bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The social construction of pedagogic discourse in physical education teacher education in Australia
Authors: Kirk David , Macdonald Doune , Tinning Richard
Published: September 2011

Once the exclusive domain of teacher education, physical education in Australian tertiary institutions has during the last twenty years evolved into a series of discipline‐based fields concerned with human movement studies, leisure studies and sport science that have begun to feed new vocational opportunities in the sport, exercise and leisure industries. Concomitant with these changes in the social organization of knowledge in tertiary physical education has been a realignment of school physical education programmes, particularly in the senior school curriculum. Inevitably, the once sole focus of physical education in tertiary institutions on teacher education is now being forced to reinvent itself in light of these dynamic changes in the social organization of school and university knowledge. Following the work of Bernstein, Goodson and others, this article analyses current policy and practice in physical education teacher education and identifies several future scenarios. The first part of the article provides an historical overview of the emergence of new forms of tertiary knowledge in physical education from the mid‐1970s until the present. The second part provides a similar overview of developments in school physical education with a focus on senior school and matriculation physical education during the same period. The third part analyses the current state of affairs in the social organization of knowledge for physical education teacher education. In the fourth part, a series of questions is raised concerning relationships between knowledge in physical education teacher education, school physical education and university forms of the field through the presentation of several future scenarios. The article concludes with several proposals for policy development concerned with physical education teacher education programmes.
A feeling for learning: modelling affective learning in school science
Authors: Watts Mike , Alsop Steve
Published: September 2011

Much of the work on conceptual change in the learning of science has focused on the cognitive domain—the factors influencing and underwriting the knowledge acquired by learners. Many writers have used the model developed by Strike and Posner (1985) who suggest that conceptual exchange will only take place when the matter to be learned is seen to be intelligible, plausible and fruitful. While these are important ingredients for learning, this is a particularly cognitive approach and their model takes little account of the affective domain. Through a series of studies in the UK and elsewhere we argue that subject matter needs also be seen to be ‘salient’, ‘palatable’ and ‘germane’. We explain our use of these expressions through a range of examples drawn from our own studies in the area, though we focus in particular on a recent survey of teachers and student teachers concerning the learning of radiation and radioactivity in schools. This argument takes discussions of conceptual change clearly into the affective domain and we explore a small range of contemporary literature which deals with the emotional aspects of learning. Our summary comments examine the need for teachers to have greater awareness of this major component of classroom work.
Differences in educational computer use: the influence of subject cultures
Authors: Selwyn Neil
Published: September 2011

Despite two decades of computer use in schools and colleges, considerable differences persist in levels of IT use throughout all levels of education. Within institutions it is noticeable that huge variations in computer use exist between different subject areas, yet little analytical work has been carried out to explore the reasons behind this. On the basis of interviews with 96 students and 20 teachers in 16‐19 education, this article examines the underlying influences behind the varying levels of computer use in different subject areas. In particular, the influence of subject ‘cultures’ are highlighted as having a significant effect on teachers’ and students’ use of IT in school, most notably in terms of subject content, pedagogy and assessment. Furthermore, subjects were found to differ in terms of their cultures of interest and access to IT within the institution. On the basis of these data, conclusions are then drawn as to alleviating subject differences in the use of IT.
Working Memory in the Acquisition of Vocabulary and Syntax: Putting Language in Good Order
Authors: Ellis Nick C. , Sinclair Susan G.
Published: September 2011

This paper argues that working memory is heavily involved in language acquisition as (a) a major part of language learning is the learning of sequences, (b) working memory allows short-term maintenance of sequence information, and (c) short-term rehearsal of sequences promotes the consolidation of long-term memories of language sequences. It first reviews evidence supporting this position. Next it presents an experiment that demonstrates that subjects encouraged to rehearse foreign language (FL) utterances are better than both silent controls and subjects who are prevented from rehearsal by articulatory suppression at (a) learning to comprehend and translate FL words and phrases, (b) explicit metalinguistic knowledge of the detailed content of grammatical regularities, (c) acquisition of the FL forms of words and phrases, (d) accuracy in FL pronunciation, and (e) some aspects of productive (but not receptive) grammatical fluency and accuracy. Finally, it describes possible mechanisms underlying these effects.
What Was Where? Memory for Object Locations
Authors: Postma Albert , De Haan Edward H.F.
Published: September 2011

