Orientation-specific effects in picture matching and naming

In two experiments, subjects made timed decisions about the second of two sequentially presented rotated drawings of objects. When the two objects were physically identical, response times to decide whether the two drawings depicted the same object varied as a function of the shortest distance between the orientation of the second drawing and either the orientation of the previous drawing or the upright. This was found for both short (250-msec) and long (2-sec) interstimulus-intervals. The result was also obtained when subjects named the second drawing after deciding whether the first drawing faced left or right. Following repeated experience with the drawings in the left/right task over four blocks of trials, time to name the second drawing in the same-object sequences was independent of orientation. These results suggest that, initially, object- and orientation-specific representations can be formed following a single presentation of a rotated object and subsequently used to identify drawings of the same object at either the same or different orientations. Alignment of the second drawing with either the canonical representation or the new representation at the previous orientation is achieved by normalization through the shortest path. Following experience with the objects, orientation-invariant representations are formed.     

Event-related potentials and the phonological matching of picture names

Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded from one midline and three pairs of lateral electrodes while subjects determined whether a pair of sequentially presented pictures had rhyming or nonrhyming names. During the 1.56-sec interval between the two pictures, the slow ERP wave recorded over the left hemisphere was more negative-going than that over the right, especially at frontal electrodes. The ERPs evoked by the second picture differed as a function of whether its name rhymed with its predecessor. This difference, taking the form of increased negativity in ERPs to nonrhyming items, had an earlier onset and a greater magnitude at right than at left hemisphere electrodes. This pattern of ERP asymmetries is qualitatively similar to that found when words are rhyme-matched. It is therefore concluded that such asymmetries do not depend on the employment of orthographic material and may reflect some aspect(s) of the phonological processing of visually presented material.     

An analysis of initial acquisition and maintenance of sight words following picture matching and copy cover, and compare teaching methods

This study compared the copy, cover, and compare method to a picture-word matching method for teaching sight word recognition. Participants were 5 kindergarten students with less than preprimer sight word vocabularies who were enrolled in a public school in the Pacific Northwest. A multielement design was used to evaluate the effects of the two interventions. Outcomes suggested that sight words taught using the copy, cover, and compare method resulted in better maintenance of word recognition when compared to the picture-matching intervention. Benefits to students and the practicality of employing the word-level teaching methods are discussed.     

Bullies and victims: Their ego picture, ideal ego picture and normative ego picture

The ego picture, ideal ego picture and normative ego picture of bullies and their victims in a school situation were measured with semantic differentials. The bullies considered themselves to be dominant, had high ideals concerning dominance and thought this was what the social norms require. They felt themselves to be impulsive and lacking in self-control. The victims considered themselves to be depressed, lacking in intelligence and personal attractiveness, and displayed in general feelings of inferiority. These characteristics can be partly a cause and partly an effect of the bullying situation. Girls scored in general lower than boys on socially valued characteristics and higher on socially undesirable ones.     

Bilingualism affects picture naming but not picture classification

Bilinguals named pictures in their dominant language more slowly (and with more errors) than did monolinguals. In contrast, bilinguals named the same pictures as quickly as did monolinguals on the fifth presentation (in Experiment 2) and classified them (as human made or natural) as quickly and accurately as did monolinguals (in Experiment 1). In addition, bilinguals retrieved English picture names more quickly if they knew the name in both Spanish and English (on the basis of a translation test that bilinguals completed after the timed tasks), and monolingual response times for the same materials suggested that this finding was not obtained simply because names that were easier to translate were easier in general. These findings suggest that bilinguals differ from monolinguals at a postconceptual processing level, that implicit activation of lexical representations in the nontarget language can facilitate retrieval in the target language, and that being bilingual is analogous to having a lexicon full of lower frequency words, relative to monolinguals.     

Automatic and strategic processes in picture naming

Prior presentation of related priming stimuli can facilitate responding to subsequent targets. However, recent research has demonstrated that inhibition effects can be produced by related primes when some of the primes in the testing sequence directly name their targets. This study used a picture-naming task, manipulating strength of relation between the prime word and the target picture, and the presence of identical primes in the testing sequence. Related primes facilitated naming when identical primes were absent, but not when they were present, whereas the strength effect did not vary as a function of identical-prime presence. A second experiment replicated the strength effect and showed that it was not affected by the presence or absence of primary associates in the testing sequence. A comparison-strategy explanation of the inhibition effect is proposed, in which the strategy is superimposed on an automatic activation of related information.     

