Memory for orientation of forms as a function of their meaningfulness and complexity.

Accuracy of memory for left-right orientation of single figures varying in meaningfulness and complexity was studied in subjects from kindergarten to adulthood. Complexity was an unimportant variable. Orientation of meaningful figures was remembered better than orientation of nonmeaningful figures at all ages. There were no developmental differences in memory for meaningful figures beyond kindergarten, but pronounced developmental differences were found in memory for nonmeaningful figures. It was proposed that a decision to store orientation information is dependent upon a judgment about the meaningfulness of a presented figure, and that young children have more difficulty than adults in finding meaningfulness in unfamiliar forms. The decision to store appears to occur automatically, since there was only a small difference between conditions in which subjects were informed or not informed to remember orientation. It was also suggested that part of the often reported difficulty in remembering diagonal orientation may be due to the symmetry of the diagonal forms typically investigated.     

On data-limited and resource-limited processes

This paper analyzes the effect on performance when several active processes compete for limited processing resources. The principles discussed show that conclusions about the interactions among psychological processes must be made with caution, and some existing assumptions may be unwarranted. When two (or more) processes use the same resources at the same time, they may both interfere with one another, neither may interfere with the other, or one may interfere with a second without any interference from the second process to the first. The important principles are that a process can be limited in its performance either by limits in the amount of available processing resources (such as memory or processing effort) or by limits in the quality of the data available to it. Competition among processes can affect a resource-limited process, but not a data-limited one. If a process continually makes preliminary results available even before it has completed all its operations, then it is possible to compute performance-resource operating characteristics that show how processes interact. A number of experiments from the psychological literature are examined according to these processing principles, resulting in some new interpretations of interactions among competing psychological processes.     

Situational and personality determinants of a victim's identification with a tormentor

The effects of two situational (tormentor legitimacy and tormentor justification) and two personality (victim's belief in the just world and victim's Machiavellianism) factors on several reactions of a victim to his tormentor were explored. Greater conformity by victims to their tormentor's opinions occurred when the victims believed strongly in the just world and when the tormentor was well justified for his behavior; there was a greater conformity towards the tormentor in these conditions than towards a neutral nontormentor. The tormentor received less positive evaluations from the victim when he acquired his role illegitimately or when the victim was Machiavellian; when the tormentor acquired the role legitimately, he was liked no less than the nontormentor. The experimental variables did not affect behavioral imitation of the tormentor or the interpersonal distance maintained by the victim. The results failed to conform to any simple identification process. Several explanations for these results are explored and directions for additional research are discussed.     

Remembrance of things parsed: Story structure and recall

An analysis of the underlying structure of simple stories is presented. It is claimed that this type of representation of stories is used to form schemata which guide encoding and retrieval. A type of tree structure containing basic units and their connections was found to be adequate to describe the structure of both single and multi-episode stories. The representation is outlined in the form of a grammar, consisting of rewrite rules defining the units and their relationships. Some transformational rules mapping underlying and surface structures are discussed. The adequacy of the analysis is first tested against Bartlett's protocols of “The War of the Ghosts.” Then a developmental study of recall is presented. It is concluded that both children and adults are sensitive to the structure of stories, although some differences were found. Finally, it is suggested that the schemata used to guide encoding and recall are related but not identical and that retrieval is dependent on the schemata operative at the time of recall.     

Mental rotation of random two-dimensional shapes

Two experiments are reported in which Ss were required to determine whether a random, angular form, presented at any of a number of picture-plane orientations, was a “standard” or “reflected” version. Average time required to make this determination increased linearly with the angular departure of the form from a previously learned orientation. The slope and intercept of the reaction-time (RT) function were virtually constant, regardless of the perceptual complexity of the test form and the orientation selected for initial learning.When Ss were informed in advance as to the identity and the orientation of the upcoming test form and, further, were permitted to indicate when they were prepared for its external presentation, RT for determining the version of the form was constant for all test-form orientations. However, the time needed to prepare for the test-form presentation increased linearly with the angular departure of the form from the learned orientation.It is argued that the processes both of preparing for and of responding to a disoriented test form consist of the mental rotation of an image, and that both sorts of mental rotation (pre-stimulus and post-stimulus) are carried out at essentially the same constant rate.     

