Instructive feedback: Effects of number and type

We evaluated the effects of presenting two instructive feedback stimuli of the same and different types for each target behavior taught. Four elementary school students with mild mental retardation were taught to name photographs of places of interest in the local community using constant time delay and instructive feedback. Initially, the four students were taught one set of photographs with one instructive feedback stimulus (name of the street on which the place was located) for each target photograph. All students learned to name all photographs, and three learned to name the street on which the place was located. The three students who learned to name the street for the place in the photograph were then taught three sets of photographs. Each set included two instructive feedback stimuli for each target photograph: Set 2 had one street name and one activity that occurred in the place; Set 3 had two activities per photograph, and Set 4 had one street name and one activity. The three students learned to name the photographs, but only learned to name the activities and not the street names that were presented through instructive feedback. These finds are discussed in terms of the factors that may control acquisition of instructive feedback stimuli and the implications for practice and future research.     

Effects on Future Learning of Presenting Non-Target Stimuli in Antecedent and Consequent Conditions

This investigation assessed the effects of presenting non-target stimuli in the antecedent and consequent events on the future learning of responses to those stimuli. A 4-s constant time delay procedure was implemented to teach students with mild to moderate disabilities to read sight words. Future target stimuli (i.e., stimuli that were presented during instructional sessions of initial target stimuli, but were not directly instructed or targeted) were presented in one of two conditions; (a) in the antecedent event, or (b) in the consequent event portion of each instructional trial. Future target stimuli consisted of sight words that were unrelated to the target stimuli. An adapted alternating treatments design was used to assess and compare the two instructional conditions. Also, after students achieved criterion for reading target sight words, constant time delay was implemented to teach the future target stimuli. The number of sessions and the number and percentage of errors through criterion for teaching target and future target stimuli were assessed to measure the efficiency of the two conditions. All students reached criterion on the target stimuli and then acquired the future target stimuli when taught. Students required fewer sessions to achieve criterion on future target stimuli compared to initial target stimuli. There were minimal differences between the two conditions (i.e., antecedent versus consequent).     

Instructive feedback: A comparison of simultaneous and alternating presentation of non-target stimuli

Instructive feedback involves presenting extra, non-target stimuli in the consequent events for children's responses. Two methods of presenting instructive feedback during direct instruction were compared. These methods involved presenting two extra stimuli on all trials, and presenting the two extra stimuli separately on alternating trials. Preschool students were taught coin combinations using a constant time delay procedure with instructive feedback stimuli added to both praise and correction statements. An adapted alternating treatments design was used to evaluate the two methods of presenting instructive feedback. The students were assessed to determine the extent to which instructive feedback stimuli were learned. The results indicate that students learned some of the instructive feedback stimuli and no consistent differences in the effectiveness of the two presentation methods were noted. Further, relationships between the two instructive feedback stimuli appeared to be established. Implications for instruction and future research are discussed.     

Integration of parafoveal orthographic information during foveal word reading: beyond the sub-lexical level?

Prior research has shown that processing of a given target word is facilitated by the simultaneous presentation of orthographically related stimuli in the parafovea. Here we investigate the nature of such spatial integration processes by presenting orthographic neighbours of target words in the parafovea, considering that neighbours have been shown to inhibit, rather than facilitate, recognition of target words in foveal masked priming research. In Experiment 1, we used the gaze-contingent boundary paradigm to manipulate the parafoveal information subjects received while they fixated a target word within a sentence. In Experiment 2, we used the Flanking Letters Lexical Decision paradigm to manipulate parafoveal information while subjects read isolated words. Parafoveal words were either a higher-frequency orthographic neighbour of targets words (e.g., blue-blur) or a high-frequency unrelated word (e.g., hand-blur). We found that parafoveal orthographic neighbours facilitated, rather than inhibited, processing of the target. Thus, the present findings provide further evidence that orthographic information is integrated across multiple words and suggest that either the integration process does not enable simultaneous access to those words’ lexical representations, or that lexical representations activated by spatially distinct stimuli do not compete for recognition.     

