Knowledge About the Probability of Change Affects Change Detection Performance.

The visual system continually selects some information for processing while bypassing the processing of other information, and as a consequence, participants often fail to notice large changes to visual stimuli. In the present studies, the authors investigated whether knowledge about the probability of particular changes occurring over time increased the likelihood that changes that were likely to occur in the real world (probable changes) would be detected. The results of two experiments showed that participants were more likely to detect probable changes. This occurred whether or not they were processing the scene in a meaningful manner or actively searching the scene for changes. Furthermore, participants were unable to accurately predict change detection performance for probable and improbable changes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Word-based grouping affects the prime-task effect on semantic priming.

Semantic priming between words is reduced or eliminated if a low-level task such as letter search is performed on the prime word (the prime task effect), a finding used to question the automaticity of semantic processing of words. This idea is critically examined in 3 experiments with a new design that allows the search target to occur both inside and outside the prime word. The new design produces the prime task effect (Experiment 1) but shows semantic negative priming when the target letter occurs outside the prime word (Experiments 2 and 3). It is proposed that semantic activation and priming are dissociable and that inhibition and word-based grouping are responsible for reduction of semantic priming in the prime task effect. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Scene and position specificity in visual memory for objects.

This study investigated whether and how visual representations of individual objects are bound in memory to scene context. Participants viewed a series of naturalistic scenes, and memory for the visual form of a target object in each scene was examined in a 2-alternative forced-choice test, with the distractor object either a different object token or the target object rotated in depth. In Experiments 1 and 2, object memory performance was more accurate when the test object alternatives were displayed within the original scene than when they were displayed in isolation, demonstrating object-to-scene binding. Experiment 3 tested the hypothesis that episodic scene representations are formed through the binding of object representations to scene locations. Consistent with this hypothesis, memory performance was more accurate when the test alternatives were displayed within the scene at the same position originally occupied by the target than when they were displayed at a different position. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Confirmatory and diagnosing strategies in social information gathering.

In 3 experiments, 342 Ss (including 199 undergraduates) were asked to test the hypothesis that another person possesses a certain personality trait by selecting sources of behavioral evidence. The 2 main informational properties on which these sources of evidence varied were (a) the probability of the evidence under the hypothesized trait, from highly probable to highly improbable, and (b) the diagnosticity of the evidence. Results show that diagnosticity was the major determinant of the information-gathering preferences. There was very little evidence for a confirmatory strategy wherein evidence probable under the hypothesized trait was preferred to evidence improbable under this trait. In fact, improbable evidence was preferred when it was more diagnostic than probable evidence. It is concluded that the confirmatory strategy did not reduce the diagnostic power of the information assembled. (29 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

On the functional relationship between word identification and letter probability.

Investigated whether words made up of probable letters and probable letter combinations are more accurately recognized than words made up of improbable letters and improbable letter combinations. The experimental method corrected shortcomings in previous research which has shown accuracy of word recognition to be affected only by word probability and not by letter probability. The shortcomings were the confounding of different letter probability dimensions within one another. In the present investigation with 40 19-43 yr old adults, 100 words were assessed with respect to the probabilities of their letters and, independently, the conditional probabilities of their letters. Subsequent tests of recognition accuracy in a brief presentation showed accuracy to be greatest for words made up of letters having either high simple probabilities or high conditional probabilities. It is concluded that word recognition is an active, perhaps serial, process which makes liberal use of individual letter statistics to facilitate accurate recognition. (French summary) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Speed limits: Orientation and semantic context interactions constrain natural scene discrimination dynamics.

The visual system rapidly extracts information about objects from the cluttered natural environment. In 5 experiments, the authors quantified the influence of orientation and semantics on the classification speed of objects in natural scenes, particularly with regard to object-context interactions. Natural scene photographs were presented in an object-discrimination task and pattern masked with various scene-to-mask stimulus-onset asynchronies (SOAs). Full psychometric functions and reaction times (RTs) were measured. The authors found that (a) rotating the full scenes increased threshold SOA at intermediate rotation angles but not for inversion; (b) rotating object or context degraded classification performance in a similar manner; (c) semantically congruent contexts had negligible facilitatory effects on object classification compared with meaningless baseline contexts with a matching contrast structure, but incongruent contexts severely degraded performance; (d) any object-context incongruence (orientation or semantic) increased RTs at longer SOAs, indicating dependent processing of object and context; and (e) facilitatory effects of context emerged only when the context shortly preceded the object. The authors conclude that the effects of natural scene context on object classification are primarily inhibitory and discuss possible reasons. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Repetition blindness for rotated objects.

