Abstracts 2005 - The Psychonomic Society

Papers 98–104 Friday Afternoon
prime with the same main verb, as compared with when it is preceded
by a DO prime with the same verb. However, Experiment 2 shows that
garden pathing is not reduced when presentation lists include distractor
sentence pairs that also repeat verbs but vary in syntactic structure
or verb sense from first to second sentence. Thus, while Experiment 1
extends structural priming in comprehension to the reduction of the
DO/SC ambiguity, results of Experiment 2 suggest that structural
priming in comprehension is mediated, in part, by learning that verb
repetition may signal structural repetition.
3:30–3:45 (98)
Motor Resonance in the Comprehension of Action Sentences.
ROLF A. ZWAAN & LARRY J. TAYLOR, Florida State University—
There is evidence that observing actions and understanding sentences
about actions activate corresponding motor processes in the observer/
comprehender. In five experiments, we examine this phenomenon of
motor resonance further. Specifically, we address two novel questions.
The first question is whether visual motion associated with an action
produces motor resonance in sentence comprehension. The second
question concerns the modulation of motor resonance during sentence
comprehension. Experiment 1 shows that a rotating visual stimulus affects
manual rotation. Experiment 2 shows that comprehending a sentence
about manual rotation (e.g., “He turned down the volume”) affects
sensibility judgments made by actual manual rotation. Experiment 3
shows that a rotating visual stimulus affects the comprehension of
manual rotation sentences. Experiments 4 and 5 show that motor resonance
is a rather immediate and localized phenomenon, exclusively
occurring during the main verb of the sentence that specifies the rotation
direction.
3:50–4:05 (99)
ERP and Joint Time–Frequency Responses to Grammatical and
Semantic Violations in Dutch–English Bilinguals. DOUGLAS J.
DAVIDSON & PETER INDEFREY, F. C. Donders Centre for Cognitive
Neuroimaging—Previous research on multilingual sentence processing
has shown that event-related potential (ERP) responses to
grammatical or semantic violations in sentences presented in a second
language are delayed or more variable than first-language responses.
We examined responses to grammatical and semantic violations
in Dutch speakers who were proficient in English, to investigate
whether joint time–frequency analyses can provide addition insight
into the nature of second-language sentence processing. The analyses
indicated that grammatical violations led to a power reduction with a
relatively broad distribution at approximately 10–15 Hz following the
violation, relative to the controls, and a corresponding increase in
power at approximately 3–5 Hz. Analyses of the ERP results indicated
an N400 effect for semantic violation critical words, relative to controls,
as well as a P600 effect for the grammatical violations. The
event-related changes in power suggest that grammatical violations
incur a greater attentional load in bilinguals.
Counting, Timing, and Time Perception
Conference Rooms B&C, Friday Afternoon, 1:30–3:10
Chaired by Richard A. Carlson, Pennsylvania State University
1:30–1:45 (100)
Counting on Emotion. RICHARD A. CARLSON & RACHEL E.
SMITH, Pennsylvania State University—Emotion is thought to play
roles in the control of cognitive processes at scales ranging from the
guidance or biasing of attention to the selection of decision-making
strategies. We considered hypotheses about the role of emotion in control
and error monitoring of a routine cognitive task, event counting.
Participants in several experiments counted sequences of briefly presented
schematic faces that could be happy, neutral, or sad. Counting
was generally more accurate with faces than with other stimuli. More
interesting, the emotionality of the faces being counted influenced the
patterns of error types (undercounts vs. overcounts) and the success
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with which participants monitored their performance for errors. These
effects depended on other factors known to influence event counting
and are unlikely to be due to shifts in general mood. The results point
to a role for emotionality in the online intentional control of fluent
performance.
1:50–2:05 (101)
Adults’ Age-Related Differences in Approximate Quantification.
DELPHINE GANDINI & PATRICK LEMAIRE, CNRS and Université
de Provence (read by Patrick Lemaire)—Young and older adults had
to find the approximate number of dots for collections of between 11
to 98 dots within 6 sec. On the basis of previous works, participants
could choose between two strategies in a choice condition: visual
scanning strategy (i.e., participants scanned the collection of dots and
gave an approximate numerosity without counting dots) or anchoring
strategy (i.e., participants first enumerated a few dots and then visually
estimated the remaining dots). Participants were also forced to use
each strategy on all trials in no-choice conditions. Data showed agerelated
changes in strategy use (percent use of each strategy) and strategy
adaptivity (i.e., choosing the best strategy on each item), in strategy
performance (latency and accuracy) and in eye-movement data
(number and duration of fixations). Implications of these findings for
the further understanding of approximate quantification skills and the
effects of age on these skills will be discussed.
2:10–2:25 (102)
Interval Length and Event-Counting Errors. DANIEL N. CASSENTI
& RICHARD A. CARLSON, Pennsylvania State University—The
speed–accuracy tradeoff specifies that as speed of processing increases,
the chance of error increases. Experiment 1 demonstrated that as presentation
speed of to-be-counted events decreases, the chance of a
counting error increases, suggesting a revision of the speed–accuracy
tradeoff. Experiment 2 distinguished between two causes of this effect:
forgetting or overuse of a strategy of rehearsal to prevent forgetting.
The results implicate the overuse of rehearsal and suggest that
the speed–accuracy tradeoff is a special case of a more general
speed–accuracy relation. Results are discussed in relation to the nature
of goals, cognitive control, and error detection.
2:30–2:45 (103)
Auditory Kappa: Effects of Pitch on Perceived Time. NOAH
MACKENZIE & MARI R. JONES, Ohio State University (read by
Mari R. Jones)—The kappa effect refers to a phenomenon whereby
spatial relationships among stimuli affect judgments of temporal relationships
among those stimuli. Events widely separated in space will
be perceived as being further apart in time than events spaced closer
together. One explanation for this appeals to the apparent motionlike
properties of the stimuli. Three experiments on auditory kappa were
conducted. In Experiment 1, a listener judged whether the second tone
in a sequence of three (a kappa cell) was closer in time to the first or
the third tone. Listeners were most accurate when the pitch of the second
tone was closest to the first or third tone. Experiments 2 and 3
added serial context immediately preceding the kappa cell. It was
found that a serial context preserving the motionlike properties of the
kappa cell preserved the kappa effect, whereas a context that did not
preserve these properties abolished it.
2:50–3:05 (104)
A 20-Year Longitudinal Study of Musical Tone Discrimination and
Identification. SHELDON G. LEVY, Wayne State University—Eartraining
experiments have been reported for more than a century. However,
past research has investigated the phenomenon over relatively
short periods of time. This report is based on 20 years of identification/
discrimination of randomly generated tones. Intervals without practice
ranged from 1 day to 5 years. Tones were generated within a twooctave
range (approximately normal distribution around G above middle
C) with 60–80 tones per minute, depending upon the speed of
response and the accuracy of identification. The maximum allowable