Spatial ecology: Its effects on the choice of friends and enemies

The present research examined relationships between physical distance, frequency of face-to-face contacts, and the probability that individuals would be chosen as friends or enemies. Consistent with previous research, the probability of being chosen as a friend increased as the distance between people decreased. There was also a positive linear relationship between the frequency of contact and the strength of linking. In contrast, the probability of being chosen as a disliked individual was even more dependent upon physical distance (more disliked than liked individuals lived close to the subjects), but the strength of disliking was unrelated to the frequency of face-to-face contact. Friends also tended to live farther away from the subjects the longer the latter had lived in their residences, but the distance that disliked individuals lived from the subjects did not depend upon time. The overall pattern of results was consistent with an “environment-spoiling” hypothesis which proposed that many negative interpersonal relationships primarily occur because the actions of specific others spoil one's living environment, whereas most positive interpersonal relationships result from frequent face-to-face contacts.     

The effects of classification structure on organized free recall in children

A sorting presentation procedure was used to study the effects of three classification schemes (self-generated, thematic, or taxonomic) on the organized free recall of second and fifth graders. Recall and clustering were significantly higher for subjects who used self-generated organizations than for subjects given the experimenter-prescribed taxonomic classification. The results indicated that memory performance benefitted when the organization of stimulus materials was consonant with children's personal classification structures.     

Asymmetries for the categorization of kanji nouns, adjectives, and verbs presented to the left and right

Kanji is one form of written Japanese in which the symbolic/analytic characteristics of language are dissociated from systematic phonetic characteristics; as such, it makes possible a more careful test of which aspect of language is responsible for the frequently observed superior left-hemisphere performance. In this study, subjects were asked to categorize tachistoscopically presented kanji as nouns, adjectives, or verbs. The previously reported (Hatta 1977, Neuropsychologia, 15, 685–688) left-visual-field advantage for kanji was found only in the case of nouns. Adjectives and verbs were processed more rapidly and correctly in the right visual field.     

Simulating a skilled typist: a study of skilled cognitive-motor performance

We review the major phenomena of skilled typing and propose a model for the control of the hands and fingers during typing. The model is based upon an Activation-Trigger-Schema system in which a hierarchical structure of schemata directs the selection of the letters to be typed and, then, controls the hand and finger movements by a cooperative, relaxation algorithm. The interactions of the patterns of activation and inhibition among the schemata determine the temporal ordering for launching the keystrokes. To account for the phenomena of doubling errors, the model has only “type” schemata—no “token” schemata—with only a weak binding between the special schema that signals a doubling, and its argument. The model exists as a working computer simulation and produces an output display of the hands and fingers moving over the keyboard. It reproduces some of the major phenomena of typing, including the interkeystroke interval times, the pattern of transposition errors found in skilled typists, and doubling errors. Although the model is clearly inadequate or wrong in some of its features and assumptions, it serves as a useful first approximation for the understanding of skilled typing.     

On the psychological reality of a natural rule of syllable structure

If natural rules in phonology, such as the rule which deletes a word final consonant before a consonant, are frequently found in unrelated languages, it must be because they tap universal features of production and/or perception. The present experiment employed a learning task to see whether naive subjects have a predisposition for the natural rule as opposed to its converse (consonant deletion before a vowel). The Ss first learned four novel words (nouns) - two beginning with a consonant, two with a vowel - as paired associates to English ‘translations’. Then three novel adjectives were combined with each of the four nouns, following the natural rule for one group of Ss, the unnatural rule for the other. The twelve phrases were cued by their English translations and the S had to respond to each with the phonologically correct sequence of adjective and noun; confirmation followed each response. The Ss learning the unnatural corpus had a strong tendency to give natural responses, whereas the converse was not true. Consequently they made many more errors en route to mastery than their natural counterparts, even when the operative rule was displayed on the first trial by presenting in turn each adjective with its four following nouns. It appears that our Ss had implicit knowledge of the natural rule, even though it does not operate to any significant extent in English.     

