A major open question in natural language research is the role of communicative efficiency in the origin and on-line processing of language structures. Here, we use word pairs like "chimp/chimpanzee", which differ in length but have nearly identical meanings, to investigate the communicative properties of lexical systems and the communicative…

The present experiments examined perceptual specificity effects using a rereading paradigm. Eye movements were monitored while participants read the same target word twice, in two different low-constraint sentence frames. The congruency of perceptual processing was manipulated by either presenting the target word in the same distortion typography…

We examined associative and item recognition using the maintenance rehearsal paradigm. Our intent was to control for mnemonic strategies; to produce a low, graded level of learning; and to provide evidence of the role of attention in long-term memory. An advantage for low-frequency words emerged in both associative and item recognition at very low…

THE HYPOTHESIS THAT WHEN ASSOCIATED PAIRS OF WORDS ARE PRESENTED, SPEED OF RECOGNITION WILL BE FASTER THAN WHEN NONASSOCIATED WORD PAIRS ARE PRESENTED OR WHEN A TARGET WORD IS PRESENTED BY ITSELF WAS TESTED. TWENTY UNIVERSITY STUDENTS, INITIALLY SCREENED FOR VISION, WERE ASSIGNED RANDOMLY TO ROWS OF A 5 X 5 REPEATED-MEASURES LATIN SQUARE DESIGN.…

The present experiment compared noun-pair learning, with and without sentence elaboration, on pairs representing all combinations of high and low frequency of usage on the stimulus and response side. (Author)

Conclusions from five experiments were: that the frequency of implicit associational responses has minimal effect on verbal-discrimination and two-category classification learning; and that the intrapair associations which do develop in verbal-discrimination learning are not critically involved in the making of those discriminations. (Authors/CB)

Experiment was concerned with the validity of the assumptions involved in the proposal of some minor modifications in the frequency theory of verbal-discrimination learning. (Author/CB)

Words in categories of high and low "flash-card learnability" and semantic congruence (logical congruence and associative congruence) were tested. Other independent variables were sex and intelligence (Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test). The dependent variable was time in tenths of seconds, from the first presentation of a word list until the…

THE PURPOSE OF THIS RESEARCH WAS TO EXAMINE THE EFFECTS OF SEVERAL MEASURES OF WORD-RELATEDNESS ON SEVERAL VERBAL LEARNING TASKS--PRIMARILY PAIRED-ASSOCIATES LEARNING AND VERBAL DISCRIMINATION LEARNING, WITH INCIDENTAL ATTENTION GIVEN TO FREE RECALL AND SEMANTIC GENERALIZATION. THE STRATEGY WAS TO SELECT A SAMPLE OF WORD PAIRS (240 COMMON NOUNS…

In the present study, acoustic similarity and word frequency were varied and their effects independently assessed on free-recall-learning (FRL) and paired-associate-recognition (PAR) tasks. (Author)

Six experiments were intended to characterize more completely a phenomenon found when lists were first learned in isolation and then placed together for simultaneous learning. The subjects learned three lists, each list clearly distinguishable from the other. One of the lists was recalled, another was tested for frequency information, and the…