Phonological and semantic processes influence beginning readers' ability to learn to read words

Children (4 to 6 years of age) were taught to associate printed 3- or 4-letter abbreviations, or cues, with spoken words (e.g., bfr for beaver). All but 1 of the letters in the cue corresponded to phonemes in the spoken target word. Two types of cues were constructed: phonetic cues, in which the medial letter was phonetically similar to the target word, and control cues, in which the central phoneme was phonetically dissimilar. In Experiment 1, children learned the phonetic cues better than the control cues, and learning correlated with measures of phonological skill and knowledge of the meanings of the words taught. In Experiment 2, the target words differed on a semantic variable-imageability-and learning was influenced by both the phonetic properties of the cue and the imageability of the words used.     

Treatment of escape-maintained aberrant behavior with escape extinction and predictable routines

We evaluated the effects of two daily activity schedules on 2 participants' rates of aberrant behavior and their compliance. Functional analysis identified the operant function of the participants' aberrant behaviors to be escape from tasks. Participants were taught to use stimuli contained in daily schedules, and were tested based on a modified stimulus-equivalence model that consisted of flash cards and activity schedules comprised of words or photographs that corresponded to the participants' daily activities. On pretests, the participants demonstrated simple and conditional discriminations with the photographs but not with the printed stimuli. A time-delay procedure was used to teach the participants to name the flash cards. Following training, the printed activity schedules corresponded to lower rates of problem behavior and higher rates of compliance than the photographic activity schedules. Performance on posttests indicated the establishment of functional classes of stimuli involving the flash cards and activity schedules even though this type of correspondence was not directly trained.     

Taking the “text” out of context effects in repetition priming of word identification

Repetition priming of masked word identification is reduced when initial exposure to target words is in a text rather than in a word list. We demonstrate that there is nothing special about the text context that reduces priming. In Experiment 1, target words read in normal text or in rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) text--either coherent or scrambled--produced similarly reduced priming, relative to the same words read aloud in a list. In Experiment 2, the delay was decreased between study and test for words presented in text, but they still displayed less priming than did words presented in a study list and tested after an equivalent delay. In Experiment 3, presenting study list words in RSVP to prevent reading each word aloud diminished priming to the same level as that in the text context. We conclude that presenting a target in context prevents it from being encoded and responded to as distinctively as when presented in isolation.     

Bidirectional semantic priming in the attentional blink

The time course of semantic priming between two associated words was tracked using rapid serial visual presentation of two synchronized streams of stimuli appearing at about 20 items/sec, each stream including a target word. The two words were semantically related or unrelated and were separated by stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) of 0–213 msec. Accuracy in reporting the first target (T1) versus the second target (T2) has been shown to interact dramatically with SOA over this range. The materials were in English in Experiment1 and Italian in Experiment2. T1 was semantically primed only at short SOAs, whereas T2 was primed at all SOAs (Experiment 1) or at all SOAs except the shortest one (Experiment2). The results indicate a strong competition between target words early in processing, with T2 often becoming the first word identified at short SOAs, thus priming T1.     

RELATIVE EFFECTS OF WHOLE-WORD AND PHONETIC-PROMPT ERROR CORRECTION ON THE ACQUISITION AND MAINTENANCE OF SIGHT WORDS BY STUDENTS WITH DEVELOPMENTAL DISABILITIES

We used an alternating treatments design to compare the effects of two procedures for correcting student errors during sight word drills. Each of the 5 participating students with developmental disabilities was provided daily one-to-one instruction on individualized sets of 14 unknown words. Each week's new set of unknown words was divided randomly into two groups of equal size. Student errors during instruction were immediately followed by whole-word error correction (the teacher stated the complete word and the student repeated it) for one group of words and by phonetic-prompt error correction (the teacher provided phonetic prompts) for the other group of words. During instruction, all 5 students read correctly a higher percentage of whole-word corrected words than phonetic-prompt corrected words. Data from same-day tests (immediately following instruction) and next-day tests showed the students learned more words taught with whole-word error correction than they learned with phonetic-prompt error correction.     

Effect of stimulus repetition on positive and negative identity priming

Most negative-priming experiments have used a limited number of stimuli that are repeated many times throughout the experiment. We report five experiments that examine in greater detail the role of stimulus repetition in negative priming. Subjects were presented with displays consisting of two or more words, and were required to name the word printed in red. On attended repetition (AR) trials, the target word was the same as the target word on the preceding trial. On ignored repetition (IR) trials, the target word was the same as the distractor word on the preceding trial. Experiments 1 and 2 used novel words, and obtained positive priming on AR trials, but no negative priming on IR trials. Experiments 3 and 4 used repeated words, and obtained negative priming on IR trials, but no positive priming on AR trials. In Experiment 5, both novel and repeated words were intermixed, and negative priming was observed for repeated, but not novel, IR conditions, whereas positive priming was observed for novel, but not repeated, AR conditions. Together, Experiments 1–5 demonstrate that positive and negative identity priming are modulated by stimulus repetition and are stimulus specific.     

