Abstracts 2005 - The Psychonomic Society

Papers 34–40 Friday Morning
9:40–9:55 (34)
Different Strategies Used for Recognizing Different-Race Faces.
MICHAEL B. LEWIS, Cardiff University (sponsored by Dylan Marc
Jones)—Other-race faces are harder to recognize than own-race faces,
but increased contact with people of the other race can reduce this
own-race bias. Two explanations for these effects are considered.
First, people employ the same strategy for processing own-race and
other-race faces, but this strategy is tuned to own-race faces. Second,
different strategies are employed for own-race and other-race faces,
and the strategy for own-race faces is superior. An experiment measured
recognition performance for the internal features of faces that
had been learned with external features that made the face look like
either an own-race face or an other-race face. Accuracy was greater
when the face had been learned as an own-race face, suggesting that
different encoding strategies are employed for different-race faces.
One implication of this research is that race affects the perception of
an individual even before the face has been fully encoded.
SYMPOSIUM: Applying Cognition to Education
Grand Ballroom Centre, Friday Morning, 10:00–11:50
Chaired by Mark A. McDaniel, Washington University
10:00–10:05 (35)
Symposium I: Applying Cognition to Education Intro. MARK A.
MCDANIEL, Washington University, & AYANNA K. THOMAS, Colby
College—E. L. Thorndike envisioned a future in which educational
practices in teaching would be guided by a psychological theory of
learning. Unfortunately, research in cognitive psychology has had little
influence on education, an area to which cognition psychology
should be well positioned to contribute. However, influential cognitive
psychologists are beginning to foreground educational concerns
in their research, with this work appearing in our flagship journals
(e.g., JEP:LMC, January 2005). The proposed symposium will provide
a forum to present and stimulate this developing trend in the
field. Researchers who have been on the cutting edge of cognitive psychology
research will present new research that orients basic cognitive
psychology research to educational issues. Research highlighted
in this symposium will include how conditions of learning and testing
can affect successful performance, whether feedback can improve
memory, the consequences of producing incorrect answers, and
whether meta-awareness of conditions of study and test affect monitoring
and control.
10:05–10:20 (36)
Learning How to Learn: Experiencing the Outcome of Differential
Encoding Strategies Enhances Subsequent Encoding. PATRICIA A.
DEWINSTANLEY, Oberlin College, & ELIZABETH L. BJORK,
UCLA—We investigated whether participants, given the opportunity to
experience the differential memorial consequences of different encoding
strategies—such as generating versus reading—would then change
how they processed future to-be-learned material. Participants were
able to profit from such an experience, but only if that experience was
of a particular kind—namely, one that offered them the opportunity
to experience the different consequences of alternative encoding
strategies within a single test. Our findings suggest educational innovations
that might lead students to adopt more effective processing
strategies. They are also consistent with metacognitive research indicating
that learners can be insensitive to the effectiveness of certain
learning-enhancing factors (e.g., Koriat & Bjork, in press) and are
typically unable to judge the efficacy of a given processing strategy
during its execution and do not switch from a less to a more effective
strategy without an opportunity to experience their relative effectiveness
(e.g., Dunlosky & Hertzog, 2000).
10:20–10:35 (37)
Zoning Out During Reading: An Underappreciated Source of
Comprehension Failure. JONATHAN W. SCHOOLER, JONATHAN
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SMALLWOOD, & MERRILL MCSPADDEN, University of British
Columbia, & DAVID HALPERN & ERIK D. REICHLE, University of
Pittsburgh—Considerable research has demonstrated that reading difficulties
can stem from comprehension-monitoring failures. However,
this research has largely overlooked the fact that people frequently fail
to notice not only that they are having trouble understanding the text,
but also that they are not even attending to what they are reading. This
talk will introduce two paradigms that examine comprehension failures
resulting from “zoning out” during reading. These include (1) a
self-report + experience sampling procedure that frequently “catches”
participants zoning out during reading before they catch themselves
and (2) a gibberish detection paradigm that demonstrates that when
zoning out, participants regularly fail to notice that they are reading
gibberish. Collectively, these studies indicate that zoning out is an important
source of comprehension failure that is due, in part, to lapses
in meta-awareness of the current contents of thought.
10:35–10:50 (38)
Working Memory, Math Performance, and Math Anxiety. MARK H.
ASHCRAFT & JEREMY KRAUSE, University of Nevada, Las Vegas,
& KELLY RIDLEY, Cleveland State University—The literature is
very clear on the global consequences of mathematics anxiety. People
who are highly math anxious avoid math: They avoid elective
coursework in math, both in high school and college, they avoid college
majors that emphasize math, and they avoid career paths that involve
math. We go beyond these psychometric relationships to examine
the cognitive consequences of math anxiety. We show how
performance on a standardized math achievement test varies as a function
of math anxiety and how math performance depends on available
working memory capacity, which varies inversely with math anxiety.
High math anxiety corresponds closely to a dual-task setting; preoccupation
with one’s math fears and anxieties functions exactly like a
resource-demanding secondary task. We speculate on possible developmental
and educational factors that contribute to the development
of math anxiety.
10:50–11:05 (39)
Region of Proximal Learning. JANET METCALFE, Columbia University—In
contrast to the view that people should study, first and
longest, the items judged most difficult, we propose that people attempt
to study within their own region of proximal learning. A model
is proposed for how they do so. The model emphasizes two components:
choice and perseverance, If people’s judgments of learning
(JOLs) are sufficiently high that they believe they know the items already,
they choose to not study. If they do choose to study, though, the
order is from that which they believe is almost known to the more difficult
(high JOL to low JOL). The decision of when to stop studying
is determined by judgments of the rate of learning (jROLs). When
learning is perceived to be proceeding quickly, they continue studying.
When their subjective assessment indicates that learning is at a
standstill, they stop. Research findings bearing on the region of proximal
learning model will be reviewed.
11:05–11:20 (40)
The Negative Cascade of Incongruent Task–Test Processing in Memory
and Metamemory. AYANNA K. THOMAS, Colby College, &
MARK A. MCDANIEL, Washington University—The present study
was conducted to examine the effects of the encoding–retrieval
process interaction on metamemory for text. Previous research suggests
that metamemory for text can improve when specific processing
variables are manipulated. We expand on this idea by testing
whether a match (or mismatch) between processes instantiated by
study tasks and those instantiated by retrieval demands affect monitoring
and subsequent implemented control strategies. In two experiments,
participants were presented with expository texts and engaged
in letter deletion, sentence sorting, or reading. After processing the
passages, participants provided section-by-section judgments of
learning (JOLs). Participants were then given either a detailed or a