Rules of engagement: Incomplete and complete pronoun resolution.

Research on shallow processing suggests that readers sometimes encode only a superficial representation of a text and fail to make use of all available information. Greene, McKoon, and Ratcliff (1992) extended this work to pronouns, finding evidence that readers sometimes fail to automatically identify referents even when these are unambiguous. In this paper we revisit those findings. In 11 recognition probe, priming, and self-report experiments, we manipulated Greene et al.'s stories to discover under what circumstances a pronoun's referent is automatically understood. We lengthened the stories from 4 to 8 lines. This simple manipulation led to automatic and correct resolution, which we attribute to readers' increased engagement with the stories. We found evidence of resolution even when the additional text did not mention the pronoun's referent. In addition, our results suggest that the pronoun temporarily boosts the referent's accessibility, an advantage that disappears by the end of the next sentence. Finally, we present evidence from memory experiments that supports complete pronoun resolution for the longer but not the shorter stories. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Readers' experiences of characters' goals and actions.

In this article, the authors examined readers' sensitivity to the match between characters' goals and characters' actions. In Experiment 1, readers integrated actions consistent with characters' goals more easily when there was a match between the extremeness of the actions and the urgency of the goals. In Experiments 2 and 3, characters' actions were consistent with either explicit or implicit goals. Participants showed different sensitivity to the mismatch between actions and urgent goals when they simply read the actions (Experiment 2) versus when they judged the likelihood of the actions (Experiment 3). Taken together, these results offer an account of how readers experience actions and goals when engaged in both local and global processing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The role of perspective in the accessibility of goals during reading.

An implicit assumption of several causal reasoning models is that readers adopt the goals of a narrative's protagonist during text comprehension. In apparent violation of this assumption, readers participating in Experiment 1 of the present study drew inferences relevant to a protagonist's goal even when that goal was already satisfied from the perspective of the protagonist. In Experiments 2 and 3, participants were explicitly asked to view the text situation from the point of view of the protagonist. In this case, the goals of the reader and the protagonist should be the same. In these experiments, participants focused on the goals of the protagonist only when those goals had not been satisfied from the perspective of the protagonist. These results are discussed in terms of reader- and character-based perspectives and in terms of text characteristics that cue perspective taking. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Constructing inferences during narrative text comprehension.

Describes a constructionist theory that accounts for the knowledge-based inferences that are constructed when readers comprehend narrative text. Readers potentially generate a rich variety of inferences when they construct a referential situation model of what the text is about. The proposed constructionist theory specifies that some, but not all, of this information is constructed under most conditions of comprehension. The distinctive assumptions of the constructionist theory embrace a principle of search (or effort) after meaning. According to this principle, readers attempt to construct a meaning representation that addresses the reader's goals, that is coherent at both local and global levels, and that explains why actions, events, and states are mentioned in the text. This study reviews empirical evidence that addresses this theory and contrasts it with alternative theoretical frameworks. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Subgoals as substitutes or complements: The role of goal accessibility.

The self-regulation process often involves breaking an ongoing goal (e.g., keeping in shape) into many individual, constituent subgoals that monitor actual actions (e.g., eating healthy meals, going to the gym). The article examines how pursuing each of these subgoals may influence subsequent goal pursuit. The authors show that when people consider success on a single subgoal, additional actions toward achieving a superordinate goal are seen as substitutes and are less likely to be pursued. In contrast, when people consider their commitment to a superordinate goal on the basis of initial success on a subgoal, additional actions toward achieving that goal may seem to be complementary and more likely to be pursued. These predictions were tested in four studies that explored the conditions under which subgoals attainment have a counterproductive versus favorable effect on further pursuit of similar actions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effects of reading purpose and working memory capacity on the processing of expository text.

The extent to which low- and high-WMC (working memory capacity) readers adjust cognitive processes to fit the reading purpose was examined. Participants performed a verbal protocol task as they read an expository text under 1 of 2 reading purpose conditions, entertainment or study, and then completed a free-recall task. When reading to study, low-WMC readers emphasized less demanding processes over more demanding processes to a greater extent than high-WMC readers and recalled less. When reading for entertainment, patterns of processes and recall were similar across readers. Thus, all readers adjusted processing to fit the reading purpose; however, when reading for study, low-WMC readers emphasized processes that were the least demanding on their resources but not necessarily beneficial for recall. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Looking back in time: Self-concept change affects visual perspective in autobiographical memory.

People who change often report that their old selves seem like "different people." Correlational (Study 1) and experimental (Studies 2 and 3) studies showed that participants tended to use a 3rd-person observer perspective when visualizing memories of actions that conflicted with their current self-concept. A similar pattern emerged when participants imagined performing actions that varied in self-concept compatibility (Study 4). The authors conclude that on-line judgments of an action's self-concept compatibility affect the perspective used for image construction. Study 5 shows applied implications. Use of the 3rd-person perspective when recalling past episodes of overindulgent eating was related to optimism about behaving differently at an upcoming Thanksgiving dinner. The authors discuss the effect of self-concept compatibility on cognitive and emotional reactions to past actions and consider the role of causal attributions in defining the self across time. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Connecting goals and actions during reading.

