In two experiments using the Brown-Peterson memory paradigm, instructions to guess had small effects on recall, but sizeable effects on incidence of prior list intrustion. However, results indicate that proactive interference is primarily the result of inability to generate correct items, rather than confusion between present and previous items.…

This contradicts N. F. Johnson's arguments that word perception does not follow letter perception and that letter analysis awaits identification of the word as a unit. His experiments lack controls, and uncontrolled factors may contribute to his effects. Johnson's implications for prior-letter-processing models are contradicted. (CHK)

A line of reasoning used in recent research on language acquisition assumes that a child acquiring the language has only two reliable sources of information available about the target grammar: a set of grammatical principles and the primary data of the language spoken around him. A third kind of evidence, negative evidence, would be helpful but is…

Three studies were conducted in an attempt to replicate previous research concluding that semantic meaning is accessed in the absence of conscious awareness. A pattern mask was used to interrupt the processing of stimulus words after 30 milliseconds; at this duration subjects were not able to identify the stimulus words or even to determine…

Thirty undergraduate students were asked to read and recall information presented in one of two parallel expository passages about the professional athlete. These passages differed only in their use of the "he" or "she" generic referent. The passages were parsed into 19 idea units, and 5 target words in each conveying the…

The main experience of an ideal reader while reading a text is an "envisionment" of that text, a representation in the reader's mind of the content of the text. According to this view the envisionment grows and sometimes changes as the reader progresses through the text, and the ideal reader not only updates and supplements the…

Differences in semantic recall between students hypothesized as having either a high or a low analytic style were investigated. Styles were determined by the amount of bilateral alpha activity measured from the cerebral cortex of the brain during eyes-open baseline recordings. The results indicated that when expository text was tightly structured,…

Much of the current research in reading processes has been aided by movements in experimental psychology known as information processing psychology, cognitive psychology, and cognitive science. The information processing movement has contributed three important ideas: (1) Logogen theory of a cognitive response unit that is sensitive to the set of…

This paper indicates the relevance of psycholinguistic research to the study of the interpretation process. Citing selected experiments that demonstrate some of the possibilities for extending research into the language experience of the interpreter, the paper argues that such an approach might lead into examining the experience of imagery,…

The study was designed to determine whether inferences about implied elements are drawn during sentence comprehension. A cued recall procedure was employed. It was argued, for example, that if one computes the use of a hammer when "the worker pounded the nail" is encountered, that "hammer" should effectively cue the recall of the sentence; while a…

Three experiments are reported regarding reaction time. Letter comparison time was found to increase when other irrelevant letters were present, regardless of whether or not the letters made up a word or a word-like configuration. Word comparison time was found to increase when distractors were similar to targets. (Author/RM)

Results of the experiment show that the generality or specificity of the verbal lable determines which of six versions of the drawings are accepted as formerly seen and which are not, and that the pattern of acceptance for the unlabeled parts corresponds to that of the labeled ones. (Author/RM)

Rote, repetitive Type I Rehearsal is defined as the continuous maintenance of information in memory using the minimum cognitive capacity necessary for maintenance. An analysis of errors made on a forced-choice recognition test supported the hypothesis that acoustic-phonemic components of the memory trace are added or strengthened by this…

Two experiments examined the effects of level of processing and uniqueness of encoding on the ability to recognize the nominal stimulus among either semantically similar or structurally similar distractor items. (Author/NCR)

Three experiments were conducted to extend the finding that, whereas phonemic coding is employed for short-term temporal order recall, coding of temporal-spatial patterns is employed for short-term spatial order recall. At least three types of coding strategies are available to subjects in short-term memory tasks. (CHK)