Temporal distinctiveness and modality.

It has been proposed that auditory stimuli are more temporally discriminable in memory than visual stimuli. Studies using the continual-distractor paradigm have provided both supporting and contradictory evidence for this hypothesis. The conflicting reports differed, however, in the modality of the interleaved distractor tasks. The present experiments manipulated both word and distractor-task modality. Results showed that aurally presented word lists were more sensitive to temporal schedules of presentation when the distractor task was auditory than when it was visual. The same effect was not consistently found for visually presented word lists. Such an interaction may help explain the previously reported disparate findings and suggests that the auditory modality, in the presence of silent distraction, can reduce participants' use of temporal-distinctiveness information at retrieval. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Acquired equivalence and distinctiveness of cues.

In Experiments 1 and 2, rats received initial training in which two stimuli (A and N) were either followed by the same consequence (food) or by different consequences (food and no food). Subsequently N was paired with electric shock and the generalization of conditioned suppression to A was assessed. Suppression to A was more marked when A and N had both been followed by food than when they had had different outcomes. In Experiment 3, 3 stimuli (A, B, and N) were presented initially. For one group, A and N were paired with food and B was nonreinforced; for a second group, B was paired with food and A and N were nonreinforced. Generalization of suppression was found to be more substantial to A than to B for both groups. These results indicate that the extent to which stimuli are treated as being equivalent is partly determined by their reinforcement histories. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Bizarre imagery, interference, and distinctiveness.

Previous studies have shown that bizarre and common images produce equivalent levels of recall in unmixed-list designs. Using unmixed lists, we tested the view that bizarre images would be less susceptible than common images to common sources of interference. In all experiments, subjects imaged a list of either bizarre or common sentences and then performed some kind of interfering task before recalling the initial list of sentences. Experiment 1 showed that bizarre images were better accessed than common images after imaging an intervening list of common sentences. Also, components of common images tended to be better recalled than those of bizarre images after imaging an intervening list of bizarre sentences. Experiments 2a and 2b showed that interfering tasks consisting of studying lists of common concrete nouns did not differentially affect memory for bizarre and common images. In Experiment 3, labeling and imaging an interfering list of common pictures produced higher recall of bizarre images. Generally, bizarre images appeared to be less susceptible than common images to interference from certain types of common encodings. Importantly, the superior recall of bizarre images was always due to greater image (sentence) access, whereas higher recall of common images was associated with greater recovery of the image (sentence) constituents. Explanation of the precise pattern of results requires consideration of the distinctive properties of bizarre images. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The distinctiveness of the word-length effect.

The authors report 2 experiments that compare the serial recall of pure lists of long words, pure lists of short words, and lists of long or short words containing just a single isolated word of a different length. In both experiments for pure lists, there was a substantial recall advantage for short words; the isolated words were recalled better than other words in the same list, and there was a reverse word-length effect: Isolated long words were recalled better than isolated short words. These results contradict models that seek to explain the word-length effect in terms of list-based accounts of rehearsal speed or in terms of item-based effects (such as difficulty of assembling items). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of lexicality and distinctiveness on repetition blindness.

The repetition blindness (RB) paradigm developed by K. M. Arnell and P. Jolic?ur (1997) was used to examine effects of lexicality (word vs. nonword target pairs) and target distinctiveness on RB. Distinctiveness was manipulated by having both targets (Experiments 1 and 2) or only the first target (Experiment 3) brighter than nontarget items. All 3 experiments demonstrated strong RB for word targets but no RB for nonword targets. This confirms that RB depends on pre-existing memory representations. In fact, there was repetition facilitation for nonwords in Experiments 2 and 3. These experiments also demonstrated that RB is reduced when targets are distinctive. This finding is better understood in terms of RB as a failure of memory rather than as a failure of perception. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A temporal distinctiveness theory of recency and modality effects.