Three experiments are reported on short-term memory for object location. Stimulus displays containing different numbers and types of objects were presented for 30 seconds, after which subjects were required to relocate the various objects within the display, merely to reconstruct positions, or to assign objects correctly to an equal number of premarked positions. In all experiments half the trials were performed with concurrent articulatory suppression. The results support the hypothesis that two processes can be distinguished: one that underlies the construction of a positional map and one that assigns objects to positions. These processes are differentially affected by object numbers and articulatory suppression. This hypothesis is discussed in terms of Baddeley's (1986) working memory model and Kosslyn's (1987) distinction between “categorical” and “coordinate” spatial relations.
The Measurement of Verbal Working Memory Capacity and Its Relation to Reading Comprehension
Authors: Waters Gloria S. , Caplan David
Published: September 2011

Ninety-four subjects were tested on the Daneman and Carpenter (1980) reading span task, four versions of a related sentence span task in which reaction times and accuracy on sentence processing were measured along with sentence-final word recall, two number generation tasks designed to test working memory, digit span, and two shape-generation tasks designed to measure visual-spatial working memory. Forty-four subjects were retested on a subset of these measures at a 3-month interval. All subjects were tested on standard vocabulary and reading tests. Correlational analyses showed better internal consistency and test-retest reliability of the sentence span tasks than of the Daneman-Carpenter reading span task. Factor analysis showed no factor that could be related to a central verbal working memory; rotated factors suggested groupings of tests into factors that correspond to digit related tasks, spatial tasks, sentence processing in sentence span tasks, and recall in sentence span tasks. Correlational analyses and regression analyses showed that the sentence processing component of the sentence span tasks was the best predictor of performance on the reading test, with a small independent contribution of the recall component. The results suggest that sentence span tasks are unreliable unless measurements are made of both their sentence processing and recall components, and that the predictive value of these tasks for reading comprehension abilities lies in the overlap of operations rather than in limitations in verbal working memory that apply to both.
Temporal Grouping Effects in Immediate Recall: A Working Memory Analysis
Authors: Hitch Graham J. , Burgess Neil , Towse John N. , Culpin Vicki
Published: September 2011

The presence of temporal pauses during list presentation can markedly improve immediate memory for a sequence of verbal items. A series of experiments analysed this effect using Baddeley's (1986) model of working memory. Experiment 1 showed that the effect of temporal grouping on memory for visual sequences was removed by either articulatory suppression or reciting random digits. Experiment 2 indicated that effects of temporal grouping were insensitive to the word length of the items. Experiment 3 showed that articulatory suppression did not remove the temporal grouping effect for auditory lists. Experiment 4 showed that the temporal grouping effect was insensitive to the phonemic similarity of the items. The effects of concurrent articulation suggest that grouping influences the phonological loop component of working memory. However, the working memory model is insufficiently well specified to account for the insensitivity of grouping effects to word length and phonemic similarity. The main findings could be simulated by a connectionist model of the phonological loop, which invokes a context timing signal (Burgess & Hitch, 1992, in press), This assumed that pauses during list presentation affect the timing signal in a similar way to the pause before list presentation and made some novel predictions.
Phonological Working Memory and Spoken Language Development in Young Children
Authors: Adams Anne-Marie , Gathercole Susan E.
Published: September 2011

This study investigated the relationship between phonological working memory and spoken language development in a large unselected sample of 4- and 5-year old children. Assessments were made of the language produced by the children on the Bus Story (Renfrew, 1969), a standard test of continuous speech. In this test, children listen to a story, which they then recount with the aid of visual clues. The amount of information recalled and the average length of the five longest utterances are taken as indices of children's expressive language abilities. Phonological working memory skills were indexed by memory span and the ability to repeat non-words. The ability to repeat non-words made a significant contribution to the variance in the children's speech independently of age, vocabulary knowledge, and nonverbal cognitive skills. The possible mechanisms by which skills assessed by phonological memory tasks may be linked to the development of speech production abilities are considered.
Irrelevant Pictures in Visual Working Memory
Authors: Quinn J. G. , McConnell Jean
Published: September 2011

The aim of the paper is to establish firmly the phenomenon of an irrelevant picture effect and to demonstrate that the phenomenon can be used to investigate the characteristics of the visuo-spatial sketchpad. Experiment 1 introduces the use of dynamic visual noise as an interfering technique. This technique is shown to cause interference with a word list learned under visual mnemonic mediation instructions but to cause no interference when the word list is learned under verbal mediation instructions. Experiment 2 serves both to replicate this selective interference effect and to illustrate how the dynamic visual noise technique can be used to characterize further the nature of interference in the visuo-spatial sketchpad. Experiment 3 confirms the robustness of the dynamic visual noise technique. Additionally, this experiment demonstrates a double dissociation between two types of interference, dynamic visual noise and irrelevant speech, and two types of mediation, rote and visual mnemonic.
Are Executive Function Tests Dependent on Working Memory Capacity?
Authors: Lehto Juhani
Published: September 2011

