Processing of words presented simultaneously to eye and ear

The simultaneous processing of auditorily and visually presented messages was examined in three experiments. Subjects searched lists of words for a target word while processing auditorily presented information. Across conditions, subjects searched for (a) target words in a list of words presented auditorily, (b) the same target words in lists presented visually, (c) a member of a taxonomic category in a visually presented list, and (d) a rhyme in a list of words presented visually. The level of processing of a simultaneous auditory message varied across experiments. In experiment 1, subjects shadowed lists of digits. In Experiment 2, subjects reported the antonym of each word in a list. In Experiment 3, subjects named the taxonomic category of each word in a list. In all three experiments, subject had high detection rates for target words presented visually and for category targets but low detection rates for target words presented auditorily and for rhyme targets. These results suggest that processing the semantic properties, but not the acoustic properties, of words presented to the visual modality is independent of simultaneous processing in the auditory modality. Implication for models of selective attention are discussed.     

Manipulating inattentional blindness within and across sensory modalities

People often fail to consciously perceive visual events that are outside the focus of attention, a phenomenon referred to as inattentional blindness or IB (i.e., Mack & Rock, 1998). Here, we investigated IB for words within and across sensory modalities (visually and auditorily) in order to assess whether dividing attention across different senses has the same consequences as dividing attention within an individual sensory modality. Participants were asked to monitor a rapid stream of pictures or sounds presented concurrently with task-irrelevant words (spoken or written). A word recognition test was used to measure the processing for unattended words compared to word recognition levels after explicitly monitoring the word stream. We were able to produce high levels of IB for visually and auditorily presented words under unimodal conditions (Experiment 1) as well as under crossmodal conditions (Experiment 2). A further manipulation revealed, however, that IB is less prevalent when attention is divided across modalities than within the same modality (Experiment 3). These findings are explained in terms of the attentional load hypothesis and suggest that, contrary to some claims, attention resources are to a certain extent shared across sensory modalities.     

Effects of retrieval practice and presentation modality on verbal learning: testing the limits of the testing effect

ABSTRACT

The testing effect refers to improved memory after retrieval practice and has been researched primarily with visual stimuli. In two experiments, we investigated whether the testing effect can be replicated when the to-be-learned information is presented auditorily, or visually?+?auditorily. Participants learned Swahili-English word pairs in one of three presentation modalities – visual, auditory, or visual?+?auditory. This was manipulated between-participants in Experiment 1 and within-participants in Experiment2. All participants studied the word pairs during three study trials. Half of participants practiced recalling the English translations in response to the Swahili cue word twice before the final test whereas the other half simply studied the word pairs twice more. Results indicated an improvement in final test performance in the repeated test condition, but only in the visual presentation modality (Experiments 1 and 2) and in the visual?+?auditory presentation modality (Experiment 2). This suggests that the benefits of practiced retrieval may be limited to information presented in a visual modality.     

The effect of warnings on false memories in young and older adults

In the present experiments, we examined adult age differences in the ability to suppress false memories, using the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm (Deese, 1959; Roediger & McDermott, 1995). Participants studied lists of words (e.g., bed, rest, awake, etc.), each related to a nonpresented critical lure word (e.g., sleep). Typically, recognition tests reveal false alarms to critical lures at rates comparable to those for hits for studied words. In two experiments, separate groups of young and older adults were unwarned about the false memory effect, warned before studying the lists, or warned after study and before test. Lists were presented at either a slow rate (4 sec/word) or a faster rate (2 sec/word). Young adults were better able to discriminate between studied words and critical lures when warned about the DRM effect either before study or after study but before retrieval, and their performance improved with a slower presentation rate. Older adults were able to discriminate between studied words and critical lures when given warnings before study, but not when given warnings after study but before retrieval. Performance on a working memory capacity measure predicted false recognition following study and retrieval warnings. The results suggest that effective use of warnings to reduce false memories is contingent on the quality and type of encoded information, as well as on whether that information is accessed at retrieval. Furthermore, discriminating between similar sources of activation is dependent on working memory capacity, which declines with advancing age.     

