The effects of interaction with the device described by procedural text on recall,true/false,and task performance

In two experiments, subjects interacted to different extents with relevant devices while reading two complex multistep procedural texts and were then tested with task performance time, true/false, and recall measures. While reading, subjects performed the task (read and do), saw the experimenter perform the task (read and see experimenter do), imagined doing the task (read and imagine), looked at the device while reading (read and see), or only read (read only). Van Dijk and Kintsch’s (1983) text representation theory led to the prediction that exposure to the task device (in the read-and-do, read-and-see, and read-and-see-experimenter-do conditions) would lead to the development of a stronger situation model and therefore faster task performance, whereas the read-only and read-andsee conditions would lead to a better textbase, and therefore better performance on the true/false and recall tasks. Paivio’s (1991) dual coding theory led to the opposite prediction for recall. The results supported the text representation theory with task performance and recall. The read-and-see condition produced consistently good performance on the true/false measure. Amount of text study time contributed to recall performance. These findings support the notion that information available while reading leads to differential development of representations in memory, which, in turn, causes differences in performance on various measures.     

Psychotherapeutinnen und Psychotherapeuten und ihr Beruf

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Extraversion and rapid tapping: reactive inhibition or general cortical activation as determinants of performance differences

Two samples of subjects (n_tot = 22) scoring high or low on EPI-E tapped a morse-key as fast as possible over a 2-min period. As predicted, extraverts showed a lower tapping performance than introverts with differences between groups increasing significantly over time due to greater delays among the extraverts. Within the E dimension tapping differences could be shown to depend significantly only on the subfactor impulsiveness but not on sociability. There were no differences between groups, however, in frequency of involuntary rest pauses. Therefore the effects of extraversion on tapping performance should be explained more in terms of underlying differences in cortical arousal level than in terms of intermittent blocks as part of inhibitory potentials.     

Effects of semantic and nonsemantic cued orienting tasks on associative clustering in free recall

Memory & Cognition - During presentation of a randomized list of nonadjacent associative pairs, Ss heard a cue after each word designating the task to be performed. All Ss performed two tasks....     

Evidence for visual persistence during saccadic eye movements

Summary 1. The persistence of visual perception was investigated under conditions of visual fixation as well as eye movement. The Ss' task was to discriminate brief double light impulses; their responses were recorded as a function of the duration of the interstimulus interval. Based on these data the critical interstimulus interval was calculated, which yielded equal response frequencies for the perception of one or two stimuli upon presentation of double light pulses.2. In the condition of visual fixation the two stimuli could not be discriminated until the mean value of interstimulus interval exceeded 73 msec. In the condition with eye movements, when the first stimulus was presented in the parafoveal region of the retina before the beginning of the saccade and the second stimulus in the foveal region just after termination of the eye movement, this duration was shown to be statistically of the same magnitude (76 msec).3. Possible alternative interpretations of this latter result, e.g., that it could be explained in terms of masking or saccadic suppression rather than visual persistence was discussed; it was attempted to invalidate such explanations by means of three control experiments.4. The main result, the persistence of visual perception during voluntary eye movements, was discussed in relation to the problem of spatial and temporal stability of visual perception.I thank Prof. Dr. H.W. Wendt for support in correcting the English translation.     

Feature analyzers for the phonetic dimensionstop vs. continuant

Perception of sounds along the phonetic dimensionstop vs. continuant was studied by means of a selective adaptation procedure. Subjects first identified a series of synthetic consonant-vowel syllables whose formant transitions varied in duration, slope, and amplitude characteristics. They were perceived as either [ba] or [wa]. After the initial identification test, an adapting stimulus was presented repeatedly, and then the subjects again identified the original test series. Adapting with a stop (either [ba] or [da]) led to a decrease in the number of test stimuli identified as [ba], whereas adapting with the continuant sound [wa] led to an increase in the number of [ba] identification responses. Removing the vowel portion of an adapting stimulus greatly reduced the identification shift only when the resulting stimulus was no longer perceived as speech-like. A reduction in the number of [ba] identifications occurred even when a nonspeech “stop” (the sound of a plucked string) was used as the adapting stimulus, suggesting that phonetic processing is not a necessary condition for an adaptation effect.     

The formation of a semantic network by induction

Summary A semantic network describing the relations between ten words has been elaborated. The raw-data for the formation of the network were 660 natural-language sentences gained in the following experiment: The ten words were presented to 12 Ss, single, in pairs, and in triplets. Ss had to form, for each given combination, a sentence containing the presented words. The sentences gained by this method were parsed and got uniform codings. Each stimulus word then has been assigned to a node, containing all words or parts of sentences to which it was related in the sentences. Nodes with similar contents have been subsumed under a higher-level node containing the relations which are common to it's constituents. The reaction times in sentence formation strongly depend on the relations between the words in the semantic network. The correlation between association strengths and the proximities between the words in the semantic network augments to 0.70. The limitations due to the purely inductive approach in the formation of the network are discussed.

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Zusammenfassung Es wurde ein semantisehes Netzwerk aufgebaut, welches die bedeutungsmäßigen Beziehungen zwischen 10 Wörtern darstellt. Die Ausgangsdaten für die Bildung des Netzwerkes bildeten experimentell gewonnene Sätze der natürlichen Sprache: 12 Versuchspersonen erhielten die 10 Wörter einzeln, in Paaroder Dreierkombinationen dargeboten und mußten Sätze bilden, in denen diese Wörter oder Wortkombinationen vorkommen. Die so gewonnenen 660 Sätze wurden in einem einheitlichen grammatischen System kodiert. Für jedes der 10 Stimuluswörter wurde darauf ein sog. Knoten aufgebaut; dieser enthält alle Wörter und Satzteile, die bei der Satzbildung zum Stimuluswort in Beziehung gesetzt wurden. Knoten mit ähnlichem Inhalt wurden unter Oberbegriffe subsumiert. Solche Knoten höherer Ordnung enthalten alle diejenigen Wörter und Wortgruppen, die bei den Knoten niedriger Ordnung gemeinsam vorkommen. Es kann gezeigt werden, daß die Reaktionszeiten bei der Satzbildung von den Relationen zwischen den Wörtern im semantischen Netzwerk abhängen. Die Korrelation zwischen den Assoziationsstärken zwischen den Stimuluswörtern einerseits und deren Nähe im semantischen Netzwerk andererseits beträgt 0.70. Die Beschränktheit eines ausschließlich induktiven Vorgehens beim Aufbau von semantischen Netzwerken wird diskutiert.

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This research was supported by a grant of the Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung.