The effect of pictorial context on sentence memory in Broca's and Wernicke's aphasia

Eighteen aphasic patients (8 Broca's and 10 Wernicke's aphasics), 11 right hemisphere damaged patients and 12 normal subjects were tested to assess the effect of pictorial context on verbal memory with a sentence recognition task. The subjects were read aloud a stimulus sentence describing a simple event and simultaneously shown a picture congruent or incongruent with the sentence. Immediately following or after an interval of 30 sec, the subjects were read aloud a second sentence and asked to judge whether this sentence was the same or different from the stimulus sentence. The results indicated that verbal memory was better retained in supportive situations than in distracting situations, and that this contextual effect was greater in aphasic patients than in any of the other groups. Verbal memory declined rapidly after an interval in aphasic patients, but not in normal subjects. The Broca's and the Wernicke's aphasics demonstrated different performance patterns when semantic analysis of sentences was critical.     

Modality of presentation and blocking in sentence recognition memory

In contrast to the findings of Bransford and Franks (1971) that no specific information is retained about acquisition sentences in their recognition memory paradigm, it was shown that subjects can consistently distinguish OLDs from NEWs when visual presentation is used, but not when auditory presentation is used. This is in agreement with the speculation of Katz and Gruenewald (1974) as to why such a split was observed in their study. This difference also has a bearing on the typical finding of no modality effects in long-term memory, as compared to the consistent superiority of auditory presentation in short-term memory. It was also found that blocking semantically related sentences during acquisition heightened the perceived "OLDness" of test sentences compared to nonblocked presentation.     

Typicality effects on memory for voice: Implications for earwitness testimony

The effects of voice typicality on voice recognition were examined. In an incidental task, participants were presented with consonant‐vowel‐consonant stimuli (with varying vowels) spoken by voices rated as high‐typical or low‐typical. One week later, they were brought back for a surprise voice recognition test where the target voice was presented along with low‐typical and high‐typical voice distracters. The results indicated that voice misidentifications occur, with many errors due to confusions of high‐typical voice targets with high‐typical target voices. The results show that voice typicality affects voice recognition accuracy and is an important factor to be considered in real‐life earwitness testimony situations. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Echoic memory and voice quality: Recency recall is not enhanced by varying presentation voice

Three experiments explored the effects on immediate recall of varying voice of presentation. Experiment 1 showed that the free-recall recency effect was not enhanced by presenting list words alternately in a male and a female voice. Experiment 2 replicated this result and also showed that recall of a given recency item from such a list was no more probable when the subjects were informed immediately following presentation that they need not recall the words presented in the other voice. Experiment 3 replicated previous findings of a reduction in the “suffix effect” when presentation voice is changed for the suffix item. The relation of this result to those of Experiments 1 and 2 is discussed.     

The generalizability of context effects on word recognition: A reconsideration of the roles of parafoveal priming and sentence context

In three experiments, subjects named target words preceded by congruous, incongruous, or neutral sentence contexts. There was no evidence that the recognition of the target word was affected by the semantic characteristics of a word presented immediately to the right of it. The nature of the preceding sentence context did affect target-naming speed. However, the magnitude of the context effect was considerably smaller in these experiments, in which nonterminal target words were used, than in previous experiments in which the target word was always the final word of the sentence, was highly predictable from the context, and was often semantically related to words in the sentence. The implications of these two findings for theories of reading and context effects are discussed.     

Imagery effects and semantic similarity in sentence recognition memory

The idea that subjects often use imagery to discriminate semantically similar sentences was tested in three experiments. In the first experiment, subjects heard subject-verb-object sentences in the context of either a comprehension task or an image-generation task. Their memory for the sentences was tested using a two-alternative forced-choice recognition test in which different types of distractor sentence were used. A sentence semantically similar to the target sentence was one type; a sentence with the same subject and object nouns as the target sentence, but dissimilar in meaning, was another type; and a sentence similar in meaning to one of the stimulus sentences, but not to the target sentence, was a third type. The results showed that the image-generation instructions enhanced later recognition performance, but only for semantically similar test items. A second experiment showed that this finding only holds for high-imagery sentences containing concrete noun concepts. A third experiment demonstrated that the enhanced recognition performance could not be accounted for in terms of a semantic model of test-item discrimination. Collectively, the results were interpreted as providing evidence for the notion that subjects discriminate the semantically similar test items by elaborating the sentence encoding through image processing.     

Multifactorial context effects on visual recognition memory

While effects of contextual change or constancy on memory are widely found when tested by free and cued recall, there is greater inconsistency in context effects on recognition. This study employed a paradigm maximizing target-context interactivity and specificity to reveal three levels of context effects on successful retrieval, as well as context effects on the generation of false alarms, thereby revealing separable contributions of target-context binding, additive familiarity, and configural constancy. The separability of these factors enables the use of memory context effects as tools for investigating associative memory.     

