The effects of rounding on memory for numbers in addition problems.

Recall and recognition of the sums of addition problems were tested using rounded or exact numbers. In Exp 1, 53 Ss were instructed to remember five-digit sums. Recall and recognition were greater for rounded than for exact numbers. In Exp 2, 60 Ss were informed at test to recall only the first two digits. Again, rounded numbers were better remembered. In Exp 3, half of the 72 Ss were informed in advance that they would be tested on only the first two digits. The rounding effect persisted in recognition for these Ss. The advantage for rounded numbers is attributed to less difficult processing requirements which makes more time available for memory processes. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Color-object paired associates in deaf and hearing children with and without response competition.

Deaf and hearing Ss, aged 6 and 10, were compared in 2 nonverbally presented paired-associates tasks. One condition used neutral color stimuli unrelated to toy response objects and another condition had colors systematically related to the same objects to provide interfering response competition. Age differences were observed, while task interacted with deafness such that hearing but not deaf Ss were impeded by the interference condition relative to the neutral condition. It was concluded that deaf Ss showed no perceptual rigidity and that covert verbalizations of hearing Ss or experiential poverty in deaf Ss produced the differential task effects. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

English as the second language of deaf children.

Administered the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) to 13 deaf adolescents with deaf parents and to 13 deaf adolescents with hearing parents. Scores achieved by all Ss on the Paragraph Meaning and Language subtests of the Stanford Achievement Test were also available. Ss with deaf parents scored significantly higher than Ss with hearing parents on all but 1 measure. Performance by hearing, foreign students on the TOEFL was more highly correlated with the performance by Ss with deaf parents than with the performance by Ss with hearing parents. Results indicate that English may be a 2nd language for deaf children and that early experience with sign language may facilitate later learning of English. (27 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Hearing status and language fluency as predictors of automatic word and sign recognition

In previous studies, evidence concerning the extent of automatic word recognition in deaf children and the influence of language fluency on word and sign recognition (as indexed by the Stroop task) has been contradictory. This study examined the effects of English and sign language fluency in the automatic word and sign recognition of deaf and hearing adults. Results indicated that responding in sign took longer and created more Stroop interference than responding orally. Two groups of certified interpreters revealed this finding to be independent of hearing status. Most important, deaf subjects showed greater automaticity in recognizing signs than words, whereas hearing subjects showed greater automaticity in recognizing words than signs. This pattern was unaffected by language fluency. The findings clarify the results of previous studies both theoretically and methodologically.     

Conceptual performance in deaf adults.

Noncollege deaf adults were compared with hearing controls on a series of 8 nonverbal learning and transfer or shift tasks which were designed to test an S's ability to combine previously discovered elements into new disjunctive and conjunctive groupings. In terms of total errors, successes, and trials to criterion, performance on these tasks was found to differentiate high from low IQ normal Ss and deaf Ss performed similar to hearing Ss on all tasks except one. These results would seem to refute the hypothesis that deaf people are generally inferior to hearing people in conceptual ability or that deaf children's experimental deficiency would leave a permanent lack in their conceptual development. The need for clarifying the role of language in cognition was stressed. (17 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cerebral laterality in deaf and hearing children.

Studied the development of lateralization of cerebral function in 20 hearing and 20 prelingually deaf children using the concurrent task paradigm. Ss were aged 5–6 and 11–12 yrs; all were right-handed. Concurrent processing of a nonverbal task did not cause a selective hand impairment monitored by a manual tapping task. However, deaf Ss were more impaired than hearing Ss in both age groups. Using a concurrent verbal task, both groups manifested a selective impairment of right-hand performance. The deaf also showed a greater left-hand decrement than did the hearing Ss. This result suggests that hemispheric specialization may be less apparent in the deaf than in hearing children. The factor of cognitive task difficulty is suggested as an explanation of these results. (23 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Semantic activation and episodic odor recognition in young and older adults.

Young, young–old, and old adults were examined in immediate and delayed episodic recognition of common odors. Items were presented in 3 different formats: name-only, odor-only, or odor-name. Ss made familiarity ratings for all items at study. In the delayed recognition test, Ss were asked to name the odors. Young Ss outperformed the 2 older age groups in both recognition tests, although the 2 older groups did not differ. Performance was higher in the odor-name condition than in the single-format conditions. Both familiarity and naming were related to recognition in all age groups. Most important, when naming was statistically controlled, age differences in odor recognition disappeared, suggesting that access to verbal labels largely determine age differences in recognition of common odors. Finally, the finding that recognition was enhanced in both young and older Ss in the odor-name condition suggests that odor memory may involve a similar degree of plasticity as other varieties of episodic memory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cognitive processing by prelingual deaf students as a function of language context.

