bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Memory Confusions and Memory Codes: A Simulation of the Acoustic Similarity Effect
Authors: Legge David , Kaminska Zofia M.
Published: July 2007

It is hypothesized that items are coded for short-term storage in the language of the modality through which the customary responses to these items are normally monitored. This Response Monitoring Modality Hypothesis may account for the acoustic similarity effect in short-term memory for verbal items. The hypothesis was tested using non-verbal material. After paired-associate training subjects were found to confuse, in retention tests, items sharing similar previously trained responses to a greater extent than items that were directly similar to one another. The experiment simulates under controlled conditions the natural phenomenon of acoustical confusions in short-term memory, and provides strong support for the Response Monitoring Modality Hypothesis.
Channel Selection and the Suffix Effect
Authors: Morton John , Chambers Susan M.
Published: July 2007

Subjects were presented with a list of digits to alternate ears for serial recall. The list was followed by a suffix, a redundant acoustic event which did not have to be recalled. The suffix was presented either to one of the ears or binaurally. In all cases the suffix gave rise to a selective impairment of recall of the final items in the list. The results are interpreted as showing first that stimuli of the kind used are processed by simultaneously selecting both ears rather than by switching attention, and second that the site of the suffix effect is after the selection mechanism.
Disturbance of the Oculomotor System Due to Lateral Fixation
Authors: Craske Brian , Crawshaw Martin , Heron Peter
Published: July 2007

Three experiments are reported on the effects of previous lateral deviation of the eyes. There is a large effect on their subsequent resting position, and a smaller instantaneous effect on voluntary eye centring. Both are in the direction of previous fixation. The latter effect becomes insignificant within 30 s. The treatment produces errors in visually guided reaching away from the previous direction of fixation. The effects are consistent with a change in registered eye position, an effect also produced by exposure to prisms. Despite this similarity, the disturbance to the oculomotor system caused by these two treatments is sharply differentiated by the resting position. Prisms cause subsequent low frequency, high amplitude oscillations of the eyes (Craske and Templeton, 1968), whereas following lateral deviation the mean resting position returns gradually towards the pre-treatment position.
Paced and Self-Paced Continuous Reaction Time
Authors: Wagenaar W. A. , Stakenburg H.
Published: July 2007

Studies of the effect of pacing in continuous RT tasks are inconclusive. They have failed to (1) compare paced and self-paced RT at matched error rates and (2) examine RT distributions as well as mean or median RT. In the present experiment RTs were corrected for error rate by relating them to the speed-accuracy tradeoff function, which was measured in each experimental session. In this way deciles of the RT distributions of paced and self-paced conditions were compared, for eight subjects and four successive sessions. The task was a four-choice continuous RT task, employing visual stimuli. The results show that RT distributions are wider in the paced conditions. RTs of the first deciles are faster for pacing whereas medians in paced and self-paced conditions are about equal. The results can be explained when it is assumed that the variable R-S intervals in paced conditions lead to a larger variability of RT.
The Foreperiod Effect Revisited
Authors: Sanders A. F.
Published: July 2007

This paper explores four factors which could be important in accounting for the discrepant results which have previously been obtained with respect to the effect of foreperiod duration on reaction time (RT). In some studies a clear effect of foreperiod duration on auditory RT has been found, in contrast to a recent finding that foreperiod duration affected visual RT but not auditory RT. By means of two experiments, the effects of practice, time-on-task, reaction task (a-reaction versus selective reaction) and signal intensity were studied. The latter variable appears to be the principal determinant of the discrepant results in that there is an interaction between signal intensity, foreperiod duration and modality. The results fit the hypothesis that signals beyond a given intensity exert an immediate arousing effect which counteracts the foreperiod effect.
Division of Attention between Non-Verbal Signals: All-Or-None or Shared Processing?
Authors: Long John
Published: July 2007

Criteria proposed by Broadbent (1971) for deciding between “all-or-none” and “shared” models of divided attention are reviewed and modified. Of the modified criteria, the amount of the reduction in efficiency and the shape of the normalized ROC curve are identified as being diagnostic for deciding between the two models. When applied to the results of two experiments involving the recognition of difficult nonverbal signals, which showed performance on the signals presented together to be significantly worse than performance on the signals when presented alone, both the criteria favour the shared model rather than the all-or-none model. The results of a third experiment with easy signals indicated that artefacts unrelated to attention were unable to account for the reduction in efficiency with difficult signals. It is concluded that the shared model, which assumes some limit to processing capacity, has the widest application to these results and similar findings reported elsewhere. The role of the all-or-none model would appear to be restricted to conditions of extreme informational overload. Further, the movement of noncentral decision criteria and the unequal contribution of the individual dimensions to overall multi-dimension performance demonstrated in the first two experiments, suggest that a reduction in the quality of decision-making may accompany the division of attention, as well as the reduction of information derived from the signals.
Reasoning with Exclusive Disjunction Arguments
Authors: Roberge James J.
Published: July 2007