Single-Letter Retrieval Cues for Anagram Solution

Anagram solution, as related to single-letter retrieval cues and first letter of the solution word (consonant or vowel), was examined. In Experiment 1, college-aged solvers were presented both types of 5-letter words and either the first letter of the solution word as a cue, or no cue. In Experiment 2, the effects of four types of retrieval cues (first, middle, or last letter or no cue) upon solving consonant-beginning words was examined. Finally, Experiment 3 examined the solution of both types of solution words as related to the preceding four types of retrieval cues. The results of all 3 experiments showed that a single letter can be an effective cue. For consonant-beginning words, the middle and last letters were as effective as the first letter. For vowel-beginning words, the first letter was more effective than either the middle or last letter. It was concluded that solvers select one letter of the anagram, typically a consonant, to serve as the first letter of the solution word, and then rearrange the remaining letters.     

Effects of hearing words, imaging hearing words, and reading on auditory implicit and explicit memory tests

In four experiments, we examined the degree to which imaging written words as spoken by a familiar talker differs from direct perception (hearing words spoken by that talker) and reading words (without imagery) on implicit and explicit tests. Subjects first performed a surface encoding task on spoken, imagined as spoken, or visually presented words, and then were given either an implicit test (perceptual identification or stem completion) or an explicit test (recognition or cued recall) involving auditorily presented words. Auditory presentation at study produced larger priming effects than did imaging or reading. Imaging and reading yielded priming effects of similar magnitude, whereas imaging produced lower performance than reading on the explicit test of cued recall. Voice changes between study and test weakened priming on the implicit tests, but did not affect performance on the explicit tests. Imagined voice changes affected priming only in the implicit task of stem completion. These findings show that the sensitivity of a memory test to perceptual information, either directly perceived or imagined, is an important dimension for dissociating incidental (implicit) and intentional (explicit) retrieval processes.     

Intrusive effects of implicitly processed information on explicit memory

This study described the interference of implicitly processed information on the memory for explicitly processed information. Participants studied a list of words either auditorily or visually under instructions to remember the words (explicit study). They were then visually presented another word list under instructions which facilitate implicit but not explicit processing. Following a distractor task, memory for the explicit study list was tested with either a visual or auditory recognition task that included new words, words from the explicit study list, and words implicitly processed. Analysis indicated participants both failed to recognize words from the explicit study list and falsely recognized words that were implicitly processed as originating from the explicit study list. However, this effect only occurred when the testing modality was visual, thereby matching the modality for the implicitly processed information, regardless of the modality of the explicit study list. This "modality effect" for explicit memory was interpreted as poor source memory for implicitly processed information and in light of the procedures used. as well as illustrating an example of "remembering causing forgetting."     

Orthographic and phonological activation in auditory and visual word recognition

A discrete-trials color naming (Stroop)’paradigm was used to examine activation along orthographic and phonological dimensions in visual and auditory word recognition. Subjects were presented a prime word, either auditorily or visually, followed 200 msec later by a target word printed in a color. The orthographic and phonological similarity of prime-target pairs varied. Color naming latencies were longer when the primes and targets were orthographically and/or phonologically similar than when they were unrelated. This result obtained for both prime presentation modes. The results suggest that word recognition entails activation of multiple codes and priming of orthographically and phonologically similar words.     

The tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon: Blocking or partial activation?

Tip-of-the-tongue states may represent the momentary unavailability of an otherwise accessible word or the weak activation of an otherwise inaccessible word. In three experiments designed to address these alternative views, subjects attempted to retrieve rare target words from their definitions. The definitions were followed by cues that were related to the targets in sound, by cues that were related in meaning, and by cues that were not related to the targets. Experiment 1 found that compared with unrelated cues, related cue words that were presented immediately after target definitions helped rather than hindered lexical retrieval, and that sound cues were more effective retrieval aids than meaning cues. Experiment 2 replicated these results when cues were presented after an initial target-retrieval attempt. These findings reverse a previous one (Jones, 1989) that was reproduced in Experiment 3 and shown to stem from a small group of unusually difficult target definitions.     

Withdrawal of spatial overt attention following intentional forgetting: evidence from eye movements

Eye movements were measured to examine whether item-method directed forgetting involved a spatial overt attention shift. Experiment 1 showed that participants’ eyes were moved away from the study word following the forget and ignore cues, but not the remember cue. Experiment 2 revealed that the eyes were moved away from the area that covered by the study word even when the study word disappeared upon the presentation of the memory cue. Both the study word and memory cue were presented auditorily in Experiment 3. In all experiments, the to-be-remembered words were recalled better than both to-be-forgotten and to-be-ignored words. More importantly, mental effort, as indexed by the pupil size, increased following the remember, as compared with the forget and ignore cues. These findings are discussed in terms of controlling spatial overt attention after encoding to withdraw attention from irrelevant information and to allocate cognitive resources to relevant information for long-term retention.     