Investigated the influence of language mode (print or sign) and syntax (English or American Sign Language [ASL]) on recall, preference, and comprehension. In Exp I, the effects of reading meaningful print passages in ASL or English were tested for 12 16–29 yr old deaf and 12 16–28 yr old hearing Ss. An effort toward comprehension interpretation was supported for the hearing Ss only. Deaf Ss not trained in ASL exhibited a familiarity with ASL syntax not exhibited by the hearing Ss. In Exp II, meaningful passages were presented to 30 15–19 yr old prelingual deaf Ss in 4 language contexts (signed English, signed ASL, print English, and print ASL) in a free recall task. Results show greater recall from ASL than from English contexts. Findings indicate that the visual orientation of prelingual deaf individuals, regardless of training in ASL, leads to the development of a sign-based encoding system that responds to ASL as a familiar language. (30 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Finger electromyographic activity during sleep: Its relation to dreaming in deaf and normal subjects.

Observations carried out during the sleep of 13 deaf Ss showed that: (a) the rates of dream recall from rapid eye movement (REM) periods were similar to those for normal hearing Ss; (b) finger electromyographic (EMG) bursts outside of REM periods were not related to the recall of mental activity; (c) in both deaf and hearing Ss, REM periods showed a consistently accelerated rate of finger EMG activity in comparison with other stages of sleep; (d) contrary to expectations, rates of finger EMG activity for 10 normal hearing Ss were just as high as those of the deaf group. The implications of this finding for the motor theory of thinking were discussed. (18 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Infant recognition of two- and three-dimensional stimuli.

To compare differences in the processing of 2- and 3-dimensional stimuli, 52 13- and 22-wk-old infants were familiarized with either a 3-dimensional object or a photograph of the object. Recognition was tested by pairing novel stimuli with the familiarization stimulus at different points in the session. The younger Ss showed no recognition of either the 2- or 3-dimensional stimuli. Among the older Ss, however, infants in the 3-dimension condition demonstrated recognition significantly more often than did the infants in the 2-dimension condition. The implications for the development of object perception are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mental representation of three-dimensional objects in visual problem solving and recognition.

Ss inspected sets of flat, separated orthographic projections of surfaces of potential 3-dimensional objects. After solving problems based on these orthographic views, Ss discriminated between isometric views of the same objects and drawings of distractor structures. Recognition of the isometrics, which had never been shown during the problem-solving phase of the experiment, was excellent. In addition, recognition of isometrics corresponding to problems that had been solved correctly when presented in orthographic form was significantly superior to recognition of isometrics based on problems solved incorrectly. In Exp 2, conditions were included in which either orthographic or isometric views functioned as problem solving or recognition displays. Only in the case of orthographic problem solving followed by isometric recognition (Exp 1) was the superiority of recognition for correctly solved problems over incorrectly solved problems obtained. The pattern of results suggests that viewers construct mental representations embodying structural information about integrated, 3-dimensional objects when asked to reason about flat, disconnected projections. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Attentional limits on the perception and memory of visual information.

Attentional limits on perception and memory were measured by the decline in performance with increasing numbers of objects in a display. Multiple objects were presented to Ss who discriminated visual attributes. In a representative condition, 4 lines were briefly presented followed by a single line in 1 of the same locations. Ss were required to judge if the single line in the 2nd display was longer or shorter than the line in the corresponding location of the 1st display. The length difference threshold was calculated as a function of the number of objects. The difference thresholds doubled when the number of objects was increased from 1 to 4. This effect was generalized in several ways, and nonattentional explanations were ruled out. Further analyses showed that the attentional processes must share information from at least 4 objects and can be described by a simple model. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Peer interaction in young deaf children: The effect of partner hearing status and familiarity.

14 deaf 54–83 mo olds were videotaped playing once with each of 4 partners: a familiar deaf playmate, a familiar hearing playmate, an unfamiliar hearing child who was a playmate of another deaf child, and an unfamiliar hearing child who had little experience playing with deaf children. 21 hearing and 7 deaf playmates participated. Deaf Ss rarely used language, and formal language use was not related to measures of interaction or play even when playing with another deaf child. Instead, interaction and pretense seemed to be related to the deaf Ss' nonlinguistic communication abilities. Partner hearing status primarily affected communication, with communication between deaf playmates being more visual (both linguistic and nonlinguistic) and less object-based than communication between deaf and hearing playmates. Familiarity played a larger role than experience in improving interaction between deaf and hearing children. The hearing children were more responsive to and used more visual communication devices with their deaf playmate than an unfamiliar deaf child. But the hearing playmates were no better at playing with an unfamiliar deaf child than were hearing children who had little experience playing with deaf children. Implications for the understanding of young children's communication abilities and for deaf educational programs are discussed. (20 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Lexical ambiguity and children's word recognition.

Conducted 2 experiments to examine the word recognition processes of 2nd, 4th, and 6th graders. In Exp I, 72 Ss named target words that were primed by words that had more than 1 meaning. Targets were related either to the more or less frequent sense of the ambiguous prime or were unrelated to it. Findings indicate that older Ss were more likely than younger Ss to restrict processing of ambiguous words to the most frequent meaning. While younger Ss showed approximately equal facilitation for words related to either meaning, regardless of each one's relative frequency, 6th graders apparently retrieved only the most frequent meaning. Exp II, with 36 Ss, was similar to Exp I but included neutral primes and varied the interval between presentation of prime and target. Results show that all groups showed automatic retrieval of both meanings of the ambiguous word. For 6th graders, however, this retrieval was followed by a 2nd stage, in which attention was allocated to the more frequent meaning, maintaining it, while the less frequent meaning was inhibited. Overall data indicate that older children use meaning frequency to narrow the amount of information kept active following word recognition. (34 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Visual memory for shapes in deaf signers and nonsigners and in hearing signers and nonsigners: Atypical lateralization and enhancement.