The relationship between working memory (WM) capacity and three executive function tests, which were adopted from clinical neuropsychology, was studied. The subjects were normal 15–16-year-old students. A large set of WM measures included digit and word span, a modified memory-updating task, and five different complex WM span tasks. The complex span measures and the memory-updating task showed high intercorrelations. Of the three executive function tests, the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) correlated significantly with WM tasks, the storage function of WM probably being a limiting factor in card sorting. The global performance measures of the WCST were more dependent on WM capacity than the number of perseverations. The two other executive function tests-the Tower of Hanoi and Goal Search Task-did not correlate with WM tasks. None of the executive function tests exhibited any significant intercorrelations. The results are in agreement with earlier studies, which have found separate executive functions. The present results and evidence from earlier studies suggest that there does not exist a unitary, limited-capacity central executive.
Spatial Orienting Controlled without Awareness: A Semantically Based Implicit Learning Effect
Authors: Lambert Anthony J. , Sumich Alexander L.
Published: September 2011

Three experiments tested whether spatial attention can be influenced by a predictive relation between incidental information and the location of target events. Subjects performed a simple dot detection task; 600 msec prior to each target a word was presented briefly 5° to the left or right of fixation. There was a predictive relationship between the semantic category (living or non-living) of the words and target location. However, subjects were instructed to ignore the words, and a post-experiment questionnaire confirmed that they remained unaware of the word-target relationship. In all three experiments, given some practice on the task, response times were faster when targets appeared at likely ( p = 0.8), compared to unlikely ( p = 0.2) locations, in relation to lateral word category. Experiments 2 and 3 confirmed that this effect was driven by semantic encoding of the irrelevant words, and not by repetition of individual stimuli. Theoretical implications of this finding are discussed.
Recency Effect in Alzheimer's Disease: A Reappraisal
Authors: Carlesimo Giovanni A. , Fadda Lucia , Sabbadini Maurizio , Caltagirone Carlo
Published: September 2011

This study investigated the hypothesis that discrepant results regarding the recency effect in Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients are due to the different scoring procedures used by various authors and/or to the different number of terminal items attributed to the recency part of the curve. Our results indicate that the last two processed words are available to AD patients for recall, just as they are to controls. Words processed slightly earlier are less available to AD patients than to controls, presumably because of the accelerated forgetting rate in demented patients.
To What Extent Do Pragmatic Reasoning Schemas Affect Performance on Wason's Selection Task?
Authors: Noveck Ira A. , O'Brien David P.
Published: September 2011

Cheng and Holyoak's (1985) most persuasive evidence for pragmatic reasoning schema theory has been the finding that an abstract permission version of Wason's selection task yields higher rates of solution than a nonpragmatic control. Experiment 1 presented two problem sets, one modelled after Cheng and Holyoak's abstract permission problem, which is relativley rich in extraneous features, and one after Wason's, relatively impoverished, standard problem. Each problem set varied type of rule (permission, obligation, or nonpragmatic) and task type (to reason from or about a rule). Results revealed that enriched problems were solved more often than impoverished ones, that reasoning-from problems were solved more often than reasoning-about problems, and that there was a beneficial interaction between enriching features and the permission rule. Experiment 2 demonstrated that although explicit negatives were crucial for solution of reasoning-from permission problems, they played no role in solution of enriched nonpragmatic-rule problems. Experiment 3 provided a replication of the enriched reasoning-from permission problem, again revealed no beneficial effect for obligation-rule problems, and further revealed no influence of instructions to provide brief written justifications. We argue that the results show that the scope of pragmatic reasoning schema theory needs to be narrowed, that although a permission rule does have an effect, an obligation rule does not, and that some beneficial task features are independent of anything explained by pragmatic reasoning schema theory.
Response Biases in Oral Reading: An Account of the Co occurrence of Surface Dyslexia and Semantic Dementia
Authors: Funnell Elaine
Published: September 2011

This paper reports a case study of a subject (EP) with a progressive impairment of semantic memory and a coincident surface dyslexia. These two disorders frequently occur together, but their association is not readily explained within current models of reading. This study investigated two theories that offer different principled accounts of this association, the “semantic glue hypothesis” (Patterson & Hodges, 1992) and the “;summation hypothesis” (Hillis & Caramazza, 1991) and found both hypotheses wanting. Instead it was shown that when vestiges of word meaning remained, a lexical response was preferred, but when meaning was lost entirely, the evidence derived from sublexical processing appeared to bias selection of the response towards the regularized form.
Paradoxes of Falsification
Authors: Poletiek Fenna H.
Published: September 2011

