bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Frequency and Recency Effects on Response Biasing in a Pseudo-Perceptual Task
Authors: Agnew Neil Mck. , Pyke Sandra , Pezer Vera
Published: July 2007

The pseudo-recognition technique provides an ingenious method of evaluating the influence of response biasing variables. This study tests the effects of recency on low and medium frequency words using the pseudo-recognition procedure. It was found that under short recency conditions the thresholds of medium and low frequency words did not differ, while under longer recency conditions the low frequency words had significantly lower thresholds than medium frequency words.
Effects of Age on Novelty Reactions and Exploration in Rats
Authors: Hughes R. N.
Published: July 2007

Female rats of three ages (approximately 39, 160 and 316 days) were individually observed in an exploration box which consisted of a novel and a familiar half. By means of a behaviour-sampling technique it was recorded which half of the box the rat was in and what sort of activity it was engaged in at the end of each of 90 10-sec. periods. The number of 8 × 8 in. units entered was also recorded. All rats were seen in the novel half more often than in the familiar half and this novelty preference was greatest for the youngest rats. However, exploration and inter-unit locomotion scores tended to be lower with the younger animals. For all three groups these two scores showed a significant decrement during an observation period.
Dependence of the Overtraining Extinction Effect on Attention to Runway Cues
Authors: Likely D. , Schnitzer S. B.
Published: July 2007

Six groups of rats were given 60 extinction trials in a runway following 30, 90 or 120 acquisition trials. For half the groups, a hurdle was interposed in the runway during both acquisition and extinction. For rats tested with the hurdle, the 30-trial group extinguished more readily than the other two groups. With the hurdle absent, overtrained rats extinguished more readily. This was interpreted as supporting the hypothesis that overtraining transfers control of responding from external to internal cues, and that internally controlled running is relatively more susceptible to extinction.
Discrimination of Mirror-Images: Choice Time Analysis of Human Adult Performance
Authors: Sekuler Robert W. , Houlihan Kevin
Published: July 2007

For members of many species left-right mirror-image discriminations are more difficult than are up-down mirror-image discriminations. A previous study with children using simultaneous presentation of pairs of figures showed that the relative difficulty of such discriminations depended upon the way in which the figures were aligned. The present experiment with human adults uses choice times to measure the difficulty of the two kinds of mirror-image discriminations under two alignment conditions. While the relative difficulties are clearly affected by alignment, the experiment shows that overall, left-right discriminations are still the more difficult.
Shadowing in Bisensory Memory
Authors: Dornbush Rhea L.
Published: July 2007

Shadowing (vocalization-at-presentation) was applied to a bisensory situation where different messages were simultaneously presented to the visual and auditory modalities. Three groups of subjects were employed: Group I shadowed the visual modality; Group II shadowed the auditory modality; Group III was a control, shadowing neither modality. Shadowing in the present experiment facilitated recall of the shadowed modality, particularly the visual modality, which is usually inferior to auditory recall.

It also became apparent that visual recall in an ordinary bisensory situation was minimal if not near an incidental level and that a true bisensory situation with equal division of attention between the two modalities employed does not exist.
Repetition Effects and Signal Classification Strategies in Serial Choice-Response Tasks
Authors: Rabbitt Patrick M. A.
Published: July 2007

Repetition-effects (Bertelson, 1965) were examined in three serial self-paced choice-response tasks in which each response was made to all members of a class of more than one signal, and in one task in which eight different responses were each made to one of eight different signals. Three kinds of transition between successive responses occur in such tasks: transitions between Identical responses where the same signal and response are immediately repeated, transitions between Equivalent responses where the same response is made to a new signal and transitions between New responses where neither signal nor response are repeated. The relative reaction-times for these three classes of events were found to vary as a function of stimulus information load, as a function of response information load and as a function of the level of practice which subjects attained in the task in question. These variations allow some comment on the utility of recent models for serial and parallel stimulus analysis as explanatory constructs for the repetition-effect.
On Understanding Logically Complex Sentences
Authors: Johnson-Laird P. N.
Published: July 2007

An experimental investigation was made into the meaning of eight types of doubly-quantified sentence, e.g. “Every medicine cures some disease,” “Some disease is cured by every medicine.” All the sentences were ambiguous, depending upon the interpretation of the quantifiers. Subjects classified diagrams representing different specific situations as truthfully or falsely described by the sentences. The classifications revealed that the order of occurrence of the two quantifiers had a crucial effect, causing active and correlative passive to receive different interpretations. This suggested that in the process of understanding an ambiguous sentence a bias towards one intepretation may be created by word order.
Proving a Disjunctive Rule
Authors: Wason P. C. , Johnson-Laird P. N.
Published: July 2007

