Errors in proofreading: Evidence for syntactic control of letter processing?

The present study compared the rates of detection of misspellings in content and in function words, controlling for the effects of familiarity by studying verbs that could be either content words or function words according to the context. In agreement with previous studies, it was found that errors were more readily detected in content words than in function words, thereby clearly demonstrating the importance of syntactic factors in processing the words in a text. Unlike previous studies, we did not find consistent evidence that errors changing the overall word shape were detected more easily than errors preserving word shape, and we found no evidence that the position of the error in the word affected its rate of detection. These findings were interpreted in the framework of an interactive approach to the reading process.     

Semantic processing in dichotic listening? A replication

This experiment explores semantic processing of one message while another is attended to and shadowed. It was an attempt to replicate and clarify an earlier finding by Lewis (1970). Like Lewis, we found that mean shadowing latency was increased when a synonym of the shadowed word coincided with it on the unattended channel. However, this occurred only with synonyms in an early list position and appeared to affect only a small proportion of trials. The implications of this and other recent findings for theories of selective listening are discussed.     

Defective number module or impaired access? Numerical magnitude processing in first graders with mathematical difficulties

This study examined numerical magnitude processing in first graders with severe and mild forms of mathematical difficulties, children with mathematics learning disabilities (MLD) and children with low achievement (LA) in mathematics, respectively. In total, 20 children with MLD, 21 children with LA, and 41 regular achievers completed a numerical magnitude comparison task and an approximate addition task, which were presented in a symbolic and a nonsymbolic (dot arrays) format. Children with MLD and LA were impaired on tasks that involved the access of numerical magnitude information from symbolic representations, with the LA children showing a less severe performance pattern than children with MLD. They showed no deficits in accessing magnitude from underlying nonsymbolic magnitude representations. Our findings indicate that this performance pattern occurs in children from first grade onward and generalizes beyond numerical magnitude comparison tasks. These findings shed light on the types of intervention that may help children who struggle with learning mathematics.     

What is specific to music processing? Insights from congenital amusia

Musical abilities are generally regarded as an evolutionary by-product of more important functions, such as those involved in language. However, there is increasing evidence that humans are born with musical predispositions that develop spontaneously into sophisticated knowledge bases and procedures that are unique to music. Recent findings also suggest that the brain is equipped with music-specific neural networks and that these can be selectively compromised by a congenital anomaly. This results in a disorder, congenital amusia, that appears to be limited to the processing of music. Recent evidence points to fine-grained perception of pitch as the root of musical handicap. Hence, musical abilities appear to depend crucially on the fine-tuning of pitch, in much the same way that language abilities rely on fine time resolution.     

Face processing in autistics: Evidence for a generalised deficit?

Several studies have recently highlighted specific impairments in face processing in autistic subjects (memory for faces, recognition of emotional expressions, identity recognition of familiar faces). The goal of the present study was to explore whether there was a generalised face processing deficit in this population. A variety of tasks examining different, and possibly dissociative, aspects of face processing was investigated. The results of autistic subjects were compared with data from (a) a group of children with Down syndrome and (b) two individually matched control groups. The study suggests that autistic subjects are impaired in the various face processing tasks, but not always to the same extent.     

Can animation compensate for temporal processing difficulties in deaf people?

This article addresses the issue of animation as an aid for temporal processing difficulties in deaf people learning the Highway Code. A decision-making task involving static or animated road situations was performed by 21 deaf and 24 hearing participants. They were confronted with four types of driving situations (overtaking, negotiating roundabouts, highways, and intersections) and had to decide whether or not to proceed. Participants were presented with two different formats (static vs. animated) and two levels of difficulty (simple vs. complex). Results showed that deaf participants had poorer performances in the static condition than hearing participants. Performance was better in the animated condition than in the static condition, especially in deaf participants. The benefits of animation were greater in complex situations for all participants. Decisions made on dynamic road situations were facilitated by the presence of spatiotemporal dimensions. These proved helpful to deaf candidates who have difficulties in this particular area.     

Lexical guidance in sentence processing?

An eyetracking experiment was conducted to explore a self-paced reading effect reported by Mitchell (1987). Mitchell found that a noun phrase (NP) was read slowly when it immediately followed an intransitive verb, as long as the verb and NP appeared in the same presentation region. This effect has been used to support the claim that verb subcategorization information is not used initially in sentence parsing. However, the effect did not appear in the eyetracking experiment reported in the present paper, supporting criticisms that Mitchell’s segmentation procedure distorted the parsing process.     

Can semantics be syntactic?

The author defends John R. Searle's Chinese Room argument against a particular objection made by William J. Rapaport called the Korean Room. Foundational issues such as the relationship of strong AI to human mentality and the adequacy of the Turing Test are discussed. Through undertaking a Gedankenexperiment similar to Searle's but which meets new specifications given by Rapaport for an AI system, the author argues that Rapaport's objection to Searle does not stand and that Rapaport's arguments seem convincing only because they assume the foundations of strong AI at the outset.The author wishes to thank Brad Bergeron, David J. Cole, James H. Fetzer, Charles E. Jahren, Michael Losonsky, William J. Rapaport, and Robyn Roslak for reading earlier drafts of this paper and/or their general discussions on cognitive science and AI. An earlier version of this paper was given at the Student Conference of the Minnesota Philosophical Society, Bethel College, 1988.     

Is there a sex difference in lateralization for processing of humorous materials?

Leventhal and Cupchik (1976) reported an unpublished finding that women rate items funnier with left-ear input, while men give higher ratings with right-ear input. This finding, widely cited in the literature, has sometimes been quoted as evidence for a biological basis for sex differences in humor appreciation, in particular, and in information processing, in general. However, the effect has apparently never been replicated. In this study, 120 subjects rated the funniness of 35 monaurally-presented comedy excerpts, with half of the subjects receiving input over each ear. Although the experiment had several features intended to maximize replicability, the reported sex difference was not found. While failure to find an effect in a particular case is not definitive, it is troubling to see such widespread citation of an unpublished and apparently unreplicated effect and to see rather extreme conclusions based on it receive serious consideration in the literature.This research was supported by a University College of Cape Breton research grant and by a job internship grant awarded by Enterprise Cape Breton Corporation. I am very grateful to Wayne Baillie, Manager, UCCB Electronic Learning Center, for his assistance in conducting this experiment. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Psychological Association, Ottawa, June, 1990.     

Accounting for cognitive aging: context processing, inhibition or processing speed?

Age-related deficits in context processing were examined in relationship to two predominant theories of cognitive aging (the Inhibitory Deficit and Processing Speed Models). Older and younger adults completed a measure of context processing (AX Continuous Performance Test (CPT) task) as well as a computerized battery of inhibitory tasks: Stroop, garden path sentences, go no-go, and the stop-signal paradigm. Participants also completed a simple processing speed task. After controlling for baseline differences in processing speed, age effects were detected on the AX-CPT. Smaller, but significant age effects were noted on the Stroop and stop-signal tasks, but no significant age effects were found on the garden path sentence and go no-go tasks. Intertask correlations were weak, providing little evidence for a homogenous or uniform construct of inhibition. The sensitivity of the AX-CPT to cognitive aging is discussed in the context of existing theories of cognitive aging. The authors suggest that deficits in context processing and utilization may underlie cognitive aging phenomena.     

Prosodic disambiguation of syntactic structure: for the speaker or for the addressee?