This paper deals with the concept of falsification in hypothesis testing research. A theoretical analysis of assumptions about falsifying behaviour and hypothesis-falsifying observations is presented, with two experimental studies. Both the theoretical analysis and the experimental results point to a number of paradoxes underlying the normative principle of falsification in cognitive psychology. First, subjects experience the falsificatory testing strategy as an impossible strategy to conduct. Obtaining falsifying results is a consequence of the quality of the hypothesis rather than of specific testing behaviour (Experiment 1 and Experiment 2). Second, under some conditions falsifying results impede rather than facilitate discovery (Experiment 2). Confirmatory testing and falsificatory testing, which have been the crucial concepts in the study of hypothesis-testing behaviour, may actually be questionable approaches to testing behaviour. The theoretical analysis is related to the standard analyses of Popper (1963) and Klayman and Ha (1987). The empirical results are discussed in relation to previous studies on falsificatory testing behaviour.
Effects of Irrelevant Sounds on Phonological Coding in Reading Comprehension and Short term Memory
Authors: Boyle Robyn , Coltheart Veronika
Published: September 2011

The effects of irrelevant sounds on reading comprehension and short-term memory were studied in two experiments. In Experiment 1, adults judged the acceptability of written sentences during irrelevent speech, accompanied and unaccompanied singing, instrumental music, and in silence. Sentences varied in syntactic complexity: Simple sentences contained a right-branching relative clause ( The applause pleased the woman that gave the speech) and syntactically complex sentences included a centre-embedded relative clause ( The hay that the farmer stored fed the hungry animals). Unacceptable sentences either sounded acceptable ( The dog chased the cat that eight up all his food) or did not ( The man praised the child that sight up his spinach). Decision accuracy was impaired by syntactic complexity but not by irrelevant sounds. Phonological coding was indicated by increased errors on unacceptable sentences that sounded correct. These error rates were unaffected by irrelevant sounds. Experiment 2 examined effects of irrelevant sounds on ordered recall of phonologically similar and dissimilar word lists. Phonological similarity impaired recall. Irrelevant speech reduced recall but did not interact with phonological similarity. The results of these experiments question assumptions about the relationship between speech input and phonological coding in reading and the short-term store.
Reading Words and Wirds: Phonology and Lexical Access
Authors: Marmurek Harvey H. C. , Kwantes Peter J.
Published: September 2011

Naming latency for printed words is inversely related to their frequency. Four experiments were run to test whether the naming of non-words that are homophones of words (pseudohomophones) is similarly influenced by the frequency of those words. McCann and Besner (1987) failed to find such a frequency effect for pseudohomophones when they were presented in a list of non-words. The present studies show that list structure is critical: A frequency effect occurs for pseudohomophones in a list only of homophones and in a list containing words. The list structure effect was found for three different stimulus lists and suggests that lexical access is strategic. If none of the items in a list has a lexical entry, then pronunciation may be the product of a non-lexical process. If all items have a lexical entry that may be accessed orthographically or phonologically, then pronunciation will be the product of a lexical process.
Modifier Attachment in Sentence Parsing: Evidence from Dutch
Authors: Brysbaert Marc , Mitchell Don C.
Published: September 2011

Current theories of parsing suggest a wide variety of mechanisms by which modifiers, such as relative clauses, may be related to constituents that offer more than one potential attachment site. Some, like the tuning hypothesis, are based on the premise that people's parsing performance is shaped by prior exposure to language. Others (e.g. garden-path theory and construal theory) play down any potential role of past linguistic experience, stressing instead the varying influences of structural characteristics of the sentence in question. The two views encourage differing expectations about cross-linguistic variation in parsing preference. A questionnaire study and two on-line experiments were carried out to investigate attachment preferences in Dutch. The results pose a number of problems for the majority of the existing parsing models and are clearly inconsistent with some of the traditional theories. In contrast, the findings are compatible with models incorporating parsing mechanisms that are tuned by language experience. The results highlight the need for further corpus studies to subject these accounts to more searching scrutiny.
Incomplete Faces Don't Show the Whole Picture: Repetition Priming from Jumbled Faces
Authors: Johnston Robert A. , Barry Christopher , Williams Catherine
Published: September 2011

