Presents study designed to further evaluate the nature of spoken-language comprehension under conditions of varying perceptual load by manipulating different comprehension conditions. Investigates effects of subsidiary task paradigms on course of simultaneous comprehension processing. Argues that these can only be used when accompanied with probes…

Discusses the cognitive processes involved in constructing linear orderings from pairwise relationships of information items. Examines the effects that sentence types used in presenting information have on these processes, and tests two models designed to clarify the acquisition of spatial knowledge and the processing of locative and comparative…

This study examines two views of lexical storage and word production, a derivational hypothesis and an independent unit hypothesis. Reaction times and errors were related to derivational complexity. A model of lexical retrieval process incorporating derivational processes is proposed. (Author/SW)

Describes a process model for sentence verification, including sentences expressing the implications of their antecedents. The model's distinctive features are the assumption that verification is based upon a focal element in the test sentence, and the comparison of this element with information corresponding to it in the antecedent…

The "property-set model" is proposed for concept learning and subsequent recognition and classification of old and new exemplars. In an experimental evaluation of alternative models, the property-set model was the best predictor of both recognition and classification performance. (Author/RM)

Presents a computer simulation testing semantic networks and spreading activation models of human memory. Describes how a sentence is encoded by building a working memory structure from its words and from semantic memory concepts related to its meaning. Retrieval processes use cue words or sentences to locate working memory structures. (Author/MES)

This study deals with the patterns of word-by-word reading times over a sentence when the subject must code the linguistic information sufficiently for immediate verbatim recall. A class of quantitative models is considered that would account for reading times at phrase breaks. (Author/RM)

Discusses a sequential, three-stage model of how nonliteral expressions are understood, as proposed in recent linguistic, philosophical, and psychological studies. Testing the model's implication that nonliteral meanings of sentences are ignored whenever literal meanings are plausible, finds evidence that both meanings are processed simultaneously…