This experiment was designed to determine whether individuals reason correctly about disjunctive rules. The task consisted in the selection of appropriate instances either to prove, or to disprove, a given disjunctive rule. When the first component of the rule was negated, i.e. when the rule was logically equivalent to implication (p v q), the selection of appropriate instances was significantly more difficult than when the first component was not negated. The majority of subjects, however, revealed patterns of reasoning which were unstable and labile. The results are discussed in relation to those of previous experiments in which subjects had to reason about conditional sentences.
Hypothesis Formation and Problem Complexity
Authors: Marková Ivana
Published: July 2007

The present study examines the relationship between hypothesis formation and the degree of complexity of the problem which has to be solved. Ninety subjects played a simple arithmetical game with the investigator. They were divided into two groups according to the type of problem given. The hypotheses formed by the subjects in the course of the game were classified under two headings; namely, H1, trying to form a general and comprehensive strategy on the basis of an overall evaluation of the problem; and HII based on a more detailed logical analysis and leading to a strategy with sub-goals. Hypotheses of the first type prevailed in the simpler versions of the problem, those of the second type were more frequent in the more complicated versions. If the number of alternative strategies is small, subjects are not forced to develop an abstract formulation of the strategies, and continue to operate with concrete strategies (e.g. I always take two chips). When there are many alternative strategies, subjects are forced to use more abstract analyses of the problem which appears to involve formulation of sub-goals. The consequences of both types of hypotheses for problem solving are discussed.
Judging the Order of Visual Stimuli
Authors: Oatley Keith , Robertson Anthony , Scanlan P. M.
Published: July 2007

Psychometric functions obtained for judgements of the order of two long duration light flashes were about half as steep as those previously obtained for short flashes. The range from 50 to 75 per cent correct judgements corresponded to interstimulus intervals from 36 to 98 msec. in the 6 subjects tested. Stimuli ½ degree above and below the fixation point produced slightly more accurate judgements than pairs of stimuli 2 degrees above and below this point. The shape of the curves did not conform to a normal ogive of the kind normally expected in threshold determinations. These data may be explicable in terms of a visual sampling mechanism capable of being triggered by incoming stimuli.
The Influence of Acoustic Similarity on Serial Recall of Letter Sequences
Authors: Anderson Nancy S.
Published: July 2007

Acoustic similarity is known to impair short-term memory (STM) for letter sequences. The present series of experiments investigated the effects of acoustic similarity on long-term retention. In the first experiment, subjects were asked to learn one of two lists of 8 letters, the letters being either of high or low acoustic similarity. Lists were visually presented for three trials, with subjects responding after each trial. Then subjects participated in an immediate memory task for digits which lasted for 20 min. Finally, subjects tried to recall the list of letters they had learned previously. Lists having items of high acoustic similarity were more difficult to recall on the first trial, but were better recalled on the delayed retention test. In a second experiment, groups of subjects were again asked to learn one of two lists of 8 letters differing in acoustic similarity, using different orders of the letters used previously. The procedures were identical except that in two groups, a STM task for digits intervened between the presentation and test of the letters. This intervening task minimized the effects of STM and eliminated the differences in retention found previously. In a third experiment, better long-term retention for material having high acoustic similarity was also obtained when subjects used a backward recall procedure. In the last experiment 14 item lists were learned to a criterion of two correct trials, and retention was tested after each trial and at a delay of 20 min. and 23 hr. No effect of acoustic similarity was found and little retention loss occurred. These results suggest that reducing the STM component by introducing a STM control or by lengthening the list caused the effect of acoustic similarity to disappear.
The Role of the Cs and Avoidance Period Duration in Discriminated Avoidance Conditioning
Authors: Biederman Gerald B.
Published: July 2007

In an experiment investigating the effect of CS duration on discriminated bar-press conditioning, subjects were assigned to one warning period duration (1.5, 5.0 or 15.0 sec.) on the first day of avoidance training, and to one of the three durations on the second day of training. On each day avoidance behaviour was greatly influenced by the duration of the CS (warning) period, but the duration on day I had no effect on the second day's avoidance performance. Groups receiving no CS during training, although provided an avoidance contingency, showed little conditioning, but produced highly significant amounts of intertrial responding. In a second experiment, subjects receiving CS on day I were shifted to no CS on day II. Avoidance performance on day II was not significantly different from the day II performance of subjects in Experiment I having two training sessions with the CS present or absent on both days.
Some Effects of Frustration in a Free Responding Operant Situation
Authors: Wilton R. N. , Strongman K. T. , Nerenberg A.
Published: July 2007

