A new technique for measuring word processing time in reading

This paper reports some preliminary data on a “window-pointer” technique for measuring word processing time in reading. In this technique, almost all of the letters are masked on a page of text shown on a video monitor. The letters can be seen only through a “window” showing one word on one line. Subjects control the horizontal location of the window by moving a pointer left and right. When subjects want to move the window to the next line, the window is moved off the right end of the current line, and the pointer is moved back to the left. The window then reappears at the beginning of the next line. After some practice, subjects can move the window in approximate synchrony with their eyes, and can read the passage without any difficulty. The length of time the window spends on each word can then be used as a measure of word processing time. An analysis of these window durations indicates that they are similar in many respects to the gaze durations obtained with eye-movement monitoring techniques.     

Developmental dyslexics do not fit in boxes: Evidence from six new case studies

Abstract

Six subjects with a reading problem were tested on a variety of reading and other tasks including tests of phonological awareness and processing, short-term memory, visual analysis and synthesis, memory for faces and pictures, and matching of letters and shapes. The subjects demonstrated differences in their reading strategies, but these showed no relation to any differences in the patterns of deficit on non-reading tasks. Five of them showed severe problems on tasks involving phonological processing and short-term memory but the seventy of these was unrelated to reading strategy. There were some indications of visual weaknesses, but these were severe in only one subject who had a pronounced defect in memory for faces; there was no evidence that the visual weaknesses were consistently related to reading ability or strategy.

It is concluded that all the subjects in this sample (with one 'possible exception) had a deficit in phonological processing but adopted different strategies to cope with this when faced with the task of converting print to sound. Differences in strategy are likely to be affected by the relative efficiency of other cognitive processes, personality and introdctional factors.     

Memory monitoring: How useful is self-knowledge about memory?

Abstract

The article reports two experiments in which we investigated the value of memory monitoring. Although the act of monitoring may not in itself be a basis for improved memory, it is reasonable to expea that the act of monitoring will provide useful information to the subject. For example, if monitoring identifies items that are inadequately encoded, then the inadequacy can be redressed if the items are repeated. We expected that repeating an item immediately after the subject had evaluated whether the item would succeed or fail later would be more valuable than merely repeating the item without any interpolated monitoring. But it wasn't. Nor did items people expected to forget benefit more from repetition than ones they expected to remember. Because the findings were unexpected, we recast the issues, and discovered that we should not have been surprised. On the whole, we would be better advised to teach subjects effective ways to study than to teach them techniques that accurately idenm inadequately encoded items; knowing an item is inadequate is of Little value in the absence of skills that will remediate the inadequacy.     

READING IN VOCATIONAL SUBJECTS: AN ANALYSIS OF STUDENTS’ READING ABILITY AND CLASSROOM PERFORMANCE

The study investigated the reading ability and classroom performance of vocational students enrolled in the second year of study in auto mechanics, carpentry, electronics, graphics, and masonry. Performance on the California Achievement Test showed average reading achievement for electronics students and below average reading achievement for students in the remaining vocational areas. Students’ ability to read their vocational textbook was measured by a cloze task, with auto mechanics students showing an adequate level of comprehension for instruction. Carpentry, graphics, and masonry students showed performance below instructional level. Significant differences were found in reading achievement between electronics students and the other four areas, and between auto mechanics and masonry. Vocational students in the present sample represented, to some extent, separate groups for reading achievement rather than the traditional view of homogeneity across vocational subjects. Teachers’ evaluations of students’ classroom performance showed statistically significant correlations with textbook reading ability in only two subjects, auto mechanics and carpentry. Correlations suggested that success may not always be dependent on the ability to comprehend the textbook, and that the vocational teachers sampled may not have placed a high value on reading ability as an indicator of competence in a vocational subject.     

Conditional discrimination in mentally retarded subjects: programming acquisition and learning set.

In Experiment 1, 3 subjects with retardation were exposed to two visual-visual arbitrary matching-to-sample problems each day. One conditional discrimination was presented under trial-and-error conditions, and the other was presented under a component training procedure. The latter began by establishing the comparison discrimination and its rapid reversal. The successive discrimination between the sample stimuli was established through differential naming. Then, sample naming was maintained in conditional discrimination sessions in which the same sample was presented in blocks of consecutive trials. Block size was decreased across sessions until sample presentation was randomized as in trial-and-error training (but with naming maintained). Two subjects initially learned only with component training. The performance of the 3rd subject was inconsistent across conditional discriminations. One of the successful subjects ultimately learned rapidly and consistently with trial-and-error procedures. Experiment 2 sought to demonstrate learning set in the other 2 subjects. Elements of the component training procedure were withdrawn over successive conditional discriminations. Ultimately, 1 subject nearly always learned under trial-and-error conditions, and the other learned under trial-and-error conditions combined with differential sample naming.     

