Psychoticism and visual recognition thresholds

This paper presents data which are of relevance in assessing the validity of the P scale of the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ; Eysenck and Eysenck. 1975). Frith (1979) suggested that a defect in inhibitory selective mechanisms constitutes the cognitive disorder underlying the positive symptomatology of schizophrenia: hallucinations, delusions and thought disorder. A priming paradigm was used to measure the operation of inhibitory mechanisms. It was predicted that, if psychosis is conceptualized as a pathological exaggeration of the features characterizing the trait of psychoticism then high P scorers should show a reduced inhibition effect. This prediction was confirmed, a negative correlation was found between P and the size of the inhibition effect. No correlation with IQ or other personality variables from the EPQ was found.     

Quantity judgments of auditory and visual stimuli by chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)

Many species can choose between two visual sets of stimuli on the basis of quantity. This is true when sets are both visible, or are presented one set at a time or even one item at a time. However, we know comparatively little about how well nonhuman animals can compare auditory quantities. Here, three chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) chose between two sets of food items when they only heard each item fall into different containers rather than seeing those items. This method prevented the chimpanzees from summing the amount of visible food they saw because there were no visual cues. Chimpanzees performed well, and their performance matched that of previous experiments with regard to obeying Weber's law. They also performed well with comparisons between a sequentially presented auditory set and a fully visible set, demonstrating that duration of presentation was not being used as a cue. In addition, they accommodated empty sets into these judgments, although not perfectly. Thus, chimpanzees can judge auditory quantities in flexible ways that show many similarities to how they compare visual quantities.     

Word age-of-acquisition and visual recognition thresholds

Current Psychology - This paper reports two experiments concerning the effects of word age-of-acquisition and other word attributes on visual recognition thresholds. The results indicated that word...     

Effect of interval between auditory and preceding visual stimuli on auditory sensitivity

Auditory thresholds were determined by a modified method of limits, in introverts, ambiverts and extraverts, under three intensities of light. Five determinations were made: one before, one during and three (30 sec., c. 8 and 16 min.) after the light stimulation. An analysis of variance of the data showed significant results for the interval conditions, the personality type and the interaction of these parameters, under the weak light. Interval effects were also significant under medium and strong light. A weak light increased, and a strong light decreased, auditory sensitivity when threshold determinations began 30 sec., but not more than about 8 min., after the light stimulation, in introverts.     

The effect of brief auditory stimuli on visual apparent motion

When two discrete stimuli are presented in rapid succession, observers typically report a movement of the lead stimulus toward the lag stimulus. The object of this study was to investigate crossmodal effects of irrelevant sounds on this illusion of visual apparent motion. Observers were presented with two visual stimuli that were temporally separated by interstimulus onset intervals from 0 to 350 ms. After each trial, observers classified their impression of the stimuli using a categorisation system. The presentation of short sounds intervening between the visual stimuli facilitated the impression of apparent motion relative to baseline (visual stimuli without sounds), whereas sounds presented before the first and after the second visual stimulus as well as simultaneously presented sounds reduced the motion impression. The results demonstrate an effect of the temporal structure of irrelevant sounds on visual apparent motion that is discussed in light of a related multisensory phenomenon, 'temporal ventriloquism', on the assumption that sounds can attract lights in the temporal dimension.     

Rehearsal of visual and auditory stimuli while shadowing.

Memory trigrams were presented by one of three methods: visual-concurrent (all three letters appeared simultaneously), visual-successive, and auditory-successive. During the 12-sec retention interval, subjects shadowed and reported their rehearsals and mnemonic associations via switches. On trials without associations, recall performance was interpreted as support for the hypothesis that the form of rehearsal is related to presentation modality. However, the frequency and temporal patterning of the rehearsals over the retention interval were virtually identical for all three presentation conditions, suggesting that the "control processes" were relatively independent of both method of presentation and modality of rehearsal. Most importantly, these data in combination with earlier data suggest that the efficiency of each rehearsal was also independent of those same factors, in each case quite comparable to that of a concurrent visual stimulus.     

Effects of redundant auditory stimuli on reaction time

Auditory redundancy gains were assessed in two experiments in which a simple reaction time task was used. In each trial, an auditory stimulus was presented to the left ear, to the right ear, or simultaneously to both ears. The physical difference between auditory stimuli presented to the two ears was systematically increased across experiments. No redundancy gains were observed when the stimuli were identical pure tones or pure tones of different frequencies (Experiment 1). A clear redundancy gain and evidence of coactivation were obtained, however, when one stimulus was a pure tone and the other was white noise (Experiment 2). Experiment 3 employed a two-alternative forced choice localization task and provided evidence that dichotically presented pure tones of different frequencies are apparently integrated into a single percept, whereas a pure tone and white noise are not fused. The results extend previous findings of redundancy gains and coactivation with visual and bimodal stimuli to the auditory modality. Furthermore, at least within this modality, the results indicate that redundancy gains do not emerge when redundant stimuli are integrated into a single percept.     

Comparing auditory vs visual stimuli in the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon

An experiment is reported comparing the effectiveness of auditory and visual stimuli in eliciting the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon. 30 participants were asked to name the titles of 27 television shows. Half of the participants were given segments of the theme song for each show (auditory cue), and half were shown the cast photographs for each show (visual cue). Participants were asked to report whenever they experienced the tip-of-the-tongue state. There were no significant differences between the auditory and visual stimuli in terms of the incidence rate for the tip-of-the-tongue state, the amount of partial information that participants provided in their responses, or the frequency of interlopers (alternative responses that persistently come to mind). These findings suggest that the characteristics of the tip-of-the-tongue state are determined more by the nature of the response set than by the type of stimuli used as cues. The results are inconsistent with inferential theories of the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon, such as the cue familiarity hypothesis and, instead, tend to support direct-access hypotheses.     

Comparisons of memory for nonverbal auditory and visual sequential stimuli

Properties of auditory and visual sensory memory were compared by examining subjects' recognition performance of randomly generated binary auditory sequential frequency patterns and binary visual sequential color patterns within a forced-choice paradigm. Experiment 1 demonstrated serial-position effects in auditory and visual modalities consisting of both primacy and recency effects. Experiment 2 found that retention of auditory and visual information was remarkably similar when assessed across a 10 s interval. Experiments 3 and 4, taken together, showed that the recency effect in sensory memory is affected more by the type of response required (recognition vs. reproduction) than by the sensory modality employed. These studies suggest that auditory and visual sensory memory stores for nonverbal stimuli share similar properties with respect to serial-position effects and persistence over time.     

Infants' recognition memory for a series of visual stimuli

The tendency of infants to distribute attention selectively to novel and familiar visual stimuli was employed to study infants' recognition memory for a series of visual targets. Infants 5 months of age demonstrated an unequal distribution of visual fixation to novel and familiar stimuli, with more attention to the novel, on both immediate and delayed stimulus-recognition tests for each of three novelty problems administered during a single testing session. The degree of differential fixation to novel targets exhibited no reliable decline from immediate to delayed testing and was not significantly altered by the serial order which the problem occupied during immediate recognition testing.