes the determination of the different response.     

A psychological perspective interpretation of the attitude-behavior relationship

In two experiments subjects were shown seven items that described uses for photographs taken of them with an opposite-sex black. The uses formed a graded series ranging from a situation in which only other researchers would see the photos to one in which they would be employed in a nationwide campaign for integration. Subjects were either asked to sign releases so that the photographs could actually be taken and used in the ways specified (behavior) or to indicate their hypothetical agreement or disagreement with each release as part of a survey on attitudes (attitude). In both experiments, the attitude subjects agreed to more of the releases than did the behavior subjects. This difference has been termed an attitude-behavior discrepancy by some researchers. However, in both experiments, behavior subjects judged themselves as no less prejudiced than attitude subjects and scaled agreement with each photographic release as reflecting less prejudice than did attitude subjects. These data are consistent with the interpretation that subjects changed their psychological perspectives (Ostrom & Upshaw, 1968) in order to interpret their own behaviors as attitudinally consistent.     

Intrusiveness and Persuasive Impact of Three Communication Media1

Two field experiments compared the persuasive impact of communications delivered face-to-face, by telephone, or by letter. In both studies, letters did not differ from faccto-face contacts but telephone calls were less effective. In the second experiment, personalness interacted with communication medium such that addressing subjects by name reduced the impact of face-to-face encounters, increased that of letters, and had no effect on phone calls. A third sample of subjects rated the appropriateness of name usage by salespeople, indicating a salesperson should give his own name but was inappropriately personal when calling the subject by name. The findings support the notion that varying media and name usage varies the psychological distance between communicator and recipient. At appropriate psychological distances, communicators and communications have optimum effectiveness; at too great or too little distance, they lose impact. Thus, not only is selection of proper medium important to communicators but how the medium is used can affect impact.     

Effects of prior knowledge on memory for new information

Three experiments examined the effects of prior knowledge on the learning and retention of new information. Subjects learned varying amounts of prior knowledge about individuals referred to by first name/last name combinations. In the first two experiments, subjects more rapidly learned new information about individuals for whom they were given prior knowledge, retrieved this information more slowly, and showed smaller interference (fan) effects. This complex of results is predicted by a spreading activation model in which we assume subjects try to integrate the prior knowledge with the new information in a network fashion. The third experiment, in addition to including conditions of prior vs. no prior experimental knowledge, included well-known names like Ted Kennedy, about which subjects have a great deal of preexperimental prior knowledge. The relationships between conditions of experimental prior knowledge and no prior knowledge obtained in Experiments 1 and 2 were replicated, but the well-known names did not behave simply like the extreme of experimental prior knowledge. In particular, subjects showed the fastest verification of new facts learned about the well-known names, rather than the slowest, as predicted from the spreading activation network model.     

Sources of Disagreement in Object Naming

Two experiments examined the processing of objects with low name agreement. Experiment I compared naming latencies for objects with three different types of name disagreement to those for matched control objects with very high name agreement. Objects with low name agreement due to abbreviations (e.g. phone) were named no more slowly than were control objects. Objects with multiple names (e.g. couch, sofa, settee) and objects often given incorrect names (e.g. spider for ant) took longer to name correctly than did matched controls. These results were confirmed in a second naming experiment using a revised set of high-name-agreement control stimuli. In Experiment 2, subjects carried out an object decision task using the revised stimulus set. Subjects could recognize objects with multiple names as quickly as those with high name agreement. Objects often given incorrect names were recognized by subjects more slowly than were high-agreement matched stimuli. The pattern of data suggests that the delay in naming latency due to the availability of more than one correct name arises after structural recognition. In contrast, the slowed naming of objects often misnamed would seem to originate from difficulties encountered at or before the structural stage of recognition.     

Remembering computer command names: Effects of subject generation versus experimenter imposition

Two experiments analyzed the effectiveness of goal statements in aiding recall of self-generated as opposed to experimenter-imposed command names. Subjects were presented with a series of before-after pairs representing the computer states before and after a command was executed. In Experiment 1, during study, one group of subjects generated a command name in response to each pair; a second group generated a goal statement describing the goal to be accomplished in addition to generating a command name. During recall, half of each group was required to recall the name, whereas the other half was required to describe the goal before attempting to recall the name. In Experiment 2, during study, command names (and goals for those subjects in the goal condition) were imposed by the experimenter rather than generated by the subject. Subjects who generated goals and names recalled more command names than did those who generated only names or who received imposed goals and/or names. Generation of an appropriate goal at study improved encoding by helping subjects to select more appropriate command names; generation of an appropriate goal at test improved retrieval for appropriate names only, presumably by activating a relevant subset of names. Even in the relatively simple task of naming and remembering command names, having an appropriate model of the domain through the use of specific goal statements substantially improved performance.     

The effects of negative relatedness upon word-picutre and word-word comparisons and subsequent recall.