[Correction Notice: An erratum for this article was reported in Vol 21(3) of Neuropsychology (see record 2007-06185-013). Figure 1 on p. 117 (Stimulus Materials section) depicting sample and match stimuli was incorrect. The labels Object condition and Shape condition should be reversed so that the top row is indicated as the shape condition and the bottom row as the object condition.] Deaf and hearing individuals who either used sign language (signers) or not (nonsigners) were tested on visual memory for objects and shapes that were difficult to describe verbally with a same/different matching paradigm. The use of 4 groups was designed to permit a separation of effects related to sign language use (signers vs. nonsigners) and effects related to auditory deprivation (deaf vs. hearing). Forty deaf native signers and nonsigners and 51 hearing signers and nonsigners participated in the study. Signing individuals (both deaf and hearing) were more accurate than nonsigning individuals (deaf and hearing) at memorizing shapes. For the shape memory task but not the object task, deaf signers and nonsigners displayed right hemisphere (RH) advantage over the left hemisphere (LH). Conversely, both hearing groups displayed a memory advantage for shapes in the LH over the RH. Results indicate that enhanced memory performance for shapes in signers (deaf and hearing) stems from the visual skills acquired through sign language use and that deafness, irrespective of language background, leads to the use of a visually based strategy for memory of difficult-to-describe items. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Visual short-term memory in the hearing and the deaf.

Tested 9 deaf and 9 normal 15-27 yr olds on their ability to report letters, shapes, and nonsense figures from a tachistoscopic presentation. Deaf Ss performed worse than hearing Ss on recall of figural information, thereby supporting a linguistic coding hypothesis. However, there was no difference between the groups on position information, and letter confusions were primarily visual in both groups. Findings suggest that more attention should be given to visual short-term memory in theoretical models of memory. Formation of the icon was apparently not affected by a linguistic deficit, since effects of stimulus duration and type of viewing (continuous vs interrupted) were similar in both hearing and deaf Ss. Significant positive correlations which were found between deaf Ss' school reading scores and their tachistoscopic scores were not interpreted as support for a linguistic coding hypothesis, but rather as support for the notion that the memory skills tested in the experiment may underlie reading ability. (French summary) (24 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

How level of processing really influences awareness in recognition memory.

Examined the effect of level of processing on awareness in recognition memory, in 3 experiments. In yes/no and 2-alternative forced-choice recognition tests, 64 young adults in UK reported 1 of 3 states of awareness when selecting each target: Remembering, knowing, or guessing. In Exps 1 and 2, Ss produced associates of the target words and recalled them after varying intervals of time. In Exp 3, the level of processing manipulation was replaced by a generate/read manipulation. In Exps 1 and 2, level of processing influenced remember responses but not know responses. In Exp 3, generating vs reading similarly influenced remember but not know responses. In each experiment, when Ss reported that they were guessing they showed no ability to discriminate targets from lures. Results show that remember/know findings generalize from yes/no to 2-alternative forced-choice recognition and that knowing is dissociable from guessing. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effect of mnemonic instructions on paired-associate recognition memory for faces or names.

96 undergraduates (4 experimental and 2 control groups) learned 2 lists of 10 pairs of number-faces or number-names. Experimental Ss learned the 2nd list under a mnemonic rhyme condition. 1/2 of the experimental Ss used imagery as a mediator while the remainder were given verbal mediation sets. Ss took longer to learn faces than names and longer to learn under mnemonic than control conditions. On recognition tests, faces evoked slower latency responses than names, whereas mnemonic sets, in particular imagery as opposed to verbal, reduced response time. Names were recognized better than faces, mnemonics improved recognition scores, and recognition of faces but not of names was facilitated by the mnemonics. Control-group data show that results are not attributable to practice effects. Questionnaire reports of learning strategies are also examined. (French summary) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Enhancing visual recognition memory in preterm infants.

Tested 6-mo-old full- and preterm infants on tasks of visual recognition memory. In Study 1, with 54 Ss, preterms failed to differentiate between novel and familiar test stimuli following brief amounts of familiarization, whereas full-terms showed significant novelty preferences on 2 of the 3 problems. Preterm Ss who had received extra sensory stimulation during the early week of life showed long-term benefits in that their performance was indistinguishable from that of the full-terms. In Study 2, 36 preterm Ss who had not received any intervention showed visual recognition memory if the familiarization time was lengthened. This success suggests that in general, prematures were able to store and retrieve the information and to make the visual discriminations involved; they did, however, show a pronounced deficit in the speed of information processing. It is suggested that visual recognition memory is negatively affected by prematurity and that performance can be improved by altering early environmental conditions. (26 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)