Reactions to heard words: varying emotional content and frequency of exposure

The authors aurally presented words varying in emotional content and frequency of exposure to 56 participants during (a) a study phase in which 288 words (72 separate words with repetitions) were presented and (b) a test phase in which participants were presented with the 72 words from the study phase along with 24 new words. In the test phase, participants responded to these 96 words with either a recognition response or a likability response. The recognition results indicated that increased exposure produced increased recognition; however, high arousal and negative valence words produced higher false positive scores. The likability scores revealed an overall mere exposure effect (MEE). However, words of low arousal and of positive valence did not show the MEE.     

Recall bias for stimulus and response anxiety words in spider phobics

Abstract

Experiments on memory bias in patients with anxiety disorders have produced inconsistent results. It is suggested that results may depend on whether the words studied relate to anxiety-inducing stimulus features or to the anxiety response. It was predicted, following previous results, that phobic subjects would show diminished recall of stimulus words, but that recall of response words might be enhanced. In fact, for both stimulus and response words, phobics showed better recall of phobia-related words than of control words. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that phobic anxiety is associated with a bias towards recall of phobia-related words. However, it seems likely that phobic anxiety has several potentially conflicting effects on recall, and that this accounts for the inconsistent results in literature.     

Equivalent inter- and intramodality long-term priming: Evidence for a common lexicon for words seen and words heard

Weaker inter- than intramodality long-term priming of words has promoted two hypotheses: (1) separate visual and auditory lexicons and (2) modality dependence of implicit memory. In five experiments, we employed manipulations aimed to minimize study-test asymmetries between the two priming conditions. Activities at visual and auditory study were matched, words were phonologically consistent, and study modality was manipulated between subjects. Equal magnitudes of inter- and intramodality priming were found in experiments with visual and auditory stem completion at test, with visual fragment completion at test, and with visual and auditory perceptual identification at test. A within-subjects experiment yielded the conventional intramodality advantage. The results point to a single amodal lexicon and to modality-independent phonological processing as the basis of implicit word memory.     

Recall and articulation of English and Chinese words by Chinese-English bilinguals

Three groups of subjects were tested to investigate the effect of language on the relationship between recall span and articulation rate. Native English-speaking monolinguals and native Chinese-speaking monolinguals recalled only English or Chinese words, respectively. Chinese-English bilinguals recalled both English and Chinese words. Articulation rates for English and Chinese monolinguals and Chinese-English bilinguals in each language were also obtained. When recall span was regressed on articulation rate, the slopes for Chinese and English words were significantly different for the Chinese-English bilinguals. This difference was not due to language proficiency but to phonological differences between English and Chinese.     

Recall and recognition of threatening,pleasant, and neutral words in repressors

Low accessibility of threatening information is a crucial element in the theory of repression. Despite many attempts, no empirical evidence has been found for such an inverse memory bias in normal subjects. An alternative approach is to study repressive processes as an individual difference. Adopting such a trait approach, several studies have shown impaired memory for threatening memories of real‐life episodes in so‐called repressors. Several other studies have yielded evidence of avoidant processing of mildly threatening information in the early stages of information processing in repressors. Thus far, little evidence for a similar avoidant bias in memory has been offered for repressors. To demonstrate the presence of memory deficits for mildly threatening information, we tested recall and cued recognition after a 30 min delay, for (i) threatening, (ii) pleasant, and (iii) neutral words in repressors and non‐repressors. No proof was found for poorer recall and recognition of threatening words in repressors, or for lower numbers of threatening semantic intrusions in these individuals, while the power of the study was adequate. While repression‐related avoidant processing may be present for even mildly threatening stimuli at earlier stages of information processing, the results of the present study indicate that repressed memory may only show up for relatively intense emotional events. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Reverse production effect: children recognize novel words better when they are heard rather than produced

This research investigates the effect of production on 4.5‐ to 6‐year‐old children's recognition of newly learned words. In Experiment 1, children were taught four novel words in a produced or heard training condition during a brief training phase. In Experiment 2, children were taught eight novel words, and this time training condition was in a blocked design. Immediately after training, children were tested on their recognition of the trained novel words using a preferential looking paradigm. In both experiments, children recognized novel words that were produced and heard during training, but demonstrated better recognition for items that were heard. These findings are opposite to previous results reported in the literature with adults and children. Our results show that benefits of speech production for word learning are dependent on factors such as task complexity and the developmental stage of the learner.     

The effects of noise on recall of lists of associated words

An experiment investigated the effect of noise on recall of lists consisting of pairs of strong and weak associates. Noise improved recall (both number recalled and organization of recall) and did so with both types of list. The subjects who were initially tested in noise continued to show better recall and organization of recall even when they were transferred to the quiet condition. This finding shows that noise may reinforce the use of the dominant strategy and that this strategy may be used more in noise when experimental conditions are changed and even when the subject is transferred from the noise to the quiet. This research was supported by a grant from the Social Science Research Council.     