In two experiments subjects were required to compare the meanings of either a word and a picture, or of two words. Different name levels, i.e. category versus superordinate names, had only a small effect on the time to compare a name with a picture. When incongruent stimulus pairs were semantically related, both positive and negative decision times were longer than when the incongruent pairs were unrelated; relatedness also affected subjects' recall of stimuli. Implications for models of semantic decision are discussed.     

不同注意条件下的知觉启动及其机制

采用快速命名方法探讨不同注意条件下的知觉启动效应及其机制。实验中呈现一系列颜色词,要求被试分别完成集中和分散注意任务,然后进行词命名和再认测验。在词命名任务中．实验1包括旧词、重组颜色词和新词,而在实验2中重组颜色词改为新颜色词。结果表明,在实验1中,只有在集中注意条件下,被试对旧词的命名时间明显短于重组颜色词．即表现出知觉启动效应。而在实验2的两种注意条件下,被试对旧词的命名时间均明显短于新颜色词。这提示,在不同注意条件下的学习会影响其后的颜色知觉启动,并且与词和颜色的联结捆绑有关。     

Verbal coding and the elimination of Stroop interference in a matching task

Translational models of the Stroop effect (Virzi & Egeth, 1985) predict that Stroop interference can be eliminated if subjects can be induced to process target colors using a coding system separate from the coding system used to process distractors. This hypothesis was tested in two experiments. In the first experiment, we attempted to eliminate the need for subjects to translate target colors to verbal codes when responding to Stroop stimuli. Before responding to verbal incongruent color word distractors, subjects practiced matching colors to irregular shapes. It was expected that subjects would use nonverbal codes to mediate responding in this task. After practice, subjects continued the matching task in the presence of incongruent color words. Stroop interference persisted, contrary to predictions. Because subjects reported adopting verbal strategies to perform the matching task, Experiment 2 was designed to control the verbal coding strategies that subjects employed. Before responding to Stroop distractor stimuli, subjects in the nonsense name group practiced using nonsense names to mediate the matching of shapes to colors; subjects in the actual name group used actual color names to mediate performance in the matching task. When incongruent color word distractors were introduced, Stroop interference was eliminated for subjects in the nonsense name group, but persisted for subjects in the actual name group. The results are interpreted as consistent with an outcome conflict (Navon & Miller, 1987) or a modified translational model of the Stroop effect.     

Acquisition of arbitrary conditional discriminations by young normally developing children

Three experiments investigated conditions designed to facilitate acquisition of arbitrary conditional discriminations in 3- to 6-year-old normally developing children. In Experiment 1, 6 subjects failed to master the arbitrary match-to-sample task under conditions of differential reinforcement alone, but 7 subjects did so when instructions or instructions and sample naming were added. In Experiment 2, sample naming introduced in a blocked-trial arrangement resulted in acquisition, but only when the sample name was a nonsense syllable provided by the experimenter (5 of 7 subjects) and not when the sample name was generated by the subject (0 of 5 subjects). Experiment 3 demonstrated the effectiveness of a training sequence involving thematically related stimuli as an intermediate step facilitating the transition from identity to novel arbitrary relations. The difficulties in mastering arbitrary conditional discriminations shown here imply that further analyses with young children will be particularly important in efforts to investigate the development of theoretically important stimulus relations.     

Grammatical Gender in Speech Production: Evidence from Czech

Three experiments demonstrate gender congruency effects (i.e., naming times of a picture are faster when the name of the target picture and a distractor noun are gender congruent) in Czech. In the first experiment, subjects named the pictures by producing gender-marked demonstrative pronouns and a noun. In the second and third experiments, subjects produced a gender-marked numeral (marked with a suffix) plus a noun. Two types of such suffixes exist in Czech. Some numerals vary in nominative singular with gender, others do not. The results show significant gender congruency effects in all experiments. They suggest that gender congruency effects can be obtained not only with free, but also with bound morphemes. In the second and third experiment the effect only emerged when the suffix was gender-marked (as opposed to gender-invariant), supporting the view that the gender congruency effect is due to competition at the level of phonological forms rather than at the grammatical level.     

Response dependency and processing dependency of line orientation and position in a single-item task

The relation between the processing of line-orientation information and position information was studied in two single-item recognition experiments with percentage correct as the dependent variable. In Experiment 1 subjects had to name the position and the orientation of a small oriented line segment in an otherwise empty field. In Experiment 2 subjects had to indicate in addition whether a line segment had been presented or not. Both experiments showed that orientation responses and position responses are highly and positively correlated. Inconsistencies in the results of two equivalent signal-detection analyses in Experiment 2 are interpreted as indicating that in the present type of task subjects often have no information about the target and have to guess. It is concluded that in such a situation a high-threshold model (subjects respond correctly if adequate information is available, and otherwise guess) is best suited to describe the results. After an appropriate correction for guessing, no orientation processing without position processing was found.     

