CROSS-LANGUAGE DIFFERENCES IN DICHOTIC LISTENING*

Greater right ear advantage in dichotic listening to English-spoken digits among English-speakers than among Japanese- and Hebrew-speakers (Hatta and Dimond 1981; Nachshon 1986) was attributed either to effects of linguistic properties of the respective native languages, or to the sequence of language acquisition. In order to evaluate the two alternative hypotheses, 112 English-Hebrew and 140 Hebrew-English bilinguals recalled a series of three-digit dichotic sets. Differential ear advantages were expected on the basis of the two hypotheses. Data analysis showed, however, that while recall was better for digits spoken in the native than in the non-native languages, no significant differences in right ear advantage between the two groups were found. Procedural effects might account for this result.     

Artificial eye for assessing corneal-reflection eye trackers

An artificial eye for assessing corneal-reflection eye trackers is described. The “eye” simulates an adult human eye and consists of a contact lens of the same curvature as the cornea.     

Assessing remote memory with an improved public events questionnaire

In the present research, public events recall and recognition tests were developed that appear to be psychometrically stronger than those used in the past. Following test construction, these tests were administered to older and middle-aged participants in order to examine the effects of chronological age and historical time period on memory for remote news events. Results indicated that middle-aged participants generally exhibited a better memory for news events than did older participants for the time periods that both age groups lived through. Across the life span, a common pattern was observed. Specifically, there was an increase in memory for events until the teenage years and fairly constant performance thereafter for both age groups. From these findings, we can clearly argue against a loss theory of remote memory. Some gender differences were observed on the recall and recognition tasks, but they were not as global or as frequent as Botwinick and Storandt (1980) suggested. The clinical potential of the remote memory tests is briefly considered.     

A research-based reconsideration of the psychoanalytic theory of dreaming.

We present a brief review of sleep research which, when combined with psychoanalytic experience, has led to the hypothesis that REM sleep and dreaming serve the function of adaptation by the process of integration of information. We then report the results of a study of dreams, based on this hypothesis. We studied dreams and their relation to waking mental activity and found a correlation between problems in manifest dreams and those in pre- and postsleep waking life. Dreams can be understood on the basis of problems that appear in them. We also found evidence for a relation between the solution of problems in dreams and the fate of those problems the next day. We discuss these findings in relation to some of the controversies about dreaming, and then present suggestions for future research.     

Relation between pronunciation and recognition of printed words in deep and shallow orthographies

The processes responsible for recognition and pronunciation of printed words were studied by means of lexical decision and naming experiments. Two languages were examined: English, which has a complex and deep correspondence between spelling and speech, and Serbo-Croatian, in which the correspondence is simple and direct. It was hypothesized that reliance on articulatory coding (instead of on mediation by the internal lexicon) would be greater for Serbo-Croatian because its shallow orthography would allow more efficient use of spelling-to-speech correspondences. Each target stimulus was preceded by a word that was either related or unrelated semantically. Semantic priming of target words facilitated performance in both lexical decision and naming for English, results suggesting an influence of the internal lexicon on both processes. In contrast, semantic priming facilitated only lexical decision for Serbo-Croatian, which suggests that naming, at least in that language, is not strongly influenced by the internal lexicon. Further, in Serbo-Croatian, lexical decision and naming latencies were correlated when both tasks were not semantically primed and were uncorrelated when either or both tasks received semantic priming. This suggested that articulatory coding is used in lexical decision, at least under conditions in which contextual semantic facilitation is absent. In contrast, in English, lexical decision and naming were correlated uniformly whether semantic facilitation was present or not, which, when considered with the effect of semantic facilitation on naming, suggested a stronger influence of the internal lexicon on both recognition and pronunciation.     

What does a person in a “TOT” state know that a person in a “don’t know” state doesn’t know

The purpose of this study was to examine the significance of Brown and McNeill’s (1966) findings regarding the “tip of the tongue” (TOT) phenomenon, A modified version of their procedure was used with 56 Ss. Although their findings that Ss in a TOT state can detect parts and properties of the missing word were generally replicated, a division of the TOT state into a variety of substates showed correct detection rate to vary greatly, depending on the substate involved. In addition, correct detection of partial information was demonstrated even when S declared he had no knowledge of the selected word (don’t know). It was suggested that a distinction be made between information detection based on knowledge of the characteristics common to the class of items of which the target is a member (“class detection”) and detection based on knowledge of characteristics specific to the target in question (“differential detection”). Both class and differential detection were found to obtain in TOT states as well as in the don’t know state. Some theoretical and methodological implications were suggested