Comprehension of main ideas and details in coherent and noncoherent discourse by aphasic and nonaphasic listeners

Aphasic and nonaphasic listeners' comprehension of main ideas and details within coherent and noncoherent narrative discourse was examined. Coherent paragraphs contained one topic to which all sentences in the paragraph related. Noncoherent paragraphs contained a change in topic with every third or fourth sentence. Each paragraph contained four main ideas and one or more details that related to each main idea. Listeners' responses to yes/no questions following each paragraph yielded the following results: (1) Nonaphasic listeners comprehended the paragraphs better than aphasic listeners. (2) Both aphasic and nonaphasic listeners comprehended main ideas better than they comprehended details. (3) Coherence did not affect comprehension of main ideas for either group. (4) Coherence did not affect comprehension of details by nonaphasic subjects. (5) Coherence affected comprehension of details by aphasic subjects, and their comprehension of details in coherent paragraphs was worse than their comprehension of details in noncoherent paragraphs. There was no significant correlation between Token Test scores and measures of paragraph comprehension.     

Sensitivity to lexical denotation and connotation in brain-damaged patients: A double dissociation?

Sets of words can be grouped in terms of their denotation (cold and warm both refer literally to temperature) or in terms of their connotation (cold and warm connote remoteness and intimacy, respectively). To assess whether these two facets of meaning are dissociable, unilaterally left- and right-hemisphere-damaged patients were presented with word triads and asked to group together the two words that were closest in meaning. Right-hemisphere-damaged patients showed a preserved sensitivity to denotation, and a selective insensitivity to connotative facets of meanings. In contrast, left-hemisphere-damaged patients exhibited a preserved sensitivity to connotation as well as a selective insensitivity to denotative aspects of meanings. Inasmuch as normal control subjects displayed a flexible sensitivity to both denotative and connotative aspects of meaning, the results suggest that unilateral brain damage selectively curtails use of one or the other major aspect of word meaning.     

Auditory perception of breaking and bouncing events: a case study in ecological acoustics

The mechanical events of bouncing and breaking are acoustically specified by single versus multiple damped quasi-periodic pulse patterns, with an initial noise burst in the case of breaking. Subjects show high accuracy in categorizing natural tokens of bouncing and breaking glass as well as tokens constructed by adjusting only the temporal patterns of components, leaving their spectral properties constant. Differences in average spectral frequency are, therefore, not necessary for perceiving this contrast, though differences in spectral consistency over successive pulses may be important. Initial noise corresponding to glass rupture appears unnecessary to categorize breaking and bouncing. The data indicate that higher order temporal properties of the acoustic signal provide information for the auditory perception of these events.     

Objects, parts, and categories

Concepts may be organized into taxonomies varying in inclusiveness or abstraction, such as furniture, table, card table or animal, bird, robin. For taxonomies of common objects and organisms, the basic level, the level of table and bird, has been determined to be most informative (Rosch, Mervis, Gray, Johnson, & Boyes-Braem, 1976). Psychology, linguistics, and anthropology have produced a variety of measures of perception, behavior, and communication that converge on the basic level. Here, we present data showing that the basic level differs qualitatively from other levels in taxonomies of objects and of living things and present an explanation for why so many measures converge at that level. We have found that part terms proliferate in subjects' listings of attributes characterizing category members at the basic level, but are rarely listed at a general level. At a more specific level, fewer parts are listed, though more are judged to be true. Basic level objects are distinguished from one another by parts, but members of subordinate categories share parts and differ from one another on other attributes. Informants agree on the parts of objects, and also on relative "goodness" of the various parts. Perceptual salience and functional significance both appear to contribute to perceived part goodness. Names of parts frequently enjoy a duality not evident in names of other attributes; they refer at once to a particular appearance and to a particular function. We propose that part configuration underlies the various empirical operations of perception, behavior, and communication that converge at the basic level. Part configuration underlies the perceptual measures because it determines the shapes of objects to a large degree. Parts underlie the behavioral tasks because most of our behaviors is indirect toward parts of objects. Labeling appears to follow the natural breaks of perception and behavior; consequently, part configuration also underlies communication measures. Because elements of more abstract taxonomies, such as scenes and events, can also be decomposed into parts, this analysis provides a bridge to organization in other domains of knowledge. Knowledge organization by parts (partonomy) is contrasted to organization by kinds (taxonomy). Taxonomies serve to organize numerous classes of entities and to allow inference from larger sets to sets included in them. Partonomies serve to separate entities into their structural components and to organize knowledge of function by components of structure. The informativeness of the basic level may originate from the availability of inference from structure to function at that level.     

