The total time hypothesis,recall strategies,and memory for rapidly presented word strings

In three experiments the free recall of rapidly presented word strings was studied. The word strings were shown either in grammatical order or a scrambled order. It was found that the invariance of recall with various presentation times for grammatical sequences breaks down at presentation times between 175 and 250 msec. The order of recall, however, remains consistent with the type of sequence presented irrespective of presentation time. The amount of time requked to utilize syntactic information fully in free recall is of approximately the same order of magnitude as that required to read the words.     

A “labial” feature analyzer in speech perception

A selective adaptation experiment was conducted to determine the ability of various adapting stimuli to alter the perception of a series of 13 synthetic speech syllables. The synthetic test syllables, which varied acoustically in the starting frequency and direction of second- and third-formant transitions, included stop consonant distinctions ofplace of articulation for the syllable types [bae], [dae], and [gae]. A systematic adaptation effect was produced in the locus of the bae-bae phonetic boundary for these stimuli after repetitive listening to each of the following adapting syllables: [bae], [p^hae], [mae], and [vae], indicating that perception ofplace distinctions among the stop consonants can be altered even by repetitive listening to certain speech sounds not belonging to the stop-consonant class.     

Experimental analysis of coding processes

The first part of the paper reports an investigation of the effects of the concreteness-imagery (C-I) value of stimuli and responses on the long-term retention of paired-associate lists. With degree of learning equated, the measures of retention after a 1-week interval showed a significant interaction of Stimulus by Response C-I: When the responses had a high value, recall was substantially better with low than with high stimuli; when the responses were low, there was no reliable difference as a function of stimulus value. Recall was best when abstract stimuli were paired with concrete responses. The second part of the paper is addressed to some current issues in the analysis of coding processes. Major emphasis is placed on the experimental and theoretical differentiation of encoding and decoding processes.     

Empathy: Its effect on how counsellors are perceived

The importance of sex of counsellor, ethnicity, empathy and client-counsellor sex-pairings on clients' perceptions of the counsellor was investigated. 96 students were asked to rate black or white, male or female, and empathic or non-empathic counsellors, on attractiveness, expertness and trustworthiness. Contrary to previous research, sex of the counsellor, and sex of student-counsellor pairings, had no significant effect on counsellor ratings. Ethnicity of counsellor - which has been largely ignored in research until recently - was found to be a highly signifcant factor in students' ratings of the counsellor: black counsellors were rated significantly higher than white counsellors on attractiveness, expertness and trustworthiness. The importance of empathy as a requisite for the counselling process was supported: counsellors were rated higher on all three variables if they used an empathic approach. There were no interaction effects between the variables.     

The effects of slowed speech on auditory comprehension in aphasia

The present study investigates the effects of slowed speech on auditory comprehension in aphasia. Specifically, an attempt was made to isolate the effects of added time on comprehension at the language processing stages of auditory perception, by increasing the duration of the vowel segments in each word; word recognition and semantic analysis, by adding silences between words; and syntactic analysis, by adding silences at constituent phrase boundaries. Sentences were also read at a slow rate to see the effects of naturally slowed speech on sentence comprehension. Test sentences consisted of simple active and passive declarative sentences, and complex sentences with embedded medial and final relative clauses. Sentences were either semantically reversible or nonreversible. Thirty-four aphasic patients who varied in both severity and type of aphasia were tested on a picture verification task. Results indicated that slowing facilitated language comprehension significantly only in the syntactic condition. Neither syntactic complexity nor semantic reversibility interacted with slowed speech to facilitate auditory language comprehension. Further, it was only the Wernicke's aphasics who showed significant improvement with time added at constituent boundaries. These results suggest that time alone does not facilitate language comprehension in aphasia, but that rather it is the interaction of time with syntactic processing which improves comprehension.     

Learning conversations: A person-centred approach to self-organised learning

A conversational approach to teaching and learning is described. Learning is viewed as a skill, which implies that individuals can learn how to learn. Awareness-raising techniques enable the development of new levels of competence. Significant improvements in reading, listening, thinking and feeling creatively, and in manual skills, have been achieved. A meta-language for articulating learning processes combines the functions of tutoring and counselling by focussing the learner's attention on reflection and review. To envisage the educational institution as a conversational network for personalising learning experiences involves fundamental changes in its aims and activities.     

Speaker information affects false recognition of unstudied lexical-semantic associates

Recognition of and memory for a spoken word can be facilitated by a prior presentation of that word spoken by the same talker. However, it is less clear whether this speaker congruency advantage generalizes to facilitate recognition of unheard related words. The present investigation employed a false memory paradigm to examine whether information about a speaker’s identity in items heard by listeners could influence the recognition of novel items (critical intruders) phonologically or semantically related to the studied items. In Experiment 1, false recognition of semantically associated critical intruders was sensitive to speaker information, though only when subjects attended to talker identity during encoding. Results from Experiment 2 also provide some evidence that talker information affects the false recognition of critical intruders. Taken together, the present findings indicate that indexical information is able to contact the lexical-semantic network to affect the processing of unheard words.     

Resilience facilitates positive emotionality and integration of negative memories in need satisfying memory networks: An experimental study

Resilience has been associated with the capacity to experience positive emotions in the midst of negative life events or following the recall of such events. Apparently, resilient people are able to self-generate those positive emotions because they tend to integrate and associate such past negative life events with other positive past events in memory networks. However, study designs on resilience have remained either cross-sectional or longitudinal. The causal effect of resilience on these outcomes remains to be shown as a third variable or unknown factor could be at play. In this study, we used a resilience intervention from a self-help clinical program to induce resilience and compared this condition against Jacobson type relaxation and neutral music background. Results showed that the resilience intervention increased positive emotionality following the recall of a negative self-defining memory and facilitated the integration of that memory within more positive and need satisfying memory networks.