The effect of context on discrimination and bias in recognition memory for pictures and words

When the context accompanying a to-be-remembered word is changed between study and test, recognition memory is impaired. The deleterious effect of context change on recognition memory can be viewed as support for encoding specificity theory, semantic theory, or the existence of two bases for recognition. A fourth possible interpretation, examined here, is that the effect of context change on recognition memory is due to an accompanying change in response bias, rather than a "true" decrease in sensitivity to old and new items. In two experiments, the effect of context change on discrimination and bias in recognition of simple line drawings and their names was examined. Bias was measured using two measures shown by Snodgrass and Corwin (1988) to be theoretically independent of their associated discrimination measures. Context change produced marked conservatism in response bias in both experiments but demonstrated an effect on discrimination in the second experiment only. The shift from a neutral to a conservative response strategy as a result of context change may also be seen in other experiments, in which the same experimental paradigm was used with a variety of stimulus materials. We suggest that the major effect of context manipulation is to produce a change in bias. A stimulus in a familiar environment appears to be more familiar than a stimulus in a strange environment, regardless of its old/new status. In addition, there appears to be a true decrease in discrimination with context change, but this is more difficult to detect. The finding that pictures, which are less polysemous than words, are as affected by context change as words are supports encoding specificity theory over semantic theory.     

Peer status and social competence in child psychiatric inpatients: A comparison of children with depressive,externalizing, and concurrent depressive and externalizing disorders

Social competence, peer status, and clinical symptomatology were evaluated in 54 child psychiatric inpatients. Aims were (a) to evaluate whether social competence deficits and peer rejection within an inpatient setting were associated with particular childhood disorders, and (b) to identify predictors of peer status in emerging groups of child inpatients. Results indicated that children with externalizing disorders (conduct or attention deficit disorders) and children with concurrent depressive and externalizing disorders were the most rejected, least liked, and least socially competent children. Depressed children without externalizing disorders had the highest scores on the social status and competence measures. Predictors of peer rejection and acceptance in the hospital differed, with measures of symptomatology predicting peer rejection, and measures of social and intellectual competence predicting peer acceptance. Implications of the results for understanding the role of peer adjustment and social competence in developmental psychopathology were discussed.This research was supported in part by Biomedical Research Support Grant RR756 awarded to the author. The author wishes to thank Donald Guthrie and Sondra Purdue for their statistical consultation, Gwen Gordon for her computer assistance, and Joan Trumbull for her assistance with data collection.     

Reaction to punishment, reflectivity, and passive avoidance learning in extraverts

Passive avoidance learning occupies a central role in accounts of disinhibited behavior, ranging from psychopaths' persistent criminality (Hare 1970) to extraverts' gregariousness (Gray, 1972). To explore the mechanism underlying passive avoidance deficits, we assessed the relation of extraversion, neuroticism, and response latency after punishment to passive avoidance learning by using two successive go/no go discrimination tasks. The tasks were designed to examine two aspects of subjects' reactions to punishment: response speed on trials immediately following punishment (Experiment 1) and time to terminate punishment feedback between successive trials (i.e., reflectivity; Experiment 2). Consistent with previous findings, the results of Experiment 1 showed that extraverts commit more passive avoidance errors than introverts do (Newman, Widom, & Nathan, 1985) and fail to pause following punished errors (Nichols & Newman, 1986). In Experiment 2, only neurotic extraverts displayed this pattern of performance differences. In both experiments, longer pausing following punishment predicted better learning from punishment for both introverts and extraverts. These results suggest that, in the presence of salient cues for reward, extraverts' characteristic reaction to punishment interferes with processing punished errors and may contribute to their more general propensity for impulsive, nonreflective action.     

