Presentation modality and proactive interference in short-term retention using a mixed-morality distractor task

Two experiments investigated the release from PI following a shift in mode of presentation of the study words. In each experiment, the interpolated task required processing of both auditory (A) and visual (V) information. The results were the same with mixed lists (Experiment I) and with independent groups (Experiment II): A release from PI was obtained following an A to V shift but not following a V to A shift. It was concluded that the mixed-modality filler task has functional characteristics very similar to those of an A filler and that the filler task influences the memory code for study items.     

Examining a processing tradeoff explanation of proactive interference

Burns (1989) claims that proactive interference effects occur in paired-associate learning because of tradeoffs in relational and response-specific processing. Consistent with this claim, Burns demonstrated that free recall of critical-list responses is better in the interference condition than in the control condition. Burns’s processing trade off explanation predicts that the occurrence of this reverse-interference effect should be positively correlated with the occurrence of traditional interference effects. We present several experiments whose results are inconsistent with-this-prediction. We hypothesize that the reverse-interference effect is a list-length effect. The results of a final experiment, contrasting the predictions of the list-length and processing trade off explanations, support the list-length explanation.     

An ecological examination of rapport using a dyadic puzzle task

Previous studies have indicated that situational context impacts the rapport experience (e.g., F. J. Bernieri, J. S. Gillis, J. M. Davis, & J. E. Grahe, 1996; N. M. Puccinelli, L. Tickle-Degnen, & R. Rosenthal, 2003). The authors designed the present study to further document the behavioral and experiential predictors of dyadic rapport and to evaluate dyadic rapport experiences when contributions were required from both interactants. Participants (N = 60) were paired into dyads and instructed to complete children's puzzles. However, the dyadic members were restricted in how they could accomplish this task: Only one interactant was allowed to work on the puzzle and had to do so blindfolded, while the second interactant gave instructions. Results suggested that less attribution of responsibility to the worker and the instructor's experience of enjoyment and frustration were indicative of higher rapport. Other characteristics of dyads reporting higher dyadic rapport included difficulty completing the task and more communicative behavior. The results provide important information for the understanding of the dyadic experience of rapport.     

Reactivation-induced interference in a short-term retention paradigm

In Experiment 1 it was demonstrated that interference with a rat's retention of a target spatial cue decreases as the interval between prior conflicting cues and the target increases. Experiment 2 showed that interference can occur even when the interstimulus interval is long, if the memory of a conflicting cue is reactivated just prior to exposing an animal to the target cue. A third experiment suggested that these findings could not be easily interpreted in terms of a stimulus satiation effect. The implications of these findings for a trace decay model of short-term retention were discussed.     

Proactive inhibition as a function of orienting task characteristics

Two release from proactive inhibition experiments were conducted, in which orienting tasks were employed to direct subjects' attention to particular features of words. Experiment 1 employed two such tasks which emphasized either semantic or nonsemantic features, while both orienting tasks in Experiment 2 directed attention to semantic features of words. Although significant release was obtained with a change in task in these experiments, the level was considerably lower in Experiment 2 than in Experiment 1. The data were interpreted in terms of a theoretical orientation that emphasizes item differentiation as a major determinant of retrieval probability. It was argued that the degree of differentiation depends to some extent on the specific tasks employed and the extent to which they direct attention to different word features.     

Acoustic interference in a recognition task

Phonetic or acoustic characteristics of stimuli in recall studies have consistently been shown to generate more interference over short intervals than semantic characteristics. We performed three experiments to determine whether this characteristic also applied to recognition processes over short intervals. Subjects were shown study lists of eight words and were asked to recognize which of those words recurred on subsequent eight-word lists. Delays varied from 0 to 100 s between study and test, with a rehearsal-preventing task inserted during the delays. Phonetic distractors generated greater interference than semantic distractors at all delay levels, and semantic distractors generated greater interference than random distractors. These distractor-type differences were not present in long-term recognition tasks. The deterioration in performance over time was considerably slower in these recognition experiments than in previous recall studies.     

Buildup and release from proactive interference in a rhesus monkey

The potential of the buildup and release from proactive interference (PI) technique in the study of animal categorization was demonstrated with a rhesus monkey. A serial probe recognition task was used with a list of 4 consecutive slide pictures (upper screen) followed by a single probe picture (lower screen). The monkey moved a lever to indicate whether or not the probe was contained in the list. PI built over 40 consecutive trials tested with either flowers or primate faces. PI was released on category change and then built during 40 trials with the second category. The first 2 serial positions showed somewhat greater PI buildup and release, supporting conclusions from human studies that the effects occur primarily in secondary memory. A second experiment provided 2 replications of the main effect and showed through color border changes and elimination of color differences that color was not a critical feature.     

