A review of: “Acquiring a concept of mind: A review of psychological research and theory”

Peter Mitchell (1996) Acquiring a Concept of Mind: A Review of Psychological Research and Theory, Basingstoke: Taylor & Francis Psychology Press, $29.95     

Word recognition across orthographies: Another look at the interaction between context and degradation

Abstract

The performance of English and Spanish subjects was examined in two experiments using a lexical decision task in which the effects of semantic priming and stimulus degradation were systematically varied. The Orthographic Depth Hypothesis predicts that priming and degradation will interact in the orthographically “deep” language (English) but not in the “shallow” one (Spanish). In the first experiment, the two factors were found to interact in a similar way in both English and Spanish groups. In the second experiment, in which only Spanish subjects participated, the interaction was again present but only in those subjects who showed an overall facilitation effect on primed words. The results are consistent with the use of the so-called “direct” route in Spanish and are at variance with other previous findings which have suggested that reading in shallow orthographies occurs via the “indirect” phonological route. There was also evidence that nonword rejection times were slower in Spanish subjects and that the performance of the two groups was affected differently by the different types of neutral baseline primes (asterisks or unrelated words). Possible interpretations of these performance variations are briefly discussed.     

Does service failure influence customer loyalty?

There is a general consensus that customer loyalty to service providers is not solely dependent upon their level of satisfaction or dissatisfaction. However, the identified antecedents of loyalty remain, at best, highly speculative. The aim of this extensive literature review is to give some understanding of the nature of customer loyalty and the antecedent effects of service dissatisfaction. The research reviewed suggests that customer loyalty is an attitudinal state, reflecting value, trust and commitment within supplier–customer relationships. Satisfaction is one of several antecedents of loyalty. A key influence on loyalty is the offer of unique value‐delivering advantages not provided by competitors. Thus firms need to develop positive value‐based exit barriers to achieve loyalty. When service failures occur, the recovery process is likely to have a greater impact on loyalty than the original service failure. The key to successful recoveries was found to be the customer's perception of ‘fairness’. Recovery programmes must get it right first time. Customers who remain dissatisfied after a complaint has been handled are more dissatisfied than if no recovery attempt had been made. Dissatisfaction and customer satiation are major causes of a customer's exit. The solution to customer satiation is dynamic value creation. Collection and monitoring of customer data is needed for success and two‐way communication is vital. Copyright © 2002 Henry Stewart Publications.     

Investigating the Relation between Imagery and Perception: Evidence from Face Priming

The relation between imagery and perception was investigated in face priming. Two experiments are reported in which subjects either saw or imagined the faces of celebrities. They were later given a speeded perceptual test (familiarity judgement to pictures of celebrities) or a speeded imagery test (in which they were told the names of celebrities and asked to make a decision about their appearance). Seeing faces primed the perceptual test, and imaging faces primed the imagery test; however, there was no priming between seeing and imaging faces. These results show that perception and imagery can be dissociated in normal subjects. In two further experiments, we examined the effects of imaging faces on a subsequent face-naming task and on a task requiring familiarity judgements to partial faces. Both these tasks were facilitated by prior imaging of faces. These results are discussed in relation to those of McDermott & Roediger (1994), who found that imagery promoted object priming in a perceptual test involving naming partial line drawings. The implications for models of face recognition are also discussed.     

Generate and test: An alternative route to knowledge elicitation in an implicit learning task

Three experiments are reported, which examine generation of knowledge in the McGeorge and Burton (1990) invariant learning task. In this task, participants are exposed to 30 four-digit numbers containing an invariant "3". Following this participants then demonstrate a preference for novel numbers containing this invariant over numbers without it. Despite above-chance performance on this pseudo-memory test, participants appear unable to verbalize anything pertinent to the invariant. Here we introduce a novel version of this task, relying on generation of items rather than a preference test. We argue that this new task engages different processing resources, resulting in different patterns of performance. In Experiment 1, invariant learning was demonstrated using a novel fragment completion test. Experiment 2 found that suppressing articulation inhibited learning, implying that this test task accesses phonological knowledge. It is suggested that using the fragment completion test engages different processing resources during test from those in a preference test. Experiment 3 reinforces this position by demonstrating that knowledge appears to transfer across surface features, a result that seems to contradict recent findings by Stadler, Warren, and Lesch (2000). A resolution is offered, drawing on episodic accounts of implicit learning.     

Book reviews

DIMSOND, S. The Double Brain. Edinburgh: Churchill Livingstone. 1972.Pp. 229. £ 3.50.

ANDERSON, J. R. and BOWER, G. H. Human Associative Memory. Washington: V. H. Winston and Sons. 1973. Pp. 524. £ 8.55.

SOMMERHOFF, G. Logic of the Living Brain. London: John Wiley and Sons. 1974. Pp. 413. £ 5.75.

KLAUSMEIER, H. J., GHATALA, E. S. and FRAYER, D. A. Conceptual Learning and De-velopment. London: Academic Press. 1974. Pp 284. £ 7.00.

RATCLIFF, F. (ED.) Studies on Excitation and Inhibition in the Retina. A Collection of Papers from the Laboratories of H. Keffler Hartime. London: Chapman and Hall. 1974. Pp. 668. £ 8.50.

ROCK, I. orientation and Form. London: Academic Press. Inc. (London) Ltd. 1973-Pp. 165. £ 5.60.

BOWER, T. G. R. Devolopment in Infancy. Reading: W. H. Freeman and Co. 1974. Pp. 258. £ 2.90

CONNOLLY, K. J. and BRUNER,J. S. (Eds). The Growth of Competence. London: Aca-demic Press. 1974. Pp. 327. £ 6.80.

PIAGET, J. and INHELDER, B. (Translated by POmerans, A.) The Child's Construction of Quantities. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. 1974. Pp. 285. £ 5.75.

GARNER, W. R. The Processing of Information and Structure. Potomac: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. 1974. Pp. xi + 203. £ 6.00.

CARTERETTE, E. C. and FRIEDMAN, M. P. (Eds). Handbook of Perception. Vol. III. Bilogy of Perceptual System. London: Acadmic Press, Inc. (London) Ltd. 1973. Pp. 521. £ 00.00.