Three experiments showed that reading about a character's actions can reactivate a goal of the character stated earlier in the passage and backgrounded by intervening material. Ss were slower to read a line describing an action that was inconsistent with a goal of the protagonist than they were to read about an action that was consistent with the goal, even though both lines were locally coherent. Goals were reactivated even when the intervening material did not describe attempts to achieve the goal (Exp 2) and when the intervening material described another goal of the protagonist (Exp 3). The results suggest that reading a sentence can reactivate relevant information from earlier in the text, even when the sentence is coherent with its immediate context and the reactivated information has been backgrounded by several lines of unrelated text. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Syntax and retention in good and poor readers.

The purpose of the experiment was to discover whether syntactic structure facilitates recall in good readers and whether this effect exists in children who are poor readers. A paired-associate task equated the two groups on their ability to associate words. Each child was taught with a tape recorder four sentences, composed of nonsense elements; two of which were syntactically structured, the other two unstructured. The good readers learned the structured sentences more rapidly than the unstructured sentences. The poor readers learned both kinds of sentences with equal facility. There was no difference between the good readers' and the poor readers' ability to retain the unstructured material. Hence, the locus of the facilitation effect lies in the syntactic cues, implicit in the structured lists. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sacred space, not sacred cows, or it's never fun being prophetic.

Replies to comments by E. F. Loftus (see record 1998-00766-029), S. Buchholz (see record 1998-00766-030), L. G. Humphreys (see record 1998-00766-031), D. S. Lindsay (see record 1998-00766-032), and T. Dineen (see record 1998-00766-033) regarding the article (see record 84-26142) concerning managed care and false memory movement issues in social justice-oriented psychology. Firstly, Brown contends that Loftus"s assertions of misrepresentation are inaccurate. Secondly, Brown argues that making memory retrieval per se the guiding strategy and goal of therapy is more likely to be detrimental than helpful to abuse survivors, and is not consistent with a pro-survivor stance. It is also stated that each claim of recovered memories must be evaluated carefully and on an individual basis in light of all available evidence. Lastly, Brown argues that her goal for her colleagues and readers was for them to develop and assert their own strategies for the achievement of tikkunolam, to be the authors of their own actions, as she attempts to create a therapy in which clients are the authors of their own lives. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Alcohol breeds empty goal commitments.

According to alcohol-myopia theory (C. M. Steele & R. A. Josephs, 1990), alcohol leads individuals to disproportionally focus on the most salient aspects of a situation and to ignore peripheral information. The authors hypothesized that alcohol leads individuals to strongly commit to their goals without considering information about the probability of goal attainment. In Study 1, participants named their most important interpersonal goal, indicated their expectations of successfully attaining it, and then consumed either alcohol or a placebo. In contrast to participants who consumed a placebo, intoxicated participants felt strongly committed to their goals despite low expectations of attaining them. In Study 2, goal-directed actions were measured over time. Once sober again, intoxicated participants with low expectations did not follow up on their strong commitments. Apparently, when prospects are bleak, alcohol produces empty goal commitments, as commitments are not based on individuals’ expectations of attaining their goals and do not foster goal striving over time. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Encoder: A Connectionist Model of How Learning to Visually Encode Fixated Text Images Improves Reading Fluency.

This article proposes that visual encoding learning improves reading fluency by widening the span over which letters are recognized from a fixated text image so that fewer fixations are needed to cover a text line. Encoder is a connectionist model that learns to convert images like the fixated text images human readers encode into the corresponding letter sequences. The computational theory of classification learning predicts that fixated text-image size makes this learning difficult but that reducing image variability and biasing learning should help. Encoder confirms these predictions. It fails to learn as image size increases but achieves humanlike visual encoding accuracy when image variability is reduced by regularities in fixation positions and letter sequences and when learning is biased to discover mapping functions based on the sequential, componential structure of text. After training, Encoder exhibits many humanlike text familiarity effects. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Inferring the outcome of an ongoing novel action at 13 months.

Many studies have demonstrated that infants can attribute goals to observed actions, whether they are presented live by familiar agents or on a computer screen by abstract figures. However, because most, if not all, of these studies rely on the repeated action presentations typical of infant studies, it is not clear whether infants are simply recognizing the completed action as goal directed, or whether they can productively infer a not-yet-achieved outcome from an ongoing action. We investigated this question by presenting 13-month-old infants with a single animated chasing event. Infants looked longer at the outcome of this action when, given the opportunity, the chaser did not catch the chasee than when it did. Crucially, this result was dependent on whether the action could be construed as efficient with regard to this goal state. This finding suggests the ability to infer the goal of an ongoing novel action and illustrates the productivity of 1-year-olds’ action understanding. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Visual working memory for observed actions.

