Abstracts 2005 - The Psychonomic Society

Thursday Evening Posters 1092–1098
2001; Wagenmakers, Farrell, & Ratcliff, 2004). Specifically, there appear
to be slowly decaying correlations between successive trials that
are consistent with the presence of long-range dependencies (LRDs).
Gilden (2001) suggested that these dependencies may arise when individuals
maintain a consistent mental task set and that switching between
tasks may eliminate these LRDs. We conducted two experiments
that required individuals to switch between two (Experiment 1)
and three (Experiment 2) tasks. The sequences from participants in
both experiments contained evidence of LRDs. These results suggest
that maintenance of a single task set is not required for performance
to exhibit LRDs.
(1092)
Top-Down Expectancy and Prior Task Interference During Task
Switching. MARK E. FAUST & ADAM YORK, University of North
Carolina, Charlotte—Prior task interference (PTI), the deleterious influence
of a relevant stimulus attribute from a prior switched-from
task (e.g., naming one of two words based on font color) on the performance
of the switched-to task (e.g., naming one of two words based
on category membership), was assessed during a task-switching paradigm.
Participants were cued with two performance tasks (of four
possible tasks) for each four-trial sequence and switched tasks between
the second and third trials in each sequence. Manipulation of
the proportion of postswitch trials in which PTI was possible resulted
in differential effects on PTI for task-switch trials and for n + 1 trials
(i.e., the trial following a switch trial). The results suggest that cognitive
control over PTI is lowered directly following a task switch and
that inhibitory control over processes associated with a switched-from
task is a capacity-limited operation.
(1093)
Do Errors Betray Executive Control in Task Switching? JASON
IVANOFF, CATHERINE M. ARRINGTON, & ALEX GOTLER, Vanderbilt
University—Task switching generates RT costs that have been
taken to reflect the time needed for a control system to implement
task-set reconfiguration. In typical explicit task cuing paradigms,
each task is cued by one cue, creating a confound between switching
tasks and switching cues. Logan and Bundesen (2003) resolved this
concern with a four-cue/two-task procedure, demonstrating much
larger costs for switching cues than for switching tasks. They argued
that task-switch costs may not reflect the duration of control
processes. Here we revisit this design with a focus on errors under different
levels of speed stress. The results from the error analysis reveal
a pattern for switching tasks and switching cues unlike that for RTs.
The distinctive patterns in RTs and error rates leave open the possibility
that “true” switch costs can be found in explicit task cuing procedures
and highlight the importance of considering multiple measures
of performance.
• VISUAL WORD RECOGNITION •
(1094)
Do Subtypes Exist Among Nondyslexic Readers? STACY L. BIRCH
& DANIEL J. PRINCE, SUNY, Brockport—Recent studies have suggested
that individuals with developmental dyslexia, similar to those
with acquired dyslexia, can be classified into subtypes, for instance
those with phonological or surface dyslexia. These subtypes are based
on dissociations between component reading skills such as phonological
coding and orthographic processing. For instance, an individual
with particular difficulty in orthographic processing might be
classified as having the surface subtype of dyslexia. In the present
study, we investigated to what extent nondisabled readers demonstrate
dissociations among component reading skills similar to those of the
subgroups of dyslexic readers. Nondisabled readers completed standardized
word identification and spelling tasks along with computerized
reaction time tasks measuring phonological coding, orthographic
processing, and rapid naming of symbols. Of these readers, 18%
showed a pattern of dissociations in reading skills similar to the
65
phonological subtype of dyslexia, and 15% showed a surface subtype
pattern. Implications of these results for subtyping in developmental
dyslexia are discussed.
(1095)
The Level Repetition Effect in Semantic Processing: The Role of
Attention and Inhibition. GWEN L. SCHMIDT & CAROL A. SEGER,
Colorado State University—We explored the role of attention to levels
of semantic relatedness (close vs. distant) in semantic processing. Balota
et al. (2001) suggested that attention is focused on different semantic
levels depending on the task. We hypothesized that when processing
semantic information at high or low levels of semantic relatedness, a
priming effect would be obtained based on the preceding semantic level,
similar to the level repetition effect with visual stimuli (Robertson,
1996). In two experiments, subjects responded to high- and lowassociation
word pairs or familiar and unfamiliar metaphors. Both experiments
demonstrated a significant interaction: for high-association/
familiar stimuli, there was a priming effect of level of relatedness; for
low-association/unfamiliar stimuli, there was a negative effect, with
slower reaction times for a repeated level. These results suggest that both
attention to and inhibition of semantic relatedness levels are important
aspects of semantic processing at both word and sentence levels.
(1096)
The Regularity Effect and Repetition in Printed Word Processing.
LEONARD KATZ, STEPHEN D. KATZ, & KENNETH R. PUGH,
Haskins Laboratories—Our research program has studied changes in
cognition and brain processing as initially unfamiliar printed words
become more familiar. Katz et al. (2005, Neuropsychologia) suggested
that phonological assembly (as indexed by the regularity effect,
RE) was the means by which low-frequency words were initially recognized
in a lexical decision task, but that assembly was replaced by
a nonanalytic process as words were repeated. In contrast, when the
task was naming, the RE persisted longer under word repetition. The
present study replicated and extended the original results. It supports
the interpretation of a decreasing RE with repetition as a reduction in
phonological assembly. The introduction of 50% pseudohomophones
into the set of nonwords in lexical decision and naming decreased the
persistence of the regularity effect, although more so in lexical decision
than in naming. Pseudohomophones suppress phonological assembly
by making it an inefficient mechanism for discriminating between
words and nonwords.
(1097)
Phonological Neighborhood Density and Frequency in Visual Word
Recognition. LAWRENCE LOCKER, Georgia Southern University,
GREG B. SIMPSON, University of Kansas, & PAUL MATTSON,
Washington State University—Phonological neighborhood density and
frequency were investigated in three word recognition tasks. The results
of a lexical-decision experiment revealed that words with highfrequency
neighbors were responded to more rapidly than words with
low-frequency neighbors, although this effect was restricted to words
with many neighbors. A semantic-categorization task revealed some
evidence of competitive effects of high-frequency neighbors, although
this effect was again a function of neighborhood density. In
contrast, the results of a rhyme detection task revealed facilitative effects
of both neighborhood density and frequency. This pattern of results
suggests that the influence of phonological neighborhood on
word processing varies as a function of the level of analysis as determined
by task requirements. The implications of these results for word
processing are discussed.
(1098)
Masked Priming With Orthographic Neighbors: An Interaction
Between Relative Prime–Target Frequency and Neighborhood Size.
MARIKO NAKAYAMA & CHRISTOPHER R. SEARS, University of
Calgary—In models of visual word identification that incorporate inhibitory
competition among activated lexical units, a word’s higher