Conducted 4 experiments with 40 undergraduates and 60 Ss drawn from a university community to confirm the qualitative and quantitative predictions of a temporal distinctiveness theory of contextually cued retrieval from memory as applied to recency and modality (auditory vs visual) effects on the recall of a list of word pairs. Results of Exp I demonstrated that increasing the length of the temporal isolation of the last word pair aurally presented increased recall of the item; increase in recall of the last item was smaller or absent for the visual presentation of the pairs. Exp II indicated that as the number of word pairs isolated at the end of the list increased, the size of the modality effect decreased. Temporal distinctiveness between the 1st and 2nd pairs in Exp III revealed auditory superiority in recall of the 1st pair, an effect that was eliminated in Exp IV when isolated interval occurred between the 3rd and 4th presentation of a 6-item word pair list. A mathematical model of the quantitative predictions of the theory is appended. (46 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Developmental invariance in distinctiveness effects in memory.

Improvements in 5- and 7-year-olds' acquisition and retention of related concept pairings were examined when additional similarities and differences between pair members were provided. Using a standard paired-associate learning paradigm, children learned 18 related picture pairs; some of the children either were given or produced additional similarities or differences between pair members at the time of learning. Three weeks after learning was complete, children attempted to recall the pairs. Using a model to determine the storage and retrieval loci of these effects, the results showed that (a) all children benefited from self-generated elaborations, regardless of whether these were similarities or differences, and these benefits were storage related, and (b) difference elaborations improved children's retention regardless of whether they were self- or experimenter-generated, and these effects were primarily retrieval based. These results are consistent with theories that (a) view retrieval as the locus of distinctiveness effects and (b) view storage as the locus of self-generated memory improvements. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Schedules of presentation and temporal distinctiveness in human memory.

Recency, in remembering a series of events, reflects the simple fact that memory is vivid for what has just happened but deteriorates over time. Theories based on distinctiveness, an alternative to the multistore model, assert that the last few events in a series are well remembered because their times of occurrence are more highly distinctive than those of earlier times. Three experiments examined the role of temporal and ordinal factors in auditorily and visually presented lists that were temporally organized by distractor materials interpolated between memory items. With uniform distractor periods, the results were consistent with A. M. Glenberg's (1987) temporal distinctiveness theory. When the procedure was altered so that distractor periods became progressively shorter from the beginning to the end of the list, the results were consistent for only the visual modality; the auditory modality produced a different and unpredicted (by the theory) pattern of results, thus falsifying the claim that the auditory modality derives more benefit from temporal information than the visual modality. We distinguish serial order information from specifically temporal information, arguing that the former may be enhanced by auditory presentation but that the two modalities are more nearly equal with respect to the latter. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Perceptions of unity and distinctiveness as determinants of attraction.

Reinforcement theories of attraction have difficulty in accommodating the findings that individuals met in a negative context are sometimes liked more than individuals met in a positive context and that the sequence of positive and negative affect can often influence attraction more than the proportion of positive to negative affect. To understand these effects, one may have to consider how an individual's organization of information within a context affects evaluations. Two experiments were conducted with 178 undergraduates in which the relationship between 2 strangers was manipulated. Results suggest that (1) generalization of affect occurred when the 2 strangers were perceived as a unit and (2) when the 2 strangers were perceived as distinct from one another, the valence of one was compared to that of the other, and a contrast effect emerged. (55 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Recognizing familiar faces: The role of distinctiveness and familiarity.

Examined the claim of J. C. Bartlett et al (see record 1985-11281-001) that the effect of distinctiveness in recognition memory for previously unfamiliar faces can be accounted for in terms of the differential perceived familiarity of distinctive and typical faces. In judging 12 photographs of male psychology department staff for distinctiveness and familiarity, 20 postgraduates and staff from other departments produced results indicating independent effects of distinctiveness and familiarity in the recognition of highly familiar faces. Results are inconsistent with the familiarity hypothesis of Bartlett et al and are explained better in terms of a facial prototype. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Stereotype distinctiveness: How counterstereotypic behavior shapes the self-concept.

Three experiments examined the relationship between distinctiveness and self-schematicity. Experiment 1 revealed that people were more likely to be self-schematic in domains of strong performance when they felt distinct from family and peers in those domains. Experiments 2 and 3 extended this finding into the arena of stereotypes by demonstrating that people were more likely to be self-schematic in domains of strong performance when their performance was counterstereotypic rather than stereotypic. In particular, African Americans and women were more likely to be schematic for intelligence than Caucasians and men if they performed well academically, whereas Caucasians—especially men—were more likely than African Americans to be schematic for athletics if they performed well athletically. These results suggest that counterstereotypic behavior plays a uniquely powerful role in the development of the self-concept. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Associative mediational processes in the acquired equivalence and distinctiveness of cues.

Three experiments used rats to examine the acquired equivalence or distinctiveness of cues occurring when 2 auditory and 2 visual stimuli were associated with either the same or with different reinforcing outcomes (A?+, A?+, V?*, and V?* vs. A?+, A?*, V?+, and V?*), Subsequent single modality discrimination learning (e.g., A?+, A?–) was assessed in Experiment 1, whereas in Experiment 2, visual and auditory discriminations were tested concurrently (i.e., A?+, A?–, V?–, V?*). In Experiment 3, auditory and visual discriminations (A?+, A?–, V?–, V?*) were trained and then reversed, using either the same (A?–, A?+, V?*, V?–) or different outcomes (A?–, A?*, V?+, V?–) within each stimulus modality. Discriminations were learned more rapidly in these studies when different outcomes were associated with stimuli from the same modality. These results challenge associative mediational theories of acquired equivalence and distinctiveness. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Acquired equivalence and distinctiveness of cues: II. Neural manipulations and their implications.

Neural manipulations were used to examine the mechanisms that underlie the acquired equivalence and distinctiveness of cues in rats. Control rats and those with excitotoxic lesions of either the hippocampus (BPC) or entorhinal cortex (EC) acquired the following conditional discrimination: In Contexts A and B, Stimulus X --3- food and Stimulus Y --* no food, and in Contexts C and D, Y - food and X ---> no food. Rats then received many food pellets in A but not in C. After this treatment, control rats showed more magazine activity in B than in D-an acquired equivalence- distinctiveness effect. This effect was also evident in BPC rats but not in EC rats. These results indicate that changes in stimulus distinctiveness are dissociable from the process of conditional leaming. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Local and relational aspects of face distinctiveness

Distinctiveness contributes strongly to the recognition and rejection of faces in memory tasks. In four experiments we examine the role played by local and relational information in the distinctiveness of upright and inverted faces. In all experiments subjects saw one of three versions of a face: original faces, which had been rated as average in distinctiveness in a previous study (Hancock, Burton, & Bruce, 1996), a more distinctive version in which local features had been changed (D-local), and a more distinctive version in which relational features had been changed (D-rel). An increase in distinctiveness was found for D-local and D-rel faces in Experiment 1 (complete faces) and 3 and 4 (face internals only) when the faces had to be rated in upright presentation, but the distinctiveness of the D-rel faces was reduced much more than that of the D-local versions when the ratings were given to the faces presented upside-down (Experiments 1 and 3). Recognition performance showed a similar pattern: presented upright, both D-local and D-rel revealed higher performance compared to the originals, but in upside-down presentation the D-local versions showed a much stronger distinctiveness advantage. When only internal features of faces were used (Experiments 3 and 4), the D-rel faces lost their advantage over the Original versions in inverted presentation. The results suggest that at least two dimensions of facial information contribute to a face's apparent distinctiveness, but that these sources of information are differentially affected by turning the face upside-down. These findings are in accordance with a face processing model in which face inversion effects occur because a specific type of information processing is disrupted, rather than because of a general disruption of performance.     

Conceptual distinctiveness supports detailed visual long-term memory for real-world objects.

