Bodies and their parts

How do we think about the space of bodies? Several accounts of mental representations of bodies were addressed in body part verification tasks. Animagery account predicts shorter times to larger parts (e.g., back < hand). Apart distinctiveness account predicts shorter times to more discontinuous parts (e.g., arm < chest). Apart significance account predicts shorter times to parts that are perceptually distinct and functionally important (e.g., head < back). Because distinctiveness and significance are correlated, the latter two accounts are difficult to distinguish. Both name-body and body-body comparisons were investigated in four experiments. In all, larger parts were verified more slowly than smaller ones, eliminating the imagery/size account. Despite the correlation between distinctiveness and significance, the data suggest that when comparisons are perceptual (body-body), part distinctiveness is the best predictor, and when explicit or implicit naming is involved, part significance is the best predictor. Naming seems to activate the functional aspects of bodies.     

The shape of action

How do people understand the everyday, yet intricate, behaviors that unfold around them? In the present research, we explored this by presenting viewers with self-paced slideshows of everyday activities and recording looking times, subjective segmentation (breakpoints) into action units, and slide-to-slide physical change. A detailed comparison of the joint time courses of these variables showed that looking time and physical change were locally maximal at breakpoints and greater for higher level action units than for lower level units. Even when slideshows were scrambled, breakpoints were regarded longer and were more physically different from ordinary moments, showing that breakpoints are distinct even out of context. Breakpoints are bridges: from one action to another, from one level to another, and from perception to conception.     

Picture memory improves with longer on time and off time.

Both recognition and recall of pictures improve as picture presentation time increases and as time between pictures increases. Processing of the pictures, rehearsal and/or encoding, continues after the picture has disappeared, just as for verbal material. Both the results and conclusions stand in contrast to those of Shaffer and Shiffrin.     

Deterministic vs probabilistic strategies in detection

A binary detection task, free from sensory components, is investigated. A deterministic model prescribing a fixed cutoff point is confirmed; a probabilistic model, which generalizes Lee’s micromatching model for externally distributed stimuli, is rejected.     

Pictorial and verbal encoding in a short-term memory task

The present research attempted to manipulate the encoding modality, pictorial or verbal, of schematic faces with well-learned names by manipulating S’s expectations of the way the material was to be used. On every trial, a single name or face was presented, followed by another one; the S was asked to respond “same” if the stimuli had the same name, and “different” otherwise. The majority of second stimuli of any session was either names or faces. It was hypothesized that if S had encoded the first stimulus in the modality of the second, his judgment would be faster than if he had not appropriately encoded the first stimulus. Significantly slower reaction times were obtained to stimulus pairs where the second stimulus modality was infrequent. Further evidence that encoding of the first stimulus was in the frequent second stimulus modality comes from the finding that “different” responses were shorter when the stimuli differed on more than one attribute in the encoding (second stimulus) modality, regardless of the modality of the stimuli. Thus, evidence is presented that not only can verbal material be pictorially encoded (and vice versa), but that whether either verbal or pictorial material is verbally or pictorially encoded depends on S’s anticipation of what he is to do with the material.     

Similarity of schematic faces: A test of

In this study we obtained direct and comparative judgments of the dissimilarity between schematic faces varying on three binary attributes. These data were used to test the hypothesis that the overall dissimilarity between faces can be decomposed (in an ordinal sense) into three additive components, one for each attribute. The hypothesis was strongly confirmed by both the direct and the comparative judgments. The study illustrates the possible usefulness of the measurement-theoretic analysis of simple combination mies for psychological dimensions.     

How eyewitnesses talk about events: implications for memory

Eyewitnesses to traumatic events typically talk about them, and they may do so for different reasons. Of interest was whether qualitatively different retellings would lead to differences in later memory. All participants watched a violent film scene; one third talked about their emotional reactions to the film (as one might do when talking to a friend), one third described the events of the film (as the police might request), and one third did unrelated tasks. Following a delay, all participants were tested on their memories for the clip. Talking about emotions led to better memory for one's emotions, but also led to subjectivity and a greater proportion of major errors in free recall. Differences were minimized on tests providing more retrieval cues, suggesting that retellings' consequences for memory are greater when retellers have to generate their own retrieval structures. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.