An experiment was performed to determine the effects of negation in the major premise and/or conclusion of exclusive disjunction arguments on adults' abilities to apply two basic principles of exclusive disjunction. The component of the disjunctive premise that was referred to in the minor premise was varied systematically so that the influence of this factor could also be explored. The results indicated that arguments involving the confirmation of one of the components of the disjunctive premise followed by the denial of the other component of this premise were easier to evaluate than those in which this confirmation/denial sequence was reversed. In addition, arguments in which the disjunctive premise had two affirmative components were easier than those in which the disjunctive premise contained at least one negative component, but arguments with affirmative conclusions were more difficult than those with negative conclusions. Most importantly, an examination of subjects' errors and their response patterns revealed primitive response tendencies that paralleled those reported in previous studies of adults' propositional reasoning abilities.
Form Perception without Attention
Authors: Rock Irvin , Schauer Ronald , Halper Fred
Published: July 2007

Methods were devised which made it possible for subjects to look directly at novel forms without attending to them. In one method a state of inattention was achieved without the use of distracting or competing material whereas in a second method the subjects selectively attended to one series of moving figures rather than another simultaneously presented series. While recognition of form directly afterward was excellent even under incidental conditions with attention it was poor or at a chance level without attention. The results suggest that without attention memory of the specific shape of a figure is not established although there is memory for certain other general characteristics of the figure. It is argued that this failure of adequate trace formation results from the failure to “describe” the spatial relations which characterize a figure. It is suggested that such a process of description constitutes the essence of form perception and does not occur without attention.
Interference in Colour-Contingent Motion After-Effects
Authors: Favreau Olga Eizner
Published: July 2007

When colour-contingent motion after-effects (MAEs) are induced with spirals that contain both colour and brightness contrast, the MAE is not apparent immediately after adaptation but does appear on a delayed test. However, when induced with stimuli that contain only colour contrast, the colour-contingent MAE is apparent immediately and decreases on a delayed test. The results are interpreted as indicating that units sensitive to brightness contrast can interfere with those that are sensitive to colour. It also seems necessary to modify or re-evaluate the fatigue theory of negative after-effects.
Do Children Find Movements Which Cross the Body Midline Difficult?
Authors: Schofield W. N.
Published: July 2007

Young children asked to make hand movements which cross the body are likely to respond with a movement confined to the same body side as the hand used. This crosslateral inhibition effect (CIE) features in Kephart's (1971) perceptualmotor theory; there is an extensive, earlier, literature on CIE in adults following cerebral insult; since the twenties, attempts have been made to relate developmental, clinical and neuropathological findings. In the present study 120 children aged from 3 to 8 years faced and copied hand movements of a model in a procedure following Head's (1920) Hand, Eye and Ear Test. CIE was confirmed, but differences between groups did not convincingly relate to age. CIE was greatest not at 3, 4 or 5 but at 6 years; further, 4-year-olds subjects made more preferred hand crosslateral responses than any other group. Analysis of imitation performance showed that older subjects applied a “proximity” strategy to both body part touched and hand use, whereas younger subjects disregarded the latter. It is argued that developmental CIE stems from procedural constraints and an agerelated choice of response strategy, and not learning related to a lateral bifurcation of perceptual-motor organization.
Verbal Reasoning and Working Memory
Authors: Hitch G. J. , Baddeley A. D.
Published: July 2007

A series of experiments was carried out to explore the hypothesis that a central working memory (WM) system is utilized during verbal reasoning. WM was provisionally defined in terms of two major features of short-term memory (STM): its limited storage capacity and its use of speech-coded information. The reasoning task required subjects to match (verify) as rapidly as possible a sentence of varying grammatical form with a symbolic referent. Experiments I and II studied the effect of storing an additional STM load on sentence verification latencies. As many as six items could be correctly recalled with no slowing of verification speed. Experiment III used a different procedure in which the STM items had to be articulated aloud during verification. In this case six-item STM loads slowed verification speed considerably, and did so more for the more difficult sentences. Only a small non-significant slowing of verification speed was obtained when redundant messages were articulated. Experiment IV showed that latencies were also increased by introducing phonemic similarity into the verification task. Generally the results were not fully consistent with the hypothesis of WM as a limited capacity store called upon by the verification task. Instead they supported the view that the WM is a general executive system with a limited capacity for information processing. It was proposed that the articulatory system, used in rehearsal and concerned with speech-coding, is a “peripheral” of the more central WM executive and plays a relatively minor role in verbal reasoning.
The Retrieval Hypothesis as an Explanation of Induced Retrograde Amnesia
Authors: Detterman Douglas K.
Published: July 2007

