bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Interaction of auditory and visual information in speech perception
Authors: Dodd Barbara
Published: April 2011

Two experiments investigated the role of stored auditory and visual information for unimodal speech perception tasks. The first experiment showed that hearing subjects performed better than deaf subjects on a lip‐reading task, possibly because they could supplement lip‐read stimuli with stored information derived from the auditory modality. The second experiment demonstrated that sighted subjects did not use stored visual information to supplement an auditory input when deleting mispronunciations, since their performance did not differ from that of congenitally blind subjects. The processing of visual (lip‐read) information in speech perception is discussed.
Can alphabet recall be part of a visuo‐spatial task?
Authors: Hughes Miranda , Wilson‐Derose Mona , Kiely Bernadette
Published: April 2011

Fifty male and 50 female undergraduates were subjects in an experiment where they were required to recall the alphabet and to count either the number of letters containing the sound ‘ee’ or the number of letters with curves in the upper‐case form. The results fail to replicate those of Coltheart et al. (1975), but are consistent with current models of hemispheric specialization. Males were found to complete the visuo‐spatial task slower than the females and it is argued that this is due to their greater degree of hemispheric specialization which necessitates transfer of information between hemispheres.
Measurement in psychology
Authors: Fraser C. O.
Published: April 2011

Two major traditions regarding the theory and practice of measurement in psychology can be identified: the classical approach associated with the work of S. S. Stevens, and the more recently developed axiomatic approach. These two approaches are compared and related to the historical development of the logical analysis of measurement.

Some practical consequences of the choice of a measurement theory paradigm are discussed, and the appropriateness of the two major approaches to guide the theory and practice of psychological measurement are evaluated.
Adult age differences in multi‐source selection behaviour with partially predictable signals
Authors: Maule A. J. , Sanford A. J.
Published: April 2011

When important information arrives intermittently at spatially separate sources people must divide attention if they wish to assimilate it. Previous research has demonstrated that, under appropriate circumstances, more attention will be allocated to those sources where the information is more likely to occur. Some recent studies have suggested that this selectivity of behaviour is found to a much lesser extent in the elderly, though such results are ambiguous because of methodological inadequacies. The present paper introduces a new method for investigating the allocation of attention which avoids these previous difficulties. Nevertheless, the results do demonstrate an age‐related loss in selectivity, suggesting these findings are reliable and of considerable generality. It is suggested that the elderly are poorer processors of stochastic information, and that in the present task this may be due to a reduced capacity for remembering the moment to moment probabilities of information being presented to each of the sources.
Presentation and representation in design problem‐solving
Authors: Carroll John M. , Thomas John C. , Malhotra Ashok
Published: April 2011

Two experimental studies of design problem‐solving are presented. Eighty‐one subjects worked on one of two design problems that were isomorphic in structure: a schedule for stages in a manufacturing process or a layout for a business office. In Expt 1, a difference between problem isomorphs is obtained: the ‘spatial’ office layout problem obtains better performance and shorter solution times than the ‘temporal’ scheduling problem. In Expt 2, this difference attenuates when subjects are provided with a graphic representation in both isomorph conditions. The availability of a graphic representation is discussed as an aid for procedural design.
Reasoning with determinate and indeterminate linear syllogisms
Authors: Sternberg Robert J.
Published: April 2011

The present article tests a proposed model of linear syllogistic reasoning on both determinate and indeterminate linear syllogisms. The proposed model, which includes processes acting upon both linguistic and spatial representations for information, is shown to be able to account for solution latencies from both kinds of linear‐syllogism problems. These demonstrations of the internal validity of the model are accompanied by a demonstration of its external validity whereby composite and component scores for individual subjects are correlated with scores from verbal, spatial and abstract reasoning tests. A number of significant and substantial correlations confirm the relationships of components of the proposed mixture model to performance on tasks quite different in surface structure from the linear syllogisms. It is concluded that although the proposed model is not the true one (in that it does not account for all of the reliable variance in the latency data), it provides a good approximation to the strategy many subjects use in the solution of linear‐syllogism problems.
Physical correlates of the judged complexity of music by subjects differing in musical background
Authors: Conley Joyce K.
Published: April 2011

