Covert orienting of visuospatial attention in response to peripherally presented cues was assesse... more Covert orienting of visuospatial attention in response to peripherally presented cues was assessed in healthy younger and older adults and those with dementia of the Alzheimer type (DAT) during a .simple detection task. The results yield both an age-related increase (Experiments 1 and 2) and a DAT-related increase (Experiment 2) in the facilitatory effect of a single peripheral cue on detection. By contrast, equivalent inhibition of return (i.e., a slowing of target detection at previously cued locations) was observed for all 3 groups when a 2nd cue was presented at central fixation. Results suggest that both healthy older adults and individuals with DAT experience changes in the posterior attention system thought to subserve visuospatial attention. Results also suggest limitations on the generality of inhibitory deficits in healthy aging and DAT. One important function of visuospatial attention is to orient attention to a particular location in the visual field in response to the appearance of an object (e.g., Posner, 1980). The visuospatial attention system can be thought of as a filter, enhancing detection of stimuli at locations that are currently attended (e.g.
Objectives To determine whether auditory and visual computer games yield transfer effects that (a... more Objectives To determine whether auditory and visual computer games yield transfer effects that (a) are modality-specific to verbal memory (auditory stimulus presentation) and visual-processing tests, (b) affect working memory and processing speed, (c) are synergistic for combined game-type play, and (d) are durable. Method A Pilot Study (N=44) assessed visual transfer effects in a two-group pre-post design. The Main Study (N=151) employed a 2 (visual games: yes, no) x 2 (auditory games: yes, no) x 3 (test session: pretest, posttest, follow-up) design, allowing different training groups to act as active controls for each other. Neuropsychological test scores were aggregated into verbal-memory (auditory presentation), visual-processing, working-memory, and processing-speed indexes. Results Visual-processing and working-memory pre-post-training change scores were differentially modulated across the four gameplay groups in the main sample, demonstrating transfer effects differing across...
Nearly twenty years ago, Gough (1971) wrote: "The problem of when and how a sentence is understoo... more Nearly twenty years ago, Gough (1971) wrote: "The problem of when and how a sentence is understood is, in my view, the central problem of experimen tal psycholinguistics. Its solution in the form of a machine which could under stand sentences would, at the least, earn its inventor an invaluable patent. But while a machine which could understand sentences would be something to marvel at, a person who could do only that would not even make good com pany." (p. 64). HIT DRINK Jack tried to punch ... Related to Related to APPROPRIATE INAPPROPRIATE Meaning Meaning Jack tried the punch ... Related to Related to INAPPROPRIATE APPROPRIATE Meaning Meaning Jack tried to bluff ... Unrelated to Unrelated to Any Meaning Any Meaning Jack tried the rolls ... Unrelated to Unrelated to Any Meaning Any Meaning For each ambiguous word, we also constructed two control sentences, which were identical to the two experimental sentences up to the point where the ambiguous words occurred. In the control sentences, the experimental am biguous words were replaced with other ambiguous words (which they matched The Role of Suppression in Sentence Compreh ension
APA PsycNET Our Apologies! - The following features are not available with your current Browser c... more APA PsycNET Our Apologies! - The following features are not available with your current Browser configuration. - alerts user that their session is about to expire - display, print, save, export, and email selected records - get My ...
A central problem in cognitive science is understanding how the cognitive system, embedded in the... more A central problem in cognitive science is understanding how the cognitive system, embedded in the environment, modulates the activation or accessibility of information in real time in the direction of thought and action. One attractive method of approaching this problem has been to assume a set of cognitive control processes that work to either enhance or inhibit dedicated task-related processes (e.g.
To identify psychological factors involved in obesity 45 individuals (40 women and 5 men), rangin... more To identify psychological factors involved in obesity 45 individuals (40 women and 5 men), ranging in age from 21 to 54 years (M age = 41 yr.), who were candidates for silastic ring vertical stapled gastroplasty were assessed on the Millon Behavioral Health Inventory and the Millon Multiaxial Clinical Inventory-III. In addition, a number of demographic variables such as education, marital status, and age of onset of obesity were considered. Analysis indicated that significant predictors of weight loss at a 6-mo. postoperative assessment include age of onset of obesity and scores on the Schizoid scale of the Millon-III. These findings may be of assistance in identifying personality variables associated with changes in weight if replicated in a larger sample.
The Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, 1995
Older and young adults were tested on eight nonlexical tasks that overlapped extensively in compl... more Older and young adults were tested on eight nonlexical tasks that overlapped extensively in complexity: disjunctive choice reaction time, line-length discrimination, letter classification, shape classification, mental rotation, visual search, abstract matching, and mental paper-folding. Performance on the first seven tasks was associated with equivalently low error rates in both groups, making it possible to directly compare their response times (RTs) on these tasks. Consistent with domain-specific slowing, the relationship between the RTs of the older adults and the RTs of the young adults was well described by a task-independent mathematical (Brinley) function. Evidence from this analysis and from analyses based on task-specific information-processing models leads to similar conclusions and provides converging support for general cognitive slowing in the nonlexical domain.