Repetition blindness (RB) is the finding that observers often miss the repetition of an item within a rapid stream of words or objects. Recent studies have shown that RB for objects is largely unaffected by variations in viewpoint between the repeated items. In 5 experiments, we tested RB under different axes of rotation, with different types of stimuli (line drawings and shaded images, intact and split), using both novel and familiar objects. Although RB was largely viewpoint invariant, in most experiments, RB was reduced for small (0°) and large (180°) viewpoint differences relative to intermediate rotations. However, these deviations from invariance were eliminated when object images were split, breaking the holistic coherence of the object. These findings suggest that RB is due mainly to the activation of object representations from local diagnostic features, but can be modulated by priming on the basis of view similarity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The dynamic microstructure of speech production: Semantic interference built on the fly.

We present 4 experiments investigating dynamic and flexible aspects of semantic activation spread during speech planning. In a semantic blocking paradigm, pictures of objects were presented in categorically homogeneous blocks consisting of semantic category members (e.g., foods), in blocks consisting of seemingly unrelated objects that could potentially be integrated into a common theme (e.g., fishing trip), or in heterogeneous blocks consisting of entirely unrelated objects. In Experiment 1 we observed a classic semantic interference effect for the categorically homogeneous condition but no effect for the thematically homogeneous condition. In Experiment 2 the blocks were preceded once by visually presented title words. When titles were presented that referred to the semantic category or theme of the block, interference was observed not only in the categorically homogeneous condition but also in the thematically homogeneous condition. The ad hoc semantic interference effects for thematic relations were replicated with a different set of materials in Experiments 3 and 4. These observations reveal the dynamic nature of the speech production system, shaped by context and formations of flexible ad hoc categories and semantic relations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Source memory enhancement for emotional words.

The influence of emotional stimuli on source memory was investigated by using emotionally valenced words. The words were colored blue or yellow (Experiment 1) or surrounded by a blue or yellow frame (Experiment 2). Participants were asked to associate the words with the colors. In both experiments, emotionally valenced words elicited enhanced free recall compared with nonvalenced words; however, recognition memory was not affected. Source memory for the associated color was also enhanced for emotional words, suggesting that even memory for contextual information is benefited by emotional stimuli. This effect was not due to the ease of semantic clustering of emotional words because semantically related words were not associated with enhanced source memory, despite enhanced recall (Experiment 3). It is suggested that enhancement resulted from facilitated arousal or attention, which may act to increase organization processes important for source memory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Attending holistically versus analytically: Comparing the context sensitivity of Japanese and Americans.

Much research indicates that East Asians, more than Americans, explain events with reference to the context. The authors examined whether East Asians also attend to the context more than Americans do. In Study 1, Japanese and Americans watched animated vignettes of underwater scenes and reported the contents. In a subsequent recognition test, they were shown previously seen objects as well as new objects, either in their original setting or in novel settings, and then were asked to judge whether they had seen the objects. Study 2 replicated the recognition task using photographs of wildlife. The results showed that the Japanese (a) made more statements about contextual information and relationships than Americans did and (b) recognized previously seen objects more accurately when they saw them in their original settings rather than in the novel settings, whereas this manipulation had relatively little effect on Americans. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Illusory conjunctions inside and outside the focus of attention.

This article addresses 2 questions that arise from the finding (e.g., W. Prinzmetal et al; see record 1986-26854-001) that visual scenes are first parsed into visual features: (a) the accumulation of location information about objects during their recognition and (b) the mechanism for the binding of the visual features. The first 2 experiments demonstrated that when 2 colored letters were presented outside the initial focus of attention, illusory conjunctions between the color of one letter and the shape of the other were formed only if the letters were less than 1° apart. Separation greater than 2° resulted in fewer conjunction errors than expected by chance. Experiments 3 and 4 showed that inside the spread of attention, illusory connections between the 2 letters can occur regardless of the distance between them. In addition, these experiments demonstrated that the span of attention can expand or shrink like a spotlight. The results suggest that features inside the focus of attention are integrated by an expandable focal attention mechanism that conjoins all features that appear inside its focus. Visual features outside the focus of attention may be registered with coarse location information prior to their integration. Alternatively, a quick and imprecise shift of attention to the periphery may lead to illusory conjunctions among adjacent stimuli. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Ease of processing constrains the activation flow in the conceptual-lexical system during speech planning.

In 3 picture–word interference experiments, speakers named a target object in the presence of an unrelated not-to-be-named context object. Distractor words, which were phonologically related or unrelated to the context object's name, were used to determine whether the context object had become phonologically activated. All objects had high frequency names, and the ease of processing of these objects was manipulated by a visual degradation technique. In Experiment 1, both objects were nondegraded; in Experiment 2, both objects were degraded; and in Experiment 3, either the target object or the context object was degraded. Distractor words, which were phonologically related to the context objects, interfered with the naming response when both objects were nondegraded, indicating that the context objects had become phonologically coactivated. The effect vanished when both objects were degraded, when only the context object was degraded, and when only the target object was degraded. These data demonstrate that the amount of available processing resources constrains the forward cascading of activation in the conceptual-lexical system. Context objects are likely to become phonologically coactivated if they are easily retrieved and if prioritized target processing leaves sufficient resources. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Visual word recognition without central attention: Evidence for greater automaticity with advancing age.

