S1 (FriAM 1-65) - The Psychonomic Society

Sunday Morning Papers 323–328
dents received a final test covering the facts they reviewed through
testing versus rereading, and some that they never reviewed. Retention
was greatest for facts that were reviewed through testing after a
3-month delay, suggesting that the principles of testing and spacing
can be readily applied to improving retention of U.S. history.
11:40–11:55 (323)
The Role of Attention in Episodic Memory Impairment During
Nicotine Withdrawal. PAUL S. MERRITT, ADAM COBB, & LUKE
MOISSINAC, Texas A&M University, Corpus Christi, & ELLIOT
HIRSHMAN, George Washington University—Previous research has
shown reductions in memory performance following 24 h of abstinence
from tobacco use (Hirshman et al., 2004). A central question
from this research is whether this is a primary effect of withdrawal
from nicotine or due to reductions in attention also observed during
withdrawal (Hirshman et al., 2004). We tested 25 moderate to heavy
smokers when smoking normally (ad lib) and after 24 h without tobacco
use (abstinent). Participants completed a recognition memory
test under both full and divided attention encoding conditions, in addition
to f digit span, selective attention task, and mental rotation. The
most significant finding was a reduction in memory performance during
abstinence which was equivalent across full and divided attention
conditions. No effects of withdrawal from nicotine were observed for
the other tasks. Tobacco abstinence appears to have a primary effect
on episodic memory performance, which may have consequences for
individuals abstaining from tobacco.
Speech Recognition
Shoreline, Sunday Morning, 10:20–12:00
Chaired by Heather Bortfeld, Texas A&M University
10:20–10:35 (324)
Early Word Recognition May Be Stress-Full. HEATHER BORTFELD,
Texas A&M University, & JAMES MORGAN, Brown University—In
a series of studies, we examined how mothers naturally stress words
across multiple mentions in speech to their infants and how this marking
influences infants’ recognition of words in fluent speech. We first
collected samples of mothers’ infant-directed speech using a technique
that induced multiple repetitions of target words. Acoustic
analyses revealed that mothers systematically alternated between emphatic
and nonemphatic stress when talking to their infants. Using the
headturn preference procedure, we then tested 7.5-month-old infants
on their ability to detect familiarized bisyllabic words in fluent
speech. Stress of target words (emphatic and nonemphatic) was systematically
varied across familiarization and recognition phases of
four experiments. The results indicated that, although infants generally
prefer listening to words produced with emphatic stress, recognition
was enhanced when the degree of emphatic stress at familiarization
matched the degree of emphatic stress at recognition.
10:40–10:55 (325)
Influence of Visual Speech on Phonological Processing by Children.
SUSAN JERGER, University of Texas, Dallas, MARKUS F. DAMIAN,
University of Bristol, MELANIE SPENCE, University of Texas, Dallas,
& NANCY TYE-MURRAY, Washington University School of Medicine—Speech
perception is multimodal in nature in infants, yet dominated
by auditory input in children. Apparent developmental differences
may be specious, however, to the extent performance has been
assessed implicitly in infants and explicitly in children. We assessed
implicitly the influence of visual speech on phonological processing
in 100 typically developing children between 4 and 14 years. We applied
the online cross-modal picture word task. Children named pictures
while attempting to ignore auditory or audiovisual distractors
whose onsets were congruent or conflicting (in place of articulation
or voicing) relative to picture–name onsets. Overall, congruent onsets
speeded naming and conflicting onsets slowed naming. Visual speech
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significantly (1) enhanced phonological effects in preschoolers and
preteen/teenagers but (2) exerted no influence on performance in
young elementary school children. Patterns of results will be related
to abilities such as speechreading, input/output phonology, vocabulary,
visual perception, and visual processing speed.
11:00–11:15 (326)
Asynchrony Tolerance in the Multimodal Organization of Speech.
ROBERT E. REMEZ, DARIA F. FERRO, & KATHRYN R.
DUBOWSKI, Barnard College—Studies of multimodal presentation
of speech reveal that perceivers tolerate large temporal discrepancy in
integrating audible and visible properties. Perceivers combine multimodal
samples of speech resolving syllables, words, and sentences at
asynchronies greater than 180 msec. A unimodal test exploiting sine
wave speech revealed that asynchrony tolerance in auditory speech
differs critically from audiovisual speech perception. Is this difference
in tolerance due to the reliance on dynamic sensory attributes, or a
true difference between uni- and multimodal organization? New tests
used sine wave synthesis of speech in an audiovisual presentation. Perceivers
transcribed audiovisual sentences differing in asynchrony of
a tone analog of the second formant relative to a visible face articulating
a sentence. Asynchronies ranged from 250 msec to 250-msec
lag. The results revealed time-critical similarities and differences between
perceptual organization of unimodal and multimodal speech.
The implications for understanding perceptual organization and
analysis of speech will be discussed.
11:20–11:35 (327)
Effects of Time Pressure on Eye Movements to Visual Referents
During the Recognition of Spoken Words. DELPHINE DAHAN,
University of Pennsylvania—Eye movements to visual referents are
increasingly being used as a measure of lexical processing during
spoken-language comprehension. Typically, participants see a display
with four pictures and are auditorily instructed to move one of them.
The probability of fixating a picture as participants hear the target’s
name has been assumed to reflect lexical activation of this picture’s
name. Here, we more closely examined the functional relation between
fixations and lexical processing by manipulating task demands.
Half of the participants were asked to complete the task as
quickly as possible, and half were under no time pressure. The frequency
of target- and distractor-picture names was varied. Time pressure
affected the speed with which participants fixated the target picture.
Importantly, it also greatly amplified the impact of lexical
frequency on fixation probabilities. Thus, the relation between lexical
activation and fixation behavior is only indirect, and, we argue,
mediated by a decisional component.
11:40–11:55 (328)
Audiovisual Alignment Facilitates the Detection of Speaker Intent in
a Word-Learning Setting. ELIZABETH JOHNSON & ALEXANDRA
JESSE, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics—Caregivers produce
distinctive speech-accompanying movements when addressing
children. We hypothesized that the alignment between speakers’ utterances
and the motion they impose upon objects could facilitate
joint attention in caregiver–child interactions. Adults (N = 8) were
videotaped as they taught the proper name of a toy to 24-month-olds.
The toy’s motion was extracted from the video to animate a photograph
of the toy. In a forced-choice task, adults (N = 24) watched sideby-side
animations (a forward and reversed version of the same animation)
and were asked to choose which toy the speaker was labeling.
Performance was above chance (75% correct). Performance was hindered
when the speech was reversed, but not when it was low-pass filtered,
suggesting that adults rely on the alignment between the motion
imposed on the labeled toy and the utterance’s prosody to detect
speaker intent. We are currently testing whether this amodal information
modulates 24-month-olds’ attention in a word-learning
setting.