Human society depends on the ability to remember the actions of other individuals, which is information that must be stored in a temporary buffer to guide behavior after actions have been observed. To date, however, the storage capacity, contents, and architecture of working memory for observed actions are unknown. In this article, the author shows that it is possible to retain information about only 2-3 actions in visual working memory at once. However, it is also possible to retain 9 properties distributed across 3 actions almost as well as 3 properties distributed across 3 actions, showing that working memory stores integrated action representations rather than individual properties. Finally, the author shows that working memory for observed actions is independent from working memory for object and spatial information. These results provide evidence for a previously undocumented system in working memory for storing information about actions. Further, this system operates by the same storage principles as visual working memory for object information. Thus, working memory consists of a series of distinct yet computationally similar mechanisms for retaining different types of visual information. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Measuring the inference load of a text.

Readability formulas are criticized because they do not consider the contributions of the readers' background or expertise and ignore the meaning and content of texts. A new approach is proposed based on the analysis of texts as causally connected chains of actions, physical states, and mental states. A formula for measuring the inference load of texts is presented which uses multiple regression techniques. The inference load of texts reflects the difficulty readers have in inferring the causal connections necessary to recover the event chains underlying the texts. Using the inference load formula, the difficulty of texts can be adjusted for readers differing in skill or knowledge. (43 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Introduction à la psychologie cognitive (2e édition).

Reviews the book, Introduction à la psychologie cognitive (2e édition) by Alain Lieury (2010). The goal of this book is to provide an overview of scientific psychology for the layperson who is considering studying this subject at university. In the first part of the work, the author reviews the history of scientific psychology and its various specialties, identifying the main areas of psychology, namely psychopathology, cognitive and experimental psychology, the neurosciences, social psychology and developmental psychology. In the second part, he explores four major themes of scientific psychology, that is, auditory and visual perception; memory; intelligence; and motivation and personality. This book paints a picture of scientific psychology with a writing style that is direct, concise and well suited to its target audience. It presents information in accessible, but not hackneyed, language. Theories are illustrated with interesting and reliable examples of research. Overall the work achieves its goal, though readers may be left puzzled by its title, since the author does not clearly define what he means by "cognitive psychology," giving it a broader meaning than it would normally have in Canada. Too succinct for some and too general for others, this is nevertheless an original work dealing with a broad topic, of which there are few in French. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Automatic imitation of biomechanically possible and impossible actions: Effects of priming movements versus goals.

Recent behavioral, neuroimaging, and neurophysiological research suggests a common representational code mediating the observation and execution of actions; yet, the nature of this representational code is not well understood. The authors address this question by investigating (a) whether this observation-execution matching system (or mirror system) codes both the constituent movements of an action as well as its goal and (b) how such sensitivity is influenced by top-down effects of instructions. The authors tested the automatic imitation of observed finger actions while manipulating whether the movements were biomechanically possible or impossible, but holding the goal constant. When no mention was made of this difference (Experiment 1), comparable automatic imitation was elicited from possible and impossible actions, suggesting that the actions had been coded at the level of the goal. When attention was drawn to this difference (Experiment 2), however, only possible movements elicited automatic imitation. This sensitivity was specific to imitation, not affecting spatial stimulus-response compatibility (Experiment 3). These results suggest that automatic imitation is modulated by top-down influences, coding actions in terms of both movements and goals depending on the focus of attention. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Verbal labelling, auditory-visual integration, and reading ability.

Classified 32 male 2nd graders into good and poor readers on the basis of whether their scores on the Gates-MacGinitie Reading Test were at or above vs below the level predicted from their IQ scores on the Otis Quick-Scoring Mental Ability Test. Ss were given verbal labeling and auditory-visual integration tasks. In general, good readers performed better than poor readers on the verbal labeling task. There was, however, no difference between the good and poor readers in performance on auditory-visual integration. Results are interpreted as lending support to the data that poor readers may have a general lack of ability in linking symbols with objects or actions. (French summary) (16 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Action type and goal type modulate goal-directed gaze shifts in 14-month-old infants.

Ten- and 14-month-old infants’ gaze was recorded as the infants observed videos of different hand actions directed toward multiple goals. Infants observed an actor who (a) reached for objects and displaced them, (b) reached for objects and placed them inside containers, or (c) moved his fisted hand. Fourteen-month-olds, but not 10-month-olds, anticipated the goal of reaching actions but tracked all the other actions reactively. Fourteen-month-olds also produced more anticipatory gaze shifts during containment compared with displacement and differentiated between reaching actions dependent on whether the overall goal was to displace objects or place objects inside containers. These results demonstrate that action type and goal type modulate the latency of goal-directed gaze shifts in infants. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)