In order to assess the hypotheses that Alzheimer's disease (AD) results in a property lev... more In order to assess the hypotheses that Alzheimer's disease (AD) results in a property level restructuring, loss, or degradation of lexical-semantic knowledge, Alzheimer's patients and normal elderly subjects were presented with a property verification task in which they were asked to judge the truth value of telegraphic statements which paired objects with their properties (e.g., "Apple is red."). Objects with either high- or low-typical exemplars of categories (e.g., "oak" is a high typical exemplar of the category "tree." while "palm" is a less typical item). Properties were varied with respect to normatively determined dominance (e.g, "fins" is a high dominant property of "trout," while "slimy" is a less dominant property) and whether they were distinctive (i.e., served to distinguish between subsets of exemplars within a category) or shared among most or all category members (e.g., "stem" for the category "fruit"). Analyses of accuracy and reaction time data suggested that AD results in neither a loss per se of representation of properties, nor a reorganization of relations between objects' properties. However, results were consistent with a property level degradation of AD patients' object concepts. While there was no evidence for a differential degradation of distinctive vs shared properties, results suggested that AD patients have degraded representations of lower dominant properties and properties of low-typical category exemplars.
Social skills and social status are important aspects of development that are likely to be influe... more Social skills and social status are important aspects of development that are likely to be influenced by an individual's ability to appropriately solve social problems. In this investigation, children (9-13 year olds) with and without mental retardation were asked to provide solutions to three types of social problems. Students were first asked to respond to open-ended questions and then were presented with three new problems in a forced-choice format. Children were also rated as liked or not liked by their same sex peers. Our findings indicated small but interesting differences between the children with and without retardation. In the open-ended benign situation (peer entry), students with mental retardation provided fewer assertive solutions and more appeal to authority solutions than their peers. In contrast, in the forced-choice hostile situation, children with mental retardation chose more assertive solutions and fewer appeal to authority than their peers. This same pattern of responses was reflected in a comparison of highly accepted children and less well-accepted children. The less accepted children chose more assertive solutions and fewer appeal to authority than their peers. It is possible that the different tendencies in the social problem solving of students with mental retardation could put them at risk for being less well accepted by their peers without mental retardation.
Previous studies of negative priming have shown that, relative to young adults, old adults can ef... more Previous studies of negative priming have shown that, relative to young adults, old adults can effectively suppress location information associated with stimuli, but not information about the identity of stimuli. S.L. Connelly and L. Hasher (1993) attributed this dissociation to an age-related decrement in the inhibitory processes that suppress meaning-bearing information. In this study, the authors report both identity negative priming and distractor interference in a group of young and old adults. Their results force a reconsideration of an age-related decrement in the inhibitory processes underlying the suppression of meaning-bearing information. The results also suggest that whether a relationship between negative priming and interference is observed may depend on whether the 2 measures index the same level of processing.
Individuals with dementia of the Alzheimer type (DAT; n ϭ 53, ages 55-91), healthy older adults (... more Individuals with dementia of the Alzheimer type (DAT; n ϭ 53, ages 55-91), healthy older adults (n ϭ 75, ages 59 -91), and younger adults (n ϭ 24, ages 18 -24) performed a word-primed picturenaming task. Word primes were neutral (ready), semantically or phonologically related, or unrelated to the correct picture name. All groups produced equivalent unrelated-word interference and semantic priming effects in response latencies. However, analysis of errors revealed a DAT-related increase of phonological blocking. The results suggest that picture-naming errors in DAT are due, at least in part, to a breakdown in access to phonological representations of object names as a consequence of reduced inhibitory control over other highly active alternatives.
Previous studies of associative encoding that used explicit retrieval tasks have shown both age- ... more Previous studies of associative encoding that used explicit retrieval tasks have shown both age- and dementia of the Alzheimer type (DAT)-related declines, but such results may be biased by group differences in explicit retrieval. In the present experiment, the authors assessed implicit associative encoding for 25 younger adults (ages 18-25), 73 healthy older adults (ages 59-91), and 65 adults with DAT (ages 59-91) during a speeded word-naming task using an episodic priming measure. Episodic priming refers to the facilitation in responding to a target word after repetition of both words in a prime-target pair, in comparison with simple repetition of the target word with a new prime on each presentation. In contrast with other studies of implicit associative encoding that did not use an implicit episodic priming measure, the present study found both age- and DAT-related declines in associative encoding under conditions of massed learning trials.