Evidence has been mixed on whether speakers spontaneously and reliably produce prosodic cues that resolve syntactic ambiguities. And when speakers do produce such cues, it is unclear whether they do so "for" their addressees (the audience design hypothesis) or "for" themselves, as a by-product of planning and articulating utterances. Three experiments addressed these issues. In Experiments 1 and 3, speakers followed pictorial guides to spontaneously instruct addressees to move objects. Critical instructions (e.g., "Put the dog in the basket on the star") were syntactically ambiguous, and the referential situation supported either one or both interpretations. Speakers reliably produced disambiguating cues to syntactic ambiguity whether the situation was ambiguous or not. However, Experiment 2 suggested that most speakers were not yet aware of whether the situation was ambiguous by the time they began to speak, and so adapting to addressees' particular needs may not have been feasible in Experiment 1. Experiment 3 examined individual speakers' awareness of situational ambiguity and the extent to which they signaled structure, with or without addressees present. Speakers tended to produce prosodic cues to syntactic boundaries regardless of their addressees' needs in particular situations. Such cues did prove helpful to addressees, who correctly interpreted speakers' instructions virtually all the time. In fact, even when speakers produced syntactically ambiguous utterances in situations that supported both interpretations, eye-tracking data showed that 40% of the time addressees did not even consider the non-intended objects. We discuss the standards needed for a convincing test of the audience design hypothesis.     

Control over speeded actions: A common processing locus for micro- and macro-trade-offs?

Cognitive control processes associated with long- and short-term adjustments of human behaviour have attracted much interest recently. It is still unclear, however, whether the mechanisms underlying these adjustments share a common locus within the chain of stimulus–response processing. In order to address this issue, the present study employed a speed–accuracy instruction producing a macro-trade-off, whereas micro-trade-off was studied by means of posterror slowing in reaction time (RT). Participants performed a spatially compatible or incompatible four-stimuli-to-two-response alternative choice RT task. Reliable variations in micro-and macro-trade-off as well as effects of spatial compatibility were found in RT and error rate. Most importantly, posterror slowing was larger when instruction stressed accuracy rather than speed, an effect being independent of spatial compatibility. Because the influence of speed–accuracy instruction and posterror slowing on performance was strongest for response alternations, together present findings suggest that the mechanisms underlying micro- and macro-trade-offs have one common locus at the level of motor processing. Additional influences of macro-trade-off on premotoric processing are likely.     

Personality and music: Can traits explain how people use music in everyday life?

This paper reports the results of a study on the relationship between individual differences and specific uses of music, referring to why and how people use music in everyday life. Questionnaire data from 341 respondents showed that open and intellectually engaged individuals, and those with higher IQ scores, tended to use music in a rational/cognitive way, while neurotic, introverted and non‐conscientious individuals were all more likely to use music for emotional regulation (e.g. change or enhance moods). Results suggest that individual differences in personality and cognitive ability may partly determine the way in which we experience music. Limitations and suggestions for future studies are discussed.     

Preattentive processing or prefocal processing?

The concept of preattentive processing is analyzed and alternative views of it are presented. A basic question is whether processing required for preattentive input selection is qualitatively different from post-selection processing. In order to study this, subjects were presented in one set of conditions with one stimulus at either of two locations, and in another set of conditions, simultaneously with two stimuli. The stimuli could be green or red, or large or small. Subjects were asked to indicate the location (or the color, or the size) of the single stimulus in the single-stimulus conditions, or of a predesignated stimulus (say, the red one) in the dual-stimulus conditions. Responses were generally slower in the dual-stimulus conditions. The increases in reaction time were accounted for by the times it takes to process for response selection the properties by which the target stimulus could be selected, as indicated by the results of two control conditions. The results as well as some other considerations do not support the view that preattentive processing is necessarily of a type that qualitatively differs from post-selection processing.     

How serial is serial processing in vision?

Visual search for an element defined by the conjunction of its colour and orientation has previously been shown to be a serial processing task since reaction times increase linearly with the number of distractor elements used in the display. Evidence is presented that there are parallel processing constituents to this serial search. Processing time depended on the ratio of the number of the two distractor types used, suggesting that only one type was scanned. Which type was scanned also depended on the distractor ratio, indicating that this decision was made after stimulus presentation and was based on a parallel figure-ground separation of the stimulus elements. Furthermore, in accordance with this serial scanning model, there was an increase in processing speed (elements scanned per second) with increase in number of elements to be scanned. This increased efficiency suggests that clumps of elements were processed synchronously. Under the stimulation conditions used, clumps contained six to sixteen elements and each clump was processed in 50-150 ms.     