Four experiments examined repetition priming of familiarity decisions to faces of famous people by the prior exposure of intact or jumbled faces. In Experiments 1 and 2 the primes were either the identical picture of the target face or a picture of the face with the internal features jumbled up. (In Experiment 2 the external features were also removed from all faces.) Compared with response times to previously unseen faces, familiarity decisions were made more rapidly if the subject had seen and identified the famous face in the pre-training stage; this was independent of whether they saw an intact or jumbled face. Priming was not shown if the face was not recognized earlier. Experiment 3 demonstrated that, if faces were not recognized spontaneously in the pre-training stage, being prompted as to their identity by the experimenter still did not yield priming at test—a result that replicated a previous study using incomplete faces (Brunas-Wagstaff, Young, & Ellis, 1992). Experiment 4 showed that it was the situation in which the information was given that was critical in determining whether priming occurred. The findings of this study are related to mechanisms for repetition priming of faces and used to discuss the necessity of modifications to the Bruce and Young (1986) model such as those offered by Burton, Bruce, and Johnston (1990).
Interactions between Mental Models Used in Categorization and Experiential Knowledge of Specific Cases
Authors: Cho Jeung-Ryeul , Mathews Robert C.
Published: September 2011

Three experiments investigated the relation between recognition of specific cases and categorization in a double-task paradigm that requires both types of information (Estes, 1986b). Results indicated that recognition and categorization were often affected differently by experimental variables. However, mental models used in categorization sometimes hindered development of experiential (case-based) knowledge, leading to lower levels of case recognition and suboptimal categorization performance. When mental models were complex or difficult to discover (non-salient), subjects often used experiential knowledge to classify into categories, resulting in dependence between categorization and recognition. A model of interactions between the two tasks is proposed that postulates two separate but interacting types of knowledge.
Universal Connectives in the Selection Task
Authors: Santamaría Carlos , García-Madruga Juan A. , Carretero Mario
Published: September 2011

Two experiments using Wason's selection task are reported in this paper. Their main purpose was to test the meaning of universal connectives ( always and never) against the hypothetical conditional connective ( if). In the first experiment, these two different kinds of connectives were used with the same content and in logically equivalent situations. Results demonstrated that universal connectives yield different patterns of responses than do hypothetical connectives. People seem to consider the situation described in the task in the same way, irrespective of the use of negations, when universal connectives are used, but not when the if… then structure is used. The second experiment extended these results to a different content, and to an abstract version of the task. An explanation in terms of mental models is provided.
Effects of Perceptual and Conceptual Processing on Memory for Words and Voice: Different Patterns for Young and Old
Authors: Naveh-Benjamin Moshe , Craik Fergus I. M.
Published: September 2011

In two experiments younger and older adults listened to a list of words presented auditorily by two speakers. The subjects processed each word either perceptually (voice judgements) or conceptually (pleasantness judgements), and were then given memory tasks for the words and the presenting voice. In the word-recognition task the two age groups benefited equally from conceptual as opposed to perceptual processing. In the voice memory task, however, conceptual processing improved performance relative to perceptual processing in the younger subjects (significantly so in Experiment 1), but conceptual processing was associated with decreased performance in the older group (significantly so in Experiment 2). These results suggest that whereas older subjects exhibit a trade-off in memory for item and attribute information, younger subjects exhibit a pattern of support, in which conceptual processing benefits memory for both items and their attributes.
Phonologic Mediation is Fundamental to Reading: Evidence from Beginning Readers
Authors: Bosman Anna M. T. , de Groot Annette
Published: September 2011

Three tasks were employed to investigate the role of assembled phonology in beginning readers. In two proofreading tasks, children had more trouble finding pseudohomophone misspellings (stimuli with phonology identical to that of a word) than control misspellings (stimuli that do not share their phonology with a word). In a lexical-decision task, they had more trouble deciding that pseudohomophone misspellings were non-words than deciding that control misspellings were non-words. Finally, in a semantic-categorization task, children had more trouble rejecting pseudohomophone misspellings as a member of a designated category than rejecting control misspellings. Differences between more and less advanced readers occurred, but they need not be attributed to differential use of phonology in word recognition. Instead, they were explained in terms of a difference between reader groups in spelling-verification efficiency. The results of the present studies on beginning reading parallel studies on skilled reading by Van Orden et al. (1992). The main conclusion was that assembled phonology plays an important role in word recognition in beginning readers.
How Initial Plans Mediate the Expansion and Resolution of Options in Writing
Authors: Rau Paul S. , Sebrechts Marc M.
Published: September 2011