Perceptual learning of noise vocoded words: effects of feedback and lexicality

Speech comprehension is resistant to acoustic distortion in the input, reflecting listeners' ability to adjust perceptual processes to match the speech input. This adjustment is reflected in improved comprehension of distorted speech with experience. For noise vocoding, a manipulation that removes spectral detail from speech, listeners' word report showed a significantly greater improvement over trials for listeners that heard clear speech presentations before rather than after hearing distorted speech (clear-then-distorted compared with distorted-then-clear feedback, in Experiment 1). This perceptual learning generalized to untrained words suggesting a sublexical locus for learning and was equivalent for word and nonword training stimuli (Experiment 2). These findings point to the crucial involvement of phonological short-term memory and top-down processes in the perceptual learning of noise-vocoded speech. Similar processes may facilitate comprehension of speech in an unfamiliar accent or following cochlear implantation.     

我听到的鬼叫声

小时候,母亲白天要干很多活儿,夜里才有时间纺棉花。为了抵御瞌睡虫的攻击,她就经常让我陪坐在她的纺车旁,听她讲故事。     

Irrelevant Sound Disrupts Order Information in Free Recall as in Serial Recall

The claim that the sensitivity of free recall to disruption by irrelevant sound is a function of the extent to which rote rehearsal is employed as a mnemonic strategy was investigated in two experiments. The degree of disruption by irrelevant sound in terms of both item and order information was contrasted under serial and free recall instructions. Irrelevant sound was found to disrupt order and item information equally in serial and free recall tasks (Experiment 1). Contrary to previous reports, an effect of irrelevant sound was also demonstrated on free recall of particularly long lists, and the interaction between list length and retention interval in the irrelevant sound effect was examined (Experiment 2). Generally, the results support the view that irrelevant sound disrupts the use of order cues.     

Recall in preschool children

Free recall, cued recall, color recall, organization in recall, and sorting of 3- and 4-year-olds was assessed on 9-item lists of objects that were orthogonally varied on color and category dimensions. Half of the children in each age group were presented items successively, and the other half simultaneously. Older children recalled more items than younger children in both free and cued recall, and also organized their recall more. Moreover, simultaneous presentation benefited the older, but not younger children. Clustering and sorting data suggested a decreasing reliance on perceptual information, and increasing utilization of conceptual information, over the preschool years. The results were discussed in terms of the importance of concrete, external stimulus support at both time of encoding and retrieval.     

Prepositional phrases spoken and heard

The relation between verbal and nonverbal behavior with common syntactic properties was investigated, using retarded and nonretarded children. Reinforcement was contingent on either verbal or nonverbal responses whereas responses of the other repertoire had no experimental consequences. Changes sometimes occurred in the unreinforced (collateral) repertoire, but they were always changes in the stimulus control of pre-existing topographies. A contingency involving responses of one repertoire never instated new topographies in the collateral repertoire. This suggested that the problem of “cross-modality generalization” should be reformulated to distinguish explicitly between instating new topographies and changing the stimulus control of pre-existing topographies. The result confirmed Skinner's hypothesis about “the same response spoken and heard” and clarified some anomalies in previous studies.     

Recall termination in free recall

Although much is known about the dynamics of memory search in the free recall task, relatively little is known about the factors related to recall termination. Reanalyzing individual trial data from 14 prior studies (1,079 participants in 28,015 trials) and defining termination as occurring when a final response is followed by a long nonresponse interval, we observed that termination probability increased throughout the recall period and that retrieval was more likely to terminate following an error than following a correct response. Among errors, termination probability was higher following prior-list intrusions and repetitions than following extralist intrusions. To verify that this pattern of results can be seen in a single study, we report a new experiment in which 80 participants contributed recall data from a total of 9,122 trials. This experiment replicated the pattern observed in the aggregate analysis of the prior studies.     

Recall of semantic domains

The order of recall of lists of words learned incidentally was analyzed by multidimensional scaling similarity matrices based on the number of times words were retrieved next to each other. For the semantic domains of mammals, birds, and kinship terms, retrieval from very long-term memory, both for groups and individuals, and recall of recently learned lists produced multidimensional solutions similar to published solutions based on judged relatedness and associative overlap. For the squares of the Monopoly board and the names of the members of the Lawrence University faculty, for which clear a priori category structures exist, the form of clustering in the order and timing of recall that is commonly found in recall of lists learned recently in the laboratory was also found in the retrieval of lists learned incidentally through multiple exposures over long periods of time in the real world.     

Recall of autobiographical events

The clarity with which events that happened 6 years earlier can be recalled was estimated. The estimates are consistent with a gradual degradation rather than a precipitate decline of memory, and with the proposition that once an event cannot be recalled then it will remain inaccessible under similar conditions of cueing. Rare events are recalled well, suggesting that proactive interference has a strong influence on difficulty to recall. Vivid events are recalled well, also, but other dimensions such as importance of the event, its association with semantic knowledge, and the intensity of physical sensation are not related to recallability. Memory for the date of an event is poor, but for its time of day is good.