The analysis of intuition: Processing fluency and affect in judgements of semantic coherence

In semantic coherence judgements individuals are able to intuitively discriminate whether a word triad has a common remote associate (coherent) or not (incoherent) without consciously retrieving the common associate. A processing-fluency account for these intuitions is proposed, which assumes that (a) coherent triads are processed more fluently than incoherent triads, (b) this high fluency triggers a subtle positive affect, and (c) this affect may be experienced as a cognitive feeling and used in explicit judgement. In line with this account, it was shown that coherent triads (a) are processed faster than incoherent triads (Study 1), (b) serve as positive affective primes (Study 2), and (c) are liked more than incoherent triads (Study 3). When participants were provided with an irrelevant source of their affective reactions, they lost the ability to intuitively discriminate between coherent and incoherent triads (Study 4). Finally, an item-based analysis found that triads that are processed faster are liked more and are more likely to be judged coherent, irrespective of their actual coherence (Study 5).     

Intuitive judgments of proportions, means, and variances: A review

Recent investigations of intuitive statistical inference have been far less optimistic regarding man’s ability as an “intuitive statistician” than were Peterson and Beach in 1967. Work on judgments of variance and central tendency formed a significant part of Peterson and Beach’s review but is now regarded as peripheral. Work in this area is discussed in this review and it is concluded that it yields some understanding of the Peterson and Beach view, as subjects appear to be reasonably competent “intuitive arithmeticians.” However, it is pointed out that these tasks involve a “lower level” type of statistical judgment and that several nonnormative biases are observed, even at this level. This review arises from research conducted by the author while employed on a Social Science Research Council grant held by Dr. J.St.B.T. Evans.     

The relativity of linguistic intuition: The effect of repetition on grammaticality judgments

Three experiments were performed to show the relativity of linguistic intuition in grammaticality judgments. In Experiment 1, 12 students judged the relative grammaticality of isolated sentences twice, receiving a repetition treatment between the two judgments. During the repetition phase, they were exposed to a repeated presentation of sentences. The findings show that the repetition treatment makes a judgment criterion more stringent for both grammatical and ungrammatical sentences. In Experiment 2, a release-from-the-proactive-inhibition paradigm was used. Twelve students first judged the grammaticality of the isolated sentences, then received the repetition treatment, and finally, made a second judgment for the sentences embedded in context. No change in judgment criterion was found for the second judgment. Judgments of the ungrammatical sentences, when embedded in context, were found to be more lenient. In Experiment 3, 12 students judged sentences embedded in context. No change in judgment criterion was found. These findings are interpreted as suggesting that linguistic intuitions as revealed in grammaticality judgments are not absolute but relative in that they are easily influenced by repetition and other variables, such as embedded context.     

Intuitive interactionism in person perception: effects of situation--behavior relations on dispositional judgments

To examine the effects of the relationships between behavior and the situation in which it occurs, we manipulated such relations and exposed subjects to them. Impressions were similar when based on the behaviors presented with situations unspecified (e.g., child hits) or when the situations in which they naturally occurred were specified (e.g., child hits when provoked). However, when situations were specified, subjects' impressions more accurately predicted individual differences in the children's actual levels of overall aggressive behavior. When the veridical situation-behavior relations were increasingly altered, the targets were perceived as being less plausible and increasingly maladjusted and odd, and correlations decreased between the perceived level of the children's aggressiveness and their actual aggressive behavior. Thus, both personality impressions and predictive accuracy were influenced by the relations between the target's behaviors and their situational contexts.     

On the relative speed account of number-size interference in comparative judgments of numerals

Humans show systematic congruency effects due to irrelevant variations of the numerical value or the physical size of digits in judgments about either of these 2 attributes alone. According to influential models (e.g., J. Tzelgov, J. Meyer, & A. Henik, 1992), these effects are characterized by genuine asymmetries of size and number processing not accounted for by simple relative speed considerations, whereas some recent work (e.g., A. Pansky & D. Algom, 1999) partly challenges this view. This article presents 2 qualitative gradient-based predictions made by relative speed models and a diffusion-based implementation of the relative speed view to quantitatively account for response times and error rates in comparative judgments of digits. The results of 2 experiments using a completely task-symmetric design are in accord with these detailed predictions; they are also consistent with the view that both number and size are converted into magnitude representations of similar structure.     