The complexity of 16 of Beethoven's Eroica Variations, Op. 35, for piano, was judged by three groups of subjects differing in musical background: university graduate music students, sophomore music majors and non‐music majors. The relationships between subjects' judgements of complexity and nine musical variables (dealing with texture, harmony and rhythm) were investigated, and the judgements of the different groups were compared. Together all specified musical variables accounted for over 90 per cent of the variability in subjects' responses. The judgements of all subjects correlated most highly with the rate of rhythmic activity of the music, and this variable accounted for 71, 90 and 78 per cent of the variability in the responses of graduate music students, sophomore music majors and non‐music majors, respectively. Although the judgements of complexity of all three groups were highly correlated, the groups differed in the variables that were significant secondary correlates of judged complexity, and there is evidence that the criteria used in judging complexity differed across groups. Both harmonic and rhythmic variables were of importance to graduate music students in judging complexity, whereas only rhythmic activity variables were of importance to less musically sophisticated subjects.
Girls' and boys' perception of their peers: Peripheral vs. central and objective vs. interpretative aspects of free descriptions
Authors: Honess Terry
Published: April 2011

It is argued that earlier studies of children's ‘free’ descriptions typically confound an interpretation of the child's capabilities (for which prescriptive precedures may be required) with an interpretation of the child's preferred mode of construing (for which minimal intrusion is generally necessary). A content analysis that avoids prescription in both instructions and coding of 8–13‐year‐olds' descriptions of liked and disliked peers reveals, contrary to common contention, that older children do employ a high proportion of so‐called ‘peripheral’ constructs and, in particular, boys show an increasing concern with others' appearance. Differences between the content of boys' and girls' descriptions amplify earlier work in demonstrating that boys' greater concern with others' relatively ‘objective’ characteristics is marked for all age groups sampled, and that reports of profound differentiation at adolescence may stem only from girls' increasing concern with interpersonal matters. Hypotheses derived from Guttman's formulation of different ‘ecologies’ for the sexes received only partial support, which suggests that his formulation blurs important sex differences in impression formation. Finally, the non‐prescriptive procedures employed reveal that, contrary to others' findings, there are substantial differences in peripheral/central focusing in descriptions of liked and disliked others.
The assessment of verbal‐imagery learning styles and their effect on the recall of concrete and abstract prose passages by 11‐year‐old children
Authors: Riding R. J. , Calvey I.
Published: April 2011

Forty 10‐11‐year‐old children received a test of verbal and imaginal representation of information during learning from prose material. A verbal‐imagery code ratio of the speed of response on test items that could be answered quickly from verbal associations to those that could be promptly answered from images was found for each subject. On the basis of this ratio, subjects were divided into five groups with equal numbers of children in each. All subjects then listened to four prose passages with a questioned recall test after each. The prose passages ranged from being highly acoustically and semantically complex in content to visually descriptive. It was hypothesized that there would be an interaction between verbal‐imagery code ratio level and passage type in their effect on recall. A significant interaction was found (P < 0.01). As the verbal‐imager ratio increased (i.e. there was a change from high verbal/low imaginal to low verbal/high imaginal performance) recall on the highly semantic passage decreased, while that on the highly visual passage increased. The results were discussed in terms of a possible verbal‐imagery learning style continuum.
Second‐order autoshaping: Is a pairing hypothesis sufficient?
Authors: Wearden J. H. , Tocilovac I. , Harwood D. W.
Published: April 2011

Autoshaping or omission stimuli, which have both been repeatedly paired with food, were used as first‐order conditioned stimuli in an attempt to produce second‐order autoshaping in Barbary doves. Pecks to the second‐order stimulus occurred when the autoshaping stimulus served as the first‐order stimulus, but not when the omission stimulus did. This suggests that a simple pairing of a first‐order stimulus and food is not sufficient to produce second‐order keypecking when pairings of that stimulus and a second‐order stimulus are given, contrary to some theories of second‐order autoshaping.
Recognition memory for sentences as a function of concreteness/abstractness and affirmation/negation
Authors: Smith C. D.
Published: April 2011

It was found that recognition memory for spoken sentences was superior when sentences were concrete than when they were abstract, provided that the sentences were affirmative. With negative sentences, however, the reverse occurred: performance was worse when the sentences were concrete than when they were abstract. Affirmative abstract sentences and negative abstract sentences were equally well recognized, whereas, for concrete sentences, negation severely impaired recognition memory. The implications of these findings for theories of mental imagery and language processing are discussed.
Constructs and ‘conflict’ in depression
Authors: Sheehan M. J.
Published: April 2011

The relationship between the nature of self‐constructs and the level of ‘conflict’ in depression was discussed. It was hypothesized that depressed patients would have lower self‐esteem and a less differentiated self‐construct system characterized by a higher level of intensity and a lower percentage of ‘conflict’ than non‐depressed individuals. After drug therapy, it was expected that these differences would diminish ‐ although not entirely ‐ on the grounds that the differences are a more permanent feature of the self‐construct system of the depressed‐prone individual. A sample of 16 depressed patients (13 in‐patients and three out‐patients) were given a ‘Multiple Perception of the Self’ grid at the start of drug therapy. After six/eight weeks of treatment, a further grid was administered and new constructs elicited. A retest grid was administered after a short interval of 12‐24 hours. The same procedure was carried out with a group of 16 non‐depressed individuals ‐ matched as far as possible for age, sex, intelligence and social class. The results offered strong support for the hypotheses.
Experimenting with children's language
Authors: Warden David A.
Published: April 2011

