Preferred recall order and recall accuracy for two messages presented simultaneously over a single auditory channel

Ss in the dichotic listening task prefer, and are more accurate with, the channel-by-channel order of recall-recalling all information presented to one ear followed by the information presented to the other ear. Current explanations for these effects rely upon the fact that the two messages are presented over separate input channels. The present study tested this hypothesis directly by presenting two messages simultaneously to a single auditory channel. Groups of Ss were instructed to recall two pairs of digits presented simultaneously over a single channel (1) in any order (free recall), (2) in the order received (simultaneous order), or (3) in sequential groups (successive order). Ss in the free recall task preferred recalling items in successive order. However, Ss instructed to recall in simultaneous order were as accurate as those instructed to recall in successive order. These data imply that accuracy with, but not preference for, the successive order of recall depends upon whether input is to one or two channels.     

Electrodermal responses to attended and nonattended significant stimuli during dichotic listening

Some investigators have found that words previously associated with shock elicit electrodermal responses (EDRs) when presented in the nonattended channel of a dichotic listening task. The present experiment tested for this phenomenon while closely monitoring for shifts in attention to the nonattended channel. College student volunteers verbally shadowed a series of unrelated words presented to the attended channel while words made significant by previous association with shock (and semantically related words) were occasionally presented to the nonattended channel. Three principal findings were obtained. Fist, when EDRs were averaged across all trials and across all subjects, it was found that EDRs were elicited by the significant words presented in the nonattended channel. Second, for the subgroup of subjects that had the significant words presented to the right ear (activating the left cerebral hemisphere), it was found that EDRs were elicited by the significant words presented to the left ear (activating the right cerebral hemisphere), it was found that EDRs were elicited by the significant word seven on trials on which there were no apparent shifts in attention. The results of this study indicate the importance of closely controlling and monitoring for shifts in attention and suggest the potential importance of cerebral laterality in mediating EDRs to stimuli presented in a nonatttended channel.     

The effects of auditory shadowing on recognition of information received visually

When Ss attend to one auditory message, they have no permanent memory for a second auditory message received simultaneously. Generally, it has been argued that a similar effect would occur crossmodally. This hypothesis was tested in the present experiment for messages presented to visual and auditory modalities. All Ss were tested for recognition of information presented either while shadowing or while hearing but not shadowing a passage of prose presented to one ear. One group heard a list of concrete nouns in their other ear. Three other groups received (1) printed words. (2) pictures of objects easily labeled, or (3) pictures of objects difficult to label. The shadowing task produced a decrement m recognition scores for the first three groups but not for the group receiving pictures of objects difficult to label. Further, the shadowing task interfered more with information received auditorily than with any form of visual information. These results suggest that information received visually is stored in a long-term modality-specific memory that may operate independently of the auditory modality.     

Variations of Bender-Gestalt constriction and depression in adult psychiatric patients.

The present study explored variations of Bender-Gestalt constriction and their relation to depression. 20 Ss showing constriction of drawings on the upper half-page and 20 Ss showing constriction of drawings on the left half-page were compared with regard to MMPI Depression scores. No significant difference was found between these groups. However, when the constricted groups were combined and then compared with 40 Ss who did not show constriction of Bender drawings, the constricted group had significantly higher (p less than .05) MMPI Depression scores. Thus, variations in Bender constriction are not differently related to depression, but presence of constriction is an indicator. However, its rate of occurrence is so infrequent, appearing in only 5% of the records examined, that its clinical usefulness in the detection of depression is quite limited.     

