Abstracts 2005 - The Psychonomic Society

Friday Noon Posters 2078–2083
DON D. A. BROWN, & JOSE F. QUESADA, University of Warwick—
Word frequency is the most important known predictor of word naming
and lexical decision times. It is, however, confounded with contextual
diversity, the number of contexts in which a word has been seen. With
a normative, corpus-based measure of contextual diversity, word frequency
effects were eliminated by contextual diversity (but not vice
versa) across three naming and three lexical decision data sets, using
any of three corpora to derive the frequency and contextual diversity
values. This result is incompatible with existing models of visual word
recognition, which attribute frequency effects directly to frequency, and
is particularly problematic for accounts in which frequency effects reflect
learning. It is argued that the result reflects the importance of likely
need in memory and that the continuity with memory suggests using
principles from memory research to inform theorizing about reading.
(2078)
Hemispheric Asymmetries for Accessing the Phonological Representation
of Single Printed Words. CHRIS H. DOMEN, ANNETTE
COLANGELO, & LORI BUCHANAN, University of Windsor—The
differential abilities of the cerebral hemispheres to access the phonological
representations of printed words were investigated using a divided
visual field task in which participants performed a lexical decision
task for target words primed by semantic associates (e.g.,
toad–frog), homophones of words semantically associated to target
words (e.g., towed–frog), and unrelated control letter strings (e.g.,
fink–frog, plasm–frog). At a short stimulus onset asynchrony (i.e.,
165 msec), priming was obtained for semantic associates regardless
of visual field of presentation. However, for homophones of words semantically
associated to the target words, priming was obtained only
for prime–target pairs presented to the right visual field/left hemisphere,
indicating that only the left hemisphere initially has access to
the phonological representations of printed words. These results diverge
from previous studies that indicate both hemispheres initially
have access to the phonological representations of printed words.
(2079)
Hemispheric Differences in the Retention of Verbal Material
Over Time: Behavioral and Electrophysiological Investigations.
KAREN M. EVANS & KARA D. FEDERMEIER, University of Illinois,
Urbana-Champaign—The ability of the right (RH) and left (LH)
hemispheres to retain verbal information over time was investigated
in a series of experiments recording recognition judgments and eventrelated
potentials (ERPs) during a continuous recognition task with
varying study–test lags. Experiment 1 used lateralized test words to
examine effects at retrieval. Although recognition judgments replicated
the oft-reported LH advantage for verbal material, comparisons
of the old–new ERP memory effect failed to reveal any difference,
suggesting that behavioral advantages may be driven by perceptual
factors, rather than by memory. Experiment 2 used lateralized study
words to examine encoding effects. Items initially encoded by the RH
and tested at long lags showed decreased response times and enhanced
P2 responses in the ERP relative to LH-encoded items. Together, these
results suggest that the RH may retain verbal material better than has
been assumed and may be especially important for retention over relatively
long study–test lags.
(2080)
Can Hypnosis Turn Off Reading? Hypnotic Versus Posthypnotic
Modulation of the Stroop Effect. LYNETTE HUNG & AMANDA
J. BARNIER, University of New South Wales—Hypnotic suggestions
appear to influence information processing by producing experiential
and/or cognitive alterations. This experiment investigated the precise
impact of the hypnotic effect on one form of information processing,
word reading—in particular, hypnotic modulation of the Stroop effect.
Before hypnosis, high and low hypnotizable participants (tested in a
real-simulating paradigm) performed a Stroop task (waking Stroop)
in which they were presented with congruent, incongruent, and neu-
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tral trials. During hypnosis, participants received a combined word agnosia
and color hallucination suggestion aimed at disrupting semantic
word processing. Participants’ responses to the suggestion were
tested via a visual test and a second Stroop task, either during hypnosis
(hypnotic Stroop) or after hypnosis (posthypnotic Stroop). Findings
indicated that the suggestion altered participants’ experiential,
but not cognitive, processing. These findings are discussed in terms
of implications for reading and automaticity, as well as for claims that
hypnosis can disrupt perceptual and cognitive processing.
(2081)
Early Spelling Skills of Diglossic and Nondiglossic Malay-Speaking
Children. SAJLIA BINTE JALIL & SUSAN J. RICKARD LIOW,
National University of Singapore—To investigate the relationship between
oral language and children’s invented spellings in a shallow orthography,
a list of high-familiarity Malay words was dictated with
standard pronunciation to diglossic Singaporean children (6–7 years
of age). As was predicted, letter name and English phoneme replacements
were rare, and frequent vowel substitutions were invariably
transcriptions of the nonstandard Malay spoken at home. The same
spelling test, together with a battery of control tasks, was then administered
to nondiglossic Indonesian children to confirm that vowel
errors were the outcome of routine aural exposure to nonstandard
phonology. The results extend previous work showing the influence of
dialects on English spelling development (Treiman, Goswami, Tincoff,
& Leevers, 1997) to the effects of diglossia. Even when phoneme–
grapheme correspondences are transparent, kindergarten children
still use their own speech representations in working memory to support
early writing skills, rather than the adult-dictated standard phonology.
(2082)
Dissociating Among Concrete, Abstract, and Emotion Words in
Immediate Serial Recall and Recognition. CHI-SHING TSE &
JEANETTE ALTARRIBA, SUNY, Albany (sponsored by Deborah L.
Best)—Emotion words (e.g., happy) are often treated as a type of abstract
word in various studies of memory. The present study attempted
to dissociate certain mnemonic characteristics among concrete, abstract,
and emotion words in an immediate serial recall (ISR) task and
a recognition test. Participants completed six study–test ISR trials.
Each of their seven-item study lists consisted of concrete, abstract, or
emotion words. They then participated in an unexpected yes/no recognition
test. The descending order of performance in the ISR tasks was
emotion = concrete > abstract (scored using a strict criterion) and in
the recognition tests was concrete > abstract > emotion (measured in
d′). Thus, we replicated the concreteness effect with a purer set of abstract
words and revealed a dissociation across abstract and emotion
words in both memory tasks. Implications for the role of interitem association
in ISR and recognition tests will be discussed.
(2083)
Do Older Adults Show Positive Biases When Processing Emotional
Words? GABRIELLE OSBORNE, Claremont Graduate University,
& DEBORAH M. BURKE, Pomona College—Older, but not
young, adults direct attention away from faces with negative expressions
and remember more faces with positive than with negative expressions
(e.g., Mather & Carstensen, 2003). We investigated whether
this pattern of processing emotion extended to emotional words in a
Stroop task. Twenty-four positive, 24 negative, and 24 neutral basewords
were presented in four different colors. Both young and older
adults produced longer color naming times for negative basewords
than for neutral and positive basewords, suggesting greater attention
to negative basewords. In a surprise recall test, both young and older
adults recalled more negative basewords than neutral or positive basewords,
and young, but not older, adults recalled more positive than
neutral basewords. In contrast to previous studies with emotional images,
older adults showed no attentional or memory bias toward positive,
rather than negative, emotional words.