Distance-dependent processing of pictures and words.

A series of 8 experiments investigated the association between pictorial and verbal representations and the psychological distance of the referent objects from the observer. The results showed that people better process pictures that represent proximal objects and words that represent distal objects than pictures that represent distal objects and words that represent proximal objects. These results were obtained with various psychological distance dimensions (spatial, temporal, and social), different tasks (classification and categorization), and different measures (speed of processing and selective attention). The authors argue that differences in the processing of pictures and words emanate from the physical similarity of pictures, but not words, to the referents. Consequently, perceptual analysis is commonly applied to pictures but not to words. Pictures thus impart a sense of closeness to the referent objects and are preferably used to represent such objects, whereas words do not convey proximity and are preferably used to represent distal objects in space, time, and social perspective. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Semantic facilitation with pictures and words.

The present experiments explored the role of processing level and strategic factors in cross-form (word–picture and picture–word) and within-form (picture–picture and word–word) semantic facilitation. Previous studies have produced mixed results. The findings presented in this article indicate that semantic facilitation depends on the task and on the subjects' strategies. When the task required semantic processing of both picture and word targets (e.g., category verification), equivalent facilitation was obtained across all modality combinations. When the task required name processing (e.g., name verification, naming), facilitation was obtained for the picture targets. In contrast, with word targets, facilitation was obtained only when the situation emphasized semantic processing. The results are consistent with models that propose a common semantic representation for both picture and words but that also include assumptions regarding differential order of access to semantic and phonemic features for these stimulus modalities. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The instructive animation: Helping students build connections between words and pictures in multimedia learning.

In 2 experiments, Ss studied an animation depicting the operation of a bicycle tire pump or an automobile braking system, along with concurrent oral narration of the steps in the process (concurrent group), successive presentation of animation and narration (by 4 different methods), animation alone, narration alone, or no instruction (control group). On retention tests, the control group performed more poorly than each of the other groups, which did not differ from one another. On problem-solving tests, the concurrent group performed better than each of the other groups, which did not differ from one another. These results are consistent with a dual-coding model in which retention requires the construction of representational connections and problem solving requires the construction of representational and referential connections. An instructional implication is that pictures and words are most effective when they occur contiguously in time or space. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Directed forgetting: Comparing pictures and words.

The authors investigated directed forgetting as a function of the stimulus type (picture, word) presented at study and test. In an item-method directed forgetting task, study items were presented 1 at a time, each followed with equal probability by an instruction to remember or forget. Participants exhibited greater yes–no recognition of remember than forget items for each of the 4 study–test conditions (picture–picture, picture–word, word–word, word–picture). However, this difference was significantly smaller when pictures were studied than when words were studied. This finding demonstrates that the magnitude of the directed forgetting effect can be reduced by high item memorability, such as when the picture superiority effect is operating. This suggests caution in using pictures at study when the goal of an experiment is to examine potential group differences in the magnitude of the directed forgetting effect. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Immediate and delayed recall of words and pictures.

Examined free and serial recall of words and pictures associates in 3 experiments with 156 Ss. In immediate free recall, presentation of pictorial material increased only the secondary memory component of recall, relative to conditions involving presentation of verbal materials. No such facilitation occurred in immediate serial recall. In delayed recall tests, negative recency effects were obtained only for verbal materials, in both free and serial recall. Recency effects were either nonnegative or positive with pictures as to-be-remembered material. Results are discussed in terms of the locus of word-picture differences and the adequacy of verbal memory model explanations for them. (French summary) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Intrapair imagery effects in verbal discrimination and incidental associative learning.

Administered 4 study-test trials to 80 17-38 yr. Old students on a verbal discrimination learning (vdl) task where the items varied in imagery (i) value. Ss were then tested for incidental associative learning. The 32-pair mixed list consisted of 8 pairs of high-i and 8 pairs of low-i nouns, and 16 pairs in which 1 item was high-i and the other low-i. For 1/2 of the latter pairs the high-i word was correct. Significantly more errors occurred during vdl with homogeneous low-i pairs than with the other 3 pair types, which did not differ reliably from each other. Incidental associative learning was highest for homogeneous high-i pairs, and stimulus i was more effective than response i when the stimuli had been wrong but not when they had been right during prior vdl. The latter condition was characterized particularly by sharply depressed performance on high-i-low-i pairs. The vdl results are discussed in terms of imagery and frequency hypotheses, and the associative memory data in terms of the effects of the experimental conditions on the amount of attention devoted to 1 or both members during vdl. (french summary) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Conceptual representation of pictures and words: Reply to Clark.

