Cuing effects and associative information in recognition memory

Item recognition requires discrimination of studied words from nonstudied words. Associative recognition requires subjects to discriminate studied word groups from recombinations of words from different groups. Cued recognition requires the same old-new discrimination as item recognition, but list items are presented as cues along with the test item. The results from three experiments show (1) little or no effect of cuing for low-frequency words, but (2) positive cuing effects for high-frequency words; (3) increasing levels of overall performance with increases in study time, but (4) unchanging effects of cuing with study time; and (5) stronger positive cuing effects for two cues than for one cue. Five models (Independent Cue Model, Matrix model, MINERVA 2, SAM, and TODAM) were fit to the data of Experiment 1. Each model has trouble with at least one aspect of the results. Theoretical implications and modifications are discussed at length.     

Effects of communication apprehension,familiarity of partner,and topic on selected “women's language” features

In keeping with Lakoff's (1975) notion that the use of women's language (WL) conveys uncertainty on the part of the speaker, the influence of communication apprehension, familiarity of partner, and topic on the use of selected WL forms was investigated. In dyadic conversation with a female friend or stranger, 71 female university students, who had completed the Personal Report of Communication Apprehension—Long, discussed a familiar or an unfamiliar topic. Multiple-regression analyses revealed that (1) communication apprehension was positively related to the use of question intonation, (2) familiarity of topic and partner were negatively related to the use of hedges, and (3) familiarity of topic was positively related to the use of intensifiers. There were no intercorrelations of the linguistic forms. These results challenge the notion that WL forms actually cohere to form a kind of language and suggest that the influence of social and psychological variables on the use of WL is much more complex and multifaceted than Lakoff believed.This article is based on portions of an Honour's thesis completed by the second author, and was presented at the Annual Convention of the Canadian Psychological Association held in Ottawa, Ontario, June 1990.     

Non-consequentialism, the person as an end-in-itself, and the significance of status

Recently, several outstanding discussions of the structure of non-consequentialism have appeared. Two of these are Shelly Kagan's The Limits of Morality and a pair of articles by Warren Quinn, "Actions, Intentions, and Consequences: the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing" and "Actions, Intentions, and Consequences: the Doctrine of Double Effect." I would like to examine several related issues discussed by these authors. Another outstanding work to which I will refer in this article, but not discuss at great length, is Judith Jarvis Thomson's The Realm of Rights. The general topic with which I shall be concerned is the structure of a non-consequentialist moral theory. Non-consequentialism has two important features. In a non-consequentialist moral theory, (1) there is a permission not to maximize overall best consequences (this is sometimes referred to as an option), and (2) there are constraints on promoting overall best consequences (for example, we must not kill one innocent, non-threatening person for his organs to save five others). I shall use the works by Kagan, Quinn, and Thomson to help characterize further the elements of the non-consequentialist structure and to justify them.     

Context-dependent variation in social stereotyping 1: The effects of intergroup relations as mediated by social change and frame of reference

During the 1990-1991 Persian Gulf conflict an experiment was conducted with Australian university students (N = 200) to investigate whether the social stereotyping of Americans varied with social contextual manipulations related to the hostilities. The study, conducted in two phases at the start and end of the conflict, examined how the assignment of standard stereotypical traits to Americans was affected (a) by the large-scale social change constituted by the war and (b) by variation in the frame of reference provided by relevant comparison groups. The elicited stereotypes were sensitive to both of these contextual variables, demonstrating significant variation and fluidity. Overall, stereotypes of Americans were relatively negative. They were significantly more negative (a) at the end of the war than at the beginning in the restricted frame (when Australia and Britain were comparison groups) and (b) in the first phase of the conflict when the frame was extended to include Iraq as a comparison group. The findings were in line with expectations derived from self-categorization theory (Turner, 1985) that the social categorization of self and other into ingroup and outgroup is inherently variable, comparative and context-dependent. They question the long-held view of stereotypes as fixed, rigid and resistant to change.     

Rubbing your stomach while tapping your fingers: interference between motor planning and semantic judgments.