In several experiments, rats and pigeons were reinforced on a chained schedule which varied in its second component but which always had a variable interval schedule as its first component. Occasionally, the reward which normally followed responding in the second component was omitted. On these frustrative non-reward occasions responding immediately subsequent to non-reward was sometimes elevated and sometimes depressed. The relevance of the elevation and depression effects to behavioural measures of frustration in the double runway was discussed.
EEG Correlates of Cumulative Expectancy and Subjective Estimates of Alertness in a Vigilance-type Task
Authors: Gale Anthony , Haslum Mary , Penfold Valerie
Published: July 2007

Occipital EEG was monitored during a slow presentation rate vigilance task. EEG samples were taken for each of 400 task events. The EEG is correlated with increases and decreases in “expectancy” built into the task. Post-trial subjective estimates of alertness parallel the EEG changes. Reaction time to “wanted signals” does not correlate with measures of pre-signal EEG.
Short Term Forgetting in the Absence of Proactive Interference
Authors: Baddeley A. D. , Scott Denise
Published: July 2007

It has been claimed that the short-term forgetting shown by the Peterson technique is entirely due to proactive interference from prior experimental items. Two experiments investigated this by studying forgetting when prior items were avoided by testing subjects only once. Both experiments showed significant forgetting, although the degree of forgetting was less than with a multitrial procedure. On the basis of this and other results it is suggested that the Peterson technique comprises two components, a primary memory component which decays within 6 sec, and a more stable secondary memory component. Forgetting with the multitrial procedure is attributed principally to the need to use temporal retrieval cues to avoid confusion between successive items; longer retention intervals are associated with reduced temporal discriminability and hence poorer recall.
Signal Probability and Spatial Location as Possible Bases for Increased Selectivity in Noise
Authors: Hockey G. R. J.
Published: July 2007

It was previously found that noise increased both performance on a primary tracking task and the detection of centrally located signals in a secondary multi-source monitoring task. The present experiment examines the effect of changing the distribution of signals across the monitoring display. When equal numbers are seen at all locations there is no differential effect of noise for central and peripheral locations. Such an effect only occurs when central signals are seen to have greater probability. This result points to the selectivity effect in noise being a function of task priorities and not of physical location.
Redistributing Control between the Elements of a Compound Stimulus
Authors: Miles C. G. , Mackintosh N. J. , Westbrook R. F.
Published: July 2007

Twenty-eight pigeons were given discrimination training. Four groups were run in which for 0, 2, 4 and 9 sessions of training colour was an irrelevant cue and tone was relevant. Generalization tests were given in extinction; the training colour (C1) and another colour (C2) were presented with tone (T) and noise (N). Responding to these four stimulus combinations, TC1, TC2, NC1 and NC2, allowed the assessment of control by colour and tone. A reduction of control by colour and an increase in control by tone were found to be positively related to the amount of training with colour irrelevant. Tests showed a strong inverse relationship between control by colour and tone.
Hemispheric Refractoriness and Control of Reaction Time
Authors: Dimond Stuart J.
Published: July 2007

Experiments are described which attempt to assess the relative efficiency of the hemispheres and their relationship in performance on complex RT tasks. A divided visual field method was used to direct signals to the temporal or nasal retinae of each eye thus passing information to separate hemispheres. A comparison of the separate response times was used to assess the relative efficiency of each hemisphere but significant differences were not observed. This suggests that each may be the equal of the other in organizing simple responses. A method was used to examine more complex RT by presenting the subject with two simultaneous signals for response. When pairs of signals are directed to separate hemispheres, response times are at their lowest value. When signals are directed to separate hemispheres through the same eye, a significant increase in RT occurs. A source of mutual interference appears to exist at the level of the eye. Response times are extended to their greatest value, however, when both signals are directed to the same hemisphere. This block to function has been described as “hemispheric refractoriness”, and is different for the two hemispheres. While each show a distinct block to function the extent of this is greater in the right or minor hemisphere than it is in the left or major hemisphere.
Orientation of Stimuli and Binocular Disparity Coding
Authors: Frisby J. P. , Roth Barbara
Published: July 2007

An experiment is described which attempts to relate physiological work on disparity coding in the cat to a psychophysical situation using human subjects and Julesz stereograms composed of small line elements. It was found that depth perception occurred only if matching disparate lines in each stereogram shared a similar orientation. Depth began to deteriorate if an orientation difference exceeded 10° and it was extinguished at about 60°. The results are interpreted as supporting the hypothesis that shape-sensitive disparity detectors of the kind found in the cat exist also in man.
Perceived Curvature of Arcs and Dot Patterns as a Function of Curvature, Arc Length, and Instructions
Authors: Virsu Veijo , Weintraub Daniel J.
Published: July 2007

