Age related changes in the effectiveness of name and visual codes in recognition memory

In the first of three studies college, third grade, and kindergarten Ss were able to determine that two stimuli presented 700 msec apart were the same more quickly if they were visually identical than if they shared the same name. If 3000 msec elapsed between stimulus presentations third grade and college Ss responded at the same rate in making both types of matches, whereas kindergarten Ss appeared to continue to respond more quickly in making visual matches. Study II was an unsuccessful attempt to replicate the kindergarten finding. A warning signal, presented 500 msec prior to the second stimulus, reduced RTs at both interstimulus intervals, but no significant differences in making visual and name matches occurred. In Study III first-graders, responding either with or without a warning signal, were found to respond like the older Ss in Study I. The warning signal again reduced RT at both intervals. The results suggest that Ss across a wide age range are able to use the visual properties of a stimulus for only a very brief period as the basis for making matching judgments.     

Effects of stimulus differentiation training upon hypotheses,strategies, and stereotypes in discrimination learning among kindergarten children

Two groups of kindergarten children received stimulus differentiation training either with feedback (experimental Ss) or without (controls), prior to presentation of a series of discrimination-learning problems using blanktrial probes. Results were as follows: Performance of both groups was virtually perfect during differentiation training (less than one error per 1000 trials). In transfer, however, experimental Ss solved more problems, generated more consistent Ss during blank-trial probes, manifested fewer response sets, were more likely to abandon a disconfirmed H, sampled more locally consistent Ss following errors, and retained a confirmed H more frequently than control Ss. Experimental Ss also manifested strategy Sys (hypothesis sampling systems) predominately, while controls generated only stereotypes. Findings were discussed in relation to theoretical perspectives derived from Piagetian theory and developmental learning theory.     

Optional shift behavior as a function of age and dimensional dominance

An optional reversal-nonreversal shift task for which the relevant color or form cues were either dominant or nondominant was presented to 320 Ss, 6 through 20 years of age. Dominance, as defined in terms of relative cue similarity, was related to initial learning and shift behavior for kindergarten and third-grade Ss; but not for sixth-grade and college Ss. The speed of initial learning and percentage of reversal shifts was related to age when the nondominant dimension was relevant. There were no developmental differences when the dominant dimension was relevant.     

Concept identification with natural material.

Phonetic letters in Japanese (Hiragana, 23 in number) written by 6 adults (Ws) were presented one by one and the S was asked to guess by which W it was written. Immediately after the S made the guess, the code of correct W was given on each trial. The Ss were Japanese housewives, students etc., 53 in number. Rate of correct identification increased during 23 × 6 trials, but only from 0.3 to 0.4 on the average. The learning transferred to the remaining 23 letters of the same kind but not to letters of the other kind (Katakana). On each trial, the S verbally described cues upon which the guess was made. When the data were separately analysed according to Ws, it was found that letters of the W who was most difficult to identify were most ‘diffused’ in characterization by the Ss. The relevance of the present experiment to study of concept identification in general was also discussed.     

Expectation theories of decision making for duplex gambles

Complete tests of subjectively expected utility (SEU), subjectively expected value (SEV), expected utility (EU) and expected value (EV) theories were made for duplex gambles without measuring subjective probability or subjective utility. All gambles were hypothetical and offered on booklets. The duplex gambles consisted of winning gambles, which offered a chance to win a certain amount of money or to break even; and losing gambles, which offered a chance to lose a certain amount of money or break even.The results indicated that SEU, SEV and EU theories could not account for the strategies of 33%, 53% and 86% of the Ss respectively in the losing form of gambles, while EV theory accounted for 78% of the behavior of Ss.In the winning form of gambles, SEU, SEV and EU theory held for 77%, 65%, and 54% of the Ss respectively, while EV theory held for only 40% of the Ss. Suggestions for further research were made.     