Item-specific proactive interference in olfactory working memory

We examine item-specific olfactory proactive interference (PI) effects and undertake comparisons with verbal and non-verbal visual stimuli. Using a sequential recent-probes task, we show no evidence for PI with hard-to-name odours (Experiment 1). However, verbalisable odours do exhibit PI effects (Experiment 2). These findings occur despite above chance performance and similar serial position functions across both tasks. Experiments 3 and 4 apply words and faces, respectively, to our modified procedure, and show that methodological differences cannot explain the null finding in Experiment 1. The extent to which odours exhibit analogous PI effects to that of other modalities is, we argue, contingent on the characteristics of the odours employed.     

Recall as a function of orienting task and retrieval cue

Abstract.— In an incidental learning experiment, a 40 word list with 4 words representing each of 10 taxonom-ic categories and beginning with each of 10 first letters was presented to 120 subjects. Half the subjects sorted the words according to category, half according to initial letter. After an interval of either 1 or 6 min, retention was measured with cued or free recall tests. The subjects in the Category sort-Category cue condition obtained higher recall than the subjects in the Category sort-Letter cue condition, whereas level of recall did not differ between the Letter sort-Letter cue and Letter sort-Category cue conditions. These results together with other results from the experiment were considered as arguments against the Encoding Specificity Principle but in favor of a theory separating encoding from retrieval.     

Implicit attentional orienting in a target detection task with central cues

Studies using Posner’s spatial cueing paradigm have demonstrated that participants can allocate their attention to specific target locations based on the predictiveness of preceding cues. Four experiments were conducted to investigate attentional orienting processes operating in a high probability condition (cues 75% predictive) as compared to a low probability condition (cues 50% predictive) using various types of centrally-presented cues. Spatially-informative cues (arrows and circles with gaps) resulted in cueing effects (CEs) for both probability conditions, with significantly larger CEs in the high probability conditions than the low probability conditions. Participants in the high probability conditions reported little or no awareness of cue–target probabilities after task completion. Our results provide support for an implicit learning account of the proportion valid effect under experimental conditions involving spatially-informative central cues and relatively short stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs).     

Attentional asymmetries in a visual orienting task are related to temperament

Spatial asymmetries are an intriguing feature of directed attention. Recent observations indicate an influence of temperament upon the direction of these asymmetries. It is unknown whether this influence generalises to visual orienting behaviour. The aim of the current study was therefore to explore the relationship between temperament and measures of spatial orienting as a function of target hemifield. An exogenous cueing task was administered to 92 healthy participants. Temperament was assessed using Carver and White's (1994) Behavioural Inhibition System and Behavioural Activation System (BIS/BAS) scales. Individuals with high sensitivity to punishment and low sensitivity to reward showed a leftward asymmetry of directed attention when there was no informative spatial cue provided. This asymmetry was not present when targets were preceded by spatial cues that were either valid or invalid. The findings support the notion that individual variations in temperament influence spatial asymmetries in visual orienting, but only when lateral targets are preceded by a non-directional (neutral) cue. The results are discussed in terms of hemispheric asymmetries and dopamine activity.     

The role of proactive interference in mnemonic techniques

The success of many mnemonic techniques, such as the method of loci, is based on the use of specific well-known anchors, which are mentally combined with to-be-learned items and subsequently facilitate their retrieval. In our studies we intended to answer the question of whether the repeated application of the method of loci may result in proactive interference effects, as might be expected due to the applied association of items with the same loci each time the method is used. To this end, we manipulated list similarity in a typical proactive interference design and compared the method of loci with the link method and the rehearsal method, which do not involve the use of a specified set of anchors. Our results replicate those from other studies, which have shown that the use of a mnemonic technique leads to superior recall of list items compared to a simple rehearsal strategy. We were further able to show that the repeated learning of items from different categories results in moderate practice effects over three list-learning trials, whereas this effect is superimposed by an effect of proactive interference if different lists are composed of items from the same category. However, this effect of proactive interference was not increased for the method of loci, and we discuss this finding with regard to its practical implications.     