Selective attention and cerebral dominance in perceiving and responding to speech messages

The effect of attention on cerebral dominance and the asymmetry between left and right ears was investigated using a selective listening task. Right handed subjects were presented with simultaneous dichotic speech messages; they shadowed one message in either the right or left ear and at the same time tapped with either the right or the left hand when they heard a specified target word in either message. The ear asymmetry was shown only when subjects' attention was focused on some other aspect of the task: they tapped to more targets in the right ear, but only when these came in the non-shadowed message; they made more shadowing errors with the left ear message, but chiefly for non-target words. The verbal response of shadowing showed the right ear dominance more clearly than the manual response of tapping. Tapping with the left hand interfered more with shadowing than tapping with the right hand, but there was little correlation between the degree of hand and of ear asymmetry over individual subjects. The results support the idea that the right ear dominance is primarily a quantitative difference in the distribution of attention to left and right ear inputs reaching the left hemisphere speech areas. This affects both the efficiency of speech perception and the degree of response competition between simultaneous verbal and manual responses.     

Verbal retention after shadowing and after listening

Ss shadowed or listened to stories that had been recorded at 1 word/sec (wps), 2 wps, and 3 wps. They then took tests of word recognition, semantic retention, and syntax recognition. At the slowest rate, shadowers’ word recognition and semantic retention were somewhat higher than listeners’ scores, but this difference disappeared at faster rates. Significant positive correlations among all three retention scores were observed for listeners, but for shadowers word recognition was unrelated to either of the other two retention measures. The results are discussed in terms of monitoring during shadowing. Implications for experiments on selective attention are considered.     

Monaural and binaural story recall by schizophrenic subjects.

P. Green and other investigators have reported that schizophrenic Ss have poorer recall of stories presented to both ears than to the single best ear (binaural deficit) and poorer recall of stories presented to the left ear than to the right ear (monaural asymmetry) than do normal control Ss. These studies are plagued by potential methodological problems, including differences in overall accuracy, which artifactually affect the difference scores, and scoring methods that are vulnerable to systematic bias. In this study, scores of schizophrenic, bipolar, and normal control Ss on the Auditory Comprehension Test were compared. Scoring bias was avoided by the use of blind scoring and a revised scoring manual, and artifactual effects of accuracy were considered in interpreting the results. Contrary to previous findings, the groups did not differ on either monaural asymmetry or binaural deficit.     

The encoding of ignored information

An experiment was conducted to study the dimensions of encoding of verbal material in short-term memory as a function of other demands placed on Ss attention. Eighty Ss shadowed one of two simultaneous lists, under instructions to remember the shadowed or the nonshadowed list, A single recognition probe followed each shadowing trial. Ss judged whether the probed item was (1) identical to, (2) a rhyme of, or (3) a synonym of one of the to be remembered items. Results indicated that acoustic information was encoded from all inputs, regardless of the focus of attention. Evidence for semantic encoding, however, was limited to those conditions in which retention of shadowed material was required. The data were interpreted as contradicting “late selection” theories of attention, which propose that all inputs are analyzed for meaning prior to the focusing of attention.     

Temporal Orientation,Human Movement Responses and Time Estimation

The relationship between temporal orientation, human movement (M) responses on the Barron inkblots, and brief time estimates was investigated. Knapp's Time Metaphor Test and the Barron inkblots were administered to 110 Ss. 40 Ss were selected on the basis of their scores on the Time Metaphor Test to participate in an individual time estimation experiment This produced two criterion groups: 20 Dynamic-Hasty (D-H) Ss and 20 Naturalist-Passive (N-P) Ss. Results indicated that N-P Ss had a lower M threshold, perceived more M and overestimated the passage of time. Discussion focused on the relationship between temporal orientation, fantasy behavior, and impulse control.     

Mood effects on attitude judgments: independent effects of mood before and after message elaboration.

This study investigated the independent effects of induced mood on the encoding of persuasive messages and on the assessment of attitude judgments. In Experiment 1, positive or negative mood was induced either before the encoding of a counterattitudinal message or before the assessment of attitude judgments. When mood was induced before message presentation, Ss in a bad mood were more persuaded by strong than by weak arguments, whereas Ss in a good mood were equally persuaded by strong and by weak arguments. When Ss encoded the message in a neutral mood, however, the advantage of strong over weak arguments was more pronounced when Ss were in a good rather than in a bad mood at the time of attitude assessment. In Experiment 2, Ss exposed to a counterattitudinal message composed of either strong or weak arguments formed either a global evaluation or a detailed representation of the message. Positive, negative, or neutral mood was then induced. Ss in a good mood were most likely and Ss in a negative mood least likely to base their reported attitudes on global evaluations.     

