Increased processing enhances calibration of comprehension.

Two experiments investigated whether increased processing increases the relation between test performance predictions and test performance, i.e., increases calibration of comprehension. The amount of processing of text was manipulated by having subjects read intact text or text with deleted letters. In Experiment 1, intact versus deleted letters were manipulated within subjects, and subjects made either comprehension ease or test prediction ratings. Paragraphs with deleted letters produced higher correlations between predictions and test performance than did intact paragraphs. Better calibration with more processing was not observed for ratings of comprehension ease. In Experiment 2, in a between-subjects design, the prediction results were replicated; calibration was better for text with deleted letters than for intact text. The results show that subjects can predict performance on text material with greater than chance accuracy and that these predictions are better when subjects do more active processing during reading. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A demonstration and comparison of two types of inference-based memory errors.

Participants viewed slides depicting ordinary routines (e.g., going grocery shopping) and later received a recognition test. In Experiment 1, there was higher recognition confidence to high-schema-relevant than to low-schema-relevant items. In Experiment 2, participants viewed slide sequences that sometimes contained a cause (e.g., woman taking orange from bottom of pile) but not an effect scene (oranges on floor), or an effect but not a cause scene. Participants mistook new cause scenes as old when they viewed the effect; false alarms to cause scenes and high-schema-relevant items increased with retention interval. Experiment 3 showed that the backward inference effect was accompanied by false explicit recollection, whereas false alarms to schema-high foils were based on familiarity. This suggests that the 2 types of inferential errors are produced by different underlying mechanisms. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The production effect: Delineation of a phenomenon.

In 8 recognition experiments, we investigated the production effect—the fact that producing a word aloud during study, relative to simply reading a word silently, improves explicit memory. Experiments 1, 2, and 3 showed the effect to be restricted to within-subject, mixed-list designs in which some individual words are spoken aloud at study. Because the effect was not evident when the same repeated manual or vocal overt response was made to some words (Experiment 4), producing a subset of studied words appears to provide additional unique and discriminative information for those words—they become distinctive. This interpretation is supported by observing a production effect in Experiment 5, in which some words were mouthed (i.e., articulated without speaking); in Experiment 6, in which the materials were pronounceable nonwords; and even in Experiment 7, in which the already robust generation effect was incremented by production. Experiment 8 incorporated a semantic judgment and showed that the production effect was not due to “lazy reading” of the words studied silently. The distinctiveness that accrues to the records of produced items at the time of study is useful at the time of test for discriminating these produced items from other items. The production effect represents a simple but quite powerful mechanism for improving memory for selected information. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Recollective experience in the revelation effect: separating the contributions of recollection and familiarity

The revelation effect is a phenomenon of recognition memory in which words presented for a recognition decision are more likely to be identified as previously studied if they are initially disguised and are then somehow revealed to the subject. The goal of the present experiments was to determine whether the revelation effect has similar or different influences on the conscious recollection of a previous encounter with a test item and on the feeling of familiarity evoked by a test item. The process-dissociation procedure (Experiment 1) and the remember/know procedure (Experiment 2) were used to achieve this goal. The main findings of these experiments were that revealing an item at test (1) increased the feeling of familiarity associated with that item, especially if it was not previously studied, and (2) decreased conscious recollection of previously studied items. These data narrow the range of potential explanations of the revelation effect.     

Social influences on metacognition: Effects of colearner questioning on comprehension monitoring.

Four experiments examined social influences on metacognition, testing whether learners' knowledge that colearners have questions about material they are simultaneously viewing affects learners' own judged levels of comprehension. In Experiment 1 (n?=?88), the frequency with which learners indicated they were confused increased with the number of questions they believed colearners had about the material. Experiment 2 (n?=?38) determined that the effect of colearner questioning on self-judged comprehension was not due to distraction or social facilitation. Experiment 3 (n?=?100) replicated the results of Experiment 1 and found that the social impact on learners' judgments of comprehension was less when questions were believed to have come from 3 colearners rather than 1. Experiment 4 (n?=?60) suggested that the number of questions per colearner determines their impact on others' comprehension judgments. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Enhancing calibration of comprehension.