Analog and semantic models of judgments about the months of the year

This study tested undergraduates’ ability to judge cyclic relations between the months of the year, days of the week, and buildings around a campus square. On each trial, a pair of month, day, or building names was presented. Subjects judged whether the second stimulus was closer to the first going forward or backward in time (or clockwise/counterclockwise around the square). For all three contents, response times and errors increased as the second stimulus approached the direction boundary. The results can be explained by the types of analog models used to account for the symbolic distance effect for bipolar continua. In contrast, semantic models of the symbolic distance effect appear to be poorly suited for explaining how cyclic comparisous are made.     

On the control of visual word recognition: Changing routes versus changing deadlines

Two different accounts have been proposed to explain the fact that (1) an effect of word frequency is present when readers of transparent orthographies read only words aloud and (2) the effect of word frequency is eliminated when subjects name words and nonwords mixed together in a single block. In the route-shifting account, subjects shift from using a lexical route that can read only words to using a nonlexical route that can read both words and nonwords via the use of sublexical spelling-sound correspondences (hence, no word frequency effect). The essence of the second, time criterion account is that the elimination of the word frequency effect is determined by the speed with which the nonwords are processed, because subjects attempt to homogenize the point in time at which they release an articulation. These two different accounts are pitted against each other in a series of naming experiments utilizing the transparent Turkish orthography. A word frequency effect persists even when words and nonwords are mixed together, provided that nonword sets are matched so as to be named as quickly as the high-frequency words and as slowly as the low-frequency words, respectively. This result is argued to be consistent with the time criterion account, but not with the unadorned route-shifting account.     

Modeling semantic memory: Effects of presenting semantic information in different modalities

How is semantic information from different modalities integrated and stored? If related ideas are encountered in French and English, or in pictures and sentences, is the result a single representation in memory, or two modality-dependent ones? Subjects were presented with items in different modalities, then were asked whether or not subsequently presented items were identical with the former ones. Subjects frequently accepted translations and items semantically consistent with those presented earlier as identical, although not as often as they accepted items actually seen previously. The same pattern of results was found when the items were French and English sentences, and when they were pictures and sentences. The results can be explained by the hypothesis that subjects integrate information across modalities into a single underlying semantic representation. A computer model, embodying this hypothesis, made predictions in close agreement with the data.     

On the existence of semantic working memory: evidence for direct semantic maintenance

Despite widespread acknowledgment of the importance of online semantic maintenance, there has been astonishingly little work that clearly establishes this construct. We review the extant work relevant to short-term retention of meaning and show that, although consistent with semantic working memory, most data can be accommodated in other ways. Using a new concurrent probe paradigm, we then report experiments that implicate a semantic maintenance capacity that is independent of phonological or visual maintenance that may build on a mechanism of direct semantic maintenance. Experiments 1 through 5 established that while subjects maintain the meaning of a word, a novel delay-period marker of semantic retention, the semantic relatedness effect, is observed on a concurrent lexical decision task. The semantic relatedness effect refers to slowed response times when subjects make a lexical decision to a probe that is associatively related to the idea they are maintaining, compared to when the probe is unrelated. The semantic relatedness effect occurred for semantic but not for phonological or visual word-form maintenance, dissipated quickly after maintenance ends, and survived concurrent articulatory suppression. The effect disappeared when subjects performed our immediate memory task with a long-term memory strategy rather than with active maintenance. Experiment 6 demonstrated a parallel phonological relatedness effect that occurs for phonological but not semantic maintenance, establishing a full double dissociation between the effects of semantic and phonological maintenance. These findings support a distinct semantic maintenance capacity and provide a behavioral marker through which semantic working memory can be studied.     

Effects of speed of word processing on semantic access: the case of bilingualism

Bilingual speakers generally manifest slower word recognition than monolinguals. We investigated the consequences of the word processing speed on semantic access in bilinguals. The paradigm involved a stream of English words and pseudowords presented in succession at a constant rate. English-Welsh bilinguals and English monolinguals were asked to count the number of letters in pseudowords and actively disregard words. They were not explicitly told that pairs of words in immediate succession were embedded and could either be semantically related or not. We expected that slower word processing in bilinguals would result in semantic access indexed by semantic priming. As expected, bilinguals showed significant semantic priming, indexed by an N400 modulation, whilst monolinguals did not. Moreover, bilinguals were slower in performing the task. The results suggest that bilinguals cannot discriminate between pseudowords and words without accessing semantic information whereas monolinguals can dismiss English words on the basis of subsemantic information.     

