Bias effects in facilitatory phonological priming

In four experiments, we examined the facilitation that occurs when spoken-word targets rhyme with preceding spoken primes. In Experiment 1, listeners' lexical decisions were faster to words following rhyming words (e.g., ramp-LAMP) than to words following unrelated primes (e.g., pink-LAMP). No facilitation was observed for nonword targets. Targets that almost rhymed with their primes (foils; e.g., bulk-SULSH) were included in Experiment 2; facilitation for rhyming targets was severely attenuated. Experiments 3 and 4 were single-word shadowing variants of the earlier experiments. There was facilitation for both rhyming words and nonwords; the presence of foils had no significant influence on the priming effect. A major component of the facilitation in lexical decision appears to be strategic: listeners are biased to say "yes" to targets that rhyme with their primes, unless foils discourage this strategy. The nonstrategic component of phonological facilitation may reflect speech perception processes that operate prior to lexical access.     

Fractional factorial designs for legal psychology

Researchers considering novel or exploratory psycholegal research are often able to easily generate a sizable list of independent variables (IVs) that might influence a measure of interest. Where the research question is novel and the literature is not developed, however, choosing from among a long list of potential variables those worthy of empirical investigation often presents a formidable task. Many researchers may feel compelled by legal psychology's heavy reliance on full-factorial designs to narrow the IVs under investigation to two or three in order to avoid an expensive and unwieldy design involving numerous high-order interactions. This article suggests that fractional factorial designs provide a reasonable alternative to full-factorial designs in such circumstances because they allow the psycholegal researcher to examine the main effects of a large number of factors while disregarding high-order interactions. An introduction to the logic of fractional factorial designs is provided and several examples from the social sciences are presented.     

Overestimation of heights in virtual reality is influenced more by perceived distal size than by the 2-D versus 3-D dimensionality of the display

One important aspect of the pictorial representation of a scene is the depiction of object proportions. Yang, Dixon, and Proffitt (1999 Perception 28 445-467) recently reported that the magnitude of the vertical-horizontal illusion was greater for vertical extents presented in three-dimensional (3-D) environments compared to two-dimensional (2-D) displays. However, because all of the 3-D environments were large and all of the 2-D displays were small, the question remains whether the observed magnitude differences were due solely to the dimensionality of the displays (2-D versus 3-D) or to the perceived distal size of the extents (small versus large). We investigated this question by comparing observers' judgments of vertical relative to horizontal extents on a large but 2-D display compared to the large 3-D and the small 2-D displays used by Yang et al (1999). The results confirmed that the magnitude differences for vertical overestimation between display media are influenced more by the perceived distal object size rather than by the dimensionality of the display.     

Maintaining proficient supervisor performance with direct support personnel: an analysis of two management approaches

A traditional management approach using indirect feedback was compared to an approach involving direct feedback for maintaining supervisory proficiency in observing and providing feedback to staff. Three supervisors participated in each condition. The first 3 supervisors then received direct feedback. Direct feedback was accompanied by high levels of performance relative to the indirect feedback protocol. The need for maintenance procedures with supervisors is discussed.     

Retroactive interference as a function of degree of interpolated study without overt retrieval practice

In two experiments, retroactive interference (RI) was examined under conditions designed to minimize retrieval-induced inhibition and output interference. In Experiment 1, the participants first learned a list of 10 person-location pairs, after which they viewed an interpolated list with the same person terms and different locations for one, four, or eight cycles. Learning was via a study-only method, so that the experimental participants did not perform instructed retrieval of the second list before a cued recall test that asked for List 1 locations only. The experimental participants in Experiment 2 received incidental learning instructions and then viewed a list of 20 unrelated words followed by another list presented either one or four times; the first two letters of each List 1 word were provided on the critical recall test. In both experiments, RI occurred and increased with degree of interpolation. The results suggest that RI does not require retrieval-induced inhibition.     

A memory-based theory of verbal cognition

The syntagmatic paradigmatic model is a distributed, memory-based account of verbal processing. Built on a Bayesian interpretation of string edit theory, it characterizes the control of verbal cognition as the retrieval of sets of syntagmatic and paradigmatic constraints from sequential and relational long-term memory and the resolution of these constraints in working memory. Lexical information is extracted directly from text using a version of the expectation maximization algorithm. In this article, the model is described and then illustrated on a number of phenomena, including sentence processing, semantic categorization and rating, short-term serial recall, and analogical and logical inference. Subsequently, the model is used to answer questions about a corpus of tennis news articles taken from the Internet. The model's success demonstrates that it is possible to extract propositional information from naturally occurring text without employing a grammar, defining a set of heuristics, or specifying a priori a set of semantic roles.     

Are there pre-existing neural, cognitive, or motoric markers for musical ability?

Adult musician's brains show structural enlargements, but it is not known whether these are inborn or a consequence of long-term training. In addition, music training in childhood has been shown to have positive effects on visual-spatial and verbal outcomes. However, it is not known whether pre-existing advantages in these skills are found in children who choose to study a musical instrument nor is it known whether there are pre-existing associations between music and any of these outcome measures that could help explain the training effects. To answer these questions, we compared 5- to 7-year-olds beginning piano or string lessons (n=39) with 5- to 7-year-olds not beginning instrumental training (n=31). All children received a series of tests (visual-spatial, non-verbal reasoning, verbal, motor, and musical) and underwent magnetic resonance imaging. We found no pre-existing neural, cognitive, motor, or musical differences between groups and no correlations (after correction for multiple analyses) between music perceptual skills and any brain or visual-spatial measures. However, correlations were found between music perceptual skills and both non-verbal reasoning and phonemic awareness. Such pre-existing correlations suggest similarities in auditory and visual pattern recognition as well a sharing of the neural substrates for language and music processing, most likely due to innate abilities or implicit learning during early development. This baseline study lays the groundwork for an ongoing longitudinal study addressing the effects of intensive musical training on brain and cognitive development, and making it possible to look retroactively at the brain and cognitive development of those children who emerge showing exceptional musical talent.     

Primacy in causal strength judgments: the effect of initial evidence for generative versus inhibitory relationships

The order in which people receive information has a substantial effect on subsequent judgment and inference. Our focus is on the order of covariation evidence in causal learning. The first experiment shows that the initial presentation of evidence suggesting a generative causal relationship (the joint presence or joint absence of cause and effect) leads to higher judged causal strength than does the initial presentation of evidence suggesting an inhibitory relationship (the presence of cause or effect in the absence of the other). Additional studies show that this primacy effect is unlikely to be due to fatigue or to an insufficient number of learning trials. These results are not readily explained by current contingency-based or associative theories of causal induction.     

Knowledge-based inferencing after childhood head injury

Inferencing was studied with a story comprehension task that required inferences to be made from a controlled knowledge base. Despite similar rates of knowledge base acquisition, knowledge base retention, and speeded access to the knowledge base across groups, the 18 children with severe head injury had lower rates of inferencing than the 15 children with mild head injury or the 18 age-matched controls. Results suggest that cognitive functions such as working memory and metacognitive skill that are disrupted by severe head injury may also play a role in some of the text- and discourse-level deficits commonly reported in these children, notably those involving inferencing.