Short-term retention of response outcome as a determinant of serial reversal learning

The correlation between short-term retention of the outcome of the preceding response and overall learning proficiency was investigated for serial reversal learning. Pigeons were trained to asymptote on a serial reversal problem and then were presented a percentage reinforcement schedule where only some correct trials were rewarded. Nonrewarded correct trials were treated exactly as incorrect trials. The difference in error probability following the two types of correct trials was then used as a measure of short-term retention. When intertrial intervals (ITI) were short (6 sec), substantial differences occurred. When the ITI's were increased, the difference in accuracy declined regularly to no difference at an ITI of 60 sec. This demonstration of a short-term retention gradient, coupled with the finding that overall reversal learning was much better with the shorter ITI's, suggests that a primary mechanism of improvement in serial reversal learning is the acquisition of a conditional discrimination based on the outcome of the preceding response.     

Agrammatism in a case-inflected language: Comprehension of agent-object relations

Yugoslav agrammatic aphasics and normal control subjects were tested for comprehension of agent-object relations in a series of simple Serbo-Croatian sentences consisting of two nouns (N) and a transitive action verb (V). The availability of nominative and accusative case inflections and a semantic contrast was systematically varied across sentences. Sentences were also varied with respect to the two sequences NVN and VNN. An analysis of subjects' agent-object assignments yielded the following results: While Broca's aphasics did show some sensitivity to case inflections, their ability to process such cues was greatly impaired relative to normal subjects, for whom morphological cues were almost completely deterministic. To a lesser degree, Broca's aphasics were impaired in their ability to employ a strategy of “choose the first noun as agent” when case inflections and semantic contrasts were not available. While Broca's aphasics showed no impairment in their ability to exploit semantic contrasts for agent-object assignment, there was no absolute compensatory increase in the degree to which they relied on semantic cues. Differences in word sequence had no effect on agent-object assignment in Broca's aphasics. Finally, Broca's aphasics frequently responded unsystematically when cues to agent-object relations occurred in isolation or in competition with one another, but when there was a convergence of cues their performance approached that of normal subjects. This result was interpreted in terms of an accessing hypothesis.     

On throwing out the baby with the bathwater: A reply to Black and Wilensky's evaluation of story grammars

A number of criticisms of a recent paper byare made. (1) In attempting to assess the observational adequacy of story grammars, they state that a context-free grammar cannot handle discontinuous elements; however, they do not show that such elements occur in the domain to which the grammars apply. Further, they do not present adequate evidence for their claim that there are acceptable stories not accounted for by existing grammars and that the grammars will accept nonstories such as procedures. (2) They state that it has been proven that under natural conditions children cannot learn transformational grammars, which is a misrepresentation of the learnability proofs which have been offered. (3) Most important, they take an unduly narrow approach to story understanding by claiming that people only understand story content and do not have knowledge of story structure which is useful in comprehension or memory. Counterevidence from the literature is cited which indicates that such knowledge is both useful and used, and a number of methods for assessing the psychological adequacy of structural models are discussed.     

Organizational vs retrieval factors in the development of digit span

Three possible sources of memory span growth were tested with a modified version of the digit span task using subjects 6, 8, 11, and 19 years of age. There was no developmental trend in facilitation due to experimenter-imposed organization of the input strings, ruling out simple input-organizational theories. The notion that children are deficient at organizing retrieved information was also found to be untenable. The data support the view that older subjects use more selective retrieval strategies, strategies which are better suited to the encoded material. The largest improvement in retrieval selectivity occurred between sixth grade and college. Recency effects were smaller for the younger subjects than for older subjects, with first graders showing significantly less recency than third graders, sixth graders, and college students. Improved item identification during input may account for this finding.     

The development of spatial and class relations in four young children with right-cerebral-hemisphere damage: Evidence for an early spatial constructive deficit

This study followed the development of four children with right-hemisphere injury on a series of manipulative classification tasks to determine whether and how early brain injury affects the development of spatial and class relations. The children were first tested at about 2 years of age. Their data were compared with previously collected data from 18- to 42-month-old normal children, and with data from four young children with left-hemisphere injury. The results showed the children with right-hemisphere injury do not generate a particular spatial relation (next to) in their spatial groupings with the same frequency as normal or left-hemisphere damaged children, although they do generate in and on relations with normal frequency. An apparent deficit in the development of class relations is shown to be secondary to the spatial deficit, in that it is evident only in tasks that require spatial grouping.