Visual effects in picture and word categorization

Two experiments are reported in which participants categorized stimuli as belonging or not belonging to the category of fruits. Blocks of pictures and words were used, with items referring to exemplars having either high or low intercategory visual similarity and/or semantic relatedness. For both pictures and words, response time was longer in the semantically related conditions than in the unrelated condition. Furthermore, there was a strong effect of visual similarity for pictures but not for words when semantic relatedness was held constant: Participants took longer to classify pictures of fruits when these were mixed with visually similar vegetables than when they were mixed with visually dissimilar vegetables. Reducing the stimulus visibility by adding a dot pattern had an additive effect for words but an interactive effect for pictures. The results are explained in terms of a unique locus for category decisions about pictures and words.     

Semantic and associative priming in picture naming

We report four picture-naming experiments in which the pictures were preceded by visually presented word primes. The primes could either be semantically related to the picture (e.g., "boat" - TRAIN: co-ordinate pairs) or associatively related (e.g., "nest" - BIRD: associated pairs). Performance under these conditions was always compared to performance under unrelated conditions (e.g., "flower" - CAT). In order to distinguish clearly the first two kinds of prime, we chose our materials so that (a) the words in the co-ordinate pairs were not verbally associated, and (b) the associate pairs were not co-ordinates. Results show that the two related conditions behaved in different ways depending on the stimulus-onset asynchrony (SOA) separating word and picture appearance, but not on how long the primes were presented. When presented with a brief SOA (114 ms, Experiment 1), the co-ordinate primes produced an interference effect, but the associated primes did not differ significantly from the unrelated primes. Conversely , with a longer SOA (234 ms, Experiment 2) the co-ordinate primes produced no effect, whereas a significant facilitation effect was observed for associated primes, independent of the duration of presentation of the primes. This difference is interpreted in the context of current models of speech production as an argument for the existence, at an automatic processing level, of two distinguishable kinds of meaning relatedness.     

Age-of-acquisition effects in word and picture identification

Words and pictures with earlier learned labels are processed faster than words and pictures with later learned labels. This age-of-acquisition (AoA) effect has been extensively investigated in many different types of tasks. This article provides a review of these studies including picture naming, word naming, speeded word naming, word pronunciation durations, lexical decisions, eye fixation times, face recognition, and episodic memory tasks. The measurement and validity of AoA ratings is discussed, along with statistical techniques used for exploring AoA's influence. Finally, theories of AoA are outlined, and evidence for and against the various theories is presented.     

Word reading and picture naming in Italian

Results from two separate norming studies of lexical access in Italian were merged, permitting a comparison of word-reading and picture-naming latencies and the factors that predict each one for an overlapping subsample of 128 common nouns. Factor analysis of shared lexical predictors yielded four latent variables: a frequency factor, a semantic factor, a length factor, and a final factor dominated by frication on the initial phoneme. Age of acquisition (AoA) loaded highly on the first two factors, suggesting that it can be split into separate sources of variance. Regression analyses using factor scores as predictors showed that word reading and picture naming are both influenced by the frequency/AoA factor. The semantics/AoA factor influenced only picture naming, whereas the length and frication factors influenced only word reading. Generalizability of these results to other languages is discussed, including potential effects of cross-language differences in orthographic transparency.     

Gobal-local precedence in picture processing

Summary Previous investigations of the global precedence hypothesis (Navon, 1977) have utilized compound letter stimuli. In these stimuli there is no predictive relationship between the global and local levels. Pictorial stimuli, however, contain mutually predictable global and local levels. This study investigated the global precedence hypothesis with pictorial stimuli using a Stroop-like interference task similar to that used by Navon. Subjects were required to respond either to the global (e.g., beach or farm) or local (e.g., boat or tractor) level of a scene. The display size and consistency of the global and local levels were varied. Response latencies supported global precedence for small scenes (4°) but local precedence for large scenes (16°). The results are interpreted by a model in which the priority of processing is determined by a critical spatial frequency sampling bandwidth.Portions of this research were presented at the meeting of the Psychonomic Society, Minneapolis, November, 1982. The authors with to express their sincere appreciation to Tom Petros for his assistance in data analysis. Requests for reprints should be addressed to James R. Antes, Department of Psychology, University of North Dakota, Grand Forks, ND 58202.     