This article is structured around 4 points concerning calibration of comprehension (COC). (1) Poor COC is the rule, rather than the exception, a fact that has been repeatedly demonstrated in our laboratory and in others. Poor COC is also typical in at least one other domain: solving insight problems. (2) We present 2 experiments that demonstrate that poor COC is not associated with a particular type of performance test but is found with inference tests, verbatim recognition tests, and idea recognition tests. Also, we demonstrate that poor calibration cannot be attributed to unreliable testing procedures. (3) The evidence from 3 experiments indicates that a likely reason for poor COC is that Ss assess familiarity with the general domain of a text instead of assessing knowledge gained from a particular text. (4) We demonstrate that COC can be enhanced if Ss are given a pretest that provides (self-generated) feedback. Implications for theories of representation of knowledge gained from reading are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Picture-word differences in a sentence verification task

Effects of picture-word format were investigated with four problem-solving items. In Experiment 1, picture-word input was presented for 8 sec followed by a test sentence that included verbatim and inference statements. Subjects made a true/false reaction time to the test sentence. In Experiment 2, the input remained on the screen while the test sentence was presented with varied stimulus onset asynchronies from 0 to 1,000 msec. Results showed that responses to pictures were faster than responses to words, and the format effect was larger with inference than with verbatim sentences. The picture advantage seemed to be due to the nature of the input and how information is extracted from it. The findings are discussed within the context of text-processing theories (Glenberg & Langston, 1992; Larkin & Simon, 1987).     

Effect of organizational cues and strategies on good and poor comprehenders' story understanding.

In two experiments, we investigated the influence of organizational cues on story comprehension by 7- to 8-year-old children, matched in age and decoding skills but differing in comprehension ability. In Experiment 1, children read abstract stories with titles and pictures that did or did not integrate story information. Providing integrative cues improved comprehension by poor, but not good comprehenders, but had no effect on verbatim recall. Both skill groups recalled more main ideas than subsidiary ones. In Experiment 2, two new groups read the stories without pictures or titles. Poor comprehenders trained to look for "clue words" to infer main story consequences, implicit in the stories, showed better comprehension than such children given no training. Good comprehenders performed at a uniformly high level regardless of training. The results are discussed in terms of cognitive control required to select and coordinate information in text. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Matching faces to photographs: Poor performance in eyewitness memory (without the memory).

Eyewitness memory is known to be fallible. We describe 3 experiments that aim to establish baseline performance for recognition of unfamiliar faces. In Experiment 1, viewers were shown live actors or photos (targets), and then immediately presented with arrays of 10 faces (test items). Asked whether the target was present among the test items, and if so to identify the person, participants showed poor performance levels (roughly 70% accurate). Furthermore, there was no difference between immediate memory for a live person and photograph. In Experiment 2, the same targets and test items were presented simultaneously, and participants were asked to perform a matching task. Again, performance was poor (roughly 68% accurate), with no difference between matching photos and live people. In the final experiment, viewers were asked to match a live person to a single photograph. Even under these conditions, performance was poor (c. 85%), with no advantage over matching 2 photographs. We suggest that problems of eyewitness identification may involve difficulties in initial encoding of unfamiliar faces, in addition to problems of memory for an event. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Implicit memory and test awareness.

In three experiments we examined whether normal subjects can perform an implicit test without becoming aware that the test items were previously encountered in the study phase of the experiment. Experiment 1 assessed single word priming with the stem completion task, and subjects who reported awareness/unawareness that the test items were previously encoded in the study task showed equivalent priming. Experiments 2a–c and 3 assessed associative priming with the stem completion task, and in this case, only subjects who were aware that the test items were previously encountered showed associative priming effects. These findings suggest that single word priming and associative priming reflect different memory processes because the former and not the latter effect can be observed in unaware subjects. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Segmentation on the basis of linear and local rotational motion: Motion grouping in visual search.

In 5 experiments using visual search procedures, grouping based on common motion was investigated. Experiments 1-3 showed that items rotating locally about their center points could be segmented and selectively searched for among stationary distractors but not among distractors rotating in the opposite direction. Experiment 4 replicated previous findings showing that upward-moving items could be selectively searched for among stationary or downward-moving items. Experiment 5 showed that rotating items could be selected efficiently from among translating items and vice versa. It is suggested that the visual system groups moving items only if they can feasibly belong to a single unique surface. Implications for current theories of visual attention are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Automatic semantic similarity priming.

