Abstracts 2005 - The Psychonomic Society

Saturday Afternoon Papers 249–254
TIMOTHY J. SLATTERY, University of Massachusetts, Amherst—Participants
viewed two rotating lines side by side. Each rotated around
its center, but at different angular velocities. Initial fixation was above
the two lines, and participants saccaded to another location below the
lines. During the saccade, there was a change in the motion of one, both,
or neither of the lines. (The change was an “advance” in the rotation
sequence followed by rotation at the initial velocity.) There were two
instruction conditions: (1) selective attention—detect changes in one of
the two lines; (2) divided attention—detect changes in either (or both)
lines. Although performance was better in the selective attention condition,
the difference was smaller than was predicted if attention can
only be directed to one line; in contrast, performance was not very divergent
from assuming two independent parallel channels.
5:10–5:25 (249)
Exploring Attentional Control of Attentional Capture Using Illusory
Line Motion and Human Performance. YOKO ISHIGAMI, JOHN J.
CHRISTIE, & RAYMOND M. KLEIN, Dalhousie University (read by
Raymond M. Klein)—Uninformative peripheral cues and digit targets
were combined with illusory line motion probes in order to explore
attentional capture. Cues were presented above, below, to the left, and
to the right of fixation. Any marker could brighten, but for a particular
participant targets only appeared on the horizontal or vertical axes.
Occasionally, a diagonal line was presented connecting two of the 8s.
Such lines are seen to be drawn away from a cue when the cue is adjacent
to the line. Digit identification and line judgment performance
revealed that attention was captured by exogenous cues even when
they were presented at task-irrelevant locations. When the line task
was removed, the digit task revealed that attention was not captured
by cues presented at task-irrelevant locations. An experiment is underway
to determine what prevented the establishment of attentional
control settings at task-relevant locations: The spatial presentation of
the line probes or memory load due to the dual task.
Serial Recall
Dominion Ballroom, Saturday Afternoon, 4:10–5:30
Chaired by Stephan Lewandowsky, University of Western Australia
4:10–4:25 (250)
Temporal Isolation Does Not Benefit Short-Term Memory for Serial
Order. STEPHAN LEWANDOWSKY, University of Western Australia,
GORDON D. A. BROWN, University of Warwick, & LISA M. NIMMO,
University of Western Australia—According to the popular temporal
distinctiveness notion, items that are temporally isolated from their
neighbors during list presentation should be recalled better than temporally
crowded items. We report several experiments in which list
items were separated by unpredictably varying temporal pauses. Irrespective
of whether memory was tested by serial recall, serial reconstruction,
or probed recall, temporal isolation did not benefit memory
for serial order unless participants used pauses to group a list or the
temporal list structure was predictable. Simulations of the SIMPLE
model provide convergent evidence that memory for serial order need
not involve temporal representations.
4:30–4:45 (251)
The Role of Domain-Specific Background Knowledge on Serial
Recall: Theory and Data. MATTHEW M. BOTVINICK, University
of Pennsylvania—Knowledge concerning domain-specific regularities
in sequential structure has long been known to affect recall for serial
order. However, little work has been done toward specifying the exact
role such knowledge plays. In recent work, we have proposed a theory
of serial recall in structured domains, based on Bayesian decision
theory and a set of representational assumptions proceeding from recent
computational and neurophysiological research. The theory makes
specific predictions concerning the relationship between sequence
structure and the probability of correct recall and concerning the characteristics
of sequencing errors in structured domains. These predic-
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tions have been tested and confirmed through subsequent behavioral
work, in which participants performed immediate serial recall on sequences
generated from an artificial grammar. Our empirical findings,
together with earlier observations concerning background
knowledge and serial recall, present a challenge to some prominent
theories of short-term memory for serial order and provide useful constraints
on further theory development.
4:50–5:05 (252)
Phonological and Semantic Interference in Serial Recall: Bringing
in the Lexicon. AMIT ALMOR, University of South Carolina—Six
experiments examined how phonological and semantic relatedness affect
serial recall. Replicating previous research, phonological relatedness
interfered with recall. Semantic relatedness, however, facilitated
the recall of related words, but interfered with the recall of some
of the unrelated words in the same lists. Both the facilitation and the
interference associated with semantic relatedness were enhanced
when the task required lexical semantic processing either because the
stimuli were acoustically degraded or because a secondary semantic
judgment task was added. The finding that semantic relatedness can
at the same time facilitate and interfere with recall may explain the
inconsistent semantic overlap effects in the literature, in which the
sum effect of facilitation and interference was mistakenly interpreted
as a weak or nonexistent effect. Furthermore, the interference associated
with semantic relatedness can help explain why in some areas of
language processing (e.g., referential processing) semantic relatedness
has been shown to slow processing.
5:10–5:25 (253)
Immediate Serial Recall, Nonword Repetition, and Nonword Learning:
A Computational Model. PRAHLAD GUPTA, JAMIE TISDALE,
& BRANDON ABBS, University of Iowa—The relationship between
immediate serial list recall (ISR) and nonword repetition (NWR) has
been studied intensively in recent years. We present a computational
model of performance in ISR and NWR tasks, offering an account of
key findings that have suggested a relationship between these abilities.
Simulations using the model exhibit (1) serial position effects in
both ISR and NWR (as documented recently in Gupta, 2005, and
Gupta et al., in press); (2) correlations between performance in these
tasks, as has been widely documented in the literature; (3) deficits
(following simulated damage to the model) in both ISR and NWR, but
not in repeating known words, similar to the neuropsychological syndrome
termed a pure short-term memory deficit; and (4) gradual
learning of nonwords following multiple exposures to them, corresponding
to empirical data to be presented. The model thus offers an
account of the interplay between short-term memory and long-term
learning.
Expertise and Real-Life Decision
Civic Ballroom, Saturday Afternoon, 3:30–5:30
Chaired by Shawn P. Curley, University of Minnesota
3:30–3:45 (254)
What Can the Popular Press Teach Us About Software Piracy?
SHARIFFAH ZAMOON & SHAWN P. CURLEY, University of Minnesota
(read by Shawn P. Curley)—Ethical decisions are a special class
of decisions that are characterized by a combination of the social nature
of the decision and the use of ethical norms and principles for justifying
decisions. The rapid development of technology has led to situations
(e.g., with software piracy) in which our society has not yet
developed consensual norms—software producers decry the billions
of losses due to piracy, but those engaged in the activity disavow any
ethical difficulties. Articles reporting on software piracy in the highest
circulation U.S. newspapers from 1989 to 2004 are used as data on
the social construction of the reality of software piracy and attitudes
toward it. A content analysis is performed, identifying rationales for
and against software piracy. These rationales are also analyzed within