Multifactorial context effects on visual recognition memory

While effects of contextual change or constancy on memory are widely found when tested by free and cued recall, there is greater inconsistency in context effects on recognition. This study employed a paradigm maximizing target–context interactivity and specificity to reveal three levels of context effects on successful retrieval, as well as context effects on the generation of false alarms, thereby revealing separable contributions of target–context binding, additive familiarity, and configural constancy. The separability of these factors enables the use of memory context effects as tools for investigating associative memory.     

The effects of environmental context on recognition memory and claims of remembering

Recognition memory for words was tested in same or different contexts using the remember/know response procedure. Context was manipulated by presenting words in different screen colors and locations and by presenting words against real-world photographs. Overall hit and false-alarm rates were higher for tests presented in an old context compared to a new context. This concordant effect was seen in both remember responses and estimates of familiarity. Similar results were found for rearranged pairings of old study contexts and targets, for study contexts that were unique or were repeated with different words, and for new picture contexts that were physically similar to old contexts. Similar results were also found when subjects focused attention on the study words, but a different pattern of results was obtained when subjects explicitly associated the study words with their picture context. The results show that subjective feelings of recollection play a role in the effects of environmental context but are likely based more on a sense of familiarity that is evoked by the context than on explicit associations between targets and their study context.     

The effects of golf expertise and presentation modality on memory for golf and everyday items

The present study assessed whether golf expertise, presentation modality, and domain relevance affected memory for golf-related and everyday items. Forty-eight experienced golfers and 48 non-golfers were compared in their memory for golf-related ("putt to the hole") and everyday ("turn on the lamp") items. To-be-remembered items were presented verbally, visually, or were enacted. Enacted information was recalled best, followed by visually presented information. Combined effects of modality and golf expertise on recall of golf items were demonstrated on immediate but not on delayed recall. The findings suggest that recall of domain-relevant information is optimal when one has relevant background knowledge, and under conditions of visual encoding. The data support research on facilitation of domain-relevant knowledge on recall [Weber, N., & Brewer, N. (2003). Expert memory: The interaction of stimulus structure, attention, and expertise. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 17, 295-308]. Interpersonal body representation may have played a role in recall processes among experts [Thomas, R., Press, C., & Haggard, P. (2006). Shared representations in body perception. Acta Psychologica, 121, 317-330].     

Strategic control of sentence context effects in a naming task

This paper reports an experiment that demonstrates strategic influences on sentence context effects in a naming task. The size of the sentence context effect is shown to be influenced by the validity of the contextual information. A similar result is obtained simply by changing the proportion of validly completed sentences in the practice session without altering the composition of the experimental trials themselves. The manipulation of context validity was found to have its effect largely on the facilitatory component of the context effect. This dissociation of facilitation and inhibition is shown to be contrary to the predictions of attentional accounts of priming but in line with an explanation of contexts effects based on a mechanism that has evolved primarily to resolve lexical and perceptual ambiguity (Norris, 1986). In a further experiment it is shown that the facilitatory effects of sentence context observed in Experiment 1 are not dependent on the particular baseline condition employed.     

The effects of print exposure on sentence processing and memory in older adults: Evidence for efficiency and reserve

The present study was an examination of how exposure to print affects sentence processing and memory in older readers. A sample of older adults (N = 139; Mean age = 72) completed a battery of cognitive and linguistic tests and read a series of sentences for recall. Word-by-word reading times were recorded and generalized linear mixed effects models were used to estimate components representing attentional allocation to word-level and textbase-level processes. Older adults with higher levels of print exposure showed greater efficiency in word-level processing and in the immediate instantiation of new concepts, but allocated more time to semantic integration at clause boundaries. While lower levels of working memory were associated with smaller wrap-up effects, individuals with higher levels of print exposure showed a reduced effect of working memory on sentence wrap-up. Importantly, print exposure was not only positively associated with sentence memory, but was also found to buffer the effects of working memory on sentence recall. These findings suggest that the increased efficiency of component reading processes that come with life-long habits of literacy buffer the effects of working memory decline on comprehension and contribute to maintaining skilled reading among older adults.     

Long-term memory for elementary visual percepts: memory psychophysics of context and acquisition effects