The empirical assessment of children's linguistic ability is fraught with difficulty. Different experimental techniques have produced conflicting evidence of competence. A number of such contradictions are discussed, in the context of an analysis of the potential weaknesses, and consequent requirements, of both comprehension and production tasks.
Relationships among cognitive complexity, sex, and spatial task performance in college students
Authors: Thompson Eileen G. , Mann Irene T. , Harris Lauren Julius
Published: April 2011

This study examined the relationship between object differentiation (spatial ability) and social differentiation (cognitive complexity). Prior research has demonstrated a link between field independence and cognitive complexity, and between field independence and spatial ability. This raises the question whether some unitary cognitive style is involved in both spatial ability and cognitive complexity. The present study used a spatial task (a variation of Piaget & Inhelder's water level task) and several measures of cognitive complexity (the Barron Complexity scale, Intolerance of Ambiguity scale, and measures of self‐differentiation and differentiation of other persons) to test the prediction that complexity will be positively related to performance on the water level task. On the basis of earlier findings, we also predicted that males would outperform females on the water level task. Thirty‐eight male and 98 female undergraduates completed the water level task and the complexity measures. Results confirmed the predictions, except that the relationship between cognitive complexity and performance was different for males than for females. For males, the correlations between scores on the water level task and the several measures of complexity were considerably higher than for females. Such results suggest that for males spatial task performance can be related to a general construct such as cognitive style; for females, this does not appear to be the case.
Category width and differentiation in semantic categories
Authors: Huang Ming‐Shiunn
Published: April 2011

The hypothesis that the judgemental categorizing behaviour measured by Pettigrew's Category‐Width scale is linked to semantic categorization is investigated. Individual differences in broad vs. narrow categorizing behaviour measured by the C‐W scale are reconceptualized within the framework of Rosch's (1977) theory of human categorization. Two extreme groups on the C‐W scale, broad categorizers and narrow categorizers, were selected as subjects. One experiment employed a short‐term release‐from‐proactive‐inhibition paradigm. The amount of discrepancy in recall between the preshift and the shift trials was used as an index to perceived semantic distance. The result showed that narrow categorizers perceived the same fuzzy items in a semantic category as less similar to the good exemplars of that category than broad categorizers did. In a further experiment using a semantic‐categorization technique, narrow categorizers judged the same fuzzy items as category members less frequently than broad categorizers did, indicating that narrow categorizers possess more differentiated semantic categories than do broad categorizers. These findings are seen as an extension of the differential categorizing behaviour on artificial categories in the C‐W scale to semantic categorization for which there is a pre‐existing system.
Ideogram reading and right hemisphere language
Authors: Besner Derek , Daniels Shona , Slade Christine
Published: April 2011

Two experiments on the identification of ideographs are reported. In Expt 1 subjects showed a right visual field advantage when reporting Arabic numerals. A right visual field advantage was also obtained in Expt 2 when Chinese and Japanese subjects reported numbers presented in Arabic and Kanji formats. The results are discussed in the context of the literature which shows a left visual field advantage for the identification of single ideographs in Chinese and Japanese, and a right visual field advantage for items in alphabetic and syllabic scripts. It is suggested that it is not the direct mapping between ideographs and the morphemes of a language which yields a left visual field advantage, but associated incidental stimulus characteristics which make demands upon preprocessing operations that are carried out more efficiently in the right hemisphere. It is argued, therefore, that this literature does not address the question of whether, subsequent to preprocessing, alphabetic, syllabic and ideographic scripts are processed by dissociable mechanisms.
EEG correlates of hemisphere differences during a rapid calculation task
Authors: Shepherd R. , Gale A.
Published: April 2011

Twenty male subjects performed a continuous task involving response to digit sets. The subject was required to respond to sets containing only odd numbers, and whose sum was greater than or equal to 20. Abundance of both left and right hemisphere EEG was inversely related to the number of odd digits in a set, showing accumulation of cortical arousal in response to cue value. This effect was stronger for the left hemisphere in some of the frequency bands. Reaction time correlated with EEG parameters for the left hemisphere only. This study overcomes many of the methodological flaws of earlier work. Differences obtained between hemispheres are thought to reflect both the exertion of mental effort in general and rapid calculation in particular.
Cognitive prerequisites to language?
Authors: Harris P. L.
Published: April 2011

Infants performed Piaget's stage 4 manual search task with an object hidden at successive locations (A and B) in the vertical plane. In the various studies, the initial location (A) either had an immediate background or the background was absent. The majority of infants in each experiment made persistent perseverative errors to the initial location (A) when the object was moved to a new location (B), if there had been no immediate background at A. When a background was available infants showed an equiprobable pattern of search to A and B. The results suggest that the typical stage 4 error, described by Piaget as characteristic of infants between eight and 11 months, may only occur when the baby is unable to monitor movements of the object with respect to a stable background as a visual frame of reference.

