Typicality effects in picture‐word interference paradigm: An evaluation of the response exclusion hypothesis

The response exclusion hypothesis suggests that the polarity of semantic effects in the picture‐word interference paradigm is determined by the response‐relevant criteria. Semantic interference effects would be observed when semantically related distractor words satisfy the response‐relevant criteria; otherwise, semantic facilitation effects should be found. The purpose of this study was to further evaluate the response exclusion hypothesis by exploring the typicality effects in pictures naming. In two experiments, pictures of objects were named either in the context of verb distractor words with different typicality of passive functions or in the context of adjective distractor words with different typicality of characteristics. Facilitation effects were observed in context of typical verbs and adjectives, while interference effects were observed in the context of atypical verbs and adjectives. Given that neither typical nor atypical distractor words satisfy the response‐relevant criteria to produce noun, these findings are problematic for the response exclusion hypothesis. Role of syntagmatic relationships in lexical retrieval was invoked to explain present findings.     

Typicality effects in face and object perception: further evidence for the attractor field model

In a previous study, it was shown that a 50/50 morph of a typical and an atypical parent face was perceived to be more similar to the atypical parent face than to the typical parent face (Tanaka, Giles, Kremen, & Simon, 1998). Experiments 1 and 2 examine face typicality effects in a same/different discrimination task in which typical or atypical faces and their 80%, 70%, 60%, and 50% morphs were presented sequentially (Experiment 1) or simultaneously (Experiment 2). The main finding was that in both modes of presentation, atypical morphs were more poorly discriminated than their corresponding typical morphs. In Experiment 3, typicality effects were extended to the perception of nonface objects; in this instance, it was found that 50/50 morphs of birds and cars were judged to be more similar to their atypical parents than to their typical parents. These results are consistent with an attractor field model, in which it is proposed that the perception of a face or object stimulus depends not only on its fit to an underlying representation, but also on the representation's location in the similarity space.     

The role of familiarity in determining typicality

Ashcraft (1978b) found that people tend to know more properties of instances they rate as typical of a category than of instances they rate as atypical. This suggests that variations in typicality result from variations in familiarity. Three experiments are presented that challenge or qualify this suggestion. Experiment 1 showed that subjects sometimes produce more properties for items they rate as low in typicality. Experiment 2 showed that in a large, random sample of items, there was a tendency to produce fewer properties for atypical items, but Experiment 3 indicated that part of the reason for this result was a response bias to assign low typicality ratings to unfamiliar words, rather than a reflection of low perceived typicality of the referents themselves. These results suggest that variations in typicality can exist independent of variations in familiarity, although familiarity may also play a role.     

When any Worx looks typical to you: Global relative to local processing increases prototypicality and liking

Two studies examine novelty categorization theory's (Förster, Marguc & Gillebaart, 2010) assumption that global compared to local processing styles enhance typicality judgments of atypical objects and thereby enhance liking. We used an artificial category of figures for an alleged computer game including a prototype and three exemplars that varied with respect to similarity with it. Results show that when primed with a global processing style, participants find atypical objects more typical, like them better and process them faster than participants under a local processing style. Mediation analyses show that typicality mediates the effects of processing styles on liking, and that ease of categorization mediates the effect of processing styles on prototypicality. Mood, measured via self report did not influence effects. The studies reflect the fact that judged typicality and its effects are context dependent.     

Regret in pursuit of change and maintenance goals

Three experiments were conducted investigating feelings of regret following poor decisions involving behaviors that were either typical for the decision-maker or atypical. Using a retrospection paradigm, the present research found that typical behaviors were more regrettable when decisions were in the context of goals to change whereas atypical behaviors were more regrettable in the context of maintenance goals. We ruled out explanations of these effects based on the temporal distance of the decision, behavioral typicality per se, the severity of the decision-outcomes and the ease of recalling the events. Results were discussed from a consistency-fit analysis of regret and decision-making.     