Clark (1987) offers a dual coding alternative (Paivio, 1971, 1986) to the conceptual hypothesis that Potter, Kroll, Yachzel, Carpenter, and Sherman (1986) proposed to explain the ease with which people can read and understand rebus sentences in which a picture replaces a noun. We present theoretical and empirical reasons for positing a conceptual representation that is distinct from the representation of an object's name and from a mental image of it. The hierarchical conceptual model has greater explanatory and predictive power and is more parsimonious overall than Clark's alternative. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Observation and discrimination learning in the rat: Specific and nonspecific effects.

After watching the performance of a model rat (N = 10), 48 Os (naive male hooded rats) were trained on a visual pattern discrimination. Results show that the observational experience facilitated discrimination learning if the same cue pattern was positive for the model and the O; it retarded learning in Ss trained on the reversal of the observed discrimination. These results depend on the viewing of a model contiguous with the cue pattern. A 2nd type of facilitating effect followed visual exposure to the cue patterns presented without a model S. When such an observational condition involved stimulus change, discrimination learning was facilitated regardless of the cue to be approached. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Feature-positive discrimination learning.

In Experiments 1, 2, and 3, pigeons were trained with an ABC+ BCo discrimination, in which three stimuli, A, B, and C, were presented together and paired with food, and the compound BC was followed by nothing; they were also trained with a DEF+ Eo Fo discrimination in which stimuli E and F were presented separately and followed by nothing, whereas the compound DEF was paired with food. On completion of discrimination training, test trials with the feature A consistently revealed a higher rate of responding than with D. In Experiment 4, reinforced presentations of D were intermixed with the DEF+ Eo Fo discrimination. Test trials revealed that E enhanced responding when it was paired with F, but it had the opposite effect when paired with D. The results are seen as being more consistent with a configural than an elemental model of conditioning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Rhyme priming of pictures and words: A lexical activation account.

Orthographically/phonologically related primes have typically been found to facilitate processing of target words. This phenomenon is usually explained in terms of spreading activation between nodes for orthographically/phonologically similar words in lexical memory. The phenomenon was explored in a series of studies involving the manipulations of prime and target type (word or picture) and prime and target task (naming or categorization). Generally, the results support the lexical activation explanation. Named primes, which activate lexical memory, facilitate processing in all target tasks involving lexical access (word and picture naming and word categorization), independent of prime type. Categorized primes show the expected Prime Type?×?Relatedness interaction with word primes, which activate lexical memory, producing much more facilitation than picture primes. Finally, unlike in semantic priming studies, increased depth of processing of a word prime decreased the size of the priming effects. Apparently, initial activation levels in lexical memory are not maintained when semantic processing of the prime is required. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Contrasting effects of three forebrain ablations on discrimination learning and reversal in chicks.

Following the ablation of 1 of 3 telencephalic regions, 93 White Leghorn baby chicks were given discrimination and reversal training. Dorsomedial ablations which included a chick's hippocampus impaired reversal training but did not affect the initial acquisition. Ablations that included tissue homologous with and adjacent to the amygdala interfered with early stages of acquisition but did not increase the number of trials to criterion and had no effects on reversal learning. Frontal ablations decreased the response rate while causing no significant learning deficits. These results and previous findings suggest that homologous avian and mammalian limbic-system structures play similar roles in learning. (26 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Configural associations in discrimination learning.

In 4 experiments, Sprague-Dawley rats and homing pigeons received training with an A+ AB0 BC+ discrimination, in which food (+) accompanied trials with A and BC. Food was not presented (0) on trials with the compound AB. Subsequent test trials revealed that responding during C by itself, or the compound ABC, was slower than during either A or BC. Responding during the ABC compound was also found to be slower after training with the A+ AB0 BC+ than an A0 AB+ BC+ discrimination. We argue that these findings demonstrate the importance of configural associations in discrimination learning. Two accounts for the way in which these associations exert their influence are considered. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Recognizing words and pictures in sentence contexts: A test of lexical modularity.

Words or pictures completed sentence fragments to form coherent or incoherent sentences. Ss made lexical decisions about words and object decisions about pictures. Modality was blocked in Exp 1 and mixed in Exp 2. In both experiments there were similar effects of context for words and pictures, contrary to the hypothesis that lexical priming produces the sentence context effect. Mixed conditions produced longer response latencies than blocked conditions but did not interact with the context effect. The finding of no interaction between the effect of context and the mixed-blocked manipulation supports a version of lexical modularity in which context effects arise as a function of post-access integration processing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Hypermnesia for pictures and words: Testing the recall level hypothesis.