The present experiment tested the hypothesis that retrograde induced amnesia is due to retrieval failure and anterograde induced amnesia to encoding failure by providing recall cues which were expected to eliminate retrograde amnesia but worsen or have no effect on anterograde amnesia. The 80 subjects received auditory presentation of 10 lists, each composed of 15 four-letter words presented at a rate of 2s/item at 75 dB in a free-recall task, followed by a 72 s recall period. The amnesia-producing event was an outstanding item in serial position 8 presented at 115 dB (about the intensity of a loud shout) on half the lists. During the first half of the recall period subjects free-recalled, but during the last half they were given a list of the first (single cue) or the first two (double cue) letters of each word, to be used as aids to recall. To demonstrate induced amnesia, lists containing a loud item were compared to those not containing one. First half free recall performance indicated that large retrograde and anterograde effects were present for both cue conditions. Second half cued recall performance indicated that in the double cue condition retrograde amnesia disappeared and anterograde amnesia became larger. Cueing had much smaller effects in the single cue condition.
Persistent Behaviour in Extinction after Partial Deprivation in Training
Authors: Morris R. G. M. , Einon D. F. , Morgan M. J.
Published: July 2007

Four groups of rats were trained to run an alleyway with one trial per day. Two groups were always deprived when trained while the other two received a partial deprivation schedule. One group of each pair received a continuous reward in the goal box while the other received partial reward. A partial reinforcement effect was found during extinction. The partially deprived groups also showed persistence in extinction. This result extends parallels between the effects of satiation and nonreward upon behaviour.
Attribute Coding at Different Levels of Processing
Authors: Davies Graham , Cubbage Anne
Published: July 2007

Schoolchildren, aged 16 years showed poorer incidental learning for nouns if the orienting task was one of finding rhymes for the items compared to assigning each word to a semantic category. On a recognition task including homophone and synonym foils, rhyming subjects made significantly more phonemic errors, whereas categorizing subjects produced a significantly greater number of semantic confusions. Subjects instructed to construct images for each of the nouns showed a performance pattern similar to the categorizing group. The results are interpreted in terms of Herriot's (1974) view that different levels of processing are associated with the coding of different clusters of stimulus attributes.
Levels, Hierarchies, and the Locus of Control
Authors: Broadbent Donald E.
Published: July 2007

The Bartlett—Craik view of human performance is restated; and particularly that it is organised at different levels. On that view, the lower levels are controlled by the upper but capable of functioning independently. Modern views of memory, language, and problem-solving are compared with this doctrine, and found to embody some of its virtues but not all. Fresh experiments are described, in which people take decisions about the running of a transportation system. The simplest control mechanism which will model their behaviour is a two-level adaptive controller.
Locus of the Effect of a Surprising Reinforcer in the Attenuation of Blocking
Authors: Mackintosh N. J. , Bygrave D. J. , Picton B. M. B.
Published: July 2007

Previous experiments on conditioned suppression in rats have shown that prior conditioning to one element of a compound conditioned stimulus paired with shock may block or prevent conditioning to the other element. Reliable conditioning may, however, occur to the added element (blocking may be attenuated), if a surprising second shock is added shortly after each compound trial. Experiment I confirmed this finding, and further showed that blocking was attenuated only when the second shock occurred 10 s after the compound trial, not when it occurred 100 s later. Experiment II showed that the surprising omission of an expected second shock 10 s after each compound trial would also attenuate blocking, thus implying that the surprising event does not itself act to reinforce conditioning to the added element, but rather permits the unconditioned stimulus (the first shock) to play its normal role as an effective reinforcer. This conclusion was confirmed by Experiment III, which showed that a surprising second shock does not produce any increase in conditioning to the added element on the trial on which it occurs; rather it serves to ensure adequate conditioning to that element on a subsequent compound trial. The implication is that the surprising event acts proactively to prevent subjects learning to ignore an otherwise redundant stimulus.
How Children Learn to Draw Realistic Pictures
Authors: Willats John
Published: July 2007