Selective access in cued recall: The roles of retrieval cues and domains of encoding

The purpose of these experiments was to determine whether retrieval access in cued recall can be selectively restricted to a single domain of encoding when information has been encoded within two domains as different as word sound and word meaning. In Experiment 1, the subjects studied pairs of rhyming words differing in rhyme set size under verbal-repetition or interactive-imagery instructions. Recall was cued with study-context rhymes, with extralist rhymes, or with extralist associates. The results indicated that rhyme set size and instructional effects were found no matter how recall was cued, indicating that both domains of encoding were always accessed. In Experiment 2, potential effects of study time and overt naming of the test cues were explored. These results indicated that both domains of encoding were accessed, except when long study times were available and subjects did not have to name the rhyme test cues. Rhyme set-size effects were eliminated under these conditions, suggesting that selective access to encoded meaning is possible in cued recall. Retrieval access in this task appears to be more controlled by domains of encoding than by information directly available in the cue, and access to encoded information can be restricted to a single domain.     

The role of spatial location in remembering and forgetting peripheral words.

This study examined whether spatial location mediates intentional forgetting of peripherally presented words. Using an item-method directed forgetting paradigm, words were presented in peripheral locations at study. A recognition test presented all words at either the same or a different location relative to study. Results showed that while recognition of Remember words was unaffected by test location, when Forget words were presented in the same location at test as at study, recognition accuracy was significantly greater than when presented in a different location. Experiment 2 showed that the speed to localize a previously studied word was faster when it was presented in the same rather than a different study-test location but that the magnitude of this spatial priming was unaffected by memory instruction. We suggest that the location of peripherally presented words is represented in memory and can aid the retrieval of poorly encoded words.     

短时记忆中的范畴组织和通道组织的比较

本文通过设置不同的线索条件对短时记忆中范畴组织和通道组织进行了比较研究。实验采用了通道线索组、范围线索组和混合线索组三种条件,并设置了五种词表比例。在通道线索组中,每个词表是同范畴字词,但一半用视觉呈现,一半用听觉呈现;在范畴线索组中,两类词分属两个不同的词义范畴,但以相同通道呈现;在混合线索组中,两类不同范畴的词,各有一半分别用视觉和听觉呈现。结果表明在三种线索条件下,ＡＲＣ分值差异显著,表现为     

Prelexical facilitation and lexical interference in auditory word recognition.

Phonological priming effects were examined in an auditory single-word shadowing task. In 6 experiments, target items were preceded by auditorily or visually presented, phonologically similar, word or nonword primes. Results revealed facilitation in response time when a target was preceded by a word or nonword prime having the same initial phoneme when the prime was auditorily presented but not when it was visually presented. Second, modality-independent interference was observed when the phonological overlap between the prime and target increased from 1 to 3 phonemes for word primes but not for nonword primes. Taken together, these studies suggest that phonological information facilitates word recognition as a result of excitation at a prelexical level and increases response time as a result of competition at a lexical level. These processes are best characterized by connectionist models of word recognition.     

How does acoustic similarity influence short-term memory?

This study attempts to discover why items which are similar in sound are hard to recall in a short-term memory situation. The input, storage, and retrieval stages of the memory system are examined separately. Experiments I, II and III use a modification of the Peterson and Peterson technique to plot short-term forgetting curves for sequences of acoustically similar and control words. If acoustically similar sequences are stored less efficiently, they should be forgotten more rapidly. All three experiments show a parallel rate of forgetting for acoustically similar and control sequences, suggesting that the acoustic similarity effect does not occur during storage. Two input hypotheses are then examined, one involving a simple sensory trace, the other an overloading of a system which must both discriminate and memorize at the same time. Both predict that short-term memory for spoken word sequences should deteriorate when the level of background noise is increased. Subjects performed both a listening test and a memory test in which they attempted to recall sequences of five words. Noise impaired performance on the listening test but had no significant effect on retention, thus supporting neither of the input hypotheses. The final experiments studied two retrieval hypotheses. The first of these, Wickelgren's phonemic-associative hypotheses attributes the acoustic similarity effect to inter-item associations. It predicts that, when sequences comprising a mixture of similar and dissimilar items are recalled, errors should follow acoustically similar items. The second hypothesis attributes the effect to the overloading of retrieval cues which consequently do not discriminate adequately among available responses. It predicts maximum error rate on, not following, similar items. Two experiments were performed, one involving recall of visually presented letter sequences, the other of auditorily presented word sequences. Both showed a marked tendency for errors to coincide with acoustically similar items, as the second hypothesis would predict. It is suggested that the acoustic similarity effect occurs at retrieval and is due to the overloading of retrieval cues.     