Knowledge of spatial relations: The determination of the relationship “nearest to”

After memorising the names and positions of a set of familiar towns, subjects were given the name of one of the towns followed by the name of a target town. The subjects' task was to state whether the given town was the nearest town in the memory set to the target. In three experiments analyses of reaction times suggested that subjects generate their responses by determining the distance from the given town to the target and comparing it with the distances of other towns to the target. The use of other methods, for example locating the nearest town on a mental map by scanning outward from the target and comparing it with the given town seem inconsistent with the data.     

Interference with short-term visual memory produced by concurrent central processing

Double-letter memory and test stimuli were used in two experiments on a speek comparison task. Faster decision times were found when memory and test stimuli were physically identical than when they were the same in name only. This finding was true even with retention intervals as long as 12 sec and even when difficult tasks filled the retention intervals. However, the decision-time advantage of physically identical comparisons was greatest when the interval was not filled with a task likely to interfere with rehearsals. High verbal subjects had a smaller advantage for the physically identical comparisons than did low verbal subjects but were affected in the same way as low verbal subjects in terms of which conditions raised the overall correct comparison times, raised the error rates, and reduced the advantage of physically identical comparisons.     

Individual differences in the verbal coding of familiar visual stimuli

Two experiments were performed both of which involved the same-different comparison of pairs of alphabet letters. "Same" reaction times were obtained for both physical matches (e.g., AA) and name matches (e.g., aA). The results of both experiments supported the hypothesis that individual subjects would differ with respect to whether or not they based their physical matches on a comparison of verbal codes. In Experiment I, subjects differed in the size of their reaction time difference between physical and name matches, and in Experiment II, individuals differed with respect to whether or not the frequency of usage of the letters affected their reaction time for physical matches. In both experiments, the individual differences in verbally coding physical matches were related to Hock's (1973) individual differences distinction between subjects emphasizing analytic processes and subjects emphasizing structural processes.     

Categorizing chairs and naming pears: Category differences in object processing as a function of task and priming

Four experiments are reported examining the locus of structural similarity effects in picture recognition and naming with normal subjects. Subjects carried out superordinate categorization and naming tasks with picture and word forms of clothing, furniture, fruit, and vegetable exemplars. The main findings were as follows: (1) Responses to pictures of fruit and vegetables (\ldstructurally similar\rd objects) were slowed relative to pictures of clothing and furniture (\ldstructurally dissimilar\rd objects). This structural similarity difference was greater for picture naming than for superordinate categorization of pictures. (2) Structural similarity effects in picture naming were reduced by repetition priming. Repetition priming effects were equivalent from picture and word naming as prime tasks. (3) However, superordinate categorization of the prime did not produce the structural similarity effects on priming found for picture naming. Furthermore, such priming effects did not arise for picture or word categorization or for reading picture names as target tasks. It is proposed that structural similarity effects on priming object processing are located in processes mapping semantic representations of pictures to name representations required to select names for objects. Visually based competition between fruit and vegetables produces competition in name selection, which is reduced by priming the mappings between semantic and name representations.     

声旁类型与频率在汉字和部件识别中的交互作用

用识别整字和识别部件两种任务探讨两种声旁频率——组字频率和使用频率的作用。结果发现：在局部识别中声旁使用频率的影响和部件类型有交互作用。声旁使用频率对识别汉字单部件声旁有易化作用。声旁组字频率的影响和部件类型有交互作用。声旁组字频率对识别汉字多部件组合声旁有易化作用。在整字识别中,声旁的使用频率有易化作用;声旁的组字频率的作用受到部件类型的影响,多部件组合声旁的组字频率对识别整字有易化作用。     

Stimulus generalization along a dimension based on a verbal concept

The present study examined generalization along a dimension based on a verbal concept of occupational status. The status dimension was scaled by students who placed occupation names into five status categories, Category 1 representing highest status and Category 5 the lowest status. In two experiments, key presses by students were occasionally reinforced when a slide showing an occupation name from Status Category 3 was present. For half the subjects, key presses were not reinforced during a name from Category 1; for the other half, presses were not reinforced during a name from Category 5. Occupation names from all status categories were later singly presented. In this generalization test, subjects typically divided the dimension into two parts, responding alike to all names within each part. The results suggest that generalization along a dimension in humans is mediated by a subject's verbal classifications of stimuli.     

Social Memory of Preschool Girls and Boys

In two experiments, 40 female and 40 male preschoolers attending a day-care center were shown photographs of children attending the center, and were asked either to name each pictured child (recall condition) or to point to the picture of the child as the experimenter said the child's name (recognition condition). In both experiments, girls and boys did not differ significantly in the number of correct identifications on either the recall or recognition tasks. The results do not support Feldstein's (1976) conclusion that preschool girls show better social memory than preschool boys.