S1 (FriAM 1-65) - The Psychonomic Society

Thursday Evening Posters 1076–1082
show a complex interaction between the aforementioned variables in
determining whether decay exists in working memory.
(1076)
Concurrent Working Memory Load and Working Memory Span
Effects on Visual Search. HEATHER D. MOTSINGER & DALE
DAGENBACH, Wake Forest University—Recent research on working
memory (WM) effects in visual search has produced conflicting results.
Typically, studies manipulating WM capacity using a concurrent
memory task have found WM effects under some conditions, but comparisons
of high and low WM span groups have not. The present study
compared search performance of high and low WM span groups under
maintenance load and no load conditions in blocks with normal arrays,
and in blocks in which a color singleton distractor was present
on half of the trials. For visual search, WM span effects emerged only
in the mixed blocks. WM load affected overall RT for both kinds of
blocks, but not search rate. In the WM task, accuracy of high spans
was significantly greater than that of low spans across all WM load
types. The presence of the singleton impacted working memory performance
for low spans, but not for high spans.
(1077)
Differential Effects of Articulatory Suppression on Spatial Location
Memory. CANDICE C. MOREY, University of Missouri, Columbia
(sponsored by Nelson Cowan)—Prabhakaran et al. (2000) and Baddeley
(2000) proposed that cross-domain stimuli, such as spatially arranged
letters, are maintained in a domain-general working memory (WM)
store. If this is true and if this store is independent from domainspecific
WM stores, then concurrent articulatory suppression should
only affect the contents of a verbal WM store (e.g., letters). Participants
viewed circled letters randomly scattered over an invisible grid.
Some participants were tested on the binding between letters and spatial
locations (bound probes), whereas some participants were tested
with letters and spatial locations separately (separate probes). Articulatory
suppression clearly impaired accurate responses to letter but
not to location probes in the separate probe condition. However, in the
bound probe condition articulatory suppression impaired ability to detect
any type of change, including new letters, locations, and recombinations.
These results suggest that WM for cross-domain stimuli
may require integration of multiple WM components, not only a
domain-general store.
(1078)
Indirect Assessment of Visual Working Memory for Simple and
Complex Objects. TAL MAKOVSKI & YUHONG V. JIANG, Harvard
University—Visual working memory (VWM) contents can influence
subsequent visual search performance, even when they are irrelevant
to the search task. For example, visual search is faster when the target,
rather than a distractor, is surrounded by a shape currently held
in VWM. This study uses this modulation of search by working memory
as a means to investigate properties of VWM. Participants were
asked to remember color or shape of simple and complex polygons,
with complexity defined by Garner’s R&R transformation rule. During
the retention interval, participants searched for a tilted line among
other lines embedded inside colored polygons. Search was faster when
the target was enclosed by the remembered polygon, but the facilitation
was greater for colors and diminished with increasing memory
set size and complexity. A control experiment confirmed that the effects
were not due to passive priming. We conclude that the search
congruity effect can indirectly assess VWM.
• SKILL ACQUISITION •
(1079)
The Rich Get Richer: Emergence of Individual Differences in an
Eye Movement Study of Storybook Reading. JIA GUO & GARY
FENG, Duke University, & KEVIN F. MILLER, University of Michigan
(sponsored by Kevin F. Miller)—Children who are initially better read-
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ers tend to accelerate in reading development. This “Matthew effect”
has been attributed to the increased exposure to print among young
readers. This study explores the origin of this nonlinear development
by investigating emerging readers’ attention to pictures and texts during
shared storybook reading. Six-year-old Chinese-speaking
preschoolers’ eye movements were monitored while an adult read two
picture books to them. As expected, the amount of time children spent
on texts versus pictures was strongly predicted by the number of words
they could recognize. Whereas nonreaders virtually ignored the text
altogether, children who could know at least some words spent more
time on the text and thus benefited from increased print exposure.
Adults’ storytelling styles—interactive or verbatim—did not influence
this pattern. Implications to word learning and reading acquisition
are discussed.
(1080)
On the Multiple Routes to Skill Failure: Distraction, Over-Attention,
and Task Demands. MARCI S. DECARO & ROBIN D. THOMAS,
Miami University, & SIAN L. BEILOCK, University of Chicago
(sponsored by Robin D. Thomas)—How do pressure-filled situations
negatively impact performance? Distraction theories suggest that
pressure-related worries co-opt attentional resources needed to perform
the task at hand. Explicit monitoring theories suggest that pressure
increases attention to the component steps of performance, disrupting
proceduralized processes. We asked whether we could find
evidence of both types of failure in the same domain—category learning.
Individuals learned rule-based and information-integration categories
under either a control condition, a pressure condition that
elicited distracting thoughts (i.e., earning money for oneself and a
partner), or a pressure condition that induced monitoring of step-bystep
performance (i.e., surveillance by a video camera). Rule-based
category learning, driven by attention-demanding hypothesis testing,
was negatively impacted by distracting pressure, but unaffected by
monitoring pressure. Information-integration category learning, reliant
on procedural learning processes operating largely outside attention,
showed the opposite pattern. There are multiple routes to failure
that depend on pressure type and task demands.
(1081)
Strategies for Using Instructions in Assembly Tasks. ELSA
EIRIKSDOTTIR & RICHARD CATRAMBONE, Georgia Institute of
Technology (sponsored by Richard Catrambone)—This study examined
which of two strategies were more effective for using and learning
from instructions. An “instruction-based” strategy involves studying
the instructions before attempting the task, whereas a “task-based”
strategy involves attempting the task and referencing instructions as
needed. Participants completed assembly tasks and performance during
training, and transfer was assessed via task completion time, correctness,
and subjective cognitive load. Participants using a task-based
strategy took longer to complete the training task than did instructionbased
participants, although there was no difference between these
groups when repeating the task in a second session a week later. Control
participants using their default strategy needed less time to complete
the transfer tasks and reported less cognitive load on all the tasks
than did the other participants. The results suggest that reading instructions
fully before attempting a task helps initial performance but
does not necessarily aid transfer performance relative to a person’s
“natural” strategy.
(1082)
Predicting Chess Skill Acquisition Throughout Time: A Linear
Mixed Models Analysis. ANIQUE DE BRUIN, REMY M. RIKERS,
& HENK G. SCHMIDT, Erasmus University Rotterdam—Studies on
the development of expertise have identified a strong relation between
accumulated hours of deliberate practice and expert performance. The
present study examined whether this relation also holds for the early
phases of skill development. Instead of a between-groups design, we
used a within-group design to study the relation between deliberate