Abstracts 2005 - The Psychonomic Society

Saturday Morning Papers 142–148
ror effect. In a second transfer task, we tested the equivalent of lexical
decision, showing an advantage for high-frequency characters. We
discuss the relation to prior research and implications for the role of
experience per se.
9:00–9:15 (142)
Memory Improvement Following Spaced Retrieval Practice: Effects
of Familiarity, Delay, and Self-Pacing. PETER E. MORRIS, CATHER-
INE O. FRITZ, PETER J. HAMPSON, & CAROLINE WADE, Lancaster
University—The effects of spaced retrieval practice were investigated
in two experiments. First, participants studied unfamiliar
psychological terms in the context of simple, factual statements, with
instructions to remember the appropriate term for each. Although
practice more than doubled performance on a cued recall test after
30 min, following 2 weeks most of the practice-based benefit had been
lost. The second experiment showed that this uncharacteristic dwindling
of the effect may have been due to the unfamiliar nature of the
to-be-learned materials. Participants studied more and less familiar
Latin equivalents for English words and were tested for the Latin with
cued recall after 1 h and again after 5 weeks. Spaced practice led to
improved recall, and the benefits were better maintained for familiar
than for unfamiliar words. In both experiments, self-pacing by the participants
was no better than experimenter-paced presentations.
9:20–9:35 (143)
Fritz Reuther: Recognizing Another Neglected Pioneer. WAYNE
DONALDSON, University of New Brunswick—In 1905, Fritz Reuther
completed and published his doctoral dissertation “Beiträge zur Gedächtnisforschung”
[Contributions to Memory Research]. He introduced the
method of identical series for studying recognition memory of complex
material. Five studies were reported, examining the effect of
number of presentations, exposure duration, series length, interval between
presentations, and retention interval on recognition memory.
Except for a brief mention in Boring’s 1953 Psychological Bulletin article,
“A History of Introspection,” his name and research are generally
absent from both the memory literature and history of psychology
texts. This paper provides a brief introduction to the methodology and
findings of these first studies in recognition memory.
Visual Search
Grand Ballroom West, Saturday Morning, 8:00–9:40
Chaired by Jeremy M. Wolfe
Brigham & Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School
8:00–8:15 (144)
Visual Search Has No Foresight: An Event-Related Signal Detection
Approach to Speeded Visual Search Tasks. JEREMY M. WOLFE,
Brigham & Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, STEPHEN
J. FLUSBERG, Brigham & Women’s Hospital, & DAVID E. FENCSIK
& TODD S. HOROWITZ, Brigham & Women’s Hospital and Harvard
Medical School—Does information about target presence accumulate
gradually during an extended visual search task (e.g., search for T
among Ls, yielding RTs of nearly 1 sec), or are targets identified
swiftly, but only once they are selected by attention? A novel method
allowed us to measure signal strength at different times prior to the end
of search. Mouse clicks produced 100-msec glimpses of the search
array. Click positions along a scale served as confidence ratings. A
final mouse click, localizing the target, ended the trial. Ratings were
used to generate ROCs for each frame, relative to the frame on which
the target was found. In other visual tasks, this method revealed slow
accumulation of information. In T-versus-L search, just two frames prior
to the finding of the target, d′ was near zero even though observers
had searched for many frames. There was no evidence for gradual accumulation
of information in this search task.
8:20–8:35 (145)
Unique Change Captures Attention. ADRIAN VON MÜHLENEN,
23
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, & JAMES T. ENNS, University
of British Columbia—Some events break through and attract
our attention even when we are engaged in a task for which these
events are irrelevant. Previous research on this kind of attentional capture
focused mainly on spatial factors. It showed that a new object is
more salient in capturing attention than an abrupt change in object
features. Here, we point to a temporal factor, over and above the importance
of new objects. In three experiments, we show that feature
changes capture attention as effectively as new objects, provided that
they occur during a period of temporal calm, where no other display
changes occur. The results show that this unique change hypothesis
applies to changes in color and in motion and even to the sudden appearance
of new objects. These findings highlight the importance of
considering both space and time in studies of attentional capture.
8:40–8:55 (146)
The BOLAR Theory of Eye Movements During Visual Search.
GREGORY J. ZELINSKY, SUNY, Stony Brook—A computational model
is introduced to describe the pattern of eye movements made during
visual search. Image-processing techniques are used to represent search
scenes in terms of simple visual feature detector responses (colors,
orientations, scales). Visual routines then act on these representations
to produce a sequence of simulated eye movements. The model’s
“eye” consists of a biologically plausible artificial retina. The model
was validated by comparing its behavior with the eye movement behavior
of human observers as they searched for targets in the identical
scenes input to the model. These scenes ranged in complexity from
simple OQ displays to fully realistic scenes depicting wooded landscapes.
In all cases, the model and the human data agreed closely in
terms of the number of fixations made during search and the eye movement
scanpath distance. The model’s behavior under standard search
manipulations (e.g., set size, search asymmetries, and changes in target–
distractor similarity) is discussed.
9:00–9:15 (147)
Distractor Location, But Not Identity, Is Remembered During Visual
Search. MATTHEW S. PETERSON & MELISSA R. BECK, George
Mason University, WALTER R. BOOT, Beckman Institute, MIROSLAVA
VOMELA, George Mason University, & ARTHUR F. KRAMER, Beckman
Institute—During visual search, knowledge about previously examined
distractors is used to guide attention toward unexamined
items. In the experiments reported here, we investigate whether any
identity information is explicitly remembered about rejected distractors.
We used three different search tasks: a conventional search task,
an oculomotor-contingent task, and a categorical search that required
deep processing to identify items. In all experiments, on roughly one
third of the trials, search was terminated, an examined location was
circled (a place holder marked that location), and observers were
quizzed about the item that had been at that location (two-alternative
forced choice). Although observers clearly remembered examined
items—they avoided revisiting the last four items in the oculomotorcontingent
experiments—performance in the 2AFC recognition tasks
was extremely poor. This suggests that people do remember the locations
of rejected distractors but that their explicit memory for distractors
does not include their identity.
9:20–9:35 (148)
Resolution of the Serial/Parallel Issue in Visual Attention. DAVID L.
GILDEN & THOMAS L. THORNTON, University of Texas, Austin—
One of the central issues in visual search concerns the parallel or serial
use of attentional resources. Although early developments in visual
search methods seemed to promise a quick resolution to this issue,
Townsend’s comments regarding the existence of capacity-limited
parallel processes made it clear that distinguishing serial from parallel
processes was not going to be easy. In fact, this problem has resisted
further definition, and there seems to be a growing sentiment
in the research community that perhaps this distinction was never real
in the first place. This is not true; it is just that the distinction is dif-