The role of imagery in the evaluation of sentences

Reaction time was the dependent variable in this sentence verification experiment. Simple sentences, which were either true or false, were constructed such that in some cases it was easy to form an image of the sentence, and in other cases forming an image was difficult. Ss' ratings were employed to select low- and high-imagery sentences. It was found that high-imagery sentences could be verified more rapidly than low-imagery sentences. Instructions which did not mention imagery were given to some Ss while others were specifically asked to employ imagery, but the reaction times of these two groups of Ss did not differ. It was concluded that imagery facilitates the process of sentence verification and that models of this process which restrict themselves to purely semantic operations are incomplete.     

Memory for prenominal adjectives in ordinary English sentences

Ss have been found to remember the gist of English sentences quite well while having little or no memory for structural features unrelated to the basic meaning. This research examines the representation of meaning in memory using adjective-noun phrases embedded in ordinary sentences. Ss studied a long series of sentences and were later tested for memory of certain of the adjectives in these sentences. Tested with a specially constructed forced-choice recognition procedure, Ss made significantly more recognition errors to distractors from the same predicative class as the correct choice than they did to distractors from different classes. This effect was highly significant when the correct choice was a nonpolar adjective but was not different from chance when a polar was correct. Data from a recall test procedure suggested this difference was due to Ss remembering the denotative or referential meaning of the adjective. The results showed that Ss remember abstract aspects of the predicative meaning of adjectival modification.     

Development of relational learning: Effects of instruction and delay of transfer

Preschool children were trained on a color relevant oddity problem by one of three methods: increased salience of the oddity relationship, instruction on the solution rule, or a combination of increased salience and rule instruction. The youngest Ss solved the training problem when the solution rule was provided but not under the salience procedure. The two older groups solved in all conditions and errors decreased with age. The generality of the solution was determined by performance on a form relevant transfer task. The youngest Ss made fewer errors on the transfer problem following rule instruction training than following training in the combined procedure. The intermediate age group made fewer errors when the transfer task was administered one week after training than one minute after training. The transfer problem was easily solved by the oldest Ss and performance was independent of training procedure and amount of delay. These results were interpreted as reflecting developmental differences in relational concept learning.     

Psychoticism and arousal: Possible evidence for a linkage of p and psychopathy

A study is described in which two postural conditions (standing, reclining) were used to induced high and low activation levels in normal Ss divided into high and low P groups ( (HP and LP). Electrodermal and heart rate (HR) measures were recorded during each of these activation conditions which included instructions, an initial rest period, a series of tones, a rtwo-flash threshold task and a final rest period. It was found that HP Ss tended to display significantly lower automatic arousability and poorer two-flash performance while undergoing the low activation (Recline) condition. There was a reliable tendency for HP Ss to evidence significantly slower recovery and rise times and to manifest significantly lower response criterion and sensory sensitivity. They also manifested a near significantly lower mean HR than LP Ss. The performance of HP and LP groups was compared to findings reported previously for schizophrenics and psychopaths for these tasks. It was posited that the performance of the HP Ss suggests that psychoticism may be more nearly akin to psychopathy than to schizophrenia.     

The child's memory for actional, locational, and serial scenes

Three-, four-, and six-year-old children (N = 180) were tested for recall of a toy missing from a previously seen display of four toys. Toys were displayed initially as a series (StoS), as a unit (UtoU), or moved from a series to a unit as S watched (StoU). There was a significant increase in memory for the missing toy with age. In addition, children viewing StoU displays remembered significantly more toys than did children viewing the other displays, independent of age. Twenty-five percent of the 6-year-olds rehearsed spontaneously while viewing the displays. Results indicated that the nature of a memory unit does not change with age, that memory improves with age, and that separate visual and verbal memories are operative in Ss in this age range.     