Integrating pictorial information across eye movements

Six experiments are reported dealing with the types of information integrated across eye movements in picture perception. A line drawing of an object was presented in peripheral vision, and subjects made an eye movement to it. During the saccade, the initially presented picture was replaced by another picture that the subject was instructed to name as quickly as possible. The relation between the stimulus on the first fixation and the stimulus on the second fixation was varied. Across the six experiments, there was about 100-130 ms facilitation when the pictures were identical compared with a control condition in which only the target location was specified on the first fixation. This finding clearly implies that information about the first picture facilitated naming the second picture. Changing the size of the picture from one fixation to the next had little effect on naming time. This result is consistent with work on reading and low-level visual processes in indicating that pictorial information is not integrated in a point-by-point manner in an integrated visual buffer. Moreover, only about 50 ms of the facilitation for identical pictures could be attributed to the pictures having the same name. When the pictures represented the same concept (e.g., two different pictures of a horse), there was a 90-ms facilitation effect that could have been the result of either the visual or conceptual similarity of the pictures. However, when the pictures had different names, only visual similarity produced facilitation. Moreover, when the pictures had different names, there appeared to be inhibition from the competing names. The results of all six experiments are consistent with a model in which the activation of both the visual features and the name of the picture seen on the first fixation survive the saccade and combine with the information extracted on the second fixation to produce identification and naming of the second picture.     

Teachers do not Deal in Widgets

Although the use of merit pay, incentive pay, bonus pay, and job promotion are well-established measures in the private or corporate sector of American society, few examples of successful teacher merit pay systems exist. In 1983, the Eastern Washington University Department of Education surveyed six major private corporations to determine whether corporate merit pay programs could be applied to teachers and educational institutions. Survey findings suggest several reasons why merit pay programs for teachers will probably fail: (a) lack of monetary goals; (b) the necessity for subjective evaluation, which requires multiple measurement devices, extensive supervision, and time; (c) the absence of a many-tiered corporate structure in most educational institutions; and (d) increased supervisory direction that could stifle creativity and flexibility.     

A word’s meaning affects the decision in lexical decision

The influence of an isolated word’s meaning on lexical decision reaction time (RT) was demonstrated through four experiments. Subjects in two experiments made lexical decision judgments, those in a third experiment pronounced the words used in the lexical decision task, and those in a fourth experiment quickly pronounced their first associative response to the words. Differences in lexical access time for the words were measured with the pronunciation task, and differences in meaning were assessed with the association task. Multiple regression analyses of lexical decision RT were conducted using associative RT, pronunciation RT, and other target word properties (printed frequency, length, instance dominance, and number of dictionary meanings) as predictor variables. These analyses revealed a relationship between lexical decision RT and associative RT after the effects of other variables had been partialed out. In addition, word frequency continued to have a significant relationship to lexical decision RT beyond that shared with pronunciation RT and the other variables. The results of these experiments indicate that at least some of the effect of word meaning and word frequency in lexical decision is attributable to a decision stage following lexical access.     

Childhood aggression and social adjustment as antecedents of delinquency

A sample of 2,453 grade school children were followed into young adulthood through record sources. Teacher interviews provided information about low-peer-status children that was assessed in relation to subsequent delinquency for both sexes and young adult criminality for males. A multivariate design evaluated the joint effects of social class, a measure of family disturbance, and childhood problem behavior factors as antecedents of delinquency. Childhood aggression emerged as the most prominent antecedent factor for males but not for females. Social class and family disturbance were associated with aggression but did not have significant direct effects on delinquency. Aggression was related to severity of delinquency. Dispositional status, reflecting severity, was the best indicator of which delinquent males would have adult criminal records. A causal model is presented.The study was supported by a grant from the Scottish Rite Schizophrenia Research Program, N.M.J., U.S.A. Portions of the study were presented at the Life History Research conference in Monterey, California, 1981. The authors wish to thank June White, Cindy Hanson, and Ned Worell for their help in conducting this research. Data for this research was originally gathered by Merrill Roff. Follow-up data were contributed by Ronald Peek, Donald Bamber, Charles Watson, Shiela Makie, William S. Ward, Edward S. Posey, Chris Hemlabs, and Harriet Barnes.