Psychological Processes in Perceiving Reality

Little attention has been paid to the mental processes and the story elements that influence perceived reality judgments of media stories. People often lack the motivation or ability to be thoughtful about perceived reality judgments. This is particularly true when the stimulus controls the pace of the story (e.g., television). It is possible that people use the typical and atypical elements of a story as a heuristic for making simple judgments about perceived reality of media narratives. In 2 studies, the careful manipulation of atypical and typical information in a soap opera and a news story predicted about half the variance in perceived reality. As the typicality of the stories increased, so did the participants' ratings of the perceived reality of the stories. In a 3rd study, while viewing entertainment television shows, participants used dials to continuously rate the selected programs for perceived reality, typicality, interest, and liking. Results indicate that viewers can make moment-to-moment reality judgments, and these judgments are strongly related to typicality. Interest-liking was related to typicality and perceived reality for drama. For comedy, however, situations with low reality produced greater interest and liking. Typicality appears to be a key psychological characteristic of media stories.     

Aesthetic appraisal of product designs: independent effects of typicality and arousal

Theories differ on how typicality and arousal influence aesthetic appraisal and whether these processes together interact or have independent effects on aesthetic appraisal. This research investigates the simultaneous effects of typicality and arousal on aesthetic appraisal for product designs by manipulating both processes separately: typicality by prototype deviation and arousal by colour saturation levels. We demonstrate that typicality has a curvilinear relationship with aesthetic appraisal. Additionally, arousal has a positive linear relationship with aesthetic appraisal of product designs. Moreover, arousal can influence aesthetic appraisal independent from typicality.     

Category typicality effects in episodic memory: Testing models of distinctiveness

Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, Tennessee Category typicality effects were investigated within the context of three models of distinctiveness: a univariate model, a fixed-multifeature model, and a weighted-multifeature model. High-typical, medium-typical, and atypical targets were embedded in lists containing a background set of mediumto high-typicality items. Atypical items were more poorly recalled than were medium- and high-typical items independently of list structure. In recognition, subjects who studied high-typical items had difficulty discriminating between high-typical items that were and were not presented as part of the list. However, item typicality had little effect on the recognition performance of subjects who did not study high-typical items. These findings were consistent with the weighted-multifeature model of distinctiveness.     

To what extent does typicality boost semantic priming effects between members of their categories?

Atypical items of their semantic category yield more generalisation than their typical members when relearning in connectionist networks (Plaut, D. C. (1996). Relearning after damage in connectionist networks: toward a theory of rehabilitation. Brain and Language, 52(1), 25–82) and in empirical studies (Kiran, S., & Thompson, C. K. (2003). The role of semantic complexity in treatment of naming deficits: Training semantic categories in fluent aphasia by controlling exemplar typicality. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 46(4), 773–787). It seems therefore that atypical words provide more information about the overall structure of the semantic category due to their specific and shared features. In this view, atypical primes could strongly facilitate the processing of targets compared to typical primes, because typical primes contain little information about the variation between members within a category. In contrast, three semantic priming experiments in visual word recognition showed an advantage with the typical context, but not with the atypical one. These findings were observed in a variety of tasks, including lexical decision, categorisation and semantic judgment. Our results do not support the findings about generalisation in relearning and suggest that typicality effects in semantic priming mostly come from the activation of representative features of categories.     

Category typicality effects in children's memory performance: Qualitative and quantitative differences in the processing of category information

Kindergarten, third, and sixth graders (6, 9, and 12 years of age, respectively) received a cue-at-input/cue-at-output recall task, using category typical and atypical items that were based on either (1) children's conceptions of item typicality, or (2) adults' conceptions of item typicality. At each grade level, recall was greater with the child-defined lists than with the adult-defined lists, and typical items were recalled to a greater extent than atypical items. Further analyses items were recalled to a greater extent than atypical items. Further analyses revealed that the recall of typical items varied as a function of children's typicality ratings of items, and that the “typicality effect” in the adult-norm condition was due primarily to the childrennot realizing that many of the atypical items were appropriate category exemplars. In contrast, typicality effects in the child-norm condition were attributed to qualitative differences in the judged “goodness of example” of the typical and atypical items. The results were discussed in terms of the appropriateness of typicality as a dimension of children's natural language concepts, the role of age differences in knowledge base in affecting performance on a cognitive task, and of the importance of using child-generated norms in studies of children's processing of category information.     