The Piagetian hypothesis that there are cognitive prerequisites for language acquisition is examined. Two different formulations are distinguished: the hypothesis that the child interprets utterances in terms of what he knows about the world; and the hypothesis that the emergence of particular ideas leads the child to cast around for the linguistic means of expressing them. The second but not the first formulation implies that the sequence of cognitive development will influence the sequence and timetable of language acquisition. Evidence from three sources is reviewed and provides little support for this prediction. It is argued that the course of language acquisition is probably determined by three factors which are largely independent of level of cognitive development: (i) linguistic complexity, (ii) the likelihood that the non‐verbal context will offer an unambiguous gloss of an adult utterance and (iii) the asymmetry between comprehension and production.
On the generalizability of conservation: A comparison of different kinds of transformation
Authors: Miller Scott A.
Published: April 2011

Three studies are reported which examined the generalizability of experimentally elicited conservation or non‐conservation of number in kindergarten and first‐grade children. In the standard conditions of all three studies the transformations were the usual ones in conservation research, i.e. adult‐produced, intentional, explicit. In the modified conditions the transformations occurred in a more ecologically natural, less adult‐mediated fashion, e.g. boats floating apart, cars running downhill, children moving closer together or farther apart. In Expts 1 and 2, performance was equivalent in the standard and the modified conditions. In Expt 3, performance was significantly better on the modified trials, which utilized accidental/incidental changes, than on standard trials. It is suggested that one important determinant of the child's response to conservation problems is the extent to which the perceptual change and subsequent question are embedded in some natural ongoing activity, as opposed to being the sole focus of attention.
The child's appreciation of the necessary truth and the necessary falseness of propositions
Authors: Russell James
Published: April 2011

Two experiments were performed in order to determine the extent to which children in the age range of five to 10 years can discriminate between (a) necessarily true vs. contingent propositions and (b) necessarily false vs. contingent propositions. In each study five types of sentence pairs (30 examples of each) were presented and success was assessed by the number of errors made. Children were either taught the basis of the discrimination by the experimenter trial‐by‐trial post hoc or received no such instruction. Children in the five to six age range appreciated the necessarily true/contingent distinction with teaching, and the necessarily false/contingent distinction without teaching, although ease of discrimination varied strongly with sentence type. The data were interpreted as being contradictory to the Piagetian account of the development of necessity, and as suggesting that linguistic experience may play a more central role in the acquisition of logical reasoning than Piaget proposed.
Phonological and tactual coding of Braille by blind children
Authors: Pring Linda
Published: April 2011

Two experiments were carried out to investigate phonological and tactual coding in Braille reading by blind children. In the first, the children read aloud two lists of word pairs, one item at a time. The second or ‘target’ word of each pair (e.g. on) was the same in both lists. In one list, the congruent list, the phonology and orthography of the first word of the pair (sun) provided no inconsistency with respect to the target word (sun‐on). In the other incongruent list, the preceding word was similar in orthography but inconsistent in phonology with respect to the target word (son‐on). The children named the target words (i.e. on) significantly faster in the context of the congruous list than in the context of the incongruous list, thus revealing a phonological effect in the blind children's reading of single words. In addition, direct lexical access, from tactual input, seems to proceed with the same facility for the blind as does visual input for the sighted.

In the second study the children read aloud words which were either orthographically regular or irregular. The results indicated that the irregular words took longer to name than the regular words. It was suggested that blind children, like sighted children, show phonological interference effects in word naming. The results are discussed in relation to recent models of the processes involved in word naming.
Proactive effects in memory for stories
Authors: Schultz E. Eugene , Johnson Ronald E.
Published: April 2011

Selective omissions in the recall of longer prose passages have been interpreted as evidence of abstractive processes during encoding. Presumably, the additional information in longer passages produces an information overload which necessitates selective attention. Learners in three experiments were tested on their recognition or recall of a short passage that either was or was not preceded by a long introductory segment. An encoding‐based view predicts that increased passage length should diminish both recognition and recall. However, increased passage length decreased recall, but not recognition, demonstrating that passage length effects are dependent upon the type of cues available during retrieval. A further study demonstrated that ideas of greater thematic importance were recognized better than ideas of lesser thematic importance, even after a negligible retention interval. Abstractive processes deal with the relative importance of ideas but not the amount of information.
Observational learning of conservation: Its independence from social influence
Authors: Robert Michèle
Published: April 2011

