Carol Bergfeld Mills

Reading text from computer screens

This paper reviews empirical studies concerning the readability of text from computer screens. The review focuses on the form and physical attributes of complex, realistic displays of text material. Most studies comparing paper and computer screen readability show that screens are less readable than paper. There are many factors that could affect the readability of computer screens. The factors explored in this review are the features of characters, the formatting of the screen, the contrast and color of the characters and background, and dynamic aspects of the screen. Numerous areas for future research are pinpointed.

Digit synaesthesia : A case study using a stroop-type test

Two experiments tested the effect that synaesthesia has on the processing of digits for a single participant, a 22-year-old female college student, who experiences colour mental images (photisms) for digits, music, sounds, etc. The experiments used Stroop-type materials that were digits in the colours of her photisms for two tasks: colour naming and digit naming. For colour naming, the hypothesis was that when the colour of the actual print of the digit mismatched the colour of the participants digit photism, colour naming times would be slower than when the print and digit photism matched, or when the digit was in black print. For digit naming, it was predicted that naming the digit corresponding to a coloured circle (that corresponded to one of her photisms for digits) would take longer than naming digits printed in any colour. ANOVAs and Tukey tests supported these hypotheses (P< .01). Synaesthesia seems to occur automatically, involuntarily, and unidirectionally for this participant. Details of her s...

The Color of Two Alphabets for a Multilingual Synesthete

Interviews with a multilingual synesthete (MLS), who experiences colored letters for Roman and Cyrillic alphabets and for digits, revealed stable synesthetic experiences over 2½ – 5 years. Colors of Cyrillic letters were based on Roman letters. Four Stroop tests involving both types of letters showed that MLS was able to name print color faster if the colors matched her synesthetic colors, showing that synesthesia is automatic. Letter-naming times for blocks of color were slower than those of actual letters, supporting unidirectionality of synesthesia. Stroop tests with Roman, but not Cyrillic, letters showed MLS acquired new temporary letter–color pairings and her color-naming times for these were not different from those for her original synesthetic colors.

Effect of a synesthete's photisms on name recall.

A multilingual, colored-letter synesthete professor (MLS), 9 nonsynesthete multilingual professors and 4 nonsynesthete art professors learned 30 names of individuals (first and last name pairs) in three trials. They recalled the names after each trial and six months later, as well as performed cued recall trials initially and after six months. As hypothesized, MLS recalled significantly more names than control groups on all free recall tests (except after the first trial) and on cued recall tests. In addition, MLS gave qualitatively different reasons for remembering names than any individual control participant. MLS gave mostly color reasons for remembering the names, whereas nonsynesthetes gave reasons based on familiarity or language or art knowledge. Results on standardized memory tests showed that MLS had average performance on non-language visual memory tests (the Benton Visual Retention Test-Revised--BURT-R, and the Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure Test--CFT), but had superior memory performance on a verbal test consisting of lists of nouns (Rey Auditory-Verbal Learning Test--RAVLT). MLSs synesthesia seems to aid memory for visually or auditorily presented language stimuli (names and nouns), but not for non-language visual stimuli (simple and complex figures).

Effects of the match between listener expectancies and coarticulatory cues on the perception of speech.

Several experiments have attempted to establish the order in which various linguistic units (e.g., syllables and words) are processed. This article presents an alternative interpretation (the target-stimulus mismatch interpretation) for those earlier results. This interpretation states that the closer the match between the listeners expectancies about how the stimulus will sound (the target) and the sound of the acoustic stimulus the listener actually hears (the stimulus), the faster the listener will recognize the stimulus. This interpretation was tested in an experiment in which the match between the target and the stimulus was varied by manipulating the acoustic (coarticulatory) properties of the stimulus while the size of the target (syllable) was held constant. The results suggest that earlier findings explained in terms of linguistic units or levels can be explained more readily by the target-stimulus mismatch interpretation, and these results provide evidence that coarticulatory information is utilized by the perceiver of speech.

Reading Procedural Texts: Effects of Purpose for Reading and Predictions of Reading Comprehension Models.

This experiment tested the effect that purpose for reading or instructional set has on reading rates, recall, and task performance for procedural text. It also tested whether comprehension models proposed by Kintsch and van Dijk (1978) and Trabasso and Sperry (1985) are predictive of text processing for procedural text. Forty‐eight college students read text for one of two purposes: (a) to perform the task described by the text (Read‐to‐Do), or (b) to recall the text (Read‐to‐Recall). Participants read one of two procedural texts for two reading trials. The results showed that, as predicted, Read‐to‐Do participants performed the task better and Read‐to‐Recall participants recalled the text better. In addition, Read‐to‐Do participants recalled less of the information judged to be less important for performing the task than Read‐to‐Recall participants. Reading rate varied as a function of high and low importance of the information to task performance and varied more for the Read‐to‐Do participants than for ...

Perception of visual temporal patterns by deaf and hearing adults

The performance of deaf and hearing college students was compared in a same-different task involving visual temporal patterns. The results showed equivalent performance for the two groups. For both deaf and hearing subjects, hierarchically simple patterns were easier than more complex patterns, which is consistent with a model of temporal pattern perception proposed by Martin (1972).

Effects of context on reaction time to phonemes

The experiments test an alternative interpretation for previous findings indicating that RT is faster to syllables than to phonemes. This interpretation is based on the match (or mismatch) of the phonetic contexts of targets and stimuli. Subjects listened for targets /b/ or /s/, which were presented in a vowel context that subjects were instructed to ignore. For both targets, when the vowel contexts of the target and stimulus matched, that is, were the same vowel, RT was faster than when they mismatched, that is, were different vowels. RT to syllable targets was found to be equal to RT to phoneme, matched-context targets. The results supported the target—stimulus mismatch interpretation.

The effects of interaction with the device described by procedural text on recall, true/false, and task performance

In two experiments, subjects interacted to different extents with relevant devices while reading two complex multistep procedural texts and were then tested with task performance time, true/false, and recall measures. While reading, subjects performed the task (read and do), saw the experimenter perform the task (read and see experimenter do), imagined doing the task (read and imagine), looked at the device while reading (read and see), or only read (read only). Van Dijk and Kintsch’s (1983) text representation theory led to the prediction that exposure to the task device (in the read-and-do, read-and-see, and read-and-see-experimenter-do conditions) would lead to the development of a stronger situation model and therefore faster task performance, whereas the read-only and read-andsee conditions would lead to a better textbase, and therefore better performance on the true/false and recall tasks. Paivio’s (1991) dual coding theory led to the opposite prediction for recall. The results supported the text representation theory with task performance and recall. The read-and-see condition produced consistently good performance on the true/false measure. Amount of text study time contributed to recall performance. These findings support the notion that information available while reading leads to differential development of representations in memory, which, in turn, causes differences in performance on various measures.

Procedural text: Predictions of importance ratings and recall by models of reading comprehension

Two models of text comprehension, a referential model proposed by Kintsch and van Dijk (1978) and a causal model proposed by Trabasso and Sperry (1985), were tested in two experiments with eight procedural