Abstracts 2005 - The Psychonomic Society

Posters 2071–2077 Friday Noon
pings for the tasks are consistent than when they are not, even when
both are incompatible. The benefit for consistent mappings has been
attributed to an emergent choice between mapping rules that slows
performance for inconsistent mapping conditions. However, perceptual
emergent features could also contribute to the benefit. A pair of
two-choice tasks was used to examine the role of emergent perceptual
and mapping choice features in dual-task performance. When the
stimuli for both tasks were visual, the benefit of the consistent incompatible
condition over the inconsistent conditions was apparent at
short SOAs, but not at long ones. Furthermore, this benefit was not
evident when the stimuli were auditory for Task 1 and visual for
Task 2. Thus, for two-choice tasks, the benefit for consistent incompatible
mappings is mainly due to the perceptual emergent features.
(2071)
Effects of Sequential Congruency on Blindness for Congruent
Stimuli. BILJANA STEVANOVSKI, Dalhousie University, CHRIS
ORIET, University of Regina, & PIERRE JOLICŒUR, Université de
Montréal—Blindness to congruent stimuli is the finding that the identification
of an arrow target (e.g., right arrow) is poorer when presented
during the execution of a congruent response (e.g., right keypress)
than during the execution of an incongruent response (e.g., left
keypress; Müsseler & Hommel, 1997; Stevanovski, Oriet, & Jolicœur,
2003). We investigated the effects of congruency between the response
and the target from the preceding trial on the blindness effect
on the current trial. The results from these sequential congruency
analyses suggest that response–target pairs become associated within
an episodic trace. Furthermore, these results suggest that repeating
one component (response or target) of the preceding trial activates this
episodic trace and facilitates or impairs target identification performance
on the current trial. The effects of episodic trace activation depend
on whether this trace matches or conflicts with current trial
events. The results are discussed within a feature-binding framework.
(2072)
The Role of Response-Specifying Precue in Blindness to Response-
Compatible Stimuli. KAZUHIKO YOKOSAWA & AKIO NISHI-
MURA, University of Tokyo—Perceiving a visual stimulus is more difficult
when a to-be-executed response is compatible with that
stimulus. This phenomenon is interpreted as a temporary blindness to a
stimulation that shares common codes with the response. This blindness
effect, however, might be due to a direct intramodal interaction between
a response-specifying precue and the following to-be-identified
target and could be interpreted from a typical repetition blindness approach.
The present study explored how the precue could affect the
occurrence of the blindness effect. In our experiments, on the basis of
the precue presentation, participants generated their responses endogenously.
Target identification rates constantly suffered from precue–target
compatibility, as compared with incompatibility, even
though the response-specifying feature of a precue was independent
of target identification. This finding would contradict the interpretation
of previous reports, in which the blindness effect should have resulted
only from response–target compatibility. The theoretical implications
of the finding are discussed.
(2073)
The Interfering Effect of Cell Phone Conversations Is More Than
Just Talk. JEFF DRESSEL & PAUL ATCHLEY, University of
Kansas—This work continues our investigation regarding which types
of conversational tasks produce the most interference for visual attention.
In the present experiments, participants performed the useful
field of view task while making ending-letter–contingent responses to
words empirically demonstrated to have positive or negative emotional
valence (Experiment 1) or while responding to a given word
with the first semantically related word that came to mind (Experiment
2). Previous work showed large interference when participants
responded to cardinal directional terms with their vertical plane analogues
(e.g., responding “upper left” when hearing “northwest”), and
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smaller interference when they made an ending-letter–contingent response
to nonvalent words. Negatively valent words led to the most
interference in all tasks, whereas producing semantically related words
led to the least. This suggests that the input to the conversation, and not
just the output, is an important factor in the amount of interference.
(2074)
Anger Superiority: Effects of Facial Surround and Similarity of
Targets and Distractors. DEAN G. PURCELL, Oakland University,
& ALAN L. STEWART, Stevens Institute of Technology—The anger
superiority effect (ASE) occurs when a search through a crowd of neutral
faces yields a shorter reaction time for an angry target face than
for a happy target face. Ohman et al. (2001) demonstrated an ASE
with schematic faces. Using the same facial features, we show that removing
the facial outline made search easier and decreased the ASE
by 40 msec. Removing the surround also eliminated the affect � row
interaction found with the original Ohman faces (Purcell & Stewart,
2002). The neutral and emotional faces of Ohman differed at the feature
level. We created neutral faces with the same features as the emotional
targets. This made search more difficult and increased the magnitude
of the ASE by 61 msec. That the ASE is modulated by variables
other than facial affect is inconsistent with the idea that the ASE is
due solely to facial expression.
(2075)
Attentional Capture for Sexual, but Not Threat-Related, Words:
Dissociating Effects of Arousing Words. JENNIFER M. AQUINO
& KAREN M. ARNELL, Brock University—There is debate as to
whether emotionally charged words receive preferential attentional
processing in normal individuals. Using a digit parity task, Harris and
Pashler (2004) found that threat-related words captured attention on
only the first trial, suggesting no attention capture for emotional
words aside from an initial surprise reaction. We examined whether
sexually explicit words would be more effective at capturing attention
in a similar task. Replicating Harris and Pashler, threat-related words
did not lead to an increase in reaction time on the parity task relative
to emotionally neutral words. However, sexually explicit words led to
a marked increase in RTs for over 100 trials. Words’ arousal ratings,
but not their valence ratings, predicted the amount of interference.
Digit RTs for individual words were also related to memory for the
word on a surprise memory test. Sexually explicit words may have
more potential to capture attention than do threat-related words.
• WORD PROCESSING •
(2076)
The Time Course of Speaking Rate Specificity Effects in the Perception
of Spoken Words. CONOR T. MCLENNAN & PAUL A.
LUCE, SUNY, Buffalo—We previously examined specificity effects in
spoken word recognition by examining the circumstances under which
speaking rate variability affects spoken word perception. Our research
focuses on whether time course of processing modulates the role that
variability plays in spoken word recognition. On the basis of previous
work, we hypothesized that speaking rate variability would affect only
later stages of recognition. Our results confirmed this hypothesis:
Specificity effects were obtained only when processing was relatively
slow. However, our previous stimuli also differed in articulation style
(casual and careful). Therefore, in the present study, we sought to determine
whether we would obtain the same results with stimuli that
differed only in speaking rate (i.e., in the absence of articulation style
differences). Moreover, to further generalize our time course findings,
the stimuli were produced by a different speaker. The results add to
our knowledge of the circumstances under which variability affects
the perception of spoken words.
(2077)
Contextual Diversity, Not Word Frequency, Determines Word
Naming and Lexical Decision Times. JAMES S. ADELMAN, GOR-