On the locus of the stimulus suffix effect

Two experiments contrasted short-term memory and sensory memory (precategorical acoustic storage) explanations of the stimulus suffix effect. Experiment 1 attempted to interfere with recency recall by forcing subjects to encode nonverbal acoustic suffixes into a verbal, articulatory code. Subjects in this condition showed recall that was comparable to that of subjects who were told to ignore the suffixes. However, Experiment 2 showed that silently mouthed articulation of a suffix can produce interference on recall of recency items, although not as much as that produced by vocal articulation. The results are discussed in terms of current models of the stimulus suffix effect.     

What does naming a picture do? Effects of prior picture naming on recognition of identical and same-name alternatives

Three experiments investigated the effects of naming pictures of objects during study on the subsequent recognition of physically identical, name-match, and new objects. Prior naming improved correct classification of all three item types at recognition. For line drawings and for photographs of functionally distinct objects, prior naming reduced the tendency to confuse identical and same-name alternatives. In Experiment 2, prior naming eliminated the right visual field/left hemisphere advantage for speeded recognition of name-match pictures, suggesting that prior naming reduces the likelihood that pictures are named at recognition. The implications of these results for dual-encoding (Paivio, 1971) and sensory-semantic (Nelson, Reed, & McEvoy, 1977) models of picture and word processing are discussed. The results suggest that the semantic representations of objects that are perceptually distinct but share a common name are not identical, and that the effect of naming such objects is to insure that a distinct semantic representation becomes a part of the resulting memory code.     

Place information in multidigit number comparison

How do we use place information in a number comparison task involving multidigit numbers? In four experiments, subjects identified stimulus numbers as larger or smaller than the number 5,000 in a choice reaction time task. As the difference between the number of places in the stimulus number and the number of places in the standard decreased, response time and errors significantly increased. When the number of places was held constant, the type of numeric information extracted depended on the value of the standard (5,000 or 5,555). In some cases, irrelevant place information affected choice time.     

Minor physical anomalies in exceptional children: A review and critique of research

The study of the relationship between physical characteristics and behavior is placed in historical context. Current research concerned with the implications of minor physical anomalies is reviewed. Anomalies, measurement considerations, relationship between anomalies and selected characteristics, methodological issues, and underlying assumptions are examined. Conclusions and suggestions for future research are provided.     

Pantomime recognition defect in aphasia: implications for the concept of asymbolia

This study investigated the relationship of impaired pantomime recognition to reading comprehension, sound recognition, letter recognition, and nonverbal abstract reasoning among aphasic patients. Defects in pantomime recognition were closely associated with defects in reading comprehension, but some with impaired pantomime recognition performed well on some or all of the remaining tests. Implications of the findings for the theory of asymbolia, and for reading comprehension are discussed.     

Antecedents of fluent and dysfluent oral reading: A descriptive analysis

Utilizing the method of repeated observations of a single subject, 18 oral reading samples were obtained from a fluent male child. Observations were made when the child was 5.6 to 6.1 yr of age. The reading material contained varying amounts of words neither understood nor produced by the child. Taped samples were analyzed for antecedents and consequences of fluent and dysfluent events, and extraneous verbal and nonverbal stimulus-response sequences. The analysis revealed the presence of five antecedents of dysfluencies: (1) poor lexical control, (2) competing stimulus-response sequences, (3) intraverbal break, (4) poor prosodic control, and (5) unusually strong intraverbal control. The results also suggested that fluency may be a function of appropriate, sequential, discriminative, stimulus control, adequate intraverbal and prosodic control in the absence of overbearing intraverbal control and interfering stimulus-response sequences.     

Constraints on strategy construction in a speeded discrimination task

In three experiments, subjects reported the identity of a word (above or below) that appeared above or below a fixation point. On some trials, a cue presented 100, 200, 400, 600, 800, or 1,000 msec before the word indicated the relation between position and identity (i.e., whether the dimensions were compatible, e.g., above/above and below/below, or conflicted, e.g., above/below and below/above). On the other trials, the cue was withheld (Experiment 2) or it bore no information about the relation between dimensions (Experiment 1 and 3). In each experiment, the cue reduced reaction time below the level of no-cue or neutral-cue controls, indicating strategic use of the relation between dimensions. Experiments 1 and 2 manipulated the number of potential cues that could occur in a block. A stronger cuing effect was found when one cue could occur (Experiment 2) than when two cues could occur (Experiment 1). Experiment 3 manipulated practice; it revealed that with practice the cuing effect reached asymptote at shorter delays. The asymptote itself did not change. Experiment 4 showed that cue-delay effects were independent of warning interval (warning interval and cue delay confounded in Experiment 1, 2, and 3). The experiments demonstrate construction and utilization of strategies; they show that construction is sensitive to constraints imposed by the subject's goals and abilities and by the structure of the task environment.     

Reading with and without eye movements: reply to Just, Carpenter, and Woolley

Just, Carpenter, and Woolley propose that measures of single-word processing times, such as gaze durations during normal reading or durations of reader-controlled exposures, can be used both for developing theories of comprehension and for determining the course of new reading technologies. We argue that better understanding of comprehension processes does not necessarily follow from observed correlations between text variables and eye-fixation parameters. Further, recent rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) research suggests that eye fixation data obtained from studies of normal reading might have little practical value in optimizing the readability of RSVP displays and other means of text presentation.