Previous research (Klatzky et al., 1989) shows that the time required to make sensible/nonsensible judgments about an action-object phrase (e.g., "rub your stomach") is reliably faster when the phrase is preceded by a cure representing a specific prototypical hand shape (vs. a neutral cue). The current experiments investigated the effects of preparing for an alternate task (finger tapping vs. syllable vocalization) on facilitatory priming of sensibility judgments. Preparation for finger tapping reduced the magnitude of the priming effect more than preparation for vocalization, suggesting that resources accessed during semantic processing of action-object phrases are also used during manual response preparation. The results support the existence of a system representing manual actions that is limited in the number of activities that can be represented at one time and that is not so general that it represents manual and vocal tract movements.     

Musical duplex perception: perception of figurally good chords with subliminal distinguishing tones.

In a variant of duplex perception with speech, phoneme perception is maintained when distinguishing components are presented below intensities required for separate detection, forming the basis for the claim that a phonetic module takes precedence over nonspeech processing. This finding is replicated with music chords (C major and minor) created by mixing a piano fifth with a sinusoidal distinguishing tone (E or E flat). Individual threshold intensities for detecting E or E flat in the context of the fixed piano tones are established. Chord discrimination thresholds defined by distinguishing tone intensity were determined. Experiment 2 verified masked detection thresholds and subliminal chord identification for experienced musicians. Accurate chord perception was maintained at distinguishing tone intensities nearly 20 dB below the threshold for separate detection. Speech and music findings are argued to demonstrate general perceptual principles.     

Influence of animation on dynamical judgments.

The motions of objects in the environment reflect underlying dynamical constraints and regularities. The conditions under which people are sensitive to natural dynamics are considered. In particular, the article considers what determines whether observers can distinguish canonical and anomalous dynamics when viewing ongoing events. The extent to which such perceptual appreciations are integrated with and influence common-sense reasoning about mechanical events is examined. It is concluded that animation evokes accurate dynamical intuitions when there is only 1 dimension of information that is of dynamical relevance. This advantage is lost when the observed motion reflects higher dimension dynamics or when the kinematic information is removed or degraded.     

The sum of the parts does not equal the whole: evidence from bihemispheric processing.

The 5 experiments in this article examine whether bihemispheric processing can be predicted from the processing observed when information is directed initially to just 1 hemisphere. Ss decided if laterally presented words rhymed with a previously presented central target. Trials varied in the degree to which the information displayed was redundant. On some trials, the same word appeared twice; in others, different words appeared, but they both led to the same decision; and finally, on some trials, different words appeared, each of which also led to a different decision. The patterns found for unilateral and bilateral trials were distinct. Furthermore, the pattern observed on bilateral trials could not be predicted from that found on unilateral trials, suggesting that interhemispheric interaction cannot be surmised from observing a hemisphere processing information in relative isolation.     

Temporal accent structure and the remembering of filmed narratives.

Effects of temporal accent structure on the remembering of filmed narratives were examined by varying the placement and number of commercial breaks. Commercials either highlighted a story's underlying organization by occurring between major episode boundaries (i.e., at breakpoint locations) or obscured this structural arrangement by occurring within episodes (i.e., at nonbreakpoints). Relative to the accentuation of nonbreakpoints, results indicated that the attentional highlighting of episode boundaries yielded higher recall and recognition performance and better memory for temporal order information and details from the story's plot. Selective recall and recognition of breakpoint scenes was significantly higher than that of nonbreakpoints, suggesting that people use episode boundaries as referents for attending and remembering. These findings illustrate certain structural invariants across environmental events and ways in which event structure can be used in remembering.     

Automatic and attentional priming in young and older adults: reevaluation of the two-process model.

Three experiments addressed the distinction between automatic and attentional mechanisms underlying semantic priming effects by factorially crossing prime-target relatedness, expectancy, and SOA in a task (pronunciation) that minimized postlexical checking processes. Also, possible age-related (young vs. older adults) differences in the automatic and attentional mechanisms were addressed. Across all experiments there was evidence of a Relatedness x Expectancy x SOA interaction, which is inconsistent with the notion of independent automatic and attentional mechanisms in semantic priming and the notion of a self-encapsulated modular lexicon. The results also indicated age-related differences in the build-up of the expectancy effect across SOAs when the prime was visually available for only 200 ms, independently of the prime-target SOA (Experiments 1 and 3), but not when the prime was visually available throughout the SOA (Experiment 2).