Arcs of circles, with six arc lengths and four radii of curvature, and an equivalent set of figures composed of three dots were used as stimuli. Subjects in Group I imagined the circle from which an arc or dot triplet was taken and indicated the centre of the circle. Group II subjects estimated the location of the point that was equidistant from the middle and ends of an arc, or equidistant from the three dots of a triplet. The results from arcs showed, in Group I, an underestimation of curvature that decreased as a function on the length of the arc. In Group II, however, overestimation of the curvature of most arcs occurred, indicating a strong influence of the difference in the perceptual task on the results. The effect of instructions was similar with the dot figures but, in general, more errors resembling overestimation of curvature occurred with these figures.
Hemisphere Function and Vigilance
Authors: Dimond Stuart , Beaumont Graham
Published: July 2007

A vigilance task in which successive signals were presented to one or other hemiretina, and therefore to one or other cerebral hemisphere, revealed no differences between the hemispheres in terms of detections, although detections declined overall during the experimental period. False positive responses also declined, but consistently more arose from the left hemisphere. There was also a difference in the detection of signals received through the nasal and temporal hemiretinae, the temporal hemiretina showing superiority in detection rate throughout the experiment. This finding may provide a new and more economical approach to the tunnel vision phenomenon.
The Effect of Sleep Deprivation on Signal Detection Parameters
Authors: Deaton Maryann , Tobias J. S. , Wilkinson R. T.
Published: July 2007

Twelve subjects performed a high signal rate vigilance task, once after a night's sleep, and once after a night without sleep. Raw scores were transformed into the signal detection parameters, d′ and β. After sleep deprivation, detection performance was significantly impaired. This was reflected in a fall of d′, whereas β was not significantly altered. Analysing the control data alone for comparison with other vigilance studies revealed a decrement in % signals detected and d′, and an increase in β from the first to the second half of the test.
Contrast and Size Variables and the Tilt After-effect
Authors: Parker D. M.
Published: July 2007

The relationship between the contrast and bar width of adapting and test gratings in the determination of the magnitude of the tilt after-effect was explored. When the contrast of adapting and test gratings is varied concomitantly over four levels, the magnitude of the tilt after-effect does not change. When the contrast of the adapting grating is higher than the test grating, the magnitude of the after-effect is increased and when its contrast is lower than the test grating, the magnitude of the after-effect is decreased. When the bar width of the test grating is narrower or broader than that of the adapting grating, the magnitude of the after-effect does not change. The implications of these results for a neurophysiological explanation of the tilt after-effect are discussed.
Short-term Retention of Tactile Stimulation
Authors: Sullivan Edith V. , Turvey M. T.
Published: July 2007

In three experiments subjects were required to reproduce after varying delays the locus of a tactile stimulation delivered to the upper-side of the arm. During the retention periods subjects either performed a subsidiary, arithmetic task or rested. Recall, as measured by accuracy in reproducing the locus of stimulation, decreased as a function of retention interval, asymptoting after approximately 5 s. Performance was poorer in the subsidiary task condition than in the rest condition; however, the effect of the subsidiary task appeared to be more on subject recall strategies than on rehearsal capacity. No evidence of proactive interference effects was found, and a decay interpretation of forgetting of discrete tactile stimuli in the short-term memory distractor paradigm was favoured.
Visual Persistence as Measured by Reaction Time
Authors: Briggs Gary G. , Kinsbourne Marcel
Published: July 2007

Latency of reaction to onset of a visual display was subtracted from latency of reaction to offset. Persistence was defined as difference between the two latency values. Persistence was inversely related to stimulus duration and was comparable for monoptic presentation and for presentation of the first half of the stimulus duration to one eye and the second half to the other. A power function described the relation between persistence and stimulus duration. The possible effects of central intermittency on this type of reaction time measure are discussed.
Symmetry, Gestalt and Information Theory: A Critique
Authors: Wing Alan M.
Published: July 2007

A criticism of a recent analysis of matrix pattern perception is advanced. It is pointed out that a fair test of the equivalence for performance of different forms of redundancy must be framed in terms of the measure of transmitted information.
Coding Processes in the Free Recall of Associated Word Lists
Authors: Matthews W. A. , Waring A. J. G.
Published: July 2007

An experiment is reported on the free recall of lists of 18 words. The lists consisted of words that were strongly or weakly associated to the eliciting stimulus, were members of either a single category or more than one category and were arranged into sets of three associated words or six associated words. Each list was presented once only and free recall required after a filled interval of 18 s. One half of the subjects were provided with cues at recall: the remainder were given no assistance. Recall efficiency increased with association level and with restricted category membership of the words in a set. Clustering at recall (when adjusted for opportunity) was greater in the 6×3 lists than in the 3×6 lists. The provision of cues only led to a significant facilitation in recall with lists consisting of 6 sets of 3 words. A detailed analysis of the recall data suggested the importance of the category membership variable in the production of the later recall.
Visual and Verbal Codes: Spatial Information Survives the Icon
Authors: Henderson Leslie
Published: July 2007