Facilitation of free recall by categorical blocking depends on stimulus type

Items that are blocked by category are typically more memorable than unblocked items. We examined the blocking effect with different types of stimuli. In Experiment 1, subjects memorized either actual objects or the printed names of those objects. Free recall was enhanced significantly by blocking only in the printed name condition. In Experiment 2, it was demonstrated that these relationships occurred whether or not verbal labels are supplied for the stimulus items. The difference in the impact of blocking on free recall was hypothesized to reflect differences in the visual detail that characterized the stimulus items in the object and printed name conditions. To test this hypothesis, Experiment 3 was conducted, using four sets of stimulus items graded in visual detail. These were a set of objects, photographs of the objects, line drawings of the objects, and printed names of the objects. The visual detail hypothesis was supported.     

Pictures and words in visual search

Ss in three experiments searched through an array of pictures or words for a target item that had been presented as a picture or a word. In Experiments I and II, the pictures were line drawings of familiar objects and the words were their printed labels; in Experiment III, the stimuli were photographs of the faces of famous people and their corresponding printed names. Search times in Experiments I and II were consistently faster when the array items were pictures than when they were words, regardless of the mode of the target items. Search was also faster with pictures than with words as targets when the search array also consisted of pictures, but target mode had no consistent effect with words as array items. Experiment III yielded a completely different pattern of results: Search time with names as targets and faces as search array items was significantly slower than in the other three conditions, which did not differ from each other. Considered in relation to several theories, the results are most consistent with a dual-coding interpretation. That is, items that are cognitively represented both verbally and as nonverbal images can be searched and compared in either mode, depending on the demands of the task. The mode actually used depends on whether the search must be conducted through an array of pictures or words.     

The nature of the visual environment induces implicit biases during language-mediated visual search

Four eyetracking experiments examined whether semantic and visual-shape representations are routinely retrieved from printed word displays and used during language-mediated visual search. Participants listened to sentences containing target words that were similar semantically or in shape to concepts invoked by concurrently displayed printed words. In Experiment 1, the displays contained semantic and shape competitors of the targets along with two unrelated words. There were significant shifts in eye gaze as targets were heard toward semantic but not toward shape competitors. In Experiments 2–4, semantic competitors were replaced with unrelated words, semantically richer sentences were presented to encourage visual imagery, or participants rated the shape similarity of the stimuli before doing the eyetracking task. In all cases, there were no immediate shifts in eye gaze to shape competitors, even though, in response to the Experiment 1 spoken materials, participants looked to these competitors when they were presented as pictures (Huettig & McQueen, 2007). There was a late shape-competitor bias (more than 2,500 ms after target onset) in all experiments. These data show that shape information is not used in online search of printed word displays (whereas it is used with picture displays). The nature of the visual environment appears to induce implicit biases toward particular modes of processing during language-mediated visual search.     

Teaching reading and spelling: exclusion and stimulus equivalence

In Experiment 1, 7 nonreading children were exposed to a program designed to teach reading of 51 training words. The program featured an exclusion-based procedure in which the children (a) matched printed to dictated words and (b) constructed (copied) printed words with movable letters and named them. All children learned to read the training words. Five children also read generalization words and showed progress in spelling. Experiment 2 applied the program to 4 different children, omitting the word-construction task. They also learned to read the training words, but only 1 participant read generalization words. The data support a stimulus equivalence account of reading acquisition and suggest that reading generalization may be obtained, especially when the teaching program includes word construction.     

内侧颞叶系统在知觉启动中的作用及其机制

以ll例内侧颞叶(MTL)损伤病人为被试,探讨MTL与知觉启动的关系及其内在机制。被试依次完成学习颜色词、快速词命名和再认任务。在实验l的词命名中包括旧词、重组颜色词和新词,结果表明,MTL损伤病人没有表现出旧词的命名时间短于重组颜色词的现象,颜色启动效应受损,其再认成绩也低于正常被试。但是当用新颜色词代替重组颜色词后(实验2),MTL损伤病人读旧词的时间明显短于新颜色词,颜色启动与正常对照组之间没有明显差别,但他们的再认成绩仍比对照组低。这表明,当任务要求被试加工项目与其特性之间的关系时(词与颜色),MTL损伤对启动效应会有影响,提示MTL在一些形式的知觉启动中起重要作用。     

Phonetic recoding of print and its effect on the detection of concurrent speech in amplitude-modulated noise.