Promoting systematic processing in low-motivation settings: effect of incongruent information on processing and judgment

Ss received consensus information that was either congruent or incongruent with the valence of persuasive message content. In Experiment 1 Ss believed that their processing task was either important or unimportant whereas in Experiment 2 all Ss believed that their task was unimportant. In accord with the heuristic-systematic model's sufficiency principle, high-task-importance Ss exhibited a great deal of systematic processing regardless of congruency, whereas low-importance Ss processed systematically only when they received incongruent messages; in the congruent conditions heuristic processing dominated. Attitude data generally reflected these processing differences and confirmed the additivity and attenuation assumptions of the model. The utility of the sufficiency principle for understanding motivation for elaborative processing and the relevance of the findings to understanding the processing and judgmental effects of expectancy disconfirmation are discussed.     

Ear asymmetry in a dichotic detection task

Pairs of consonant-vowel (CV) syllables were presented dichotically to Ss who were instructed to monitor for the presence of a target CV which could occur in either ear. Ss responded by depressing a response button ; reaction time (RT) was also recorded. Right ear targets were detected 6.2% more frequently, on the average, than left ear targets and had an average RT 50 msec quicker than their left ear counterparts. These results demonstrate the existence of a right ear superiority in dichotic listening when a nonverbal motor response measure is used, supporting the contention that the ear asymmetry phenomenon is truly perceptual in nature and not merely due to the lateralization of verbal output. Two alternative explanations of the RT difference between left and right ear targets are offered. One attributes this difference to the time necessary for intercortical transfer of right hemisphere information, while the second holds that it is due to the longer times needed by the right hemisphere to process information projected to it.     

Decisions concerning the rejected channel

It was thought that the physical aspects of auditory stimuli were possibly transmitted via separate pathways from those transmitting the verbal aspects. Three experiments were designed to test this hypothesis. In these experiments subjects had to perform a shadowing task and had to respond simultaneously on response keys to pips superimposed in either ear on verbal messages. The response to these pips was of increasing complexity, in that it was a simple reaction time which was measured in the first experiment, a choice reaction time in the second experiment and a more complex choice reaction time in the third experiment. Subjects were able to perform these tests although the increasing difficulty was reflected in longer reaction times and more errors. The reaction times to the pips presented to the ear which was not being shadowed were slower, and the errors, made to pips in both channels, were “false positives” rather than errors of omission. These results were taken as favouring the hypothesis.     

Two-flash thresholds as a function of flash luminance and area

Two-flash thresholds were obtained from three dark-adapted Ss by means of a two-interval, temporal forced-choice technique involving foveally fixated circular targets varying in luminance and area. The Ss were instructed to report the temporal position of the longer of two pairs of I-msec flashes. a comparison pair with an interflash interval of 1 msec, and a test pair with a varying interflasn interval. The Ss were informed about the accuracy of their responses after each response. For all three Ss the results replicated a previous finding that two-flash thresholds are a negatively accelerated function of flash luminance. but the function was shown to be dependent on area. a greater threshold change occurring at smaller areas. Two-flash thresholds were also found to be a decreasing function of stimulus area. with the greatest threshold change occurring at low luminances.     

