S1 (FriAM 1-65) - The Psychonomic Society

Papers 120–126 Friday Afternoon
SHIM, MIT, & TAL MAKOVSKI, University of Minnesota—Is the
number of objects one can hold in visual working memory (VWM)
constant, or is it variable, such that VWM holds more simple objects
than complex objects? Previous studies produced conflicting results.
Although VWM for “complex” objects is worse than for “simple” objects,
this difference may reflect effects of similarity rather than complexity.
To dissect complexity from memory-probe similarity, we
measured VWM performance for complex (face identity along a morphing
continuum) and simple attributes (line orientation), at different
memory load and different memory-probe similarities. At memory
load 1, face performance was worse than line performance when faces
changed in steps of 10% and lines changed in steps of 5 degrees. As
memory load tripled or quadrupled, this difference was reversed
rather than exacerbated, such that face performance was better than
line performance at these steps. We conclude that complex objects
don’t fill up VWM capacity faster than simple objects.
4:50–5:05 (120)
Discrete Fixed-Resolution Representations in Visual Working
Memory. WEIWEI ZHANG & STEVEN J. LUCK, University of California,
Davis (read by Steven J. Luck)—Some researchers have proposed
that visual working memory stores a limited set of discrete,
fixed-resolution representations, whereas others have proposed that
working memory consists of a pool of resources that can be allocated
flexibly to provide a small number of high-resolution representations
or a large number of low-resolution representations. We addressed this
controversy by using a color recall task that provides independent
measures of the number of representations stored in working memory
and the resolution of each representation. We show that, when presented
with more than a few objects, observers store a high-resolution
representation of a subset of the objects and retain no information
about the others. We further show that memory resolution varies over
a narrow range that cannot be explained in terms of a general resource
pool but can be well explained by a model consisting solely of a small
set of discrete, fixed-resolution representations.
5:10–5:25 (121)
Selective Storage and Maintenance of an Object’s Features in Visual
Working Memory. GEOFFREY F. WOODMAN, Vanderbilt University,
& EDWARD K. VOGEL, University of Oregon—It has been shown that
we have a highly capacity-limited representational space with which
to store objects in visual working memory. However, most objects are
composed of multiple feature attributes and it is unknown whether observers
can voluntarily store a single attribute of an object without
necessarily storing all of its remaining features. In this study, we used
a masking paradigm to measure the efficiency of encoding and neurophysiological
recordings to directly measure visual working memory
maintenance while subjects viewed multifeature objects and were
required to remember only a single feature or all of the features of the
objects. We found that measures of both encoding and maintenance
varied systematically as a function of which object features were task
relevant. These experiments show goal-directed control over which
features of an object are selectively stored in working memory.
Sentence Processing
Seaview, Friday Afternoon, 3:50–5:30
Chaired by Peter C. Gordon
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
3:50–4:05 (122)
Independence of Sentence Processing and Reasoning. YOON-
HYOUNG LEE & PETER C. GORDON, University of North Carolina,
Chapel Hill (read by Peter C. Gordon)—A new method is presented
for examining the interaction of sentence processing with other cognitive
processes in which both the syntactic complexity of a sentence
and the difficulty of reasoning about the information in that sentence
are manipulated. In the experiments sentence complexity was manip-
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ulated through the use of different types of relative clauses. Difficulty
of reasoning was manipulated by whether or not the structure of a twoclause
sentence made it possible to use explicit information in the two
clauses to make a transitive inference about the relationship between
two entities that were not explicitly related in the sentence by verbs.
Reading time and response-accuracy data support the conclusion that
reasoning in this task occurs after basic processes of sentence interpretation,
and that those processes are not influenced by the cognitive
demands of reasoning.
4:10–4:25 (123)
Sense, Structure, and Sentence Comprehension. MARY HARE &
TRACY TABACZYNSKI, Bowling Green State University, KEN
MCRAE, University of Western Ontario, & JEFF ELMAN, University of
California, San Diego—Meaning and structure are related in language:
Many verbs have multiple senses, which tend to occur in different syntactic
structures. We examined whether such meaning–structure correlations
influence comprehension of sentences containing verbs like
burn, which have both a change-of-state and a causative sense, with
the first biased toward intransitive structures (the popcorn burned)
and the second toward transitives (the popcorn burned his fingers).
Pairs of transitive and of intransitive sentences were created, with the
same verb preceded by a subject NP that was either a good patient or
good cause/instrument for the event the verb described. Intransitive
sentences were read more quickly in the postverbal region when the
subject NP was a good patient than when it was a good cause; the opposite
was true for transitive sentences. This suggests that the subject
NP serves as a biasing context, activating different verb senses and
consequently different expectations about upcoming structure.
4:30–4:45 (124)
The Syntactic Use of Idioms: The Competence Model. PATRIZIA L.
TABOSSI, University of Trieste—Idioms (e.g., kick the bucket) are
syntactically defective expressions; that is, they cannot enter all the
syntactic operations that comparable literal strings can accept. For example,
the passive sentence The bucket was kicked by Paul can be used
literally, but loses its figurative meaning. However, idioms can undergo
many syntactic operations and what determines people’s ability
to use these expressions in a syntactically appropriate fashion is
still a wide-open question. The paper presents a model of how speakers/
listeners can accomplish this task, along with empirical evidence in
support of its claims. According to this model, one’s linguistic competence,
along with the knowledge of the meaning of an idiom, imposes
constraints on what operations that idiom can or cannot accept.
The advantages of the proposed hypothesis compared with alternative
theoretical views are discussed.
4:50–5:05 (125)
BOLD Signal Response to Implicit Syntactic Processing. DAVID N.
CAPLAN, Massachusetts General Hospital, & GLORIA S. WATERS,
Boston University—BOLD signal was measured while 16 participants
made timed font change detection judgments in sentences that varied
in their syntactic form (subject- and object-extracted sentences). Accuracy
was above 85% for all sentence types. RTs showed unimodal
distributions for all sentence types, indicating that the participants
processed all sentences similarly. There were longer RTs to objectthan
to subject-extracted sentences without font changes and longer
RTs for sentences in which the font change occurred at the embedded
noun or verb of object- compared to subject-extracted sentences, indicating
that sentences were processed to the level of syntactic structure.
BOLD signal increased for object-extracted sentences without
font changes in left supramarginal gyrus. The result provides evidence
that left supramarginal gyrus plays a role in implicit syntactic and associated
semantic processing of object-extracted relative clauses.
5:10–5:25 (126)
Contingent Cue Facilitation and No Structural Priming for Reduced
Relatives. GAIL MAUNER & TODD D. REEVES, University at Buf-