Can generic expertise explain special processing for faces?

Does face recognition involve face-specific cognitive and neural processes ('domain specificity') or do faces only seem special because people have had more experience of individuating them than they have of individuating members of other homogeneous object categories ('the expertise hypothesis')? Here, we summarize new data that test these hypotheses by assessing whether classic face-selective effects - holistic processing, recognition impairments in prosopagnosia and fusiform face area activation - remain face selective in comparison with objects of expertise. We argue that evidence strongly supports domain specificity rather than the expertise hypothesis. We conclude that the crucial social function of face recognition does not reflect merely a general practice phenomenon and that it might be supported by evolved mechanisms (visual or nonvisual) and/or a sensitive period in infancy.     

Can a temporal processing deficit account for dyslexia?

In this comment, we argue that although Farmer and Klein (1995) have provided a valuable review relating deficits in nonreading tasks and dyslexia, their basic claim that a “temporal processing deficit” is one possible cause of dyslexia is somewhat vague. We argue that “temporal processing deficit” is never clearly defined. Furthermore, we question some of their assumptions concerning an auditory temporal processing deficit related to dyslexia, and we present arguments and data that seem inconsistent with their claims regarding how a visual temporal processing deficit would manifest itself in dyslexic readers. While we agree that some dyslexics have visual problems, we conclude that problems with reading caused by the visual mechanisms that Farmer and Klein postulate are quite rare.     

Can holistic processing be learned for inverted faces?

The origin of "special" processing for upright faces has been a matter of ongoing debate. If it is due to generic expertise, as opposed to having some innate component, holistic processing should be learnable for stimuli other than upright faces. Here we assess inverted faces. We trained subjects to discriminate identical twins using up to 1100 exposures to each twin in different poses and images. In the upright orientation, twin discrimination was supported by holistic processing. Removal of a single face feature had no effect on performance, and a composite effect (Young, A. W., Hellawell, D., & Hay, D.C. (1987). Configurational information in face perception. Perception 16 (6), 747-759) was obtained. In the inverted orientation, however, above chance identification ability relied on (a) image specific learning, or (b) tiny local feature differences not noticed in the upright faces. The failure to learn holistic processing for inverted faces indicates that, in contrast to the situation for objects (Tarr, M.J., & Pinker, S. (1989). Mental rotation and orientation-dependence in shape recognition. Cognitive Psychology 21 (2), 233-282), orientation specificity of face processing is highly stable against practice.     

Can preference for background music mediate the irrelevant sound effect?

Research suggests that listening to background music prior to task performance increases cognitive processes, such as attention and memory, through the mechanism of increasing arousal and positive mood. However, music preference has not been explored with regard to a more common and realistic scenario of concurrent music and cognition, namely the ‘irrelevant sound effect’ (ISE). To examine this, serial recall was tested under quiet, liked and disliked music sound conditions as well as steady‐state (repetition of ‘3’) and changing‐state speech (random digits 1–9). Results revealed performance to be poorer for both music conditions and the changing‐state speech compared to quiet and steady‐state speech conditions. The lack of difference between both music conditions suggests that preference does not affect serial recall performance. These findings are discussed within the music and cognition and auditory distraction literatures. Copyright © 2010 JohnWiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Does background music in a store enhance salespersons' persuasiveness?

Background music has been studied as a key element of the store atmosphere in terms of its emotional effects; however, previous studies have shown also that music may have cognitive influence on consumers. How does music affect the salespersons' persuasive efforts within the store? To answer this question an experimental study was designed to assess the effects of four levels of arousing music conditions (no-low-moderate high arousing music). The level of pleasure of the musical pieces was controlled for. Music does not moderate significantly the effects of the salespersons on the intent to buy, but low and moderately arousing music (similarly low and moderately interesting musical pieces) does influence significantly the effects on the acceptance of the salesperson's arguments and the "desire to affiliate," i.e., to enter into communication.