Children of ages 5 to 17 years were given a real scene to draw from a fixed viewpoint. Their drawings were classified according to the type of drawing system used, and given a score for the number of correct representations of occlusion by overlap. Six classes of drawing system used were identified, and it was found that with increasing age children were able to use an increasingly complex type of system. This development appeared to take place in discrete stages and covered the whole age range tested. Increase in the ability to use overlap as a pictorial device appeared to be continuous; below the age of 9 few children made use of overlap, and rapid learning took place between the ages of 10 and 12. It is argued that the use of these two pictorial devices requires different abilities; and that learning to use a particular type of drawing system does not depend directly on perception or on learning culturally determined stereotypes but in its demands on creative ability closely resembles the acquisition of language.
Fixation and Attention in Apparent Motion
Authors: Kolers Paul A. , Von Grunau Michael
Published: July 2007

The likelihood of reporting a figure in motion was measured when the point of fixation was systematically separated from the point of attention. More reports of optimal motion were made when the two points were separated than when they were close together. Control tests showed that the reduction in the probability of seeing motion through the center of fixation was more likely due to the structure of the eye than to the conflict of fixation point and object in illusory motion. The notion of attention as a perceptual event contributes little to these results.
Personal Memories at Different Ages
Authors: Franklin Helen C. , Holding Dennis H.
Published: July 2007

Men and women aged between 25 and 75 were asked to associate personal experiences to a set of 50 randomly chosen common words. The dates of these experiences were reconstructed and plotted as frequency distributions. Neither sex differences nor introversion—extraversion had reliable effects, and response latencies did not differ between conditions, but age differences significantly affected the memory distributions. Contrary to the hypothesis that ageing produces a selective deficit for recency, it appears that the average date of remembered events tends to increase with age.
The Development of a Simple form of Communication
Authors: Boakes R. A. , Gaertner Ilse
Published: July 2007

This paper is concerned with situations in which one of two possible stimuli is presented to one subject, the sender, while a second subject is required to make one of two responses. The stimuli are not available to the receiver, but the latter can perceive the sender. Successful performance depends on the sender indicating what stimulus is present to the receiver. It is proposed that the development of this form of communication, initially observed with dolphins, can be understood in the light of recent autoshaping research. An experiment demonstrated that pairs of pigeons can learn to perform appropriately in such a situation and provided evidence supporting an autoshaping analysis.
Recognition Memory after Short Retention Intervals in Fornix-Transected Monkeys
Authors: Gaffan David
Published: July 2007

Fornix-transected monkeys were impaired in recognition memory after brief retention intervals for short lists of either colours or spatial positions. The results were contrasted with the existing evidence in human amnesic patients for a neurologically separate, intact short-term memory system.
The Symbolic Distance Effect for Alphabetic Order Judgements: A Subjective Report and Reaction Time Analysis
Authors: Hamilton J. M. E. , Sanford A. J.
Published: July 2007

The time needed to decide whether a pair of letters is in the correct alphabetic order varies inversely with alphabetic separation. This is an example of a phenomenon generally found with the comparison of ordered symbols or concepts, called the symbolic distance effect (Moyer and Bayer, 1976). It is argued that when letters are compared, an important determinant of this effect is the degree to which subjects subvocally run-through parts of the alphabet to determine the correctness of the order of a stimulus pair. A trial-by-trial introspection procedure coupled with reaction time measurements is used in the present experiment, in which letter order judgements were made over a range of separations. RTs increased with increasing number of letters in the reported run-through. At small letter separations, run-through occurred more frequently, and this was found to be the basis of the symbolic distance effect. For trials on which no run-through was reported the symbolic distance effect was absent. The data are summarized as a model in which comparisons are made from directly available order information from memory, or with an additional run-through process. The details of the run-through process suggest that groupings learned in childhood are probably involved in the selection of the starting letter for run-through.
Backward Masking and Asymmetry of Processing for Vowels Differing in Acoustical Similarity
Authors: Allen John , Haggard Mark
Published: July 2007

Several investigations have reported problems in demonstrating for vowels the phenomena of backward masking and right ear advantage so easily demonstrated for consonants. An experiment is reported on the dichotic backward masking (BM) of acoustically similar and dissimilar sets of vowels in consonant-vowel syllables. The results suggest that increasing perceptual difficulty by varying the acoustic similarity of the stimulus set augments BM. A second experiment showed that the right ear advantage (REA) was augmented by manipulating the acoustic similarity of the stimulus set and by decreasing intelligibility through the addition of noise. This and other evidence was employed to ascribe variations in both REA and BM to the interaction of perceptual processing time with information decay in precategorical acoustical storage. It is argued that this process interaction underlies statistical interactions in dichotic data which show that variations in difficulty (discriminability, noise addition, brain deterioration) affect most adversely the least favoured items (those presented earlier, those on the unattended ear, those on the left ear).
Laterality, Attention and Rate Effects in the Auditory Temporal Discrimination of Chronic Schizophrenics: The Effect of Treatment with Chlorpromazine
Authors: Hammond Nick V. , Gruzelier John H.
Published: July 2007