Spacing effects in picture memory

Three experiments were conducted to capitalize on the conclusion of Shaffer and Shiffrin (1972) that complex visual scenes are not rehearsed in testing the hypothesis that the effect of spacing on memory is due to rehearsal. In Experiment I, a list of vacation slides was presented in which both the number of repetitions and the spacing of repetitions were varied. Subsequent frequency judgments showed an effect of spacing much like that found using verbal materials. In Experiments II and III, effects of filled and unfilled spacing intervals were compared, and it was concluded that the spacing effect is primarily a function of the duration of the spacing interval. No evidence was found to support the notion that pictures are rehearsed. Rehearsal apparently cannot play the key role in an adequate, completely general explanation of the spacing effect.     

Category-structure effects in picture comparisons

Subjects indicated for a series of trials whether or not two pictures of common objects were from the same category. Reaction time (RT) was recorded. The pool of stimuli used in the series of trials consisted of two pictures representing each of several categories. Half were S categories, members of which were similar; the other half were D categories, which had dissimilar members (this variable is termed category structure). In Experiments 1 and 3, the similarity manipulation defining category structure was based on the concept of basic level categories (Rosch, Mervis, Gray, Johnson, & Boyes-Braem, 1976). In Experiment 2, category labels were homonyms, and the two members of S or D categories represented one or two senses of the labels, respectively. The principal finding was an effect of category structure (faster RT on trials using stimuli from S categories rather than D categories). These results are interpreted in terms of a model that postulates the use of semantic codes in the task, even on trials where the two stimuli are physically identical.     

Projective invariance and picture perception

Four experiments test the assumption that, in the visual perception of pictures, observers have reliable and direct access to the equivalence of shapes in projective geometry. The assumption is that perception of projective equivalence is the basis of shape constancy ('the projective thesis'). Observers matched or reproduced abstract planar shapes under conditions of rotation in the picture plane, and pictured rotation in depth. Departure from projective equivalence was assessed in each study by measuring the planar analogue of cross ratio. Projective equivalence was not found to be perceived uniformly where Euclidean equivalence was not judged uniformly, either in recognition tasks or in production tasks. When the projective thesis is put to a suitably general test, confidence in the thesis is undermined.     

Processes of task-set reconfiguration: switching operations and implementation operations

When participants are asked to shift between four dimensionally organized tasks which differ in the type of judgment (numerical vs. spatial) and/or the judgment-to-response mapping (compatible vs. incompatible), a characteristic profile of shift costs can be observed. It can be accounted for in terms of two different types of operations: generalizing switching operations on a dimensionally organized set of task representations and implementation operations [T. Kleinsorge, H. Heuer, Psycholog. Res. 62 (1999) 300]. In a first experiment we corroborated our previous findings by way of a new procedure that makes it possible to estimate shift costs unconfounded by a number of factors that are likely to affect estimates of shift costs based on more conventional procedures. In a second experiment we investigated the endogenous and exogenous nature of the postulated types of operations. The characteristic profile of shift costs disappeared when long precue intervals (PCIs) were used. Augmented by a formal analysis, this finding suggests that both switching and implementation operations are endogenously controlled. In addition, there remained some residual shift costs which were essentially insensitive to the nature of the task shift but depended on the difficulty of the new task. Most likely they reflect a process of consolidation of an already configured task set.     

Planarity and segmentation in stereoscopic matching

The matching of stereograms which contain periodic patterns suggests ways in which the stereo correspondence problem may be solved in human vision. The stereograms seem to be segmented by coarse-scale features. Within each segment a set of matches approximating a plane is chosen. In regions with periodic patterns there may be many such planar sets, and the disparity of coarse-scale features seems to guide the choice of a particular set. This emphasis on planarity may reflect the occurrence of correlation-like operations in cortical neurons. An attractive possibility is that segmentation effectively delimits areas of the visual field within which disparities are likely to be slow changing (eg local tangent planes to surfaces) so that the correlation sums evaluated in a segment can give the best estimate of depth. A mechanism of this kind cannot account for all of stereo matching, since not all visual objects are well described by ensembles of planes. But it is likely to be a component of the matching system which is particularly important where images are 'noisy' and averaging is needed to extract reliable disparities.