In order to assess the authenticity of conservation attainment through an observational learning paradigm, the model's age and presence were manipulated, since these variables are known to induce conformity to modelled behaviour. On the one hand, it was predicted that if, in reaction to social pressure, the observers' performance amounts to their matching the model's responses without comprehension of the involved rationale, conservation scores should differ according to the model's age and presence, and should correlate with readiness to comply to social influence. On the other hand, if the former non‐conservers reach some understanding of the conservation demonstration, scores should not be affected by the model's age and presence, and should not correlate with propensity to yield to social influence. Non‐conservers were selected during a pretest that comprised an opinion task, with no objective right answers, and conservation tasks varying in degree of difficulty. During the learning session, the children were exposed to either a peer or an adult model who was either present (physically) or absent: on videotape, the model opposed each child's pretest opinion and solved correctly one easy conservation task. On the immediate post‐test, the four conditions regarding the model's age and presence were maintained, while on the delayed post‐test, the model was absent from all groups. In all these groups, significant but equivalent learning was reported: whereas, for the easy tasks, progress was stable across post‐tests, for the more difficult tasks, further improvement occurred on the delayed post‐test. Conservation scores did not correlate with adoption of the model's opinion. However, compliance with the model's opinion was higher in the model's presence. Therefore, the failure to find any evidence of a causal or correlational bearing between social influence variables and the observational acquisition of conservation was discussed as being indicative of the genuineness of the provoked achievement.
Hand preference and skill in 115 children of two left‐handed parents
Authors: Annett Marian
Published: April 2011

A second sample of children of L × L parents resembled a first sample (Annett, 1974) in the distribution of hand preferences and of hand skill. The mean difference between the hands in skill (L—R) was slightly but not significantly biased in favour of the right hand and 31 per cent were sinistral writers. Three tests were made on the combined samples of the hypotheses, derived from the right shift (RS) theory of handedness (Annett, 1972), that the L — R skills of the majority are not biased to either side, but that some are biased to the right hand like controls, in spite of being reared by two left‐handed parents. Children with a possibly pathologically sinistral parent, and children in families where neither left‐handed parent had a close sinistral relative, resembled controls more closely than the remaining children. The L — R distribution was compatible with expectations for three genotypes, as expected if the RS depends on a single gene (Annett, 19786).

Analyses for sex differences found sons and daughters alike for hand, eye and foot preferences and for L—R skill. Analyses of reports of developmental problems of speech, reading, writing or spelling found an excess of affected males over females smaller than expected in the general population. The incidences of such reports in the sons and daughters of L × L families were almost identical, with incidences reported for the fathers and mothers, respectively, of dyslexics (Annett & Kilshaw, 19826). The findings were consistent with the view that sex differences in hand preferences, L — R skill and the risk of developmental language problems in the general population are all due to the more effective expression of the rs + gene in females than males, and that the gene is more often absent in the children of L × L families than in the general population.
Eye‐movements in dyslexic children: Comments on Pavlidis' reply
Authors: Stanley Gordon , Smith Glen A. , Howell Edwin A.
Published: April 2011

One of the difficulties facing any attempt to investigate a research finding is to know what effect certain differences in procedure or equipment will have on the result. Our previous attempt at looking at non‐reading eye‐movements in developmental dyslexics (Stanley, 1978) produced essentially the same results as another research group (Adler‐Grinberg & Stark, 1978), despite considerable differences in procedure and equipment. With respect to Pavlidis' (1981 a) work, we were somewhat at a disadvantage, in so far as his original paper does not provide the rationale now given (Pavlidis, 1983) for a number of procedural moves which might otherwise be considered arbitrary. While appreciating the value of having his position clarified for us in a way not provided by his previous publication, we would like to comment on a number of points he has made about our paper (Stanley et al., 1983).
Word recognition: Age differences in contextual facilitation effects
Authors: Cohen Gillian , Faulkner Dorothy
Published: April 2011

A series of experiments compared contextual facilitation of word recognition in old (63–80) and young (19–34) subjects. Visual word recognition was examined in a lexical decision task. Sentence contexts or no context preceded words or non‐words. Both groups responded faster when context was supplied. For high predictability words, there was no age difference in the magnitude of the contextual facilitation effect. For low predictability words and non‐words, the old showed greater contextual facilitation than the young. Auditory word recognition was tested with target words spoken with or without sentence context in a background of white noise. Old subjects, again, showed superior contextual facilitation. It was concluded that old people compensate for deterioration in stimulus quality by more effective use of contextual information.
Dextroamphetamine and individual susceptibility to reinforcement in verbal operant conditioning
Authors: Gupta B. S. , Gupta Uma
Published: April 2011