Schizophrenic patients, non-psychotic patients and healthy subjects were required to detect longer target tones from a sequence of short tones presented to either ear. The rate of stimulus presentation and the frequency of switches between the ears were varied. The schizophrenic patients were examined for four weeks while on standard clinical doses of chlorpromazine, for four weeks while on placebo, and for four weeks following reinstatement of medication. Lateral asymmetries in the performance of the schizophrenics were found to diminish in proportion to both the duration and the dosage of medication. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that chlorpromazine causes an improvement of left hemisphere performance relative to the right. The performance of the schizophrenics, relative to that of comparison subjects, deteriorated as the rate of stimulus presentation increased, supporting the hypothesis that schizophrenics have particular difficulties in response selection or organization.
Animal Learning of Independent and Correlated Events
Authors: Wookey P. E. , Morris R. C. , Kirby R. M.
Published: July 2007

Evidence suggests that experience of a truly random presentation of a conditioned and unconditioned stimulus (CS and US) retards subsequent acquisition of a classically conditioned response when the CS and US are paired. In these studies, no events reliably predict the US during the first part of training. The present experiment demonstrated impairment of subsequent appetitive conditioning in rats following a random CS-US presentation, both when another predictive cue is present and when it is absent during this experience. Results are discussed with reference to “general attention” theory, and learned helplessness. However, the data support an interpretation in terms of learning a specific relationship between a particular CS and US.
The Role of Trace Strength in Recency and Frequency Judgements by Amnesic and Control Subjects
Authors: Huppert Felicia A. , Piercy Malcolm
Published: July 2007

Amnesic and control subjects were required to judge the recency and frequency of presentation of complex pictures. The pictures were shown either once or three times 10 min or 24 h before testing. In both groups recency judgements were influenced by frequency of presentation, and frequency judgements by recency of presentation. Because the amnesic patients were unable to discriminate between the effects of repeated presentation and recent presentation, it was concluded that their judgements were determined solely by trace strength. Because controls showed some ability to make this discrimination, it was concluded that their judgements were determined jointly by trace strength and specific information about time and frequency of presentation.
Extradimensional Shift Learning in Pigeons: Positive and Negative Transfer Produced by Prior Discrimination Training
Authors: Hall Geoffrey
Published: July 2007

Four groups of pigeons were trained on a free operant successive discrimination between line-stimuli differing in orientation. The groups differed according to their previous treatment. Two groups had received true discrimination (TD) training with stimuli differing in colour and two groups had received pseudo-discrimination (PD) training. For one pair of groups the line-stimulus that was to become the positive stimulus in the transfer stage of the experiment was superimposed on both colours and in these the subjects given PD training learned the orientation discrimination more readily than those given TD training. In the other pair of groups TD animals learned more readily than PD. These results require us to modify current theories of attentional factors in transfer.
Visual Comparison of Random-Dot Patterns: Evidence concerning a Fixed Visual Association between Features and Feature-Relations
Authors: Foster David H.
Published: July 2007

Subjects made Same—Different judgements on pairs of briefly presented random-dot patterns: they had to judge in separate experiments either whether the members of each pair were identical in shape or whether the number of dots in each pattern was the same. When one pattern was the rotated version of the other, the proportion of Same responses varied with the angle of rotation in the same way for the two types of judgement. From these and other data obtained with pattern pairs in which members differed in shape and in dot-number, the following inferences are made. First, in making both kinds of Same judgements, a fixed visual association is established between local features (dot-clusters within the pattern) and certain spatial relations between these local features. Thus when spatial-relation information is in principle irrelevant to the pattern-comparison task, as in judgements of dot-number, this information is not separated from the relevant local-feature information in the pattern representation. Second, in both tasks, a common description of the patterns in terms of local features and feature-relations is used in making a Same judgement. Third, some shape discrimination independent of orientation and some dot-number discrimination independent of shape are each the result of the process mediating Different decisions.
Initial Codes for Order in Memory
Authors: McNicol D.
Published: July 2007

The roles of positional and associative information in preserving the order of short sequences of items were investigated either by presenting an item in the same serial position on successive trials (position transfer), or by presenting the same pair of items in adjacent but shifted positions on successive trials (association transfer). While Experiment I found that positive transfer of position information occurred after just one repetition of an item in the same serial position, Experiment II found no evidence for association transfer after a single trial. If an item is presented in the same position, or if a pair of items are presented in adjacent positions on several successive trials, position transfer effects built up more rapidly than association transfer effects (Experiments III and IV). However, the rate at which association transfer effects are established depends on the type of item used, with lists of concrete words showing rapid establishment of associations (Experiment V) but lists of digits showing only slow development of associations (Experiment IV). It was concluded that serial order may be preserved both by positional and associative codes, but the establishment of an associative code is linked to the extraction of information about the items themselves.
Linguistic and Psychometric Factors in Propositional Reasoning
Authors: Roberge James J.
Published: July 2007