Warned reaction times of sociopaths

A warned reaction time (RT) task was employed with eight male sociopaths and eight normal male Ss. A warning light appeared at a variable interval preceding a light to which the S responded with a key press. All Ss received both a regular and an irregular series with warning intervals of 1, 2, 4, 8, and 16 sec. In the regular series, blocks of intervals were presented in an ascending order. In the irregular series each interval followed every other interval equally often. Sociopaths obtained reliably slower RTs than did control Ss, showing a constant decrement across all intervals in the two kinds of series.     

Reaction time to the second of two shortly spaced auditory signals both varying in intensity

Six subjects participated in a reaction time (RT) task in which the stimulus events consisted of two sinusoidal waves presented in close succession. The leading stimulus (S₁) had a duration of 25 msec while the binary reaction stimulus (S₂) was 250 msec. Presentation of the interstimulus interval (ISI) was irregular. S₁ as well as S₂ varied in intensity and were assigned randomly the values of 45, 68, 85 and 105 db (SPL). RT to S₂ was examined as a function of the intensity of both stimuli. Generally RT varied inversely with the intensity of S₁ and the downward gradient of RT with ISI became steepened at least for ISIs shorter than 200–250 msec. Concerning S₂, RT grew shorter as the intensity increased up to 85 db. Probably due to startle, RT tended to lengthen at S₂ = 105 db. When both S₁ and S₂ were 105 db the startle effect upon RT seemed most evident. Then the elevation in RT took place at especially those ISIs for which he fastest RTs might have been expected (about 200 msec). For the remaining intensities no interaction between S₁ and S₂ upon RT was found even for the shortest ISIs, implying that the effects of S₁ and S₂ intensities upon RT were independent.     

Effects of a coactor's prediction on latencies to predict and indentify stimuli

On each of 300 trials E's confederate (C) verbalized which of two stimuli would occur; then S made a prediction. Following each presentation, S and C pulled a trigger to identify the stimulus. Two latencies were measured: the interval between C's and S's prediction (prediction time), and the interval between stimulus presentation and S's identification response (choice RT). Prediction times were significantly shorter when S's prediction agreed rather than disagreed with C's prediction, when S's preceding prediction was correct rather than incorrect, and when S was female rather than male. Choice RT was influenced by distributions of C's stimulus predictions and C's prediction outcomes in directions supporting an expectancy model.     

Active selection of items to be remembered: The role of timing

A series of experiments was carried out in which Ss were required to extract critical stimuli from a stream of nine spoken inputs, presented at various rates, and report on these after the presentation of each list. The critical items were normally digits at positions 2, 4, 6, and 8 in the input sequence. Subjects were required to employ either an “active” extraction strategy, aimed at achieving temporary storage only of items to be remembered, or a “passive” strategy, involving storage of all inputs with subsequent extraction of critical items. The initial experiment showed that the active strategy markedly improved performance efficiency as the presentation rate decreased; passive performance remained relatively stable. Experiments 2 and 3 indicated that the level of active performance was higher when critical items were categorically different from unwanted items. There were indications that this effect was independent of the effect of changes in the presentation rate.The final experiments in the series showed that when Ss were denied the opportunity of predicting the time of arrival of critical items active performance hardly benefitted from a reduction in rate.A “controlled activation” process is proposed as a basis for S's ability to modulate his state of alertness, so as to maximize receptivity for critical stimuli arriving at well-defined points in time.     

Facilitation versus inhibition in non-spatial attribute discrimination tasks

Inhibition of Return is a delay in initiating attentional shifts to previously inspected locations. It has been explained as a mechanism to facilitate visual search of a scene by inhibiting the allocation of attention to locations that have already been examined. We (Hu, Samuel, &; Chan, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 2010) recently demonstrated that similar processing costs can appear when a non-spatial attribute (color or shape) repeats—detection of a target stimulus was slower if the target shared color or shape with a recently presented cue. In the current study, we test whether such inhibitory effects occur for non-spatial attribute repetition when observers must make a discrimination judgment about targets. We found two independent effects: First, there was a standard location-based IOR effect—target discrimination was slower when the target appeared in the same location as a preceding cue. Second, reaction times were faster if the target's color or shape matched the cue's color or shape; this facilitation effect contrasts with both the location-based inhibition that was present in the current experiments, and with the inhibitory effect of feature repetition in our previous detection task study. The data are best accounted for by a three-factor model recently suggested by Lupiáñez (Attention and time, 2010).     

