The emotional carryover effect in memory for words

Emotional material rarely occurs in isolation; rather it is experienced in the spatial and temporal proximity of less emotional items. Some previous researchers have found that emotional stimuli impair memory for surrounding information, whereas others have reported evidence for memory facilitation. Researchers have not determined which types of emotional items or memory tests produce effects that carry over to surrounding items. Six experiments are reported that measured carryover from emotional words varying in arousal to temporally adjacent neutral words. Taboo, non-taboo emotional, and neutral words were compared using different stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs), recognition and recall tests, and intentional and incidental memory instructions. Strong emotional memory effects were obtained in all six experiments. However, emotional items influenced memory for temporally adjacent words under limited conditions. Words following taboo words were more poorly remembered than words following neutral words when relatively short SOAs were employed. Words preceding taboo words were affected only when recall tests and relatively short retention intervals were used. These results suggest that increased attention to the emotional items sometimes produces emotional carryover effects; however, retrieval processes also contribute to retrograde amnesia and may extend the conditions under which anterograde amnesia is observed.     

Inhibition of return is not detected using illusory line motion

Inhibition of return (IOR) is the name that has been assigned to a response time (RT) delay to a stimulus presented at a recently stimulated spatial location. A commonly held explanation for the origins of IOR is that perceptual processing is inhibited and that this inhibition translates into slower RT. Three experiments with 10 subjects were used to directly test this perceptual explanation. The first two experiments assessed the level of perceptual facilitation present in the IOR paradigm using the frequency and latency of illusory line motion judgments. Contrary to the predictions of the perceptual view, the line motion and RT measures revealed only speeded processing at previously stimulated spatial locations. Experiment 3 required a simple detection response and used the same stimulus and timing parameters as those in Experiments 1 and 2. IOR was present, replicating the recent finding that judgments based on perceptual qualities of the stimulus do not demonstrate a RT delay, whereas simple detection tasks do show RT inhibition at previously stimulated locations. These findings are discussed in relation to a number of hypotheses about the origin of the RT delay.     

Average KR degrades parameter learning

In the present study, the effects of average knowledge of results (KR) about a set of trials on the learning of a spatiotemporal movement pattern were examined. Participants (N = 85) practiced 3 movement patterns with the same relative and absolute timing and the same relative amplitudes but with varied absolute amplitudes. Five groups of participants practiced under 1 of the following 5 conditions: KR after every trial (100% KR); average KR after every 3rd trial (average); average KR after every trial about the last 3 trials (running-average); KR after every 3rd trial (33% KR); and KR after every trial; plus average KR after every 3rd trial (both). Although there were no differences between groups in the learning of the fundamental movement pattern (or generalized motor program), average feedback (average, running-average) clearly degraded subjects' ability to learn to properly parameterize the actions in amplitude.     

Book reviews

Pseudo‐Problems. How Analytic Philosophy Gets Done, Roy Sorensen, 1993. London, Routledge xi + 291 pp., hb £37.50, ISBN: 0–415–09464X

Changing Tools: Case Studies in the History of Scientific Methodology, Marta Feher, 1995. Adademiai Kiado £23.17, ISBN: 9630567288

Evolutionary Naturalism, Michael Ruse, 1995, London, Routledge pp. 316, hb £35, ISBN 0–415–08997–2

Knowledge and the Body‐Mind Problem: in Defence of Interaction, Sir Karl Popper, 1994 London, Routledge ix+ 158 pp., hb £25; £10.99 pb, ISBN: 0–415–11504–3

Whys and Ways of Science, Peter J. Riggs, 1992 Melbourne University Press ix + 235 pp., £11.95, ISBN: 0522844715

Rethinking Objectivity, Aixan Megill, Ed., 1994 Durham and London, Duke University Press ix +342pp., £43.50, ISBN: 0822314797

Projective Probability, James Logue, 1995 Clarendon Press xiii+ 171 pp., £24.75, ISBN: 0198239599