The present investigation was designed to study the relationship between extraversion, d‐amphetamine and modes of reinforcement in verbal operant conditioning. A factorial design involving two levels of extraversion (extraverts and introverts), two reinforcement conditions (‘good’ and ‘electric shock’) and three treatments (placebo and two doses, 7·5 and 12·5 mg, of d‐amphetamine) with repeated measures on the last factor was used. Sixty postgraduate female students were individually subjected to Taffel's verbal conditioning procedure. The study supported the following conclusions: (1) under the placebo condition, the extraverted subjects condition better with the rewarding reinforcer while the introverted subjects condition better with the punishing reinforcer; (2) under the influence of d‐amphetamine, the extraverted subjects condition better with the punishing reinforcer while the conditioning scores of introverted subjects decrease with the punishing reinforcer but are not influenced with the rewarding reinforcer.
Phonological recoding for reading: The effect of concurrent articulation in a Stroop task
Authors: Chmiel Nik
Published: April 2011

The present experiment obtained Stroop and reverse Stroop effects in a card‐sorting task where subjects were required to sort cards into bins, labelled with either colour patches or colour names in black ink, under silent and concurrent articulation conditions. Performance by normal subjects and a conduction aphasic supported the notion that concurrent articulation affects post‐lexical phonology. It was shown that the status of the hypothesis that pre‐lexical phonology is normally used to access meaning during reading (the speech recoding hypothesis) remained uncertain if concurrent articulation only affected post‐lexical phonology.
The development of word recognition processes
Authors: Underwood Geoffrey , Briggs Pamela
Published: April 2011

To observe the course of the development of automatic processes in word recognition, two experiments were performed in which a distracting word interacted with a target stimulus. In Expt 1 the subjects named a simple line drawing, and in Expt 2 they named a word appearing in a rectangle. The distracting word (i) was a semantic associate of the target stimulus, (ii) was graphemically similar to the name of the target, (iii) was phonemically similar to the name of the target, (iv) was unrelated in meaning, orthography and phonology, or (v) was replaced with an unpronounceable letter string. Three groups of subjects were tested. Skilled adult readers were compared with two groups of children. Matched groups of children were used, with similar ages (9–12 years old) and non‐verbal spatial abilities, but dissimilar reading ages. All groups of subjects showed semantic interference and graphemic priming from the distractor word in Expt 1, and the children showed phonemic priming. In Expt 2, only the poor readers showed semantic interference, and no groups showed graphemic or phonemic effects.
Reproduction of complex two‐dimensional movements as a function of mode of presentation
Authors: Colley Ann , Pritchard Susan
Published: April 2011

The experiment reported here examined the kinaesthetic reproduction of two‐dimensional patterns from three different modes of presentation: kinaesthetic only, visual only and visual plus kinaesthetic. The patterns were open and consisted of three linear segments of different lengths. All reproductions tended to underestimate pattern size. Subjects who had received visual experience of the pattern with or without simultaneous kinaesthetic experience produced significantly greater underestimates than subjects who had not seen the patterns. This is discussed in terms of the dominance of vision over kinaesthesis, and differences in size perception in the two modalities. Least distortion of the pattern shape was found in the reproductions of subjects who had received both kinaesthetic and visual experience of the criterion.
Psychological hypotheses about the evolution of constructs: A comment and some further evidence
Authors: Webley Paul
Published: April 2011

Benjafield (1983) applied psychological principles to the history of language and derived five hypotheses that were supported by the evidence. It is argued that most of the hypotheses and the method employed to substantiate them were seriously flawed. Benjafield's principal error was a failure to distinguish between constructs and language (words which represent constructs). If this distinction is made, additional evidence supports the hypothesis that in general the older a construct the more frequently it is used. The idea that constructs used to refer to psychological events will tend to enter the language later than those used to refer to physical events is not supported. There are alternative, more parsimonious explanations for two other findings which exemplifies the need to be rigorous with historical data. Benjafield's lead deserves to be followed but strict standards must be applied.
Awareness of the ‘possible’ as a mediator of formal thinking in conditional reasoning problems
Authors: Markovits Henry
Published: April 2011