What is the optimal position of low-frequency words across line boundaries? An eye movement investigation

When displaying text on a page or a screen, only a finite number of characters can be presented on a single line. If the text exceeds that finite value, then text wrapping occurs. Often this process results in longer, more difficult to process words being positioned at the start of a line. We conducted an eye movement study to examine how this artefact of text wrapping affects passage reading. This allowed us to answer the question: should word difficulty be used when determining line breaks? Thirty-nine participants read 20 passages where low-frequency target words were either line-initial or line-final. There was no statistically reliable effect of our manipulation on passage reading time or comprehension despite several effects at a local level. Regarding our primary research question, the evidence suggests that word difficulty may not need to be accounted for when determining line breaks and assigning words to new lines.     

On the relation between metacontrast masking and suppression of visible persistence

Does the introduction of additional contours in a display sequence (an operation known to reduce the strength of suppression in metacontrast) also reduce suppression of visible persistence? In three experiments, duration of visible persistence was estimated by a method in which successful performance depends on the temporal integration of a pattern whose elements are displayed in two successive frames. In this procedure, the arrival of the trailing frame is known to exert a suppressive influence on the visible persistence of the leading frame. Embedding the elements of the leading frame within additional contours (a line grid) reduced the degree of suppression exerted by the trailing frame. This did not occur when the grid was part of the trailing display. We conclude that suppression of visible persistence and metacontrast masking belong to the same class of events.     

KNOWING ABOUT READING BEFORE READING: PRESCHOOL CHILDREN'S CONCEPTS OF READING

This paper reports findings from an investigation of preschool children's concepts about reading. Three tasks related to several basic ideas about reading were presented to 60 preschool children, ranging in age from three to five years. The first task assessed children's ability to identify oral and silent reading. The number of children who correctly identified both forms of reading increased with age, with almost all five‐year‐olds giving accurate responses. The second task was aimed at establishing children's perceptions of their own reading ability. Only four of the 60 children incorrectly evaluated their own reading ability. The third task investigated children's ability to recognize what it is on a page that is read. Three‐year‐olds were, on the whole, quite unaware of the salient information in books. Even among the five‐year‐olds, who performed significantly better than three‐ and four‐year‐olds on this task, some children's responses indicated an ambiguity about the role of print in reading. Suggestions for adults who guide young children through their early experiences with print are drawn from the findings of this investigation.     

Attention to repeated images on the World-Wide Web: Another look at scanpath theory

The scanpath theory of visual perception was tested using Web pages as visual stimuli.Scanpaths are repetitive sequences of fixations and saccades that occur upon reexposure to a visual stimulus. Since Internet users are exposed to repeated visual displays, the Web provides ideal stimuli to test this theory. Eye movement data were recorded for subjects’repeated viewings of three Web pages over three sessions. Resemblance of eye path sequences was measured with a string-edit method; multidimensional scaling and cluster analysis were used to group sequences. Support was found for the scanpath theory; some clusters included pairs of sequences from the same subject. A repeated measures analysis of variance revealeda statistically significant main effect for stimulus type, with a text-intensive news story page generating more similar sequences than a graphic-intensive advertising page. There was a statistically significant main effect for cross-viewing comparisons, reflecting a linear trend in which eye paths for the same subject became more alike over time.     

Self-reinforcement: Appealing misnomer or effective mechanism?1

The purpose of these two experiments was to test the motivational explanation for the effectiveness of self-reinforcement techniques. In each experiment, the classic self-reinforcement procedure (a desirable consequence following a target behavior) was compared with variations. In Experiment 1, undergraduate females (n = 61) showed no more self-recorded exercise when they performed a classic self-reinforcement procedure (high-probability activities following exercising) than when they only self-monitored exercise or engaged in one of three related procedures (high-probability activities preceding exercise, or low-probability activities following or preceding exercise). Indeed, only this last group produced significantly more self-recorded exercise. In Experiment 2, undergraduates (n = 62) attempted more workbook questions following a reading session in which they read a page and then ate a chosen food (classic self-reinforcement procedure) or ate a chosen food and then read a page, than when they read and ate in no particular order. More importantly, more workbook questions were answered correctly by the group who ate a chosen food and then read a page than by the other two groups. No differential results were produced by subjects' level of food deprivation. The classic self-reinforcement procedure showed no advantage over the variations in either experiment. These results call into question the motivational explanation for the effectiveness of self-reinforcement techniques. An alternative stimulus or cuing explanation is offered: that self-reinforcement is effective because it cues the long-term environmental consequences that actually control the frequency of the target behavior.     