Words similar in meaning but not associated may not automatically prime one another (J. R. Shelton & R. C. Martin, 1992). This contradicts a central prediction of distributed models, necessitates questionable revisions of spreading activation and compound cue theories, and has led to the claim that automatic priming does not tap word meaning. Low item similarity was hypothesized to be the primary factor responsible for the previous null effects. Experiment 1 obtained priming with highly similar items using single and paired presentation with lexical and semantic decision tasks. Experiment 2 replicated Shelton and Martin to show that the results of Experiment 1 were not due to methodological factors. Experiment 3 showed priming for highly similar items for short and long SOAs, but for less similar items for a long SOA only. Thus, semantic similarity is an important aspect of semantic relatedness, and automatic priming does tap word meaning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Context, feedback, and the calibration and resolution of confidence in perceptual judgments

The effects of variations in the global task difficulty context on judgmental confidence and confidence calibration were investigated in two experiments requiring perceptual comparisons. In Experiment 1, target judgments of moderate difficulty were embedded in a larger set of more difficult (hard context) or less difficult (easy context) judgments. Decisional response time on the target items was longer in the hard context condition, but there was no effect of difficulty context on target judgment confidence, accuracy, over/underconfidence, calibration, or resolution. In Experiment 2, each subject was exposed to three levels of local judgment difficulty. The global contextual difficulty manipulation involved varying the frequency with which the hard and easy judgments appeared, and the presence or absence of trial-by-trial response feedback was manipulated between subjects. As in Experiment 1, contextual difficulty affected decisional response times but not mean confidence ratings or accuracy. However, we found that providing feedback on a globally difficult task makes calibration worse. Also, resolution (the ability to differentiate correct from incorrect judgments) was found to be superior for easy judgments in a difficult context and for difficult judgments in an easy context. We discuss the implication of these findings for research on confidence and confidence calibration.     

Learning from text with diagrams: Promoting mental model development and inference generation.

Two experiments investigated learning outcomes and comprehension processes when students learned about the heart and circulatory system using (a) text only, (b) text with simplified diagrams designed to highlight important structural relations, or (c) text with more detailed diagrams reflecting a more accurate representation. Experiment 1 found that both types of diagrams supported mental model development, but simplified diagrams best supported factual learning. Experiment 2 replicated learning effects from Experiment 1 and tested the influence of diagrams on novices' comprehension processes. Protocol analyses indicated that both types of diagrams supported inference generation and reduced comprehension errors, but simplified diagrams most strongly supported information integration during learning. Visual representations appear to be most effective when they are designed to support the cognitive processes necessary for deep comprehension. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Lexical ambiguity resolution in good and poor comprehenders: An eye fixation and self-paced reading study in primary school children.

To investigate the use of context and monitoring of comprehension in lexical ambiguity resolution in children, the authors asked 10- to 12-year-old good and poor comprehenders to read sentences consisting of 2 clauses, 1 containing the ambiguous word and the other the disambiguating information. The order of the clauses was reversed so that disambiguating information either preceded or followed the ambiguous word. Context use and comprehension monitoring were examined by measuring eye fixations (Experiment 1) and self-paced reading times (Experiment 2) on the ambiguous word and disambiguating region. The results of Experiment 1 and 2 showed that poor comprehenders made use of prior context to facilitate lexical ambiguity resolution as effectively as good comprehenders but that they monitored their comprehension less effectively than good comprehenders. Good comprehenders corrected an initial interpretation error on an ambiguous word and restored comprehension once they encountered the disambiguating region. Poor comprehenders failed to deal with this type of comprehension failure. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Language comprehension in learning disabled children who perform poorly on memory span tests.