Three experiments are reported to demonstrate partial independence of identity and spatial position information concerning visually presented symbols. Experiment I shows that performance on these forms of information improves at different rates as a function of exposure duration. Experiment II shows that performance on one can be traded against the other. Experiment III demonstrates partial statistical independence of item and position responses and shows that increases in the duration and delay of the probe facilitate performance. Some implications of these experiments for theories involving mandatory verbal encoding of visual symbol-arrays are discussed. A model is proposed comprising visual and name stores with different acquisition rates and capacities. Both are indexed by identity but the visual code can also be interrogated by spatial cues.
Studies on the Function of Sighting Dominance
Authors: Money Jean
Published: July 2007

The perceptual accuracy of the dominant and non-dominant eye was compared in four tachistoscopic experiments. The first two required that stimulus arrays be scanned during or immediately following stimulus presentations. The latter two tested digit recognition and dot localization in the absence of eye movement. Perceptual accuracy was significantly higher with the dominant eye than with the non-dominant in both scanning studies, while no perceptual differences were found between the eyes in the control experiments. In a fifth study, recordings of eye movement made during monocular scanning and searching tasks indicated that the dominant eye required significantly less time to complete the tasks than did the non-dominant. The results were interpreted as supporting Walls' (1951) theory that sighting dominance reflects asymmetrical motor functioning.
Disruption of Free-Operant Successive Discriminations by Septal Damage in Rats
Authors: Dickinson Anthony
Published: July 2007

In Experiment I rats were trained preoperatively on a successive, free-operant discrimination with fixed component durations until S— responding had been minimized. Septal damage resulted in a transitory loss of discriminative performance due to an elevation of S— responding. Experiment II showed a comparable septal deficit following training which employed a “correction” procedure that penalized S— responding. It is concluded that, even after extended training, the maintenance of a low level of S— responding by rats in these types of discriminations requires the operation of an active mechanism which can be disrupted by septal damage. The possibility that this disruption results from a lesion-induced change either in the primary reactions to frustrative non-reward or in associated processes is discussed.
Concept Identification with and without Blank Trials
Authors: Coltheart Veronika
Published: July 2007

The blank trials technique introduced by Levine (1966) has been of considerable importance in the study of concept identification and human discrimination learning, as it provides a means of identifying the hypotheses generating choice responses. However, this technique involves the interpolation between normal feedback trials of several trials during which no feedback concerning the correctness of a subject's responses is given.

An experiment was conducted to study the comparability of concept identification with and without blank trials. No differences in trials to criterion, number of errors, or in presolution latencies were observed. These results tend to justify inferences about normal concept identification from blank trial data, and they also have some implications concerning the role of memory in concept identification.
Ear Differences in the Recall of Monaurally Presented Sentences
Authors: Frankfurter Anthony , Honeck Richard P.
Published: July 2007

Using a short-term memory paradigm, with an interpolated task, college students were required to recall monaurally presented sentences. Four types of sentences, representing a factorial combination of Surface Structure, either right-branching or self-embedded, and Semantic Constraint, either semantically normal or semantically anomalous, were used. Analysis of recall data indicated a right ear advantage (REA). This result clearly contradicts Kimura's (1967) “perceptual rivalry” hypothesis which assumes that auditory conflict as induced, for example, through dichotic stimulation, is necessary for producing a REA in verbal processing. It was concluded that short-term and attentional factors contributed to the presence of the REA. No interactions involving Ear and either Surface Structure and/or Semantic Constraint were obtained and, therefore, no conclusion could be drawn regarding the view (Kimura and Folb, 1968; Studdert-Kennedy and Shankweiler, 1970) that the lateralized speech encoding mechanisms operate solely at a phonemic or subphonemic level.
Stimulus Intensity and Foreperiod Effects in Intersensory Facilitation
Authors: Bernstein Ira H. , Chu Philip K. , Briggs Patricia , Schurman Donald L.
Published: July 2007