Overestimating the Salience of Racial Labels

Abstract

In the present study, a word at the end of one page was wrongly doubled at the top of the next page. The word was white, black, or some other label applied to men. Racial labels were no more likely to elicit the detection of doubling errors than other labels, according to a baseline experiment on 352 subjects divided into five treatment groups. In Experiment 2, 134 South Africans, most of whom were white, estimated what the percentage of error detectors had been for each doubled label. Detection of errors in racial labels was more likely to be overestimated than detection of errors in other labels. An assumption by the subjects that race is as salient in the cognitions of others as in their own cognitions may explain the over-estimation.     

CONTINGENT PAYMENT PROCEDURES FOR SMOKING REDUCTION AND CESSATION

We assessed the ability of a combined contingent reinforcement and intensive monitoring procedure to promote and sustain temporary smoking cessation among 34 hired research volunteers, and the ability of a smoking reduction test to predict the subsequent initiation of abstinence. During the 5-day cutdown test, subjects were paid from $0 to $6 per day depending on the extent of reduction from baseline CO levels. During the abstinence test, breath samples were obtained three times daily and subjects were paid $4 for each CO reading ≤11 ppm. Sixty-eight percent of subjects initiated abstinence. Of the breath samples collected during the abstinence test (91% of scheduled samples), 96.5% were ≤11 ppm and 80.5% were ≤8 ppm. Subjects who earned more money during the cutdown test were more likely to abstain (r = ?0.51, p < .001). Contingent reinforcement and intensive monitoring procedures appear to have usefulness for analog studies of smoking reduction and cessation.     

The differential effects of simultaneous and successive cueing on the detection of bilateral symmetry in dot patterns.

Corballis and Roldan (1975) obtained speeded judgements of whether dot patterns were bilaterally symmetrical about, or translated across, a line. Reaction times (RTs) were ordered V (vertical) > D (diagonal) > H (horizontal) where ">" means faster than. Similar results occurred with blocked axis orientations, suggesting subjects cannot prepare by rotating a mental frame of reference. Blocking trials may have been ineffective because blocking cannot provide incremental benefits over those already provided by axis lines. Four experiments show that the usual axis orientation ordering of V > H > D is markedly attentuated by simultaneous but not successive axis lines. Also, axis cue lines and axis blocking are not equivalent treatments. Instead, unblocked line cues require finite processing time whereas, under blocking, subjects can prepare for the expected orientation. There was no suggestion anywhere of the V > D > H axis ordering that Corballis and Roldan reported. Successive axis line cues may only direct attention to the orientation being cued, but simultaneous line cues may change the stimulus itself, thus providing an additional means of visual processing that facilitates symmetry detection at non-vertical axis orientations.     

工作记忆中的语音回路对汉语阅读理解的影响

语音回路是工作记忆中一个重要的组成部分,主要负责加工和存储语音信息。采用混合实验设计,以正确数和反应时 为指标,汉语语篇为阅读材料,探讨工作记忆中的语音回路对汉语阅读理解的影响。本研究包括两个实验,实验一采用发音抑制的范式,结合错误干扰考察了语音回路中的发音复述装置对汉语阅读理解的影响;实验二采用无关言语的范式,结合错误干扰考察了语音回路中的语音存储装置对汉语阅读理解的影响。结果表明：(1)通过发音抑制和无关言语的方法证明,语音回路中的发音复述装置和语音存储装置在汉语阅读理解中起着重要作用。(2) 字音和字形都影响汉语的阅读理解,但字形比字音起着更大的作用,而且它们的作用机制也不相同,字音直接进入语音存储装置,而字形要经过字音的转换进入语音存储装置。(3) 词频与语音回路有密切关系,语音回路中的发音复述装置的作用在高频词上有明显的表现。(4) 词频与字形、字音也有密切关系,在低频词的条件下,字形的作用大于字音的作用     

Inhibitory Control During Sentence Reading in Dyslexic Children

The present study focused on the nature of the reading disability of children with the guessing subtype of dyslexia (who read fast and inaccurately). The objective was to separate the excitatory account of their reading disturbance (i.e., in guessers the words’ resting levels of activation are oversensitive to semantic context) from the inhibitory account (i.e., guessers tend to react prematurely to (false) candidate words that are activated in the lexicon).