Five experiments with 150 undergraduates examined the hypothesis that hypermnesia (improved recall across repeated tests) can be predicted from cumulative recall levels. Contrary to this view, Exp I demonstrated that when the cumulative recall levels for pictures and words were equated, pictures still produced a larger hypermnesic effect. Results of Exps II and III show that varying test length (and thus recall level) had no effect on the magnitude of the hypermnesic effect. In Exp IV, Ss studied a categorized word list and then received 1 21-min test or 3 7-min tests. Results suggest that (a) similar retrieval processes are used in these 2 conditions and (b) hypermnesia in the repeated test paradigm results from Ss generating covert cues to aid item recovery across tests. Overall findings suggest that although hypermnesia is related to cumulative recall levels, various other factors (e.g., item type) modulate the magnitude of the hypermnesia by affecting item accessibility across tests. It is argued that changes in item accessibility across tests, caused by learning during testing, play a major role in producing hypermnesia in both episodic and semantic memory tasks. (43 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Forgotten but not gone: Savings for pictures and words in long-term memory.

Five experiments examined the relearning of words, simple line-drawing pictures, and complex photographic pictures after retention intervals of 1 to 10 weeks. For those items that were neither recalled nor recognized, the identical item was relearned better than an unrelated control item, as measured by a recall test following relearning. This relearning advantage in recall held for all three classes of material and extended to the cross-modality case (i.e., picture–word and word–picture) and the same-referent case (i.e., two pictures of the same object). However, recognition tests of relearning failed to detect this same relearning advantage for apparently forgotten items. Taken together, these findings conflict with the existing account of savings. Most fundamental, the classic argument that relearning serves a trace-strengthening function is undermined by the observed recall-recognition contrast. An alternative explanation of savings is suggested wherein relearning assists retrieval of information, thereby affecting recall in particular. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Relative effects of early rearing environment and genotype on discrimination learning in house mice.

Reared 768 house mice from 6 inbred strains and their F1 crosses in enriched or smaller laboratory cages for the 1st 6 wk. of life. Performance was then measured on black-white and vertical-horizontal discrimination, transfer of training, nonvisual T maze, and reversal learning tasks. Results indicate a strong degree of directional dominance on all but 1 task. On all tasks, early enrichment and maternal effects were extremely small relative to the amount of normal genetic variation found among the strains. Few Genotype * Environment interactions were found. A high genetic correlation was found between visual discrimination tasks, which in turn were negatively correlated with nonvisual T-maze performance. (45 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Neural correlates of the episodic encoding of pictures and words

A striking characteristic of human memory is that pictures are remembered better than words. We examined the neural correlates of memory for pictures and words in the context of episodic memory encoding to determine material-specific differences in brain activity patterns. To do this, we used positron emission tomography to map the brain regions active during encoding of words and pictures of objects. Encoding was carried out by using three different strategies to explore possible interactions between material specificity and types of processing. Encoding of pictures resulted in greater activity of bilateral visual and medial temporal cortices, compared with encoding words, whereas encoding of words was associated with increased activity in prefrontal and temporoparietal regions related to language function. Each encoding strategy was characterized by a distinctive activity pattern, but these patterns were largely the same for pictures and words. Thus, superior overall memory for pictures may be mediated by more effective and automatic engagement of areas important for visual memory, including medial temporal cortex, whereas the mechanisms underlying specific encoding strategies appear to operate similarly on pictures and words.     

Transfer effects of cue-related movement reversal in discrimination reversal learning with rhesus monkeys.

Investigated the relative influence of directional movement reversal on the learning of discriminations and discrimination reversals using 36 macaque monkeys in 2 experiments. The learning tasks involved comparisons among movement feedback, brightness, and spatial location as discriminanda. Results indicate that differential directional movements, when related to or serving as discriminative cues, produce a persistent elevated level of postreversal errors within a discrimination reversal task. Further, the brightness dimension was relatively easy for reversal and generally superior to spatial location and movement feedback. It is suggested that the transfer difficulty produced by cue-related differential movement might be attributed to proactive interference from the reorganization of response-response sequences within the response. (16 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Contextual control in discrimination reversal learning.

In 3 human predictive learning experiments, the authors examined contextual control of responding in discrimination reversal learning. In Phase 1, a discrimination between 2 stimuli (A+, B-) was trained in Context 1. During Phase 2, participants received discrimination reversal training (A-, B+) in Context 2. Testing occurred in Context 1 and Context 2 (Experiments 1A and 1B) or in Context 1 and Context 3 (Experiment 2). During the test phase, performance in Context 1 and Context 2 reflected the contingencies trained during Phase 1 and Phase 2, respectively. When testing occurred in Context 3, there was no discriminative responding between A and B. In addition, the experiments demonstrated that discriminating stimuli with a consistent reinforcement history were also affected by contextual manipulations. Results indicate that each training context acquires the ability to control performance. Unique-cue and configural approaches account for a major part of the results. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)