The communication of friendly and hostile attitudes by verbal and non-verbal signals

Two experiments are reported here in which Ss were asked to rate videotapes of a performer reading friendly, neutral and hostile messages in a friendly, neutral or hostile non-verbal style. These messages and non-verbal styles had previously been presented independently to a separate group of Ss jor rating, in order to obtain an estimate of their individual strengths in terms of six rating scales, and thus permit a matching of verbal (messages) and non-verbal (styles) cues in the experiment where both types of cues were presented in combination. The results of both experiments indicate that non-verbal cues had a greater effect on ratings made on 7-point scales, such as hostile-friendly, than verbal cues. The magnitude of this greater effect of non-verbal cues, however, was dependent on the relative strength of non-verbal as opposed to verbal cues. In the first experiment, both types of cues were approximately equal in strength when ruted alone; here non-verbal cues accounted for 12.5 times us much variance us verbal cues, and produced 5.7 times as much shift on the ratitig scales. In the second experiment the verbal cues were much stronger than the non-verbal cues when rated alone. Here the relative effect of non-verbal cues in the second experiment was diminished; the ratio of non-verbal : verbal variance was now 1.67:1. When verbal and non-verbal signals were inconsistent, the performance was rated as insincere, unstable and confusing - which was not found in earlier experiments on the superior-inferior dimension.     

Retrieval of information from multiple ensembles in short-term memory

A recognition memory experiment investigated Ss’ ability to organize information in short-term memory. A paradigm similar to that used by Sternberg was employed. A sequentially presented series of six digits (positive set) was shown with each digit appearing on a red, green, or amber background. The colors defined different ensembles, and responding to a test digit was contingent upon an item’s membership in the positive set and the color-defined ensemble. Reaction time (RT) to the test digits indicated that Ss did organize information into ensembles. Furthermore, when informative cues were presented prior to the test item, Ss directed and confined their search to the cued subset.     

A methodological study of auditory lateralization

The just-noticeable-shift (JNS) threshold of a centered image was determined for four naive Ss A two interval forced choice situation was used under the method of constant stimuli. The three manners of presentation of the intensity imbalance were as follows: (1) an increase in intensity at one ear, (2) a decrease in intensity at one ear, (3) an increase in intensity at one ear produced concommitantly with a decrease in intensity at the opposite ear. The sign test demonstrated significant differences between method (2) and methods (1) and (3).     

Oral and visual presentation and production of original responses.

Verbal originality scores were obtained from Onomatopoeia and Images, Form 1B, given to 106 Ss aged 10 to 12 yr. and 94 Ss aged 16 to 19 yr. The older Ss scored significantly higher than the younger Ss with significant main effects for age, but not for method of word presentation. A significant interaction was found between word presentation method and age. Older Ss were more original with the oral presentation while the younger Ss performed approximately the same with both methods.     

Multiple audience problem: a strategic communication perspective on social perception

Examined how communicators send mixed messages containing an explicit surface content and a covert hidden content. In Study 1, Ss wrote constrained essays presenting either an introverted or extraverted personality. Although authors reported manipulating essay credibility and readers reported relying on credibility to make their judgments, readers succumbed to correspondence bias. In Studies 2 and 3, Ss again prepared either constrained essays (Study 2) or constrained videotapes (Study 3) and included in them a hidden message that would be understood by only their friends but not by strangers. Observers then read these essays or watched these videotapes. Friends detected and decoded the hidden messages, whereas strangers did not. We discuss these findings in terms of social perception and strategic communication.     

Individual differences in working memory capacity and divided attention in dichotic listening

The controlled attention theory of working memory suggests that individuals with greater working memory capacity (WMC) are better able to control or focus their attention than individuals with lesser WMC. This relationship has been observed in a number of selective attention paradigms including a dichotic listening task (Conway, Cowan, & Bunting, 2001) in which participants were required to shadow words presented to one ear and ignore words presented to the other ear. Conway et al. found that when the participant’s name was presented to the ignored ear, 65% of participants with low WMC reported hearing their name, compared to only 20% of participants with high WMC, suggesting greater selective attention on the part of high WMC participants. In the present study, individual differences in divided attention were examined in a dichotic listening task, in which participants shadowed one message and listened for their own name in the other message. Here we find that 66.7% of high WMC and 34.5% of low WMC participants detected their name. These results suggest that as WMC capacity increases, so does the ability to control the focus of attention, with high WMC participants being able to flexibly “zoom in” or “zoom out” depending on task demands.