This study attempted to test the hypothesis that formal reasoning on conditional logic problems of the form pr̊q is mediated by awareness of the existence and pertinence of possible relations of the form ar̊q. A paper‐and‐pencil test consisting of three conditional reasoning problems and a fourth question designed to measure subjects' awareness of alternate possibilities within the context of a given conditional relation was administered to 239 post‐secondary students. Of these subjects, 143 were also given an individual conditional reasoning test using an apparatus with visible and invisible trajectories. The results indicated that, while individual performance on the two tests varied greatly, it remained correlated with subjects' awareness of the ‘possible’. In addition, analysis of non‐formal responses produced in both tests indicated that certain of these could be reasonably categorized as intermediate or transitional responses between concrete and formal levels.
Real and laboratory gambling, sensation‐seeking and arousal
Authors: Anderson G. , Brown R. I. F.
Published: April 2011

The existence and importance of excitement in gambling, the effects of runs of wins and losses on gambling behaviour and the relationships of both with sensation‐seeking were investigated using samples of students and experienced gamblers in real and artificial gambling situations. Heart‐rate increases, gambling behaviour and events such as ‘stake decision time’ were recorded as subjects played blackjack.

Significant differences between real and artificial casinos were found for mean heart‐rate increases over base‐lines, for gambling behaviour and in the relationships between sensation‐seeking, arousal and gambling in the two conditions. Doubt is cast on laboratory gambling as a valid analogue of the real gambling situation. Sensation‐seeking and arousal are discussed briefly in relation to explanations of gambling.
Sleep and memory
Authors: Idzikowski C.
Published: April 2011

The possible effects that sleep may have on long‐term memory are first considered using the restorative hypothesis of sleep. This hypothesis proposes that protein synthesis is facilitated by sleep. The confounding role of circadian rhythms in previous sleep and memory experiments is also considered. Two experiments are reported. The first experiment investigated the effect of sleep on memory, in part using a sleep‐deprivation technique. The second experiment controlled both for the interference effects and for possible non‐specific effects of sleep deprivation. Results supported the restorative hypothesis and suggested that sleep was affecting memory by modulating trace consolidation.
One man's memory: A study of a mnemonist
Authors: Gordon Paul , Valentine Elizabeth , Wilding John
Published: April 2011

This paper reports a systematic study of a man (T.E.) with astonishing mnemonic skills. After a brief description of his most favoured mnemonic technique, the ‘figure alphabet’, his performance and the mnemonic techniques used on five classical memory tasks are described. These are: one task involving both short‐ and long‐term memory (the Atkinson‐Shiffrin ‘keeping track’ task), two tasks involving just long‐term memory (recall of number matrices and the effects of imagery and deep structure complexity upon recall), and two tasks involving just short‐term memory (short‐term retention of individual verbal items and digit span). Whenever possible, T.E.'s performance was compared with that of normal subjects, and also with other mnemonists who have been studied in the past.

There was no evidence to suggest that T.E. has any unusual basic memory abilities; rather he employs mnemonic techniques to aid memory, and the evidence suggests that previous mnemonists who have been studied by psychologists have used very similar techniques.
Characteristics of ideal museum exhibits
Authors: Alt M. B. , Shaw K. M.
Published: April 2011

A method of classifying museum displays in terms of the ways they are perceived by museum visitors is presented. The experimental and analytical procedures used have a number of advantages over multidimensional scaling and clustering techniques and indicate a general method of investigating the ways in which museum visitors perceive relations between real‐world objects in a natural setting.
The nature and specificity of the language coding deficit in autistic children
Authors: Ramondo Nick , Milech Dan
Published: April 2011

The subjects, 12 autistic, 12 retarded and 12 normal children, range‐matched on digit span and mental age, were asked to learn and recall sequences of words. Four types of sequence were used: sequences were constructed to be either grammatically well formed or not and were constructed so that the elements had a high or low degree of semantic relatedness. Sequences were presented in an auditory‐verbal serial recall task and performance was assessed with three measures: serial recall, cluster recall and free recall. In general, recall was better when the degree of semantic relatedness was high rather than low, and the improvement was similar for all groups. Similarly, recall was better for sequences which were grammatically well formed than for sequences which were not, but the improvement of normal children was significantly greater than that of autistic children. While contemporary theories view the linguistic deficit evidenced by autistics as a deficit in the processing of semantic information, these results show that autistics have a deficit in processing syntactic information. However, this study does not resolve the issue of whether the deficit is specific to autism or a more general, developmental deficit, for while autistics differed from matched normal children, they did not differ from matched retarded children. Methodological problems in the construction of natural language sequences which vary independently in semantic and syntactic features are discussed, and it is suggested that sequences with artificial syntactic and semantic (associational) structures should be used to resolve the question of whether autistics have a deficit in processing semantic information.
On testing the right shift theory: A reply to Annett
Authors: McManus I. C.
Published: April 2011

Annett's criticisms of McManus' (1985) critique of the application of the right shift theory to population distributions of skill asymmetry are themselves criticized.
Learning disabilities and intelligence test results: A model based on a principal components analysis of the WISC‐R
Authors: Lawson J. S. , Inglis James
Published: April 2011