Isolating the effects of symbolic distance,and semantic congruity in comparative judgments: An additive-factors analysis

The time needed to compare two symbols increases as the cognitive distance between them on the relevant dimension increases (symbolic distance effect). Furthermore, when subjects are told to choose either the larger or the smaller of two stimuli, the response time is shorter if the instruction is congruent with the overall size of the stimuli (semantic congruity effect). Three experiments were conducted to determine the locus of these effects in terms of a sequence of processing stages. The developmental aspects of these effects were also evaluated, as the subjects were from kindergarten, first grade, third grade, fifth grade, and college. By varying the visual quality of the stimulus in each experiment, it was determined that the distance effect resides in a comparison stage, whereas the congruity effect is an encoding phenomenon. Both distance and congruity effects were present at all grade levels, but they decreased in magnitude as grade increased. The results were interpreted relative to recent models of comparative judgments.     

Cortical regions activated by the subjective sense of perceptual coherence of environmental sounds: A proposal for a neuroscience of intuition

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, intuition is “the ability to understand or know something immediately, without conscious reasoning.” In other words, people continuously, without conscious attention, recognize patterns in the stream of sensations that impinge upon them. The result is a vague perception of coherence, which subsequently biases thought and behavior accordingly. Within the visual domain, research using paradigms with difficult recognition has suggested that the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) serves as a fast detector and predictor of potential content that utilizes coarse facets of the input. To investigate whether the OFC is crucial in biasing task-specific processing, and hence subserves intuitive judgments in various modalities, we used a difficult-recognition paradigm in the auditory domain. Participants were presented with short sequences of distorted, nonverbal, environmental sounds and had to perform a sound categorization task. Imaging results revealed rostral medial OFC activation for such auditory intuitive coherence judgments. By means of a conjunction analysis between the present results and those from a previous study on visual intuitive coherence judgments, the rostral medial OFC was shown to be activated via both modalities. We conclude that rostral OFC activation during intuitive coherence judgments subserves the detection of potential content on the basis of only coarse facets of the input.     

Intuition in the context of object perception: intuitive gestalt judgments rest on the unconscious activation of semantic representations

Intuition denotes the ability to judge stimulus properties on the basis of information that is activated in memory, but not consciously retrieved. In three experiments we show that participants discriminated better than chance fragmented line drawings depicting meaningful objects (coherent fragments) from fragments consisting of randomly displaced line segments (incoherent fragments) or from fragments which were rotated by 180 degrees (inverted fragments), even if participants did not consciously recognize the objects. Unrecognized coherent, but not incoherent or inverted fragments produced reliable priming of correct object names in a lexical decision task, indicating that coherent fragments activated an unconscious semantic object representation. Priming effects were larger for coherent fragments judged as coherent compared to coherent fragments judged as incoherent. We conclude that intuitive gestalt judgments for coherent fragments rested on the activation of semantic object representations, which biased participants' intuitive impression of "gestalt-ness" even when the underlying object representations remained unconscious.     

Intuition,affect, and personality: unconscious coherence judgments and self-regulation of negative affect

According to personality systems interaction theory, a negative mood was expected to reduce access to extended semantic networks and to reduce performance on intuitive judgments of coherence for participants who have an impaired ability to down-regulate negative affect (i.e., state-oriented participants). Consistent with expectations, state-oriented participants reporting higher levels of perseverating negative mood had a reduced discrimination between coherent and incoherent standard word triples (Study 1) and individually derived word triples describing persons (Study 2). Participants who are able to down-regulate negative affect (i.e., action-oriented participants) did not show this tendency. In addition, Study 2 revealed a dissociation between state orientation and Neuroticism that is discussed in terms of a functional difference between the two constructs.     

Calibration of sensory and cognitive judgments: Two different accounts

The purpose of this study was to test predictions of two recent theories of realism of confidence. Ecological approaches to realism of confidence in one's general knowledge (Gigerenzer et al. , 1991; Juslin, in press a ; Björkman, in press) predict good calibration or, in the case of poor cognitive adjustment, overconfidence, within the cognitive domain. The subjective distance theory of confidence in sensory discriminations (Björkman et al. , 1992) predicts a pervasive underconfidence bias for sensory discriminations. Empirical data are reported showing that: (a) Calibration for sensory judgments is considerably poorer than calibration for well adapted cognitive judgements, a difference that can be entirely traced to underconfidence in the sensory domain. (b) While an initial overconfidence bias in the cognitive domain is removed by outcome feedback, the bias observed in sensory discriminations is unaffected even by a prolonged feedback session. It is suggested that the nature of confidence in sensory discriminations is different from the nature of confidence in cognitive judgments.     