Semantic specificity in cued recall

In three cued recall experiments, extralist retrieval cues that were congruous in meaning to an encoded target pair of words produced better recall of the targets than wh6n the cuetarget relation was incongruous. However, this result, which differs from that of other experiments, depended in some cases on scoring recall of a target pair when either member of the pair was recalled. It is argued that (1) pairs of words are typically stored as higher order units, (2) the best test procedure is to request recall of both members of the pair when an extralist cue is presented, and (3) semantic features provide an important dimension in the mnemonic representation of word events.     

Semantic and acoustic processing in free and cued recall by educable mentally retarded adolescents

The abilities of educable mentally retarded adolescents to encode and retrieve words with semantic and acoustic cues were investigated in a free and cued recall task. On each of three trial blocks, seven groups of subjects were presented 20 unrelated stimulus words. Groups received either semantic, acoustic, or no encoding cues along with the stimuli. Free recall was requested from all subjects, followed immediately by a second period of either free recall or cued recall with the semantic or acoustic cues. Semantic cues were most effective when presented both at encoding and retrieval. The subjects were unable to use acoustic information as effective retrieval aids. Results were discussed in terms of encoding dimension dominance and mediational deficiencies.     

Word length,phonemic, and visual similarity effects in poor and normal readers

Serial order recall for visually and auditorily presented stimuli was examined in a group of 12-year-old poor readers and 7-year-old reading-age controls. With pictorial presentation, the poor readers showed a visual similarity effect, no word length effect, and a smaller phonemic similarity effect than that of controls. However, with visual presentation of printed words and with auditory presentation, poor readers showed word length and phonemic similarity effects of similar magnitude to that of controls. It is concluded that poor readers rely on visual information in tasks where the presented images are highly codable, and where verbal recoding is not obligatory, but that they will make use of phonological coding when the stimuli are not as easily codable visually in memory.     

Taboo words: The effect of emotion on memory for peripheral information

In three experiments, we examined memory for peripheral information that occurred in the same context as emotion-inducing information. In the first two experiments, participants studied either a sentence (Experiment 1) or a pair of words (Experiments 2A—2C) containing a neutral peripheral word, as well as a neutral, negative-valence, or taboo word, to induce an emotional response. At retrieval, the participants were asked to recall the neutral peripheral word from a sentence fragment or emotion-inducing word cue. In Experiment 3, we presented word pairs at encoding and tested memory with associative recognition. In all three experiments, memory for peripheral words was enhanced when it was encoded in the presence of emotionally arousing taboo words but not when it was encoded in the presence of words that were only negative in valence. These data are consistent with priority-binding theory (MacKay et al., 2004) and inconsistent with the attention-narrowing hypothesis (Easterbrook, 1959), as well as with object-based binding theory (Mather, 2007).     

Effects of divided attention and word concreteness on correct recall and false memory reports

Lists of thematically related words were presented to participants with or without a concurrent task. In Experiments 1 and 2, respectively, English or Spanish word lists were either low or high in concreteness (concrete vs abstract words) and were presented, respectively, auditorily or visually for study. The addition of a concurrent visual or auditory task, respectively, substantially reduced correct recall and doubled the frequency of false memory reports (nonstudied critical or theme words). Divided attention was interpreted as having reduced the opportunity for participants to monitor successfully their elicitations of critical associates. Comparisons of concrete and abstract lists revealed significantly more recalls of false memories for abstract than concrete word lists. Comparisons between two levels of attention, two levels of word concreteness, and two presentation modalities failed to support the "more is less" effect by which enhanced correct recall is accompanied by increased frequencies of false memories.