To disentangle the above accounts, guessers and normal readers were presented with a sentential priming task (SPT). In the SPT, subjects had to determine whether the final word of a sentence was semantically congruent or incongruent with the sentence, but had to inhibit their ‘congruent’ or ‘incongruent’ response in case of an occasionally presented pseudoword. To evoke guessing, each pseudoword closely resembled either a valid congruent or incongruent word. Guessing referred to prematurely accepting a pseudoword as a word that either appropriately or inappropriately completed the sentence. The extent to which subjects guessed at word meaning was evidenced by the false recognition rates (FRR) of the misspelled terminal words.

Analyses on the FRRs of the pseudowords showed that guessers had significantly more difficulty in suppressing the ‘go tendency’ triggered by the pseudowords. It was concluded that the impulsive reading style of guessers should be ascribed to a less efficient suppression mechanism rather than to excessive reliance on contextual information. Specifically, the data were explained by assuming that the availability of the pseudoword’s candidate meaning activated the hand to respond with, and that guessers found difficulty in suspending this response until they analyzed all letters in the stimulus and they could be sure of its spelling.     

Differential Competencies Contributing to Children's Comprehension of Narrative and Expository Texts

The purpose of this study was to examine the connections between the oral reading abilities and the spelling behaviors of third and fifth grade students. Seventy-two third graders and sixty fifth graders from two different schools (one urban and one suburban) were the subjects of the study. Each subject read a selection one level above his/her current grade placement, spelled the words on the appropriate grade level list of the Qualitative Inventory of Word Knowledge and took the appropriate level of the Gates-MacGinitie Reading Tests. Oral readings were scored for accuracy, rate and phrasing. Spellings were scored for accuracy, phonetic quality and stage of spelling development. These scores were then analyzed using correlations, partial correlations and multiple regression techniques. At both grade levels there were high, significant correlations between spelling and reading variables, with spelling variables accounting for from 40% to 60% of the variance in oral reading measures and a smaller, but still significant percentage of the variance when standardized test scores were used as a control. These results confirm a strong relationship between spelling skill and oral reading ability, supporting the argument that a common body of conceptual word knowledge underlies both.     

Complex knowing: Toward a psychological hermeneutics

Abstract

The case history arises out of that place of discourse where the history of a patient is transformed into a narrative with a story line. Complex knowing, and its derivative, complex reading, are needed to do justice to this narrative, woven as it is from event, symptom, memory, and dream.     

The delay-reduction hypothesis: Effects of informative events on response rates and choice

The present study replicated a prior one by Pearce and Collins (1985) in which informative events displayed greater reinforcing strength than did uninformative ones despite higher rates of reinforcement on the uninformative alternative, both in a choice test and in a test that presented the events successively. The delay-reduction hypothesis of choice and conditioned reinforcement is consistent with results from the successive test but cannot account for the choice results. As the original study conducted the choice test following the successive test for all subjects, and as no reversals of the choice procedure were carried out, the present study replicated Pearce and Collins (1985) while controlling for order effects. Pigeons' relative rate of responding on the informative side was significantly greater in the successive procedure than in the choice procedure (as in the prior study); however, the uninformative side was significantly preferred to the informative side in the choice procedure when order of exposure to the two types of procedures was controlled. Both findings are consistent with the delay-reduction hypothesis.     

Error monitoring recovery after abstinence and treatment in cocaine addicts / Recuperación del procesamiento de errores tras abstinencia y tratamiento en adictos a cocaína

Abstract

Cocaine addiction is associated with different cognitive functions. Error monitoring and inhibition of behaviour are of great significance, they are specifically relevant because of their connection with problems in decision making and relapse. The aim of this work is to not only study the deficits but also to see if recovery is possible after treatment and abstinence. We evaluated 23 participants with cocaine dependence and 23 control subject with a modification of the Eriksen Flanker Task. Participants with addiction showed lower scores than control subjects in congruent and incongruent conditions. As treatment time increased the number of correct responses improved, especially in post-error hits. We conclude that the processes of rehabilitation and detoxification could improve the ability to monitor errors and inhibiting behaviour.     

Ordinal properties of perceived average duration: simultaneous and sequential presentations

When a subject evaluates the duration of two simultaneous events, the perceived durations are combined in a nonlinear manner, whereas comparable evaluations of successive events yield linear combinations. Fifty-four subjects rated average durations of pairs of time intervals ranging from 0.5 s to 10.0 s. The intervals making up a pair were presented successively and simultaneously on separate occasions within the same presentation sequence. The order of data was consistent with models previously proposed for perceived average duration. A nonmetric analysis of the combined ordinal data from both conditions yielded a single set of measures of perceived duration with ratio-scale properties. The common scale for the two conditions is consistent with differences in results from simultaneous and successive monitoring of time intervals, stemming from differences in the way duration information is combined rather than how it is perceived. the derived scale is related to physical time by a power function with a 1.06 exponent.