Conducted three studies of language comprehension skills in 9- and 10-year-old learning disabled (LD) children who have extreme difficulties retaining brief sequences of verbal information. The performance of this subgroup of LD children is contrasted with other LD subjects who perform normally on memory span tests and with normally achieving subjects. In Experiment 1 we showed that although children in the target subgroup had difficulties remembering the specific words and word order used in expository passages, they were not different from the two control groups in their comprehension of the passages. In Experiment 2 we showed that the gist recall of idea units from two folk tales was equally influenced in all groups by the thematic importance of the idea units being recalled. The primary inference was that the groups comprehended the stories equally well. Experiment 3 showed that children in the subgroup with memory limitations had more difficulty than children in the other two groups in following simple directions involving the manipulation of blocks. They were impaired in their ability to follow sequences of directions whether order of execution was important or not. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Evidence for role-neutral initial processing of metaphors.

Two models of metaphor processing are contrasted. The structure-mapping model postulates an initially role-neutral alignment process, followed by directional projection of inferences. The attributive categorization model postulates role-specific processing throughout comprehension. To test between these models, the early stages of metaphor comprehension were probed using a technique based on S. Glucksberg, R. Gildea, and H. Bookin's (1982) finding that metaphorical meaning interferes with literal truthfulness judgments. In Experiment 1, interference effects did not differ between normal metaphors and metaphors with reversed terms, suggesting that initial processing is role-neutral. In Experiment 2, we again found no role dependence in interference effects, even for highly conventional metaphors. In Experiment 3, it was verified that (a) full comprehension is role-sensitive and (b) full comprehension reaction times (RTs) are far longer than interference RTs, buttressing the claim that interference is an early-stage effect. Overall, the results support the structure-mapping model of metaphor processing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Retrieval processes underlying confidence in comprehension judgments.

People's ratings of confidence in ability to answer questions about previously studied expository passages are virtually uncorrelated with test performance. This correlation would be attenuated if confidence ratings were influenced by momentary accessibility (e.g., latency to initial access of probed information) and if test performance were influenced by other aspects of retrieval (e.g., total recall over an interval). To see if momentary accessibility influences confidence ratings, Experiment 1 manipulated accessibility by using self- versus other-generated title probes. Both confidence and accessibility measures varied with generation condition. Experiment 2 provided three findings. First it assessed whether accessibility is the only common factor underlying confidence and domain familiarity ratings by observing whether confidence and familiarity covary wth accessibility partialed out. Marginal covariation implied either some common factor other than accessibility, imperfect measurement of accessibility, or both. Second, negative correlations of rating latencies with rating magnitudes implied that access latency, momentary access rate, or both, affect the ratings. Third, calibration of comprehension was poor, but nonzero. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Short-term implicit memory for words and nonwords.

A short-term implicit memory effect is reported and interpreted as arising within the word recognition system. In Experiment 1, repetition priming in lexical decision was determined for low-frequency words and pseudowords at lags of 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 9, and 23 intervening items. For words, a large short-term priming component decayed rapidly but smoothly over the first 3 items (8 s) to a stable long-term value. For nonwords, priming dropped to the long-term value with a single intervening item. This Lag x Lexicality interaction was replicated with a naming task in Experiment 2 and with high-frequency words in Experiment 3. Word frequency affected long-term priming but not the size or decay rate of short-term priming, dissociating the two repetition effects. In Experiment 4, an old-new decision task was used to test explicit memory. Parallel word and nonword decay patterns were found, dissociating short-term priming from explicit working memory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Retrieval experience as a modifier of future encoding: Another test effect.

Research on how individuals monitor their level of comprehension during study paints a picture of learners as being insensitive to many of the factors or conditions of learning that can enhance long-term retention and transfer. In previous research, however, deWinstanley and Bjork (2004) demonstrated that learners—if made sensitive to the memorial benefits of generation in the context of an informative test following study of a text passage in which they had encoded both to-be-read and to-be-generated critical items—then became more effective processors of future to-be-read information presented in a 2nd text passage. In Experiments 1 and 2 of the present research, we explored the potential applicability of this effect by testing whether it could survive certain types of activity-filled delays. In Experiments 3 and 4, we tested whether enhanced processing of contextual information, an encoding strategy that could possibly have been discovered by participants during the testing episode for the 1st text passage, was a potential underlying cause of this effect. Together, our results bring to light an additional benefit of test taking and point to what might be considered necessary and sufficient conditions for leading learners to become more effective processors of future to-be-learned information. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)