In the first phase of each of two experiments, participants learned to associate a set of labels (i.e., consonant-vowel-consonant [CVC]) with a set of line lengths by using a paired-associate learning procedure. In the second phase of each experiment, these learned labels were used as memorial standards in the method of constant stimuli. Psychometric functions and the associated indices of discriminative performance (i.e., Weber fractions [WFs], just noticeable difference, and point of subjective equality) were then obtained for the remembered standards. In Experiment 1, WFs (i.e., the indices of memory precision) obtained with remembered standards were found to be higher (i.e., had poorer discriminability) than were WFs obtained with perceptual standards. In addition, WFs obtained with the remembered standards exhibited serial position effects (i.e., poorer discriminability for central items in the memory ensemble) and systematically varied with set size (i.e., the number of standards in the memory set), but WFs obtained with perceptual standards did not depend on serial position or set size. In Experiment 2, increasing the number of acquisition trials reduced WFs and diminished serial position effects. In addition, WFs did not vary systematically with the "physical" spacing between the standards in memory, but they did with the ordinal spacing. The results are consistent with a noisy analogue representation of remembered magnitudes, whereby central items in a memory ensemble are subject to lateral inhibition and thus reduced discriminability. Finally, presentation order effects, as defined by the classic time-order error, were observed with purely perceptual comparisons but not with comparisons involving a remembered standard. This latter finding is inconsistent with a strong form of the functional equivalence view of perception and memory.     

Selective impairment of thematic role assignment in sentence processing

We report the performance of a brain-damaged subject showing a particularly pure dissociation between impairment in processing thematic roles and spared ability to process the morphological structure of sentences. The thematic role processing impairment was observed in both comprehension and production of active and passive reversible sentences, although it was more severe for the latter sentence type. This pattern of performance poses interesting challenges for current conceptions of the nature of language breakdown in aphasia and for models of normal sentence processing.     

Paradoxical effects of presentation modality on false memory.

Two experiments are reported in which the effects of presentation modality on false memory in recall and recognition are studied. False recall and recognition of critical targets are lower for non-presented items related to a study list when that study list is presented visually than when presented auditorily. This pattern of low levels of false memory for critical targets holds even when participants read the visually presented study items aloud. These results suggest that recollection of visual detail plays a role in the prevention of false memory. However, both the hit rates (true memory) and the false-alarm rates to weakly related distractors (non-critical targets) were higher for visual presentation than for auditory presentation, suggesting that more than one mechanism may underlie false recognition.     

Mechanisms of sentence context effects in reading: Automatic activation and conscious attention

In. Experiment I subjects named target words that were preceded by a congruous sentence context, an incongruous sentence context, or no sentence context, under stimulus conditions that were either normal or degraded by contrast reduction. Under normal stimulus conditions, a contextual facilitation effect, but no contextual inhibition effect, was observed. When the target word was degraded, both contextual facilitation and inhibition were observed. Experiment 2 replicated the increase in contextual inhibition under degraded conditions and also demonstrated that inhibition increased as the interval between contextual processing and target-word onset was lengthened. The results were interpreted within the framework of the Posner and Snyder two-process theory of expectancy. Thus, when target-word recognition is rapid, only the fast-acting automatic activation component of context effects has time to operate. When target-word processing is delayed, the conscious-attention mechanism, which is responsible for inhibition effects, becomes operative. The relevance of these results to developmental investigations of the interaction of word recognition and contextual processing is discussed.     

The interpretation of ambiguous trimorphemic words in sentence context

Many trimorphemic words are structurally and semantically ambiguous. For example, unlock-able can either be un-lockable (cannot be locked) or unlock-able (can be unlocked). Which interpretation is preferred and whether the preceding sentence context affects the initial interpretation is not clear from prior research. The present experiment embedded ambiguous trimorphemic words in sentence contexts, manipulated whether or not preceding context disambiguated the meaning, and examined the pattern of fixation durations on the ambiguous word and the remainder of the text. The results indicated that the unlock-able interpretation was preferred; moreover, preceding context did not exert a significant effect until the eyes had initially exited from the target word.     

Forgotten but not gone: context effects on recognition do not require explicit memory for context

Context effects on recognition memory provide an important indirect assay of associative learning and source memory. Neuropsychological studies have indicated that such context effects may obtain even if the contexts themselves are not remembered--for example, in individuals impaired on direct tests of memory for contextual information. In contrast, a recent study indicated that the effects of temporal context reinstatement on visual recognition obtain only when the contextual information itself was explicitly recollected. Here we report that the effects of reinstatement of spatial-simultaneous context on visual object recognition memory obtain irrespective of whether those context stimuli are explicitly recognized. We suggest that spatial-simultaneous context effects might be based on ensemble unitization of target and context stimuli at encoding, whereas temporal context effects may require recollective processes.     

The role of the verb in sentence memory

Investigators have frequently found that nouns are more important than verbs in the memory representation of sentences. This pattern of results is incompatible with recent theories of sentence memory that have emphasized the verb and with the results of sentence comprehension studies that have demonstrated the importance of the verb. The four experiments reported here were designed to reexamine the role of the verb in sentence memory. Linguistic variables other than sentence function were held constant in three studies. Verbs were recalled as well and were as effective retrieval cues as nouns in these experiments. The to-be-remembered sentences were presented in the context of paragraphs in the fourth experiment. This reduced the difference in level of recall between subjects, verbs, and objects. The conclusion was drawn that the verb is no less important than sentence nouns in the memory representation.