When an amplitude-modulated noise generated from a spoken word is presented simultaneously with the word's printed version, the noise sounds more speechlike. This auditory illusion obtained by Frost, Repp, and Katz (1988) suggests that subjects detect correspondences between speech amplitude envelopes and printed stimuli. The present study investigated whether the speech envelope is assembled from the printed word or whether it is lexically addressed. In two experiments subjects were presented with speech-plus-noise and with noise-only trials, and were required to detect the speech in the noise. The auditory stimuli were accompanied with matching or non-matching Hebrew print, which was unvoweled in Experiment 1 and voweled in Experiment 2. The stimuli of both experiments consisted of high-frequency words, low-frequency words, and non-words. The results demonstrated that matching print caused a strong bias to detect speech in the noise when the stimuli were either high- or low-frequency words, whereas no bias was found for non-words. The bias effect for words or non-words was not affected by spelling to sound regularity; that is, similar effects were obtained in the voweled and the unvoweled conditions. These results suggest that the amplitude envelope of the word is not assembled from the print. Rather, it is addressed directly from the printed word and retrieved from the mental lexicon. Since amplitude envelopes are contingent on detailed phonetic structures, this outcome suggests that representations of words in the mental lexicon are not only phonological but also phonetic in character.     

Case-Mixing Effects on Spelling Recognition: The Importance of Test Format

In a multiple-choice spelling recognition test, 56 university students were more accurate on more regular than irregular words, and on lower-case than mixed-case words, with the case mixing effect greater for irregular than regular words. In Experiment 2, the same words were presented singly in correct or incorrect spellings and distortion of word shape was achieved by case mixing (32 subjects) or by alternating the size of lower-case letters within a word (32 subjects). The main effects of regularity and distortion were replicated and the effect of distortion was greater for incorrect than correct stimuli, with correctly spelled words suffering a decrement in accuracy of less than 5 percentage points. Case mixing had a greater effect than size mixing on response latencies. In Experiment 3, with comparable test procedures, case mixing interacted with regularity in the subjects analysis for the multiple choice format, but not the single presentation format. This result indicates that comparisons based on visual configuration may be an artifact of multiple-choice tests.     

Phonological encoding and ideographic reading by the disconnected right hemisphere: Two case studies

The mute disconnected right hemispheres (RHs) of two commissurotomy patients are able to understand spoken words and read printed words by matching them with pictures of the objects named. In this paper we report the results of five experiments. The RH of one patient could “evoke the sound image” of a word to the extent of matching two pictures with homonymous names (experiment 1) or with rhyming names (experiment 2) without being able to name either one. This transformation of picture to covert sound does not depend on orthographic similarity of word ends as a clue to homonymy or rhyme, nor does it improve with short-term learning. Yet neither RH can translate print into sound by matching a spelled word with a picture that has a rhyming name (experiment 3) or by matching two orthographically dissimilar rhymes, be they meaningful (experiment 4) or nonsense words (experiment 5). We suggest that these RHs read “ideographically,” recognizing words directly as visual gestalts without intermediate phonetic recoding or grapheme-to-phoneme translation.     

Lateralization of lexical codes in auditory word recognition

Three experiments examined the lateralization of lexical codes in auditory word recognition. In Experiment 1 a word rhyming with a binaurally presented cue word was detected faster when the cue and target were spelled similarly than when they were spelled differently. This orthography effect was larger when the target was presented to the right ear than when it was presented to the left ear. Experiment 2 replicated the interaction between ear of presentation and orthography effect when the cue and target were spoken in different voices. In Experiment 3, subjects made lexical decisions to pairs of stimuli presented to the left or the right ear. Lexical decision times and the amount of facilitation which obtained when the target stimuli were semantically related words did not differ as a function of ear of presentation. The results suggest that the semantic, phonological, and orthographic codes for a word are represented in each hemisphere; however, orthographic and phonological representations are integrated only in the left hemisphere.