The unrotated principal components analysis of the WISC‐R normative data yields a bipolar factor 2 which corresponds to a verbal‐non‐verbal continuum of test material. A review of published WISC‐R and WISC data from learning disabled (LD) children reveals that the amount of deficit shown by these children on any particular subtest is closely proportional to the degree of verbal content, as expressed by the factor 2 score coefficient of that subtest. This test‐specific effect was found to be very much greater in LD boys than in LD girls.
Noise, biased probability and serial reaction
Authors: Smith Andrew P.
Published: April 2011

Recent studies have shown that moderate intensity noise does influence performance although most studies showing effects of this level of noise have used verbal materials. An experiment showed that moderate intensity noise (85 dBC) also influences attentional selectivity in a serial reaction task which involved the processing of sensory information. Noise decreased response times to signals with high probabilities of occurrence but increased latencies for signals which occurred less frequently. Although attentional selectivity in noise depended on signal probability, it was not influenced by the spatial location of the signal. When a mode of responding is adopted in noise, subjects are often rather inflexible and continue to use this strategy even though it is inappropriate. This was demonstrated in the present study because the noise‐induced bias continued even when the signal probabilities were returned to normal. Previous studies using higher noise intensities have shown that noise often increases the number of errors or gaps. The moderate intensity noise used in the present study did not have this effect.
Language switching during bilingual reading
Authors: Dalrymple‐Alford E. C.
Published: April 2011

Evidence for the hypothesis that bilingual performance requiring alternation of languages involves language‐switching mechanisms is critically examined. Four experiments are reported in which bilinguals read mixed‐language word lists. The results indicate that if switching mechanisms are implicated they operate much more quickly than previously suggested. Further, shifting languages was not found to result in slower responding when the transition was across translation‐equivalent words. An account is offered of these and related findings without invoking the operation of language‐switching mechanisms.
On the nature of movement representation in memory
Authors: Lee Timothy D. , Magill Richard A.
Published: April 2011

Theoretical views of movement representation in memory range from positions which rely upon response‐produced feedback as an integral part of the stored representation to perspectives which claim that a memory record is abstract in nature, void of any sensory details. Previous investigations that varied the storage‐test conditions using a short‐term memory paradigm have consistently supported a feedback‐based view. Two experiments described here, which employed a learning paradigm, also provide evidence to suggest that movement representation is embedded with response‐produced feedback information available during the acquisition trials. While potentially damaging to abstract representation theories of motor learning, theoretical limitations of the present findings are also explored.
Age and individual differences in correct and error reaction times
Authors: Smith G. A. , Brewer Neil
Published: April 2011

Rabbitt (1979, 1981) has argued that the slowing of choice RT performance with old age reflects less sensitive control over speed of responding. Based on the finding that old subjects' errors were as fast as young subjects', whereas their correct responses were much slower, Rabbitt suggested that old subjects often overshoot when trying to increase or reduce response speed. Data collected from a different serial, four‐choice RT task in this experiment were not, however, consistent with Rabbitt's account. Error as well as correct RTs were longer in old than in young adults, with both showing similar increases with age. A post hoc examination of the aged subjects' data also indicated important individual differences within aged samples. Some subjects' RTs and error rates were no different from those of the young; other subjects' longer RTs and lower error rates were consistent with an increased emphasis on accuracy.
Cognitive and affective aspects of boredom
Authors: Perkins R. E. , Hill A. B.
Published: April 2011

It is argued that previous research may have been mistaken in assuming that monotony in sensory stimulation is a necessary and sufficient cause of boredom.

Five investigations are reported which used personal construct theory and repertory grid techniques to investigate three hypotheses: (1) that boredom is associated with subjective monotony, (2) that boredom is associated with a high degree of frustration and (3) that boredom arises when stimulation lacks meaning for the individual.

Results supported hypotheses (1) and (2) but no evidence was found to support hypothesis (3).
Towards a model of boredom
Authors: Hill A. B. , Perkins R. E.
Published: April 2011

On the basis of the authors' own research it is suggested boredom may be viewed as having cognitive and affective components. The cognitive component is subjective monotony and the affective component is a high level of frustration. An attempt is made to integrate the evidence supporting this view of boredom with other evidence from the literature to present an integrated model of boredom in which the roles of personality, situational and task characteristics influencing boredom are outlined. Psychophysiological changes occurring during the performance of boring tasks are examined. It is argued that the nature and extent of changes in heart rate and heart‐rate variability are not a consequence of boredom but of a task feature (mental load). It is concluded that no clear psychophysiological component of boredom can be detected at present.