Intersensory facilitation refers to the more rapid reaction time (RT) to a target in one modality and an accessory stimulus in a different modality compared to a RT to the target alone. Prior studies suggest two processes contribute to the phenomenon, termed the preparatory state and energy integration which refer to the action of accessory stimulation in providing forewarning and intensifying the reaction signal, respectively. Experiment I factorially varied foreperiod duration, light (target) intensity and tone (accessory) intensity in a discriminative RT task. The results were that foreperiod (preparatory state) and intensity (energy integration) effects were additive, implying that they affected separate processing stages. Accessory stimulus intensity affected false alarm rate on catch trials. This suggests that energy integration involves a form of response bias (increased likelihood of responding) and not facilitation (more rapid information processing). Experiment II indicated that comparable energy integration effects obtain with tone as target and light as accessory, as well as vice versa. The findings further indicated that RT to a bisensory pairing is more rapid when attention is directed to the more potent member of the pair.
The Spatial or Temporal Organization of Short-Term Memory
Authors: O'Connor N. , Hermelin B. M.
Published: July 2007

Children were shown three visually displayed digits. The digits were exposed successively in three windows in such a way, that the left-to-right order never corresponded with the temporal-sequential order. When asked to recall or recognize the digits, normal children responded in terms of temporal order. Deaf, autistic and some subnormal children, recalled or recognized the spatial, i.e. the left-to-right order. The relationship between hearing and/or speech and the temporal ordering of visual displays is discussed.
Feature-Testing Models and Their Application to Perception and Memory for Speech
Authors: Smith Philip T.
Published: July 2007

Four models of the organization of feature-testing units in the perception of phonemes are developed and tested against data drawn from a number of published studies. The independence model, which asserts that features are tested independently of each other, is conclusively rejected. The response-conditional and stimulus-conditional models require individual feature-testing units to be dependent, respectively, on the responses of other feature-testing units and on the other features present in the stimulus. Both these models handle perceptual confusions very well among stop and nasal consonants, but are less satisfactory for fricatives. Finally, the correct-conditional model requires individual feature-testing units to be dependent on the correctness of the decisions made by other feature-testing units; this model is very poor for perceptual confusions but quite good for mnemonic confusions. In addition, some of the distinctive features currently favoured by linguists are shown to provide unsatisfactory descriptions.

The implications of this study are that perceptual and mnemonic processes are different in certain basic respects, and that many current scaling models are ignoring important types of structure in the data they analyse.
Selective Masking and Processing Strategy
Authors: Butler Brian E. , Merikle Philip M.
Published: July 2007

A patterned masking stimulus was presented immediately following a 100-ms exposure of a centrally-fixated, eight-letter row. The bar-marker probe, indicating which letter to report, appeared either at onset (simultaneous cue), or at offset (delayed cue) of a letter row. A selective-masking effect—greater masking at the centre positions than at the ends of a row—was obtained with the delayed cue. With the simultaneous cue, all positions were masked and there was no selective-masking effect. These results indicate that the effects of a patterned masking stimulus are dependent upon the processing strategy, and they support previous interpretations of selective masking which state that it is produced by an ends-first processing strategy.
Memory of a Speaker's Voice: Reaction Time to Same- or Different-voiced Letters
Authors: Cole Ronald A. , Coltheart Max , Allard Fran
Published: July 2007

Subjects were presented with a sequence of two letters, each letter spoken in either a male or female voice. On each trial, the subject was required to indicate, as quickly as possible, whether the two letters had the same name. Reaction times (RTs) were faster for letters spoken in the same voice for both “same” and “different” responses, even when letters were separated by 8 s. These results are incompatible with the notion of physical and name codes in auditory memory since a “different” response should always be based on a comparison of letter names and should not be influenced by voice quality. It was also found that RTs were not influenced by the phonemic distinctive feature similarity of the letters.
Word Familiarity and Retention
Authors: Loewenthal Kate , Gibbs Graham
Published: July 2007

These experiments examine the relationship between subjects' familiarity judgements of words of similar (low) frequency and their recall or recognition of these words. The expected relationship between familiarity and recall was well confirmed, as was the less expected relationship between familiarity and recognition. An analysis of the vocabulary acquisition process led to more specific predictions about performance on delayed, as compared with immediate, retention tests. The most crucial of these predictions was that words which are familiar, but whose meanings are not known, are remembered by tagging sets of phonological (as opposed to semantic) features, leading to good immediate recall but poor delayed recall, and a greater likelihood of acoustic confusions following a delay. Some support was obtained for these predictions. However, subjects showed unexpectedly good retention of unknown words and it was felt that tagging alone does not account for all the findings.
Pictorial Coding of Verbal Descriptions
Authors: Seymour Philip H. K.
Published: July 2007

Two experiments are described in which subjects matched written verbal descriptions against pictures of geometric shapes. The first experiment demonstrated that a difference in reaction time between simultaneously displayed description picture and picture-picture combinations was entirely eliminated when a I-S delay occurred between the stimuli, implying that the description might be converted to a pictorial form of coding. A second experiment assessed the effects of variation in the complexity of the verbal description on description-picture comparison times, where the two displays might be presented simultaneously, or successively, with the description first, or the picture first. Complexity interacted with presentation conditions, having its greatest effect on the Simultaneous condition and least effect on the Successive condition in which the description preceded the picture. Some theoretical implications of these results are discussed.
The After-Effects of Ventriloquism
Authors: Radeau Monique , Bertelson Paul
Published: July 2007

