Lingual vibrotactile threshold and suprathreshold responses of normal-speaking black and white young adults.

A paradigm for studying oral sensory tactile function through use of single frequency vibration applied to the dorsal surface of the tongue was administered to a group of 10 young black women and 10 young white normal-speaking women. Analyses showed no differences between groups with regard to lingual vibrotactile threshold of sensitivity or suprathreshold magnitude-estimation scaling responses.     

Differences in lingual vibrotactile threshold shifts during magnitude-estimation scaling between normal-speaking children and children with articulation problems.

The purpose of this study was to investigate differences in function of the tactile sensory system between groups of normal-speaking children and children with articulation problems. This task was accomplished by studying possible tactile threshold shifts occurring during magnitude-estimation scaling of vibratory stimuli presented to the dorsal surface of the tongue. 10 normal-speaking children (M age = 7.8 yr.) and 9 children with articulation problems (M age = 7.5 yr.) participated. The normal-speaking children and articulatory defective children performed differently on the magnitude-estimation scaling task in which threshold was allowed to return to baseline after each stimulus presentation. These two groups of children also showed dissimilar threshold shifts for the suprathreshold intensities employed in the magnitude-estimation scaling.     

Reading long words embedded in sentences: informativeness of word halves affects eye movements

The possibility was explored that the informativeness of a specific region within a word can influence eye movements during reading. In Experiment 1, words containing identifying information either toward the beginning or toward the end were displayed asymmetrically around the point of fixation so that the reader was initially presented with either the informative or noninformative zone. Words were read with shorter summed initial fixation time when the reading was started from the informative zone. In Experiments 2 and 3, the target words were presented in sentences that were to be comprehended. More attention was given to the informative endings of words than to redundant endings. The latter were also skipped more often. The duration of the first fixation was not affected by information distribution within the word, whereas the second fixation duration was. The results of these experiments lend good support to the hypothesis of immediate lexical control over fixation behavior and to the notion of a convenient viewing position.     

Collusion after a collision: Witnesses' reports of a road accident with and without discussion

In a study of the accuracy of recall of witnesses to a road accident, subjects watched a video recording of a natural scene for a few minutes. Two vehicles collided, and reports from the witnesses were taken using a version of the report form used by officers investigating road accidents in the UK. Witnesses were asked questions about the scene of the accident, about each of the two vehicles, and about the timing of the collision relative to a traffic signal. Does the accuracy of report depend upon the isolation of the witness? The study investigated this question by having some witnesses watch the video recording and complete the questionnaire alone, while other witnesses were encouraged to discuss their perceptions and recollections both while watching the recording and during an interval of a few minutes prior to administration of the questionnaire. All witnesses completed their reports in isolation. As a check on witnesses' expectancies, some of them, both individual and group witnesses, were informed prior to seeing the video recording that they would see a road accident and that they would be asked about it. The ‘uninformed’ witnesses were told to expect questions about the road scene. There was no overall difference between the recall accuracy of individual and group witnesses, but there was an interaction between groups and expectancy. When expecting to see a collision the group witnesses were more accurate than the individuals. Social facilitation in recall was restricted to occasions when the witnesses could anticipate the focus of the questions to be asked.     

Paired associate learning: Data on pair difficulty and variables that influence difficulty

Two hundred pairs of five-letter words were produced randomly from all five-letter words in Thorndike and Lorge (1944). The difficulty of each pair was established for paired associate learning by having 50 subjects learn lists of 20 pairs. The difficulty of a pair was found to be highly reliable and was not influenced by the particular list in which it was learned. Frequency of response terms was positively related to learning, but the frequency of the stimulus terms was not. Two-syllable five-letter words were learned more rapidly than one-syllable five-letter words. Two 20-pair lists were constructed, one consisting of homogeneous pairs of average difficulty and the other of 10 very easy pairs and 10 very difficult pairs. As anticipated, performance on the latter list was initially better than that on the former, with the performance on the two lists converging over trials. The difficulty of the pairs as determined by paired associate learning was unrelated to misses on a recognition test, but the false alarms decreased as difficulty decreased.     

The dispositional shift in attribution over time

Two experiments examined the effect of time on causal attributions. In Experiment I, subjects who described themselves into a tape recorder assumed more personal responsibility for their behavior after 3 weeks' time than others who explained their behavior immediately after its occurrence. In Experiment II, actor-subjects took part in a getting acquainted conversation and explained their behavior more dispositionally and less situationally after 3 weeks' time than they had initially, while observer-subjects experienced no change over time. Results were interpreted in terms of an altered self-perspective in memory and the diminished salience of situational details over time.     

Eye movements during search and detection in comparative visual search

Motivated by the fact that previous visual memory paradigms have imposed encoding and retrieval constraints, the present article presents two experiments that address how observers allocate eye movements in memory and comparison processes in the absence of constraints. A comparative visual search design (Pomplun, Sichelschmidt, et al., 2001) was utilized in which observers searched for a difference between two images presented side by side. Robust time course effects were obtained, whereby search was characterized by brief fixations and a high proportion of comparative saccades. Then, upon target detection, fixations were extended, more comparative saccades were elicited, and the search focus was narrowed. The saliency and presence of differences did not guide attention, and detection was contingent upon direct fixation of the targets. The results indicate that, when full control is given, observers adopt a strategy that cuts down on memory usage in favor of restricted encoding and active scanning.