An experiment is reported which demonstrates the effects of linguistic and psychometric factors on adults’ performance on a propositional reasoning task. The three linguistic factors were the semantic content in which the logical rule was embedded, the linguistic form of the logical rule, and the polarity of the major premise of the logical arguments. The two psychometric factors were the mode of response and the order of presentation of the different types of content. The results showed that the linguistic factors had a pronounced effect on adults’ propositional reasoning abilities, whereas the influence of the psychometric factors was negligible. These findings are discussed in relation to operational and interpretational factors in reasoning.
The Overshadowing of Background Stimuli: Some Effects of Varying Amounts of Training and UCS Intensity
Authors: Odling-Smee F. J.
Published: July 2007

Two experiments investigated the capacity of a nominal CS to overshadow background stimuli. Rats received CS-shock pairings in one compartment of a double compartment apparatus. After training the shock compartment was represented, but in the absence of both the CS and shock. Overshadowing was then assessed by measuring rats’ latency to enter this compartment. If rats readily entered the shock compartment this indicated that the background cues in that compartment had acquired little or no associative strength during training, and overshadowing was therefore inferred. If however rats avoided the shock compartment, then this indicated that the background stimuli must have become aversive during training, and overshadowing could not then be inferred. In both experiments it was found that the capacity of a CS to overshadow background stimuli was directly related to the amount of training given. The experiments also showed that this capacity is inversely related to shock intensity. The results are discussed in terms of Rescorla and Wagner's (1972) model of conditioning.
Sodium Amylobarbitone and Responses to Nonreward*
Authors: Feldon J. , Guillamon A. , Gray Jeffrey A. , de Wit H. , McNaughton N.
Published: July 2007

Three experiments are reported testing two alternative hypotheses concerning the behavioural effects of sodium amylobarbitone (SA): (1) that it blocks the after-effect of nonreward; (2) that it blocks conditioned frustration, elicited by stimuli associated with nonreward. In support of (2) Experiment I showed that SA given in acquisition abolished the partial reinforcement extinction effect (PREE) when rats were run at one trial a day in an alley for food reward on a continuous (CRF) or partial (PRF) reinforcement schedule. Experiment II showed that, in the goal section, the effect of the drug on the PREE was due to its presence during acquisition and was not due to state dependency; but the effect of the drug in the start section was consistent with state dependency of the PREE. In Experiment III, in opposition to (1) and again in support of (2), SA given to rats trained to show patterned running for water reward on a single alternation schedule blocked patterning by increasing running speeds on nonreward trials, not by decreasing running speeds on rewarded trials.
Stroop Interference: An Input and an Output Phenomenon
Authors: Stirling Nick
Published: July 2007

Three theories of Stroop interference are considered: perceptual conflict theory (Hock and Egeth, 1970), response competition theory (Morton, 1969) and conceptual encoding theory (Seymour, 1977). The first two fail to provide a full explanation of the available data, and Seymour's evidence is incomplete. Two experiments are reported. In the first, typical Stroop interference occurs in naming colour patches. In the second, subjects responded to colour patches with learned letter name responses. Both stimulus-related (incongruent colour names) and response-related (incongruent letters) distractors produced interference. These results indicate that any theory which assumes only a single locus for interference is incomplete. Conceptual encoding conflict and a modified form of response competition are suggested as possible dual mechanisms for Stroop interference effects.
Knowledge of Spatial Relations: The Specification of the Information Used in Making Inferences
Authors: Wilton R. N.
Published: July 2007

On being shown the names of two towns geography students determined whether one of the towns was north (say) of the other. Reaction time decreased as the distance between the towns increased. This finding was explained by supposing that subjects attempt to make inferences (about whether one town is north of another) by first accessing stored information that specifies a town's location only crudely; when this is insufficient to make the relevant inference more finely discriminating information is accessed. The explanation was supported in a second experiment: when one town was Scottish and the other English, reaction times were shorter than when both were English. This result was predicted from the assumption that the information first accessed specifies which country a town lies in: when one town is Scottish and the other English, this information can be used to make the correct inference without further specification of location (since all Scottish towns are north of all English towns), whereas when both towns are English further information must be accessed. Control conditions showed the result was not due merely to a greater familiarity with Scottish towns. The explanation was discussed in relation to accounts of reaction times obtained when other characteristics (e.g. size) of named objects are compared.
Specifying Levels of Processing
Authors: Parkin Alan J.
Published: July 2007