‘Most advanced,yet acceptable’: Typicality and novelty as joint predictors of aesthetic preference in industrial design

Typicality and novelty have often been shown to be related to aesthetic preference of human artefacts. Since a typical product is rarely new and, conversely, a novel product will not often be designated as typical, the positive effects of both features seem incompatible. In three studies it was shown that typicality (operationalized as ‘goodness of example’) and novelty are jointly and equally effective in explaining the aesthetic preference of consumer products, but that they suppress each other's effect. Direct correlations between both variables and aesthetic preference were not significant, but each relationship became highly significant when the influence of the other variable was partialed out. In Study 2, it was furthermore demonstrated that the expertise level of observers did not affect the relative contribution of novelty and typicality. It was finally shown (Study 3) that a more ‘objective’ measure of typicality, central tendency — operationalized as an exemplar's average similarity to all other members of the category — yielded the same effect of typicality on aesthetic preference. In sum, all three studies showed that people prefer novel designs as long as the novelty does not affect typicality, or, phrased differently, they prefer typicality given that this is not to the detriment of novelty. Preferred are products with an optimal combination of both aspects.     

Categorical target templates: Typical category members are found and identified quickly during word-cued search

What information do people use to guide search when they lack precise details about the appearance of their target? In this study, we employed categorical (word-cued) search and eye tracking, to examine how category typicality influences search performance. We found that typical category members were fixated and identified more quickly than atypical categories. This finding held when the participant was cued at the superordinate level (finding “clothing” among non-clothing items) or the basic level (finding a “shirt” among other clothing items). This suggests that categorical target templates may be constructed by piecing together features from the most typical category member(s).     

Surface form typicality and asymmetric transfer in episodic memory for spoken words

A series of experiments was conducted to determine whether the typicality of the surface form of speech would affect memory retention of spoken words. For each surface characteristic studied, a continuous-recognition-memory task was used in which listeners based recognition judgments on word identity alone. For "typical" items, repetition benefits did not depend on whether the surface forms of the 1st and 2nd occurrences matched or mismatched. For "atypical" items, a larger repetition benefit occurred when the surface forms of the 2 occurrences matched. These results suggest that episodic memory for spoken words may be directly related to the perceived typicality of particular surface characteristics.     

Phonological typicality influences sentence processing in predictive contexts: reply to Staub, Grant, Clifton, and Rayner (2009)

In 2 separate self-paced reading experiments, Farmer, Christiansen, and Monaghan (2006) found that the degree to which a word's phonology is typical of other words in its lexical category influences online processing of nouns and verbs in predictive contexts. Staub, Grant, Clifton, and Rayner (2009) failed to find an effect of phonological typicality when they combined stimuli from the separate experiments into a single experiment. We replicated Staub et al.'s experiment and found that the combination of stimulus sets affects the predictiveness of the syntactic context; this reduces the phonological typicality effect as the experiment proceeds, although the phonological typicality effect was still evident early in the experiment. Although an ambiguous context may diminish sensitivity to the probabilistic relationship between the sound of a word and its lexical category, phonological typicality does influence online sentence processing during normal reading when the syntactic context is predictive of the lexical category of upcoming words.     

Intragroup differentiation in terms of ingroup and outgroup attributes

An experiment (n = 36) was conducted to test the hypothesis that attribute typicality moderates intragroup differentiation. The predicted reversal from perceived relative ingroup homogeneity on typical ingroup attributes to perceived relative outgroup homogeneity on typical outgroup attributes was confirmed for both homogeneity measures (standard deviation and probability of differentiation). But the ingroup homogeneity effects were more reliable than the outgroup homogeneity effects. Relative ingroup size (minority versus majority) was included in the experimental design as a between-subjects factor but did not qualify the reversal of perceived relative homogeneity.     