The present experiments examined the automaticity of word recognition. The authors examined whether people can recognize words while central attention is devoted to another task and how this ability changes across the life span. In Experiment 1, a lexical decision Task 2 was combined with either an auditory or a visual Task 1. Regardless of the Task 1 modality, Task 2 word recognition proceeded in parallel with Task 1 central operations for older adults but not for younger adults. This is a rare example of improved cognitive processing with advancing age. When Task 2 was nonlexical (Experiment 2), however, there was no evidence for greater parallel processing for older adults. Thus, the processing advantage appears to be restricted to lexical processes. The authors conclude that greater cumulative experience with lexical processing leads to greater automaticity, allowing older adults to more efficiently perform this stage in parallel with another task. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

What is learned during automatization? II. Obligatory encoding of spatial location

Six experiments addressed the encoding of location information during automatization, to test a critical prediction of the instance theory of automaticity (G. D. Logan, 1988). Subjects searched 1- or 2-word displays for members of a target category. Specific targets appeared in the same locations consistently throughout training, and then location changed at transfer. Sensitivity to changes in location were assessed with implicit and explicit memory tests. In both tests, sensitivity depended on the number of locations the words could occupy (2 vs. 16). Sensitivity varied with the number of words presented (1 vs. 2) in the implicit test, but not in the explicit test. The results suggest that subjects encoded the locations of the words during automatization, which confirms the predictions of the instance theory.     

Age-related differences in recognition memory: Effects of materials and context change.

The study explored age-related differences in the effects of context change on recognition memory by presenting object names (Expt. 1A) or their pictures (Expt. 1B) on background scenes. Participants later attempted to recognize previously presented items on background scenes that were original, switched, blank, or new. Older adults recognized fewer word stimuli than did younger adults, and context effects were larger for older adults. With pictures, however, the age-related decrement was eliminated and context effects were reduced. The beneficial effect of context reinstatement in older adults occurs despite the finding that they are less able to recall or recognize such contexts (Experiment 2). Older adults can use context information in recognition memory at least as efficiently as younger adults when suitable materials and conditions are provided. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Affective habituation: Subliminal exposure to extreme stimuli decreases their extremity.

Following a functional perspective on evaluation, the authors hypothesized that subliminal exposure to extreme stimuli (e.g., extremely negative or positive words) would lead these stimuli to be perceived as less extreme. This process--affective habituation--was tested in 4 experiments. In Experiment 1, participants were subliminally exposed to extremely positive and extremely negative words. In a subsequent explicit-judgment task, these words were rated as less extreme than extreme words that had not been presented. In Experiment 2, these results were replicated with an implicit evaluation measure. In Experiments 3 and 4, subliminal exposure to extreme positive and negative words made the words "behave" as words that are only moderately positive or negative. Several implications are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of semantic priming on visual encoding of pictures.

We investigated the effects of semantic priming on initial encoding of briefly presented pictures of objects and scenes. Pictures in 4 experiments were presented for varying durations and were followed immediately by a mask. In Exps 1 and 2, pictures of simple objects were either preceded or not preceded by the object's category name (e.g., dog). In Exp 1 we measured immediate object identification; in Exp 2 we measured delayed old/new recognition in which targets and distractors were from the same categories. In Exp 3 naturalistic scenes were either preceded or not preceded by the scene's category name (e.g., supermarket). We measured delayed recognition in which targets and distractors were described by the same category names. In Exps 1–3, performance was better for primed than for unprimed pictures. Exp 4 was similar to Exp 2 in that we measured delayed recognition for simple objects. As in Exps 1–3, a prime that preceded the object improved subsequent memory performance for the object. However, a prime that followed the object did not affect subsequent performance. Together, these results imply that priming leads to more efficient information acquisition. We offer a picture-processing model that accounts for these results. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The integration defect in paranoid and nonparanoid schizophrenia.

Tested a theory of schizophrenia which views the central defect as an inadequate integration of perceptual and cognitive processes. Instead of combining these processes as normals do, paranoids emphasize cognitive processes, whereas nonparanoids emphasize perceptual processes. 10 nonparanoid and 10 paranoid patients and 10 control Ss (hospital aides), all 18-60 yrs old, listened to sentences ending in high-, or low-probability words masked by 1 of 5 levels of white noise. As predicted, paranoids identified the masked word significantly more accurately than nonparanoids when task performance was facilitated by cognitive processes (expectation of the probable ending). When expectations operated to decrease performance (improbable endings), subgroup performance tended to reverse, although differences were not significant. The prediction that normals' performance would be intermediate in both conditions was confirmed. Controls performed more like paranoids on probable end words but more like nonparanoids on improbable end words. Moreover, signal detection analysis showed that paranoids were biased toward high-probability responses, whereas nonparanoids were biased toward low-probability responses, thus deviating from normals in opposite directions. (34 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)