This study examines the nature of stimulus processing under semantic and nonsemantic orienting instructions. Two experiments are reported in which subjects were presented with a series of trials each beginning with the presentation of a “decision word” about which they made either a semantic or non-semantic orienting decision. This decision was followed by a word in coloured ink whose colour subjects were required to name as quickly as possible. On half the trails the coloured word was the primary associate of the decision word whilst on the other half the two words were normatively unrelated. On completion of the experiments the subjects were given an unexpected free recall test. The semantic orienting condition led to longer colour naming latencies on associate trials whilst no such difference was found in the non-semantic condition. The semantic condition also produced higher levels of incidental recall although paradoxically an analysis of associative clustering in recall failed to show any difference between the two orienting conditions. The results are interpreted as support for the “Levels of Processing” approach to memory since they provide an index of processing depth which is independent of retention performance.
Instantiation of Verbs
Authors: Garnham Alan
Published: July 2007

Two experiments are reported in which it is shown that (1) if subjects are presented with sentences containing general verbs, more specific verbs may be better recall cues for those sentences than the general verbs themselves, (2) in a recognition test using the same sort of materials subjects recognize the sentence that actually occurred, not a version with a more specific verb substituted. These results show that people instantiate when they encode verbs, but they rule out a simple recoding explanation of instantiation. Two alternative theoretical analyses of instantiation are presented and discussed.
Tune Recognition with Reduced Pitch and Interval Information
Authors: Moore Brian C. J. , Rosen Stuart Michael
Published: July 2007

Twenty subjects were tested on their ability to recognize simple tunes from which rhythm information had been removed. Only the first phrase of each tune was presented. The purpose of the experiment was (a) to determine whether stimuli containing only high harmonics can evoke a sense of musical pitch, and (b) to provide a set of data in normal subjects with which the performance of deaf subjects whose auditory nerve is stimulated electrically can be compared. Each subject was tested on five sets of stimuli presented in a counterbalanced order. These stimuli were (I) pulse trains high-pass filtered at 2 kHz, with repetition rates in the range of 100–200 p.p.s.; (2) as in (I) but high-pass filtered at 4 kHz; (3) sinusoids with musical intervals compressed, so that the “octave” was a ratio of I:I·3; (4) sinusoids with the musical intervals expanded, so that the “octave” was a ratio of I:4; (5) sinusoids of a constant frequency in which the normal frequency changes were translated into intensity changes, each semitone being represented by a 3 dB change in level. The results indicate that a pattern of intensity changes does not support tune recognition, and that, although the pitch contour alone allows reasonable performance, subjects do use musical interval information in recognizing tunes. Stimuli containing only high harmonics can provide such interval information, and thus can evoke a sense of musical pitch. Preliminary results from a deaf subject stimulated electrically with an electrode on the surface of the cochlea indicate that such stimulation can also evoke a sense of musical pitch. It is concluded that musical pitch information can be carried in the time-pattern of nerve impulses in the auditory nerve.
Time of Day and Processing Strategy in Free Recall
Authors: Folkard Simon , Monk Timothy H.
Published: July 2007

Consistent effects of time of day have been observed in digit span/sequence performance, and in the immediate memory for information presented in prose. However, studies using syntactically unstructured word lists have yielded inconsistent results. Three experiments were conducted that examined the free recall of 15 word lists. In all three, immediate recall from the pre-recency positions was found to be superior in the morning to the afternoon. This superiority disappeared after a 20-min delay (Experiment 1) and under articulatory suppression (Experiment III), but was unaffected by a manipulation that equated recall order (Experiment II). Immediate recall from the recency positions showed a W-shaped trend over the day (Experiment I) that might account for the inconsistencies previously reported. It is suggested that the changes in recall from the pre-recency positions may reflect a decrease in maintenance, and increase in elaboration, over the day. Such a change in processing strategy could itself reflect an increase in attentional selectivity associated with the changes in basal arousal level commonly held to occur over the day.
One-Trial Overshadowing
Authors: Mackintosh N. J. , Reese Benjamin
Published: July 2007

Two experiments on conditioned suppression in rats examined the extent to which conditioning to a tone was overshadowed by the presence of a light. When animals received four conditioning trials, a light of moderate intensity significantly overshadowed the tone. On the first trial of conditioning, however, the light had no effect on conditioning to the tone, unless (Experiment I) its intensity was increased, or (Experiment II) it occurred in closer temporal contiguity to reinforcement than the tone. The results establish that overshadowing can occur on the first trial of conditioning, contrary to the predictions of several theories, but suggest that this may be for different reasons from those operating to produce overshadowing over a series of conditioning trials.
A Verbal Illusion
Authors: Wason Peter C. , Reich Shuli S.
Published: July 2007