Covert orienting of visuospatial attention in response to peripherally presented cues was assesse... more Covert orienting of visuospatial attention in response to peripherally presented cues was assessed in healthy younger and older adults and those with dementia of the Alzheimer type (DAT) during a .simple detection task. The results yield both an age-related increase (Experiments 1 and 2) and a DAT-related increase (Experiment 2) in the facilitatory effect of a single peripheral cue on detection. By contrast, equivalent inhibition of return (i.e., a slowing of target detection at previously cued locations) was observed for all 3 groups when a 2nd cue was presented at central fixation. Results suggest that both healthy older adults and individuals with DAT experience changes in the posterior attention system thought to subserve visuospatial attention. Results also suggest limitations on the generality of inhibitory deficits in healthy aging and DAT. One important function of visuospatial attention is to orient attention to a particular location in the visual field in response to the appearance of an object (e.g., Posner, 1980). The visuospatial attention system can be thought of as a filter, enhancing detection of stimuli at locations that are currently attended (e.g.
Objectives To determine whether auditory and visual computer games yield transfer effects that (a... more Objectives To determine whether auditory and visual computer games yield transfer effects that (a) are modality-specific to verbal memory (auditory stimulus presentation) and visual-processing tests, (b) affect working memory and processing speed, (c) are synergistic for combined game-type play, and (d) are durable. Method A Pilot Study (N=44) assessed visual transfer effects in a two-group pre-post design. The Main Study (N=151) employed a 2 (visual games: yes, no) x 2 (auditory games: yes, no) x 3 (test session: pretest, posttest, follow-up) design, allowing different training groups to act as active controls for each other. Neuropsychological test scores were aggregated into verbal-memory (auditory presentation), visual-processing, working-memory, and processing-speed indexes. Results Visual-processing and working-memory pre-post-training change scores were differentially modulated across the four gameplay groups in the main sample, demonstrating transfer effects differing across...
Nearly twenty years ago, Gough (1971) wrote: "The problem of when and how a sentence is understoo... more Nearly twenty years ago, Gough (1971) wrote: "The problem of when and how a sentence is understood is, in my view, the central problem of experimen tal psycholinguistics. Its solution in the form of a machine which could under stand sentences would, at the least, earn its inventor an invaluable patent. But while a machine which could understand sentences would be something to marvel at, a person who could do only that would not even make good com pany." (p. 64). HIT DRINK Jack tried to punch ... Related to Related to APPROPRIATE INAPPROPRIATE Meaning Meaning Jack tried the punch ... Related to Related to INAPPROPRIATE APPROPRIATE Meaning Meaning Jack tried to bluff ... Unrelated to Unrelated to Any Meaning Any Meaning Jack tried the rolls ... Unrelated to Unrelated to Any Meaning Any Meaning For each ambiguous word, we also constructed two control sentences, which were identical to the two experimental sentences up to the point where the ambiguous words occurred. In the control sentences, the experimental am biguous words were replaced with other ambiguous words (which they matched The Role of Suppression in Sentence Compreh ension
APA PsycNET Our Apologies! - The following features are not available with your current Browser c... more APA PsycNET Our Apologies! - The following features are not available with your current Browser configuration. - alerts user that their session is about to expire - display, print, save, export, and email selected records - get My ...
A central problem in cognitive science is understanding how the cognitive system, embedded in the... more A central problem in cognitive science is understanding how the cognitive system, embedded in the environment, modulates the activation or accessibility of information in real time in the direction of thought and action. One attractive method of approaching this problem has been to assume a set of cognitive control processes that work to either enhance or inhibit dedicated task-related processes (e.g.
To identify psychological factors involved in obesity 45 individuals (40 women and 5 men), rangin... more To identify psychological factors involved in obesity 45 individuals (40 women and 5 men), ranging in age from 21 to 54 years (M age = 41 yr.), who were candidates for silastic ring vertical stapled gastroplasty were assessed on the Millon Behavioral Health Inventory and the Millon Multiaxial Clinical Inventory-III. In addition, a number of demographic variables such as education, marital status, and age of onset of obesity were considered. Analysis indicated that significant predictors of weight loss at a 6-mo. postoperative assessment include age of onset of obesity and scores on the Schizoid scale of the Millon-III. These findings may be of assistance in identifying personality variables associated with changes in weight if replicated in a larger sample.
The Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, 1995
Older and young adults were tested on eight nonlexical tasks that overlapped extensively in compl... more Older and young adults were tested on eight nonlexical tasks that overlapped extensively in complexity: disjunctive choice reaction time, line-length discrimination, letter classification, shape classification, mental rotation, visual search, abstract matching, and mental paper-folding. Performance on the first seven tasks was associated with equivalently low error rates in both groups, making it possible to directly compare their response times (RTs) on these tasks. Consistent with domain-specific slowing, the relationship between the RTs of the older adults and the RTs of the young adults was well described by a task-independent mathematical (Brinley) function. Evidence from this analysis and from analyses based on task-specific information-processing models leads to similar conclusions and provides converging support for general cognitive slowing in the nonlexical domain.