Subjects were tested for both ear-hand and eye-hand co-ordination before and after monitoring a synchronous series of noise bursts and of light flashes coming from the same spatial position, but with the virtual position of the flashes displaced 15° laterally by prisms. Attention was forced on both stimuli by the instruction to detect occasional reductions in intensity. No subject reported noticing the spatial discrepancy. Nevertheless ear—hand co-ordination was shifted in the direction of the prismatic displacement, and eye-hand co-ordination in the opposite direction. Both shifts were observed with instructions suggesting that the sound and the light came from one single source, with instructions suggesting two separate sources, and also with no information regarding the spatial relationship of sound and light. It is concluded that the resolution of auditory-visual spatial conflict involves recalibrations of both visual and auditory data and that these alterations last long enough to be detected as after-effects.
Recognition and Attention
Authors: Fox John
Published: July 2007

Sternberg has suggested that a possible way of achieving identification of degraded stimuli would be to execute “preprocessing” operations prior to recognition. Such operations would have some parallels with the “filtering” operations, suggested by Broadbent and others, for perceptual selection and attention. But when trying, in this paper, to consider how such operations could be implemented, some rather non-trivial problems emerge. Experimentally, these doubts find support in visual selection tasks of quite general character, in that filtering does not appear to take place. It seems, however, that these problems may be successfully overcome by some simple, though implicative, conceptual changes. The main implication is that effective focal attention is rather likely to be achieved through a process that is best described as “context-sensitive” selection.
The Effects of Scopolamine on a Two-Cue Discrimination
Authors: Warburton D. M.
Published: July 2007

Rats were trained with a tone, light or a tone—light combination as the discriminative stimulus. These groups were tested after doses of scopolamine and it was found that groups trained with a single cue were more sensitive to the drug than double-cue groups, although their pre-drug responding was similar. A similar pattern was found among individuals in the double-cue groups in which there was a significant correlation between dependency on a single cue, as shown in transfer tests, and drug sensitivity. These results were interpreted in terms of scopolamine-induced changes in stimulus sensitivity produced by a modification of the neural mechanisms controlling attention.
On Consolidation and the Potency of Delayed Stimulus Suffixes
Authors: Routh D. A. , Mayes J. T.
Published: July 2007

In a strictly serial recall task, increasing the temporal separation of a spoken memory list and a spoken distractor (stimulus suffix) is known to reduce the latter's potency as a source of interference. This phenomenon was studied further using suffix delays in the range 0.8–6.4 s and a transcription task to minimize rehearsal during the suffix delay. The results indicated that the probability of correct recall from the terminal serial position, of a sequence of eight digits, is a linearly increasing function of the logarithm of the suffix delay, over the range studied. The results are discussed in terms of their value as evidence for the existence of a consolidation process.
The Solution of An Inferential Problem as a Function of Stimulus Materials
Authors: Bracewell R. J. , Hidi S. E.
Published: July 2007

Stimulus materials were varied in three ways to assess the effect on performance of problems involving implicational rules. The three factors were natural versus arbitrary relationship between the terms of the problem, concrete versus abstract problem material and order of the presentation of the terms in the rules. The natural relationship condition facilitated performance compared with the arbitrary relationship condition. This difference was explained in terms of differential cognitive load. A significant interaction between materials and order factors was attributed to semantic differences in the rules.
The Meal Patterns of the Oestrous Cycle and Their Motivational Significance
Authors: Drewett R. F.
Published: July 2007

Food intake was monitored continuously throughout the oestrous cycle of the rat by operant methods. On the night of oestrus the size of meals eaten was reduced and the average intermeal interval was shorter; and even after meals of the same size, oestrous animals returned to eat again more quickly than dioestrous animals. These results suggest that the way in which ovarian oestrogens reduce food intake is by intensifying processes responsible for the short-term satiation of hunger without affecting the motivational processes responsible for its arousal. Signs of motivational arousal at oestrus could thus be the result of a self-imposed nutritional deprivation, rather than a direct effect of ovarian hormones on sexual receptivity.
A Comparison between “Aware” and “Naive” Conditions in the Suppression of GSR Activity
Authors: Quy Roger J. , Kubiak Edward W.
Published: July 2007