The sentence, No head injury is too trivial to be ignored, tends to be systematically misconstrued to mean that one should not ignore head injuries. It is argued that the sentence is anomalous in two ways. It is semantically anomalous because the relation between the adjective and the verb is the same as in the sentence, No sinner is too wicked to be condemned. It is pragmatically anomalous because the relation between the noun and the verb expresses an injunction which is inconsistent with commonly held beliefs. An experiment was conducted to investigate the effect of this pragmatic anomaly on comprehension. Four pragmatic and four non-pragmatic sentences were paraphrased. The prediction was confirmed that the pragmatic sentences were paraphrased more accurately than the non-pragmatic sentences. Some alternative explanations are considered.
Effects of Medial and Lateral Septal Lesions on the Partial Reinforcement Extinction Effect at One Trial a Day
Authors: Feldon J. , Gray J. A.
Published: July 2007

Rats sustained electrolytic lesions of either the medial septal (MS) area (of a kind known to eliminate the hippocampal theta rhythm) or the dorso-lateral septal (LS) area (of a kind known to spare theta) or both (a “total septal”, TS, lesion). They were compared to sham-operated controls in three experiments in the straight alley with food reward on continuous (CRF) or partial (PRF) reinforcement at one trial a day. MS lesions either left the partial reinforcement extinction effect (PREE) unchanged or enhanced it; LS lesions substantially reduced the PREE. The latter effect was due to a fall in resistance to extinction in PRF animals with no change in CRF animals. MS lesions greatly increased resistance to extinction in both CRF and PRF animals in one experiment but increased resistance to extinction only marginally and only in PRF animals in a second experiment. The TS lesion acted like the LS lesion. These results demonstrate a clear double dissociation between the effects of MS and LS lesions, especially in the PRF condition (LS lesions reduce resistance to extinction, MS lesions increase it).
Chicks' Responses to Familiar Stimuli in Unfamiliar Environments
Authors: Sluckin W. , Berryman J. C. , Mayes A. , Mann D.
Published: July 2007

The aim of the present experiments was to find out how imprinted chicks respond to familiar figures in unfamiliar settings. Experiment I showed that chicks individually imprinted with a coloured stationary disc did not readily approach it when later confronted with it in a larger pen—a confirmation of an earlier finding. Experiment II showed a similar disruptive effect when the chicks were individually presented with a stationary object (a ball) in a pen differing in colour from the original one. Experiment III, however, in which chicks were imprinted to a moving ball, showed unattenuated imprinting when testing took place in a strange environment. It was concluded that the disruptive effect of neophobia can be overcome when a high degree of figure salience ensures powerful imprinting.
Category Use in Abstract Mental Comparisons
Authors: Howard Robert W.
Published: July 2007

A recent model proposes that at least two processes are involved in mental comparisons; use of analogue and use of category information. The evidence that category information is used is not strong, however. It comes mainly from studies which had subjects overlearn the objects associated with arbitrary categories in the laboratory, and which used concrete dimensions. In the present study, two experiments were conducted to see if subjects spontaneously use natural categories from an abstract dimension (occupational status) in mental status comparisons. Subjects scaled occupations into status categories before each experiment and then compared the status of within-category and between-category occupation pairs. Within-category status comparisons reliably took longer than between-category ones of the same distance, suggesting that natural status categories were used.
Levels of Processing and Retrieval: Recency Effects after Incidental Learning in a Reaction Time Task
Authors: Mayes J. T. , McIvor Gillian
Published: July 2007

In their development of the levels-of-processing approach to memory Craik and Jacoby (1975) proposed a dual-process theory of retrieval which involves both the scanning of recent episodic memory and a process of reconstruction in semantic memory. The theory predicts that a depth of processing effect will emerge only when the latter retrieval process is employed. Two experiments tested this prediction under the “conveyor-belt” assumption that scanning will be adopted for recent items while earlier items must be retrieved by reconstruction. An incidental-learning paradigm was employed, in which subjects performed an orienting reaction-time task on a sequence of word-pairs. Each word-pair was judged at either a semantic, phonemic or (in Experiment I) orthographic level of coding. In the first experiment half the subjects subsequently attempted free recall while half performed a recognition task; in the second experiment subjects were cued for recall in the last six serial positions, followed by free recall of the remaining items. A consistent “levels” effect emerged in both recall and recognition and this was particularly clearly observed in recency positions. A significant difference also emerged between positive and negative judgements. Although it is argued that these effects might emerge even in scanning it is concluded that these experiments provide no support for the proposal of two distinct retrieval modes.