Effects of a period of planning prior to writing (“pre-writing”) and of the writing medium on the content and quality of writing were examined in two between-subjects experiments. In Experiment 1, subjects wrote short narratives either immediately after instruction or following a 5-minute pre-writing period; half of each group used pen and paper; the other half used a word processor. Both pre-writing and word processing resulted in more changes to text content, resulting in compositions that were judged as more sophisticated and creative. Experiment 2 demonstrated that pre-writing using a written outline decreases content revisions compared to non-written pre-writing. Verbal protocols indicated that non-written pre-writing was focused on content generation, whereas outlines were associated with more conceptual planning. To account for these data we propose several additions to the Hayes and Flower (1980) cognitive model of the writing process. Both pre-writing and word processing are viewed as expanding the alternatives to be considered, i.e. “option expansion”. During writing the options are resolved during pauses and through changes to text content, i.e. “option resolution”.
Rate-dependent Perception of Aspiration and Pre-aspiration in Icelandic
Authors: Pind Jörgen
Published: September 2011

Speech segments are highly context-dependent and acoustically variable. One factor that contributes heavily to the variability of speech is speaking rate. Some speech cues are temporal in nature—that is, the distinctions that they signify are defined over time. How can temporal speech cues keep their distinctiveness in the face of extrinsic transformations, such as those wrought by different speaking rates? This issue is explored with respect to the perception, in Icelandic, of Voice Onset Time as a cue for word-initial stop voicing, wordinitial aspiration as a cue for [h], and Voice Offset Time as a cue for pre-aspiration. All the speech cues show rate-dependent perception though to different degrees, with Voice Offset Time being most sensitive to rate changes and Voice Onset Time least sensitive. The differences in the behaviour of these speech cues are related to their different positions in the syllable.
On the Mental Representation of Conditional Sentences
Authors: Evans Jonathan St. B. T. , Ellis Charles E. , Newstead Stephen E.
Published: September 2011

Four experiments are reported which attempt to externalize subjects’ mental representation of conditional sentences, using novel research methods. In Experiment 1, subjects were shown arrays of coloured shapes and asked to rate the degree to which they appeared to be true of conditional statements such as “If the figure is green then it is a triangle”. The arrays contained different distributions of the four logically possible cases in which the antecedent or consequent is true or false: TT, TF, FT, and FF. For example, a blue triangle would be FT for the conditional quoted above. In Experiments 2 to 4, subjects were able to construct their own arrays to make conditionals either true or false with any distribution of the four cases they wished to choose. The presence and absence of negative components was varied, as was the form of the conditional, being either “if then” as above or “only if”: “The figure is green only if it is a triangle”.

The first finding was that subjects represent conditionals in fuzzy way: conditionals that include some counter-example TF cases (Experiment 1) may be rated as true, and such cases are often included when subjects construct an array to make the rule true (Experiments 2 to 4). Other findings included a strong tendency to include psychologically irrelevant FT and FF cases in constructed arrays, presumably to show that conditional statements only apply some of the time. A tendency to construct cases in line with the “matching bias” reported on analogous tasks in the literature was found, but only in Experiment 4, where the number of symbols available to construct each case was controlled. The findings are discussed in relation to the major contemporary theories of conditional reasoning based upon inference rules and mental models, neither of which can account for all the results.
What Are the Functional Orthographic Units in Chinese Word Recognition: The Stroke or the Stroke Pattern?
Authors: Chen Y. P. , Allport D. A. , Marshall J. C.
Published: September 2011

We present evidence that the visual analysis of Chinese characters by skilled readers is based upon well-defined orthographic constituents. These functional units are the recurrent, integral stroke-patterns, not the individual strokes as previously thought. The speed of simultaneous “same-different” comparisons of Chinese characters is affected by the number of these orthographic units and, for “different” judgements, by the proportion of mismatching units, but not by the number of individual strokes.

We further define a category of orthographic unit, referred to here as the “lexical radical”, which requires strict positional regularity within each composite character. Violation of positional regularity results in illegal non-characters. In contrast, recombination of orthographic units (stroke patterns) with the lexical radical in its regular position forms a regular pseudocharacter. We show that real characters are matched faster than pseudocharacters and non-characters—a word superiority effect in Chinese. Pseudocharacters are matched faster than non-characters, a pseudoword advantage in Chinese. We also present evidence suggesting that individual stroke patterns may be better recognized in real characters than in pseudocharacters and non-characters—a word superiority effect in terms of unit recognition.

