Aging and memory for expected and unexpected objects in real-world settings.

Adult age differences in the consistency effect were examined in 3 experiments. The consistency effect refers to items inconsistent with expectations being better remembered than items consistent with expectations. Younger and older adults walked into an office room and viewed objects that varied in their consistency with expectation. Immediate and delayed recognition tests on item information (i.e., distractors were defined by their semantic identity) revealed that both age groups recognized unexpected items better than expected items. However, when recognition of token information was requested (i.e., distractors were defined by their physical appearance), younger adults, in contrast to older adults, exhibited consistency effects. Also, under divided attention, young adults revealed the same pattern of data as did elderly adults under full attention. The results are discussed in terms of capacity-related differences in distinctive encoding.     

The influence of only on syntactic processing of "long" relative clause sentences

We report an eye movement experiment investigating the influence of the focus operator only on syntactic processing of "long" relative clause sentences. Paterson, Liversedge, and Underwood (1999) found that readers were garden pathed by "short" reduced relative clause sentences containing the focus operator only . They argued that due to thematic differences between "short" and "long" relative clause sentences, garden path effect might not occur when "long" reduced relative clause sentences are read. Eye-tracking data show that garden path effects found during initial processing of the disambiguating verb of "long" reduced sentences without only were absent or delayed in the case of counterparts with only . We discuss our results in terms of current theories of sentence processing.     

Deconstructing the Tower of London: Alternative moves and conflict resolution as predictors of task performance

Despite widespread use the cognitive demands of the five-disc Tower of London (TOL) are unknown. Research suggests that conflict moves (those that are essential to the solution but do not place a disc in its final position) are a key aspect of performance. These were examined in three studies via a verification paradigm, in which normal participants were asked to decide whether a demonstrated move was correct. Experiment 1 showed that individual move latencies increase with the number of intermediate moves until the disc is placed in its goal position (resolution). Post hoc tests suggested that the number of alternative moves and moves to resolve a disc were independent predictors of performance. Experiment 2 successfully manipulated these factors in an experimental design. Experiment 3 showed that they remain determinants of performance as familiarity increased. Overall, errors on the task were significantly correlated with spatial memory. The implications of these findings for the use of the TOLin cognitive psychology and as an assessment tool are discussed.     

Epistemic constraints on practical normativity

What is the relation between what we ought to do, on the one hand, and our epistemic access to the ought-giving facts, on the other? In assessing this, it is common to distinguish ‘objective’ from ‘subjective’ oughts. Very roughly, on the objectivist conception what an agent ought to do is determined by ought-giving facts in such a way that does not depend on the agent’s beliefs about, or epistemic access to, those facts; whereas on the subjectivist conception, what an agent ought to do depends on his beliefs. This paper defends the need for, and explicates, a third category of ‘ought’: ‘warranted oughts’. Section 1 introduces the distinction between objective and subjective ‘oughts’. Sections 2–3 draw attention to some serious problems with each. Section 4 examines, though rejects, a recent attempt to replace subjective ‘oughts’ with objective ‘wide-scope oughts’ operating on belief-action combinations. Section 5 explicates the notion of a warranted ‘ought’ and defends the account against some possible objections. The resulting a picture is one in which an adequate analysis of practical normativity requires both objective and warranted ‘oughts’. Section 6 concludes by responding to a worry about countenancing both.