Humans have a massive capacity to store detailed information in visual long-term memory. The present studies explored the fidelity of these visual long-term memory representations and examined how conceptual and perceptual features of object categories support this capacity. Observers viewed 2,800 object images with a different number of exemplars presented from each category. At test, observers indicated which of 2 exemplars they had previously studied. Memory performance was high and remained quite high (82% accuracy) with 16 exemplars from a category in memory, demonstrating a large memory capacity for object exemplars. However, memory performance decreased as more exemplars were held in memory, implying systematic categorical interference. Object categories with conceptually distinctive exemplars showed less interference in memory as the number of exemplars increased. Interference in memory was not predicted by the perceptual distinctiveness of exemplars from an object category, though these perceptual measures predicted visual search rates for an object target among exemplars. These data provide evidence that observers' capacity to remember visual information in long-term memory depends more on conceptual structure than perceptual distinctiveness. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Autobiographical elaboration reduces memory distortion: Cognitive operations and the distinctiveness heuristic.

Retrieval monitoring enhances episodic memory accuracy. For instance, false recognition is reduced when participants base their decisions on more distinctive recollections, a retrieval monitoring process called the distinctiveness heuristic. The experiments reported here tested the hypothesis that autobiographical elaboration during study (i.e., generating autobiographical memories in response to cue words) would lead to more distinctive recollections than other item-specific encoding tasks, enhancing retrieval monitoring accuracy at test. Consistent with this hypothesis, false recognition was less likely when participants had to search their memory for previous autobiographical elaborations, compared to previous semantic judgments. These false recognition effects were dissociated from true recognition effects across four experiments, implicating a recollection-based monitoring process that was independent from familiarity-based processes. Separately obtained subjective measures provided converging evidence for this conclusion. The cognitive operations engaged during autobiographical elaboration can lead to distinctive recollections, making them less prone to memory distortion than other types of deep or semantic encoding. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Order information and retrieval distinctiveness: Recall of common versus bizarre material.

The order-encoding hypothesis (E. L. DeLosh & M. A. McDaniel, 1996) assumes that serial-order information contributes to the retrieval of list items and that serial-order encoding is better for common items than bizarre items. In line with this account, Experiment 1 revealed better free recall and serial-order memory for common than for bizarre items in pure lists, and Experiment 2 showed that recall for bizarre items increased and the recall advantage of common items was eliminated when serial-order encoding for bizarre items was increased to the level of common items. However, inconsistent with a second assumption that bizarre-item advantages in mixed lists reflect better individual-item encoding for bizarre items, Experiments 3 and 4 showed that the bizarreness effect in mixed lists is eliminated when alternative retrieval strategies are encouraged. This set of findings is better explained by the differential-retrieval-process framework, which proposes that contextual factors (e.g., list composition) influence the extent to which various types of information are used at retrieval, with the bizarreness advantage in mixed lists dependent on a distinctiveness-based retrieval process. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Is face distinctiveness gender based?

Two experiments were carried out to study the role of gender category in evaluations of face distinctiveness. In Experiment 1, participants had to evaluate the distinctiveness and the femininity-masculinity of real or artificial composite faces. The composite faces were created by blending either faces of the same gender (sexed composite faces, approximating the sexed prototypes) or faces of both genders (nonsexed composite faces, approximating the face prototype). The results show that the distinctiveness ratings decreased as the number of blended faces increased. Distinctiveness and gender ratings did not covary for real faces or sexed composite faces, but they did vary for nonsexed composite faces. In Experiment 2, participants were asked to state which of two composite faces, one sexed and one nonsexed, was more distinctive. Sexed composite faces were selected less often. The results are interpreted as indicating that distinctiveness is based on sexed prototypes. Implications for face recognition models are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Evidence for auditory temporal distinctiveness: Modality effects in order and frequency judgments.

Two new, long-lasting phenomena involving modality of stimulus presentation are documented. In one series of experiments we investigated effects of modality of presentation on order judgments. Order judgments for auditory words were more accurate than order judgments for visual words at both the beginning and the end of lists, and the auditory advantage increased with the temporal separation of the successive items. A second series of experiments investigated effects of modality on estimates of presentation frequency. Frequency estimates of repeated auditory words exceeded frequency estimates of repeated visual words. The auditory advantage increased with frequency of presentation, and this advantage was not affected by the retention interval. These various effects were taken as support for a temporal coding assumption, that auditory presentation produces a more accurate encoding of time of presentation than does visual presentation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)