The effects of perceptual pretraining on concept identification and preference

The effects of perceptual pretraining on preferences and concept identification performance in five- and eight-year-old Ss were investigated. The results indicated that perceptual pretraining facilitated performance on a concept identification task with a non-preferred relevant cue for the five-year-olds, but not for the eight-year-olds. However, perceptual pretraining did not affect preference in either age group and Ss were as consistent in their preference responding before and after perceptual pretraining as was a control group that had not received perceptual pretraining. Preferences were highly consistent in both age groups over a one week period. Perceptual pretraining was interpreted to increase the usability of the less preferred dimensions for the younger Ss, and to leave the affective preference response unaltered in both groups.     

Storage and later recognition of exemplars of concepts

This paper concerns the problem of abstraction: whether when we encounter several exemplars of a concept, we retain only the abstracted concept, only the exemplars, or both. Although many studies concur that both are stored, a recent article argued strongly that only the abstracted concept is stored. The present study, aimed at replication of this recent finding, follows the earlier procedural details but adds appropriate controls and uses simpler material. A set of 24 exemplars of four concepts, in the form of four-tuples of letters and numbers, was presented to Ss who, after presentation, rated a larger set of exemplars for recognition. One group of Ss experienced the conceptual exemplars; control group Ss experienced items that were similar in composition but not exemplars of a concept. Two major results appeared: Unlike the study on which this was based, all Ss were able to distinguish those items that were originally experienced from those that were not. And, the more completely an exemplar fit the concept (the longer the item), the more confident the S was that it had been presented. In contrast, in the control condition, the longer the item, the more confident the S was that it had not been presented earlier. Two models are described to account for these results. One is based on the S's initial storage of the exemplars in a concept-plus-correction format; the other is based on a procedure whereby the S can make recognition judgments without having previously abstracted and retained the concepts.     

Written Responses in a Musical Situation as a Function of the Stability of Emotional Behavior

The present study investigated the degree to which learning sets developed during formation of 20 successive concepts. Forty S s were evenly distributed among eight experimental conditions. Conditions compared were rule with attribute identification, conjunctive with disjunctive concepts, and random with ordered arrays of figures. Results showed that learning sets formed with rule identification for both conjunctive and disjunctive concepts, but not with attribute identification. Concepts were easier to learn when using systematic compared to random arrays of figures (of questionable significance), when forming conjunctive rather than disjunctive concepts (not significant), and when using rule identification instead of attribute identification. Procedural differences among studies in this area appear to be major contributors to differences among studies in the results found.     

S-multiplicativity of a stochastic matrix and applications to visual identification

A stochastic matrix is called S-multiplicative if the conditional probabilities in a specific subset S of its cells can be factorized into the product of two functions depending on the rows and columns, respectively. The concept of S-multiplicativity is related to Goodman's concept of quasi-independence and generalizes Falmagne's concept of a multiplicative confusion matrix, where S consists of the cells lying outside the main diagonal ($\text{D}$-multiplicativity). In the present study, the notion of S-multiplicativity is applied to the analysis of visual identification performance. The confusion matrices obtained from three identification experiments are tested for predictions of S-multiplicativity derived from the multicomponent theory of perception. If the stimuli do not overlap, i.e., different stimuli have no features in common, then the theory predicts a $\text{D}$-multiplicative confusion matrix. Alternatively, in the case of overlapping stimuli the theory predicts S-multiplicativity with respect to a more severely restricted subset S. These predictions are confirmed by the data.