S1 (FriAM 1-65) - The Psychonomic Society

Papers 158–164 Saturday Morning
ence may indeed account for opposite effects of neighborhood in visual
and spoken word recognition. We show how this result follows
naturally from accounts based on attractor dynamics or basic principles
of the interactive activation framework.
Event Cognition
Shoreline, Saturday Morning, 8:00–10:00
Chaired by Michael E. Young
Southern Illinois University, Carbondale
8:00–8:15 (158)
Stimulus Dynamics Alter the Perception of Time: Faster Is Longer.
JOSHUA S. BECKMANN & MICHAEL E. YOUNG, Southern Illinois
University, Carbondale (read by Michael E. Young)—The purpose
of the present study was to observe the functional relationship
between stimulus dynamics and stimulus duration discrimination.
Participants performed a bisection task requiring the judgment of the
duration of a stimulus (a sphere) that rotated on its y-axis at various
rates. In Experiment 1, temporal discrimination was observed under
four rotation speeds (88.9, 44.4, 22.2, and 0 deg/sec). Participants’ duration
judgments were longer the faster the sphere was rotated. In Experiment
2, the original effect was replicated across a much wider
range of rotation speeds (711.1–2.7 deg/sec). In Experiment 3, we
demonstrate that the effect is increased or decreased by establishing
contingencies based on time or stimulus change. These results are
used to test various quantitative models of temporal discrimination by
adapting them for sensitivity to stimulus change (thus reflecting stimulus
dynamics) rather than the mere passage of time.
8:20–8:35 (159)
Continuity Editing in Narrative Film and the Perception of Event
Boundaries. JOSEPH P. MAGLIANO, Northern Illinois University,
JEFFREY M. ZACKS & KHENAN M. SWALLOW, Washington University,
& NICOLE SPEER, University of Colorado—Narrative films
typically consist of hundreds of camera shots that are edited together.
These edits influence the viewer’s perception of narrative continuity.
We explored the impact of edits that affect spatial, temporal, and action
continuity on the perception of event boundaries by looking at
participants’ behavioral segmentation of a narrative film, and brain
activity while viewing the same film (using functional MRI). Edits
that produced discontinuities in action more frequently coincided with
judgments that a new event had begun than did spatial or temporal discontinuities.
Moreover, the perception of event boundaries was attenuated
when discontinuities in space and time were not accompanied
by discontinuity in action. Patterns of brain activity during edits suggested
that perceptual systems are selectively engaged when edits introduce
spatiotemporal discontinuities that co-occur with action continuity,
but not when there is discontinuity of actions. Such processing
may allow viewers to bridge these discontinuities and treat the continuing
action as a single ongoing event
8:40–8:55 (160)
Perceptual Events May Be the “Episodes” in Episodic Memory.
KHENAN M. SWALLOW, JEFFREY M. ZACKS, & RICHARD A.
ABRAMS, Washington University (read by Jeffrey M. Zacks)—The
perception of everyday activities is structured in time such that people
segment continuous activity into events. A theory of event perception
proposed by Zacks and colleagues (2007, Psychological Bulletin)
makes two predictions about the relationship between event
segmentation and memory. First, when a boundary between two
events is crossed working memory is updated to represent the new
event, rendering information from the previous event less available.
Second, information that is present at event boundaries receives more
intensive processing, which increases its strength in long-term memory.
To test these predictions we administered object recognition tests
to participants as they watched movie clips. Recognition test performance
supported both predictions. Together with new imaging data,
25
these data provide compelling evidence that event boundaries act as a
form of control over memory processes.
9:00–9:15 (161)
Moving Through Space: What and Where. GABRIEL A. RADVAN-
SKY & ANDREA K. TAMPLIN, University of Notre Dame—In two
experiments, people memorized a map of a building, including the locations
of objects within the rooms of the building. Following memorization,
people navigated a virtual reality environment of the memorized
building and were probed with object names from all of the
rooms, following a procedure developed in research on text comprehension
(e.g., Bower & Morrow, 1990; Rinck & Bower, 1993) and extended
to Virtual Reality (e.g., Radvansky, Tamplin, & Copeland,
2007). We observed that responses to probes were markedly slower in
the room a person had just entered relative to the other rooms in the
building. A follow-up experiment having people progress through a
year using a monthly calendar showed the opposite pattern. This suggests
that the suppression effect of the first experiment is due to how
a person moves through space, not to a general cognitive progression
through a series.
9:20–9:35 (162)
The Role of Risk in Perceiving and Remembering Events. SHULAN
LU, LONNIE WAKEFIELD, & DEVIN PIERCE, Texas A&M University,
Commerce—Studies are inconclusive regarding the role of the beginnings
and the ends of events. The present study investigated how
risk affects the processing of beginnings and ends. For example, people
risk their fingers while cutting celery. Participants viewed films
that had risks at either the beginning or the end while their eye movements
were recorded, then answered true or false to statements regarding
the beginnings and ends. When events had risks at the beginnings
as opposed to no risks, there were longer fixations, more
correct, and faster answers to the beginnings. When events had risks
at the ends as opposed to no risks, there were slightly more correct answers
regarding ends, but longer fixations before the end points. The
present study suggested that people attend more to the beginning
when an event has risks at the beginning and that people make perceptual
predictions of the risks at the ends.
9:40–9:55 (163)
On the Path Toward Understanding the Dynamics of Aspect in Descriptions
of Motion Events. TEENIE MATLOCK, University of
California, Merced, CAITLIN FAUSEY, Stanford University, &
SARAH CARGILL & MICHAEL SPIVEY, Cornell University—
How do people process aspectual markers in English? What’s the difference
between “David hiked” and “David was hiking”? Research
has examined the function of aspect across languages or its role in the
construction of situation models, but little is known about the dynamics
of aspect in processing motion events. Here, we use a novel
mouse-trajectory paradigm, adapted from Spivey, Grosjean, and
Knoblich (2005) to investigate the time course of understanding motion
events with different aspectual forms. Participants first heard a
simple past or past progressive description that included information
about movement toward a destination. Next they clicked on a character
and dragged it into a picture to match the sentence. The results revealed
differences in mouse trajectories toward destinations (e.g.,
greater adherence to the path itself during movement). The findings
have implications for motion verb comprehension, event understanding,
and perceptual simulation.
SYMPOSIUM: Embodied Perception and Cognition
Regency ABC, Saturday Morning, 9:40–12:20
Chaired by Maggie Shiffrar, Rutgers University, Newark
9:40–9:55 (164)
Symposium Title: Embodied Perception and Cognition. MAGGIE
SHIFFRAR, Rutgers University, Newark, & DENNIS PROFFITT,