Explaining the adult careers of dyslexic boys: Variations in critical skills for high-level jobs

Several hundred boys who were diagnosed as dyslexic (specifically reading disabled) in adolescence and who attended a private college preparatory school for dyslexics were followed up in adulthood. The occupations of these men, who were above average in both intelligence and socioeconomic background, were compared to those of both a control group and the general white male population. As hypothesized, the dyslexic men had higher level jobs than the average man but they were much less likely than the controls to become professionals. They rarely entered jobs such as physician, lawyer, or college teacher which require higher degrees; instead most became managers or salesmen. The occupational differences between the dyslexic and control men were related to, but not completely accounted for, by their large differences in educational attainment. Data on the competencies rated as critical to good job performance in different occupations were consistent with the hypothesis that dyslexic men would establish themselves in relatively high-level jobs emphasizing nonacademic rather than academic on-the-job skills. Nondisabled professionals rated getting information through reading among the most critical of the skills required on their jobs. In contrast, managers and salesmen rated reading as less important than nonacademic competencies such as taking initiative and responsibility or being persuasive. The results illustrate the value of knowing more about the particular competencies required in different jobs in order to help members of special groups, particularly those such as dyslexies who have specific and enduring handicaps but who are otherwise intellectually normal.     

Acquisition and use of spelling-sound correspondences in reading

The acquisition and use of knowledge concerning the spelling-sound correspondences of English were evaluated by having children read words and nonwords that contained regular and homographic spelling patterns. Regular spelling patterns are associated with a single pronunciation (e.g., -UST as in MUST); homographic patterns have multiple pronunciations (e.g., -OSE as in HOSE, DOSE, LOSE). Analyses of errors, latencies, and pronunciations provided evidence for two complementary developmental processes: good beginning readers rapidly learn to recognize high-frequency words from visual input alone, while at the same time they are expanding and consolidating their knowledge of spelling-sound correspondences. Younger and poor readers rely more on phonological information in word decoding, as evidenced by their particular difficulty reading homographic spelling patterns. Poor readers do not appear to use a radically different strategy for reading words: their perfomance is similar to that of younger, good readers.     

Children's numerical skill and judgments of confidence in estimation

This study investigated how children's fluent use of a basic numerical skill is related to their perceptions of confidence on a task of quantitative estimation. One hundred four 10th graders (age 15.7 years) were categorized according to level of numerical fluency as assessed by timed tasks of counting in various nonunity increments. They then made estimates of large numbers of dots and rated how confident they were on each trial. The estimation task varied according to two within-subject factors of task difficulty. It was found that counting skill was related not only to accuracy in estimating, but also to the appropriateness of the children's confidence in their responses. Skillful children made judgments that corresponded with actual task difficulty. A derived calibration score corroborated ANOVA findings of the interaction of skill level and task difficulty on confidence ratings. It also revealed that while girls were less confident than boys, they were actually more realistic in their judgments. Findings are discussed in terms of (a) the effect of stimulus knowledge on awareness of task difficulty and (b) sex differences in achievement-related expectancies.     

Differentiation and decrement in the Mueller-Lyer illusion

Two experiments were conducted to test the hypothesis that decrement of the Mueller-Lyer illusion with inspection is due to learning to differentiate the test element from the accessory lines. In one experiment, the test element is predifferentiated for the observer by means of configurational variations and in the other by restriction of attention. Although the initial magnitude of the illusion is found to be inversely proportional to the amount of predifferentiation, the slopes of the decrement curves are not affected.     

Matching patterns vs matching digits: The effect of memory dependence and complexity on “same”-“different” reaction times

Two experiments are reported in which “same”-“different” reaction times (RTs) were collected to pairs of stimuli. In Experiment 1 stimuli were matrix patterns, and in Experiment 2 stimuli were digits. In both experiments, the pairs were presented simultaneously (discrimination task) and successively (memory task) for a set of nine simple and a set of nine complex stimuli. The following results were obtained: discrimination RTs were longer than memory RTs; RTs to complex stimuli were longer than RTs to simple stimuli; “same” RTs were faster than “different” RTs across all conditions except simple pattern discrimination, for which “different” RTs were faster than “same” RTs; and discrimination RTs for complex patterns were longer than would be predicted from the other conditions. Some evidence was obtained that the form of encoding for both patterns and digits in the memory task was visual. These results are discussed in terms of encoding and comparison strategies.