“Aware” (A) and “naive” (N) groups received different instructional sets, the former being informed both of the nature of their task and the response-reinforcement contingency. Negative reinforcement was given to these groups whenever a spontaneous GSR was emitted during four 4-min trial periods. Two corresponding yoked-control groups, CA and CN, received non-contingent reinforcement over the same periods. The contingent reinforcement groups both showed learned suppression of spontaneous GSR activity, but comparison between the A and N groups revealed a significant interaction between Time and Instructional Set. It is suggested that the “aware” instructional set had an inhibitory effect upon learning.
Children's Understanding of their Own Phonological Forms
Authors: Dodd Barbara
Published: July 2007

The ability of young children to understand their own and other children's deviant phonological forms was tested. Children were better at understanding an unfamiliar adult's speech than they were at understanding their own or other childrens’ speech. Their understanding was found to be related to the degree to which the deviant speech resembled the adult phonological form. It was concluded that children do not store their own deviant phonological forms for recognition in the same way that they store adult forms.
Imagery, Concreteness, and Lexical Complexity
Authors: Richardson John T. E.
Published: July 2007

Both imageability and lexical complexity are shown to be influential in determining performance in free recall. However, both features may be confounded with an item's concreteness, and all three factors are controlled in a second experiment. Lexical complexity is shown not to have any effect on recall when imageability and concreteness are both controlled. Further, imageability is found to have an effect in the case of abstract words, but not in the case of concrete words. This result is replicated using English nominalizations. It is suggested that concreteness is a feature which is to be distinguished from imageability.
Concreteness and Imageability
Authors: Richardson John T. E.
Published: July 2007

Previous research has shown that the positive effect of imageability upon recall is confined to abstract items. In Experiment I it was found that imageability would affect the recall of concrete items if subjects were instructed to use imagery in their memorizing. This suggested that imagery is not usually employed in remembering concrete items. In Experiment II subjects were asked to categorize items on the basis of their meaning. A majority showed sorting related to the concreteness of the items, but very few showed sorting related to imageability. In Experiment III it was found that the concreteness of an item correlated with the time taken to produce a free associate to it, but that its imageability did not. It was concluded that concreteness is a feature of lexical organization, and not a measure of the image-arousing quality of verbal material.
Fixed and Random Address Models for Storing Order in Short-Term Memory
Authors: McNicol D.
Published: July 2007

Two models have been proposed for storing order in short-term memory. Conrad's (1965) fixed address model assumes that items are kept in a set of fixed addresses, while Crossman's (1961) random address model assumes that items are tagged for order, and assigned to a set of random addresses. Experiment I tested the models in a task where six items were presented visually and either watched silently or shadowed. Memory for the position of one of them was tested with a probe. Neither model fitted the data, and it was suggested that order might pass through two stages in memory, the first being a buffer store with properties like the fixed address model, and the second being a longer-term store which behaves like a set of random addresses. Simulations of a combined fixed and random address model produced results like those of Experiment I, and in Experiment II response latencies were used to separate the buffer and longer term store stages. Responses with short latencies produced results like those from a buffer with fixed addresses, while responses with long latencies conformed more to the predictions of a random address model.
Perceptual Distinctiveness and Proactive Interference in the Primacy Effect
Authors: Underwood Geoffrey
Published: July 2007

When subjects monitor a list of verbal items for one item which is to be selected and remembered, they are more likely to recall the critical item if it is the first member of the list than if it is presented towards the centre of the list. The present experiment examined the possibility that this primacy results from an accumulation of proactive interference from incidentally processed early members of the list which would cause a decrement in the recall of later members. By changing the semantic category of the list members before presentation of the critical item any accumulated interference would have been released, but this procedure produced no weakening of the primacy effect and so the interference theory of primacy was not supported. An alternative explanation of the effect was discussed in which it is assumed that the first member of a series is perceptually distinct from central members.
The Inference of Covert Hypotheses by Verbal Reports in Concept-Learning Research
Authors: Wilson Allan
Published: July 2007

A paradigm designed to examine the degree to which verbal reports represent the subject's learning was evaluated using a concept-acquisition task. Specifically, the degree to which hypotheses verbalized during the concept-acquisition procedure represent the covert hypotheses controlling category responding was examined. Subjects were required to make category responses, verbal reports, and sorts and re-sorts (blank-trial probes) of the stimuli at intervals in a reception paradigm. By comparing the sorts made during the acquisition procedure, the re-sorts after a 1-week delay, and the sorts made by subjects who had not participated in the acquisition procedure, it was determined that the verbal reports do not accurately represent the underlying hypothesis-testing process under all conditions. Verbal reports elicited at the beginning of the acquisition procedure and at criterion accurately represented the underlying hypotheses; those elicited at intervening points did not. The ambiguity of the verbal reports was a similar function of acquisition trials.