Background Data and Autobiographical Memory: Effects of Item Types and Task Characteristics

Background data, or life history measures, ask people to recall and report prior behavior and experiences. Although these measures have been found to be effective predictors of performance, little is known about the characteristics of items contributing to accurate reporting and good recall. Accordingly, 153 undergraduates were asked to work on a complex, computer-based ‘in-basket’ task. In working through this task, objective indices of their activities were obtained. After completing this task, subjects were asked to answer a set of background data items describing their behavior and experiences during task performance. Additionally, they were asked to return one week later and, again, answer the background data questions. Indices of accuracy and recall consistency were obtained for various item types. In accordance with the literature of autobiographical memory, it was found that people could consistency recall and accurately report general summaries of activities and their reactions to the task. More specific actions or behaviors that were not linked to goals were not accurately and consistently recalled. The implications of these findings for the development and application of background data measures are discussed.     

Construal: Overview, Motivation, and Some New Evidence

Is there underspecification in the syntactic phrase marker constructed during on-line sentence analysis? According to the construal hypothesis (Frazier &; Clifton, 1996), a very limited amount and type of structural underspecification is available to the human sentence parsing mechanism. Here we present the basic definitions of construal, illustrating the theory with some already published evidence. We also discuss several new pieces of evidence, from our laboratory and elsewhere, that support the construal hypothesis. We end by raising the question of what kind of mechanism operates in the process of interpreting a nonprimary phrase (a phrase that receives an underspecified syntactic analysis), and conclude that it is not a process of competition between multiple activated possible analyses but instead is a process in which the sheer existence of ambiguity need not result in increased processing cost.     

TOWARD A SOUND PERSPECTIVE ON MODERN PHYSICS: CAPRA'S POPULARIZATION OF MYSTICISM AND THEOLOGICAL APPROACHES REEXAMINED

Abstract. Fritjof Capra's The Tao of Physics , one of several popularizations paralleling Eastern mysticism and modern physics, is critiqued, demonstrating that Capra gives little attention to the differing philosophies of physics he employs, utilizing whatever interpretation suits his purposes, without prior justification. The same critique is applied and similar conclusions drawn, about some recent attempts at relating theology and physics. In contrast, we propose the possibility of maintaining a cogent relationship between these disciplines by employing theological hypotheses to account for aspects of physics that are free from interpretive difficulties, such as the ability to create mathematical structures with extraordinary predictive success.     

Partially selective search of memory for letters and digits

Three experiments failed to provide evidence that subjects could search just the digits, or just the letters, of a mixed list of digits and letters in deciding whether a probe item was a member of the list. Providing a precue as to the category of the probe shortly before the presentation of the probe decreased the time needed to encode it, but did not change the memory search process. Repeating the category of the probe from one trial to the next, however, did change the pattern of memory search. A "partially selective search" model was proposed which claimed that a mixed list was stored as two categorized sublists, and that a self-terminating search of the sublists could occur in which the first sublist searched was the one which had been probed on the previous trial.     

Effects of sound frequency on behavioral and cardiac orienting in newborn and five-month-old infants

Alert newborn and 5-month-old infants' responsivity to variations in spectral composition of a rattle sound was examined. Each child received four stimulus conditions: low-, mid-, and high-frequency bandpass-filtered rattles and an unfiltered broadband rattle. Stimuli were played through a single loudspeaker laterally positioned, and head orientation and cardiac responses to sound were recorded. Compared to other stimuli, the low-frequency sound elicted less head turning in both age groups, with this effect exaggerated in younger infants. Head orientation toward the mid-frequency, high-frequency, and broadband stimuli did not differ with age. For all conditions, latency and duration of newborns' head turning was longer than that of 5-month-olds. Newborns responded with cardiac deceleration only on trials when they failed to turn. When head turns occurred, an acceleratory cardiac response was obtained. Five-month-olds responded with reliable cardiac deceleration irrespective of head turning toward the sound. Heart rate change did not vary as a function of frequency at either age, suggesting that all stimuli were equally effective in eliciting the infant's attention.     

Recoding processes in recognition: Some effects of presentation rate

Character classification time was studied in a situation in which Ss sometimes had to decide whether a probe item was a translation of a remembered item according to a previously learned translation scheme. When translation between probe and remembered items was necessary, the rate at which the to-be-remembered items had been presented affected the form of the memory-scanning functions. This result seemed to contradict Cruse and Clifton’s (1973) hypothesis that Ss translated all remembered items into the form of the probe after the probe was presented. An alternative model claimed that, when time permits, Ss translate to-be-remembered items into their alternate form at the time of presentation and scan the resulting translated items at a relatively slow rate if the probe matches them in form. If Ss are unable to translate the to-be-remembered items when they are presented, they resort to the strategy of translating the probe item into the form in which the remembered items had been presented.     

An economical system for collecting and reducing heart-rate data,using someone else’s small computer

Hardware and program are described for a heart-rate data collection and reduction system that uses a small computer at a time removed from the actual data collection. The system is portable and inexpensive; exclusive of the computer, it can cost under $1,500. It uses an ordinary tape recorder to record discrete signals upon each occurrence of a heart beat, and it returns edited second-by-second averages of interheart-beat intervals.