Self‐motion: from Aristotle to Newton, M. L. Gill & J. G. Lennox (Eds), 1994 Princeton, New Jersey, Princeton University Press xxi + 367 pp., £36.50, ISBN: 0–691–03235–1     

Panic Disorder: Cognitive Behavioral and Pharmacological Treatment Strategies

The past decade has seen significant advances in both psychosocial, notably cognitive behavioral (CBT), and pharmacological treatments for panic disorder. Given the widely acknowledged efficacy of both forms of treatment, it is reasonable to consider that the combination of approaches should yield an extremely potent strategy to treating panic disorder. The present report summarizes scientific evidence for the singular and combined treatment approaches to panic disorder. Data across studies indicate that combined treatments yield immediate and short-term benefits above those provided by either pharmacologic treatment or CBT alone. In the long-term, however, these benefits disappear. In fact, the combination of benzodiazepines and CBT appears to produce poorer end-state functioning than CBT alone. Other data indicate that the sequencing of pharmacotherapy and CBT may be useful for benzodiazepine fading. Although these data are preliminary, combined treatments do not appear to be the treatment of choice for patients with panic disorder. Treatment algorithms are suggested based on existing data.     

The effect of the Müller-Lyer illusion on map reading

One important reason for studying visual illusions is that they can influence real-world perception as people interact with human-made displays. Three experiments examined how the Müller-Lyer illusion affects distance judgments and decision-making in the complex graphical context of a map by having subjects estimate the lengths of road segment lines framed by inward-going or outward-going wings in actual maps, in control displays that had the map context removed, and in simulated maps. The experiments showed that (1) outward-going wings led to higher distance estimates than did inward-going wings to the same extent both with and without the map context, (2) decisions based on distances determined from maps were affected by Müller-Lyer elements in the maps, and (3) map readers’ measurement behavior influenced the effect of the Müller-Lyer elements in maps. The discussion focuses on how certain display manipulations and task manipulations affect the Müller-Lyer illusion. In addition, the discussion addresses the instances in which using a map might be affected by misestimation due to Müller-Lyer elements.     

Comparison of deaf and hearing children on body-object localization.

20 profoundly deaf and 20 normal hearing children from ages 10 to 13 were compared as to their ability to locate visually the position of apparent vertical and the apparent location of the longitudinal axis of the body under erect and 30 degrees left and right body-tilt. Both deaf and normal hearing children were able accurately to locate a rod to the apparent visual vertical, but deaf children were significantly more accurate in aligning a rod to their apparent body-position than hearing children. This finding is discussed from both a learning view and from a hypothesis of developmental lag.     

Semantic expectancy effects on word access

Summary Access to word-representations in memory was studied in an experiment that used a lexical decision task: Ss had to decide whether a string of letters was a word or a nonword. Independent variables were context-similarity and semantic expectancy. The former is defined in terms of the categorical relationship that holds between a set of context words and the subsequently presented test word. The second refers to the cue-value given to subjects as to the likelihood with which related or unrelated test words would be presented. Cue-values did not provide information on the likelihood with which word or nonword decisions were required, but only on the most probable semantic relationship holding among context and test words. In theory, Meyer and Ellis' (1970) race model for word access was extended for the present purpose. It is shown that the two search processes assumed to mediate lexical access interfere on the basis of limited processing capacity, at least under the special conditions prevailing during the experiment. Furthermore, it is shown that Ss effectively manage to control the point in time at which they decide to issue a nonword response. Cuing for related test words tends to produce faster nonword decisions than cuing for unrelated words.This paper reports work that was conceived and begun at Stanford University, Calif., USA, where the author spent a year as a post-doctoral fellow. This fellowship was made possible by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Bad Godesberg, Federal Republic of Germany, Grant Schm 350/1. I am grateful to R.C. Atkinson, S. Monsell, P. Matthews, and D. Vorberg for supporting this research in a number of ways.