In order to assess the hypotheses that Alzheimer's disease (AD) results in a property lev... more In order to assess the hypotheses that Alzheimer's disease (AD) results in a property level restructuring, loss, or degradation of lexical-semantic knowledge, Alzheimer's patients and normal elderly subjects were presented with a property verification task in which they were asked to judge the truth value of telegraphic statements which paired objects with their properties (e.g., "Apple is red."). Objects with either high- or low-typical exemplars of categories (e.g., "oak" is a high typical exemplar of the category "tree." while "palm" is a less typical item). Properties were varied with respect to normatively determined dominance (e.g, "fins" is a high dominant property of "trout," while "slimy" is a less dominant property) and whether they were distinctive (i.e., served to distinguish between subsets of exemplars within a category) or shared among most or all category members (e.g., "stem" for the category "fruit"). Analyses of accuracy and reaction time data suggested that AD results in neither a loss per se of representation of properties, nor a reorganization of relations between objects' properties. However, results were consistent with a property level degradation of AD patients' object concepts. While there was no evidence for a differential degradation of distinctive vs shared properties, results suggested that AD patients have degraded representations of lower dominant properties and properties of low-typical category exemplars.
Social skills and social status are important aspects of development that are likely to be influe... more Social skills and social status are important aspects of development that are likely to be influenced by an individual's ability to appropriately solve social problems. In this investigation, children (9-13 year olds) with and without mental retardation were asked to provide solutions to three types of social problems. Students were first asked to respond to open-ended questions and then were presented with three new problems in a forced-choice format. Children were also rated as liked or not liked by their same sex peers. Our findings indicated small but interesting differences between the children with and without retardation. In the open-ended benign situation (peer entry), students with mental retardation provided fewer assertive solutions and more appeal to authority solutions than their peers. In contrast, in the forced-choice hostile situation, children with mental retardation chose more assertive solutions and fewer appeal to authority than their peers. This same pattern of responses was reflected in a comparison of highly accepted children and less well-accepted children. The less accepted children chose more assertive solutions and fewer appeal to authority than their peers. It is possible that the different tendencies in the social problem solving of students with mental retardation could put them at risk for being less well accepted by their peers without mental retardation.
Previous studies of negative priming have shown that, relative to young adults, old adults can ef... more Previous studies of negative priming have shown that, relative to young adults, old adults can effectively suppress location information associated with stimuli, but not information about the identity of stimuli. S.L. Connelly and L. Hasher (1993) attributed this dissociation to an age-related decrement in the inhibitory processes that suppress meaning-bearing information. In this study, the authors report both identity negative priming and distractor interference in a group of young and old adults. Their results force a reconsideration of an age-related decrement in the inhibitory processes underlying the suppression of meaning-bearing information. The results also suggest that whether a relationship between negative priming and interference is observed may depend on whether the 2 measures index the same level of processing.
Individuals with dementia of the Alzheimer type (DAT; n ϭ 53, ages 55-91), healthy older adults (... more Individuals with dementia of the Alzheimer type (DAT; n ϭ 53, ages 55-91), healthy older adults (n ϭ 75, ages 59 -91), and younger adults (n ϭ 24, ages 18 -24) performed a word-primed picturenaming task. Word primes were neutral (ready), semantically or phonologically related, or unrelated to the correct picture name. All groups produced equivalent unrelated-word interference and semantic priming effects in response latencies. However, analysis of errors revealed a DAT-related increase of phonological blocking. The results suggest that picture-naming errors in DAT are due, at least in part, to a breakdown in access to phonological representations of object names as a consequence of reduced inhibitory control over other highly active alternatives.
Previous studies of associative encoding that used explicit retrieval tasks have shown both age- ... more Previous studies of associative encoding that used explicit retrieval tasks have shown both age- and dementia of the Alzheimer type (DAT)-related declines, but such results may be biased by group differences in explicit retrieval. In the present experiment, the authors assessed implicit associative encoding for 25 younger adults (ages 18-25), 73 healthy older adults (ages 59-91), and 65 adults with DAT (ages 59-91) during a speeded word-naming task using an episodic priming measure. Episodic priming refers to the facilitation in responding to a target word after repetition of both words in a prime-target pair, in comparison with simple repetition of the target word with a new prime on each presentation. In contrast with other studies of implicit associative encoding that did not use an implicit episodic priming measure, the present study found both age- and DAT-related declines in associative encoding under conditions of massed learning trials.
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