On the basis of early transitivity judgments

This research had two aims. The first was to test three explanations of performance on N-term series tasks by young children: the labeling model of B.DeBoysson-Bardies and K. O'Regan (1973), Nature (London), 246, 531–534, the sequential-contiguity model of L. Breslow (1981, Psychological Bulletin, 89, 325–351), and the ordered array or image model of C. A. Riley and T. Trabasso (1974, Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 17, 187–202). In the first experiment, 5-year-old children were taught additional premises which would interfere with labeling and sequential-contiguity processes, but not with forming an ordered array. Reasoning performance was essentially comparable to previous results with the paradigm, thus supporting the ordered array model. The second aim was to reexamine children's ability to learn sets of premises which can be assembled into an ordered array, since there was reason to believe that previous studies had created false positives. In the second experiment, 3- to 7-year-old children were taught either overlapping (a > b, b > c, …) or nonoverlapping (a > b, c > d, …) premises. Overlapping premises can be integrated into an ordered array (a, b, c, d, e), but nonoverlapping premises cannot. However, the overlapping condition proved more difficult, and the success rate for preschoolers ($\text{3}\text{1}\text{2}\text{-}\text{to 4}\text{1}\text{2}\text{-year-olds}$) was of zero order. This raises doubts about their ability to learn a set of premises of the kind required for transitive inference. These doubts were strengthened by the third experiment which showed that when premises were not presented in serial order, preschool ($\text{3}\text{1}\text{2}\text{-}\text{to 4}\text{1}\text{2}\text{-year-old}$) children could not learn the premises of an N-term series task.     

Determinants of famous name processing speed: Age of acquisition versus semantic connectedness

The age of acquisition (AoA) and the amount of biographical information known about celebrities have been independently shown to influence the processing of famous people. In this experiment, we investigated the facilitative contribution of both factors to famous name processing. Twenty-four mature adults participated in a familiarity judgement task, in which the names of famous people were grouped orthogonally by AoA and by the number of bits of biographical information known about them (number of facts known; NoFK). Age of acquisition was found to have a significant effect on both reaction time (RT) and accuracy of response, but NoFK did not. The RT data also revealed a significant AoA × NoFK interaction. The amount of information known about a celebrity played a facilitative role in the processing of late-acquired, but not early-acquired, celebrities. Once AoA is controlled, it would appear that the semantic system ceases to have a significant overall influence on the processing of famous people. The pre-eminence of AoA over semantic connectedness is considered in the light of current theories of AoA and how their influence might interact.     

Confidence judgments in syllogistic reasoning: the role of consistency and response cardinality

In two experiments, we examined the resolution of confidence judgments in syllogistic reasoning and their heuristic bases. Based on the assumptions of Koriat's Self-Consistency Model of confidence, we expected the confidence judgments to be related to conclusion consensuality, reflecting the role of consistency as a heuristic cue to confidence. In Experiment 1, the participants evaluated 24 syllogisms with conclusions that varied with respect to validity and consensuality. In Experiment 2, the participants produced conclusions to 64 pairs of premises. The correlation between confidence and reasoning accuracy was low. In both experiments confidence was related to the consensuality of the responses. For consensually correct items, correlation between confidence and accuracy was positive; however, for consensually incorrect items it was negative. In Experiment 2, confidence was lower for syllogisms with higher response cardinality, or syllogisms that elicited a greater variety of conclusions.     

On the spread of semantic excitation

Summary Access to word-representations in memory was studied in two experiments. A lexical decision paradigm was used in both: Ss had to decide whether a string of letters shown to them was a word or a nonword. Decision time was the main dependent variable. Independent variables were context-similarity and context-intensity. The former is defined in terms of the categorical relationship that holds between a set of context-words and a subsequently presented test-word. The latter is defined by the number of highly related context-words, all sampled from a small semantic subcategory, that preceded the test-stimulus. In theory, the presentation of the context-words generates semantic excitation that spreads over memory and activates other memory representations. Differences in mean decision time, as a function of experimental conditions, are attributed to differences in the activation of test-words. Two hypotheses about the course or gradient of excitation-spread in lexical memory were studied. The results indicate that a simple spread-of-excitation hypothesis as proposed by Meyer, Schvaneveldt and Ruddy (1972, 1974) is sufficient to account for the data. For the conditions studied in the experiments, there was no reliable evidence of inhibitory processes that confine spread of excitation to a small region of lexical memory.This paper reports work that was conceived and begun at Stanford University, Calif., USA, where the author spent a year as a postdoctoral fellow. The fellowship was made possible by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Bad Godesberg, West Germany, Grant Schm 350/1. I thank Prof. Richard G. Atkinson and Dr. Stephan Monsell for discussing aspects of this work with me. I further thank Paul Matthews for introducing me to the art of running computerized experiments.