Verbal interference in a perceptual comparison task

When Ss had to indicate if the colors of pairs of items from the Stroop test were the same or different, the usual interference effect was completely eliminated. However, when the verbal information consisted of SAME and DIFF rather than color names, interference was reestablished. This indicates that the perceptual comparison task does not eliminate interference simply by rendering Ss insensitive to the meanings of words.     

Estimating the executive demands of a one-back choice reaction time task by means of the selective interference paradigm

The present study proposes a new executive task, the one-back choice reaction time (RT) task, and implements the selective interference paradigm to estimate the executive demands of the processing components involved in this task. Based on the similarities between a one-back choice RT task and the n-back updating task, it was hypothesized that one-back delaying of a choice reaction involves executive control. In three experiments, framed within Baddeley's (1986) Baddeley, A. 1986. Working memory, Edited by: Baddeley, A. Oxford, , UK: Oxford University Press.  [Google Scholar] working-memory model, a one-back choice RT task, a choice RT task, articulatory suppression, and matrix tapping were performed concurrently with primary tasks involving verbal, visuospatial, and executive processing. The results demonstrate that one-back delaying of a choice reaction interferes with tasks requiring executive control, while the potential interference at the level of the verbal or visuospatial working memory slave systems remains minimal.     

Estimating the executive demands of a one-back choice reaction time task by means of the selective interference paradigm

The present study proposes a new executive task, the one-back choice reaction time (RT) task, and implements the selective interference paradigm to estimate the executive demands of the processing components involved in this task. Based on the similarities between a one-back choice RT task and the n-back updating task, it was hypothesized that one-back delaying of a choice reaction involves executive control. In three experiments, framed within Baddeley's (1986) working-memory model, a one-back choice RT task, a choice RT task, articulatory suppression, and matrix tapping were performed concurrently with primary tasks involving verbal, visuospatial, and executive processing. The results demonstrate that one-back delaying of a choice reaction interferes with tasks requiring executive control, while the potential interference at the level of the verbal or visuospatial working memory slave systems remains minimal.     

Sequence effects in a spatial cueing task: Endogenous orienting is sensitive to orienting in the preceding trial

In a spatial cueing paradigm it was investigated whether endogenous orienting is sensitive to orienting processes in the previous trial. Specifically, the effect of the previous cue direction, the previous trial type (valid, invalid, neutral, catch) and target alternation effects were studied. Strategic effects were shown as attentional costs and benefits were larger after a valid than after an invalid trial. Following catch trials, an overall response slowing was observed, but costs and benefits were unaffected. This was interpreted as a reduction in alertness and as support for the dissociation between spatial and temporal attentional mechanisms. Repetition of target position per se had no effect, but in neutral trials responses were slower to targets appearing at the location that was cued in the previous trial, independent of validity of the preceding trial. This suggests that long-term inhibition-of-return can occur between trials when attention is controlled endogenously.     

Performance of bilinguals in a picture-word interference task

The picture-word interference task was administered to Spanish-English adults in order to determine whether the lexicons of bilinguals are integrated or whether words are stored and accessed separately in semantic memory. Pictures were printed with Spanish words naming other objects, with English translations, and with X's. Spanish and English distractor words were observed to slow down picture naming in both languages. Also, an interaction was detected among subjects naming pictures in English. On the first trial Spanish words produced more interference than English words, whereas the pattern was reversed thereafter. This effect is attributed to task novelty, which disappears with practice. No differential patterns of interference were observed among subjects naming pictures in Spanish, probably because of greater error variance. Results for English picture-naming bilinguals supported the integration hypothesis but suggested that there is less distance between words within a language than between languages in semantic memory.     

Attentional orienting and awareness: evidence from a discrimination task

We used several cue–target SOAs (100, 500, 1000 ms) and three different degrees of cue predictability (Non-predictive-50%, Predictive-75%, Counter-predictive-25%), to investigate the role of awareness of cue–target predictability on cueing effects. A group of participants received instructions about the informative value of the cue, while another group did not receive such instructions. Participants were able to extract the predictive value of a spatially peripheral cue and use it to orient attention, whether or not specific instructions about the predictive value of the cue were given, and no matter their ability to correctly report it in a post-test questionnaire. In the non-predictive block, bad estimators who received no instructions showed regular cueing effects, while good estimators exhibited smaller and non-significant facilitatory effects at the short SOA and an absence of significant IOR at longer SOAs. However, for the instructions group, the pattern of results reversed.