Effects of achievement contexts on the meaning structure of emotion words

Little is known about the impact of context on the meaning of emotion words. In the present study, we used a semantic profiling instrument (GRID) to investigate features representing five emotion components (appraisal, bodily reaction, expression, action tendencies, and feeling) of 11 emotion words in situational contexts involving success or failure. We compared these to the data from an earlier study in which participants evaluated the typicality of features out of context. Profile analyses identified features for which typicality changed as a function of context for all emotion words, except contentment, with appraisal features being most frequently affected. Those context effects occurred for both hypothesised basic and non-basic emotion words. Moreover, both data sets revealed a four-dimensional structure. The four dimensions were largely similar (valence, power, arousal, and novelty). The results suggest that context may not change the underlying dimensionality but affects facets of the meaning of emotion words.     

What is typical about the typicality effect in category-based induction?

Research on category-based induction has documented a consistent typicality effect: Typical exemplars promote stronger inferences about their broader category than atypical exemplars. This work has been largely confined to categories whose central tendencies are also the most typical members of the category. Does the typicality effect apply to the broad set of categories for which the ideal category member is considered most typical? In experiments with natural and artificial categories, typicality and induction-strength ratings were obtained for ideal and central-tendency exemplars. Induction strength was greatest for the central-tendency exemplars, regardless of whether the central tendency or the ideal was rated more typical. These results suggest that the so-called “typicality” effect is a special case of a more universal central-tendency effect in category-based induction.     

知觉和概念加工范式对内隐与外显记忆发展的影响

控制知觉材料的熟悉性和概念范例的典型性,以考察它们对内隐与外显记忆发展的影响。结果表明：（1）知觉内隐记忆的启动效应不存在年龄和熟悉性效应,而知觉外显记忆成绩则具有明显的年龄和熟悉性效应;（2）在概念内隐记忆任务上,典型范例的启动效应不存在年龄差异,非典型范例的启动效应则存在随年龄而增长的启动效应：无论是典型范例还是非典型范例的外显记忆成绩均随年龄增长而提高。     

Driving without memory: The strength of schema-consistent false memories

Drivers’ memory for their recent trips has been shown to be surprisingly poor, with relatively low accuracy of both recall and recollection and substantial levels of false memories. Driving research has suggested that arousal, such as from risk, leads to more accurate memories. Memory research suggests that the typicality of objects and events makes them harder to remember accurately, compared to schema-inconsistent or atypical objects, and leads to greater likelihood of false memories. In contrast, it has been suggested that memory for actions is different to memory for objects, and that typical actions are remembered more accurately than atypical actions. The present research examined the role of typicality or schema consistency in the accuracy of memory for driving. Participants drove a 15 km route in their own cars and then answered questions about their drive. The results showed that atypical objects and actions were recalled with greater accuracy than typical objects and actions. The results also showed that false memories were most common for typical objects, but not for typical actions. We interpret these results in terms of both memory theory and implications for understanding skilled behaviour such as driving.     

Prototypicality in sentence production

Three cued-recall experiments examined the effect of category typicality on the ordering of words in sentence production. Past research has found that typical items tend to be mentioned before atypical items in a phrase—a pattern usually associated with lexical variables (like word frequency), and yet typicality is a conceptual variable. Experiment 1 revealed that an appropriate conceptual framework was necessary to yield the typicality effect. Experiment 2 tested ad hoc categories that do not have prior representations in long-term memory and yielded no typicality effect. Experiment 3 used carefully matched sentences in which two category members appeared in the same or in different phrases. Typicality affected word order only when the two words appeared in the same phrase. These results are consistent with an account in which typicality has its origin in conceptual structure, which leads to differences in lexical accessibility in appropriate contexts.