Subjects compared pairs of nonconcrete and "nonimageable" words along a dimension which has no physical analog--the evaluative dimension of the semantic differential. Their reaction time to do so was an inverse logarithmic function of the difference between the numerical "goodness' values they had assigned to the words. (Author/RM)

Two experiments investigated the representation of meaning and input language in bilingual memory. (Author/RM)

Discusses two experiments into a subject's "Different" reaction time in judging whether two test instances are members of the same semantic category. (Author/RM)

The effect of presupposition on memory depends upon a restricted class of pragmatic conditions. If certain intended misleaders are introduced, presupposition does not enter into memory. This was shown with two experiments in which subjects "remembered" an accident differently, depending upon whether misleading facts were introduced.…

This study investigated the role of semantic variables, derivable from multidimensional scaling, in search and decision processes. (Author/RM)

Assumptions about comprehension of utterances are challenged in two experiments using as an example the verb phrase "to do a Richard Nixon on a tape" (i.e., erase it). It is argued that creating meanings, as with this phrase, works differently from selecting senses for utterances and that many require a mixture of the two. (MSE)

Two experiments studied how people determine relationships among family members. In one experiment, subjects were to determine relationships in hypothetical families. In the second, the families were in the subjects' experience. It was determined that memory was organized in terms of parent-child relations together with knowledge of which members…

To show the organization of recall, items that are remembered together can be written on the same line of a two-dimensional (2D) grid. Such 2D recall does not induce the clustering it reveals. Various aspects of 2D recall and the clustering it reveals are discussed. (Author/RM)

Examines the verification of false sentences of the form "All S are P." It was found that the number of properties shared by the subject and predicate concept of the sentence was directly proportional to reaction time. These findings question the assumption that only property relations are prestored in memory. (Author/EJS)

Verifying simple sentences generally involves a process wherein the meanings of individual words are combined to form the meaning of the entire sentence. Three experiments are described in which the combination process was investigated by asking subjects to decide whether S-V-Adj-O sentences were true or false. (Author/RM)

Meyer found subjects were faster to determine if a stimulus word was a member of either of two prespecified categories if the categories were close in meaning. A reanalysis of the data favors instead a model emphasizing the role of decision-making processes in categorization and flexibility of task strategies. (CHK)

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)

A model is proposed in which information processing is accompanied by dynamic processes, including the reorganization of items into active patterns and their subsequent displacement. Research using category names and instances showed that reaction times decreased with each successive repetition under one condition, but longer latencies were…

Discusses three experiments which investigated the role of convention and context in understanding indirect requests. Experiments 1 and 2 showed the wide variety of conventions used and how context determines conventionality. Experiment 3 showed how conventional requests take less time to process than nonconventional ones. (Author/PJM)

Two experiments examined the comprehension of singly and multiply negated sentences. Difficulty of comprehension was measured by the speed and accuracy with which subjects judged the semantic reasonableness of sentences. Marked and negatively prefixed adjectives were a particular focus of the study. (Author/RM)