These results support the hypothesis that the functional orthographic unit in the recognition of Chinese characters, comparable to the letter in alphabetic word recognition, is the recurring integral stroke pattern.
Interference with Rehearsal in Spatial Working Memory in the Absence of Eye Movements
Authors: Smyth Mary M.
Published: September 2011

We have previously argued that rehearsal in spatial working memory is interfered with by spatial attention shifts rather than simply by movements to locations in space (Smyth & Scholey, 1994). It is possible, however, that the stimuli intended to induce attention shifts in our experiments also induced eye movements and interfered either with an overt eye movement rehearsal strategy or with a covert one. In the first experiment reported here, subjects fixated while they maintained a sequence of spatial items in memory before recalling them in order. Fixation did not affect recall, but auditory spatial stimuli presented during the interval did decrease performance, and it was further decreased if the stimuli were categorized as coming from the right or the left. A second experiment investigated the effects of auditory spatial stimuli to which no response was ever required and found that these did not interfere with performance, indicating that it is the spatial salience of targets that leads to interference. This interference from spatial input in the absence of any overt movement of the eyes or limbs is interpreted in terms of shifts of spatial attention or spatial monitoring, which Morris (1989) has suggested affects spatial encoding and which our findings suggest also affects reactivation in rehearsal.
Does Immediate Arousal Enhance Response Force in Simple Reaction Time?
Authors: Ulrich Rolf , Mattes Stefan
Published: September 2011

Three experiments assessed the hypothesis that immediate arousal enhances response force in speeded reaction-time tasks. Immediate arousal was manipulated via the physical characteristics of a warning signal that closely preceded the imperative response signal. The first experiment revealed that responses were more forceful and faster for a loud than for a soft warning signal. The second experiment manipulated the duration of an auditory warning signal; more forceful but slower responses were obtained for longer durations of the warning signal. The third experiment employed a visual warning signal, and its intensity was either rather weak or moderately bright; more forceful responses and slightly faster responses were observed for the brighter warning signal. Although the results of Experiment 1 and 2 may agree with an arousal account, the findings of Experiment 3 argue against such an account. A stimulus-response compatibility hypothesis is suggested as one possible alternative account.
The Relative Importance of Anticipated Test Format and Anticipated Test Difficulty on Performance
Authors: Thiede Keith W.
Published: September 2011

In this investigation, the relative importance of the effects of anticipated test format and anticipated test difficulty on performance was examined by simultaneously manipulating both. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that test performance was affected more by anticipated test format than by anticipated test difficulty. This suggests that the superior performance of subjects who had anticipated a recall test versus those who had anticipated a recognition test, reported here and in previous studies, is more likely to be due to anticipating a recall format than to anticipating a more difficult test. Experiment 2 showed that subjects who had anticipated a recall test studied longer than subjects who had anticipated a recognition test, even when recall tests were less difficult than recognition tests. One explanation for this finding is that subjects inaccurately monitor the relative difficulty of tests across test formats. Subjects rated recall items as more difficult than recognition items, even when recall items are actually less difficult (Experiment 3). These findings suggest that a priori metacognitive knowledge may reduce the accuracy of on-line metacognitive monitoring.
Case marking in the Parsing of Complement Sentences: Evidence from Eye Movements
Authors: Traxler Matthew J. , Pickering Martin J.
Published: September 2011

An eye-tracking experiment investigated the role of case-marking in parsing. We manipulated the case of pronouns in reduced complement sentences like I recognized you and your family would be unhappy here and I recognized she and her family would be unhappy here, in which the nominative pronoun she immediately disambiguates the sentences, in contrast to the ambiguous you. The nominative pronoun she disambiguates the sentence because I recognised she is ungrammatical, and thus she and her family must be the subject of an embedded sentence and not the NP-object of the preceding verb. Subjects took longer to read she and her family than you and your family during initial processing. The pattern reversed at the disambiguating phrase would be. Unambiguous control sentences containing the complementizer that did not produce case-marking effects. These results demonstrate very rapid effects of case-marking on parsing. Either case information is used immediately, or it is employed after an extremely short delay. We discuss implications for current theories of parsing.
Grammatical Priming of Visual Word Recognition in Fourth grade Children
Authors: Bowey Judith A.
Published: September 2011

Previous work examining context effects in children has been limited to semantic context. The current research examined the effects of grammatical priming of word-naming in fourth-grade children. In Experiment 1, children named both inflected and uninflected noun and verb target words faster when they were preceded by grammatically constraining primes than when they were preceded by neutral primes. Experiment 1 used a long stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) interval of 750 msec. Experiment 2 replicated the grammatical priming effect at two SOA intervals (400 msec and 700 msec), suggesting that the grammatical priming effect does not reflect the operation of any gross strategic effects directly attributable to the long SOA interval employed in Experiment 1. Grammatical context appears to facilitate target word naming by constraining target word class. Further work is required to elucidate the loci of this effect.
Base word Frequency and Pseudohomophone Naming
Authors: Herdman Chris M. , LeFevre Jo-Anne , Greenham Stephanie L.
Published: September 2011

The advantage of naming pseudohomophones over non-pseudohomophones has been interpreted as reflecting the contribution of whole-word lexical representations in phonological coding. A whole-word interpretation was further supported by Taft and Russell (1992), who reported a pseudohomophone frequency effect such that pseudohomophones were named faster if they corresponded to high- than to low-frequency base-words (e.g. poast vs. hoast). Experiment 1 replicated this pseudohomophone frequency effect using the Taft and Russell items. Further analyses showed, however, that the pseudohomophones in Taft and Russell's high-frequency group were more orthographically similar to words than the pseudohomophones in the low-frequency group. These differences in orthography may have been the cause of the “frequency” effects. In Experiment 2, a new set of high- and low-frequency pseudohomophones was constructed that were matched on orthographic factors (i.e. SPBF and N). With these items, a standard pseudohomophone advantage was found such that pseudohomophones were named faster and more accurately than non-pseudohomophones. However, in contrast to Taft and Russell's results, pseudohomophone naming was not related to base-word frequency. We conclude that the pseudohomophone advantage occurs at a postlexical stage in non-word naming.
On the Irrelevance of Phonological Similarity to the Irrelevant Speech Effect
Authors: Denny C. LeCompte , Shaibe Deborah M.
Published: September 2011

Irrelevant background speech disrupts immediate recall of visually presented items. Salame and Baddeley (1982) found that increasing the phonological similarity between the irrelevant speech and the visual items greatly increased this disruption. In contrast, Jones and Macken (1995) found little evidence for such an increase. The present experiments directly manipulated the phonological similarity of the irrelevant speech background and the to-be-remembered visual items. Experiments 1–4 compared background speech that shared virtually no phonemes with the visual stimuli with background speech that shared all of the phonemes of the visual stimuli. No effect of phonological similarity was found. Experiment 5 replicatedthe method of Salame and Baddeley's critical experiment but not their results. With regard to the two primary explanations of the irrelevant speech effect, these data present a strong challenge to the phonological store hypothesis while offering some support to the changing state hypothesis.
The Effects of Prior Processing Episodes on Basic level Superiority
Authors: Lin Emilie L. , Murphy Gregory L. , Shoben Edward J.
Published: September 2011

Four experiments were conducted to investigate the effects of prior processing episodes on people's preference for categorizing objects at the basic level (e.g. dog) relative to their preference for categorizing at the superordinate (e.g. animal) and the subordinate (e.g. Dalmation) levels. The prior processing episode in Experiment 1 was designed to induce subjects to activate representations at the superordinate level, and those in the remaining experiments were designed to induce subjects to differentiate objects at the subordinate level. After the prior processing episodes, subjects performed either a free naming or a picture categorization task that required them to decide whether an illustrated object belonged to a specified category. Results showed that prior processing episodes modestly reduced the superiority of basic level to superordinate level and subordinate level in categorization but not in free naming. The results suggest that the basic-level advantage is subject to the effects of context, but the effects are not as strong as the context effects on other aspects of categorization behaviour (e.g. rating typicality of a category member). Hence, the preference for the basic level is a somewhat more stable, invariant aspect of conceptual representation. Possible determinations of this stability are discussed.
Endogenous Covert Spatial Orienting in Audition Cost-Benefit Analyses of Reaction Times and Event related Potentials
Authors: Schröger Erich , Eimer Martin
Published: September 2011

The present study examines mechanisms of endogenous covert spatial orienting in audition as revealed by event-related brain potentials (ERPs) and reaction times (RTs). In one experimental condition, subjects were instructed to respond to any target tone irrespective of whether it was presented in a valid (spatially predictive cue), neutral (uninformative cue), or invalid (misleading cue) trial. In another experimental condition, only target tones presented at a cued position required a response—that is, subjects could completely ignore tones presented at the uncued ear. Cue validity had an effect on RT, which consisted in benefits for valid trials and in costs for invalid trials relative to the RTs in neutral trials. There were also distinct ERP effects of cue validity in the 100–300 msec time range. These ERP effects were enlarged in the condition in which uncued tones could be ignored. The effects of cue validity on RTs and ERPs demonstrated covert orienting in audition both for stimuli requiring an overt response and also for stimuli that did not require a behavioural response. It is argued that this attentional selection is located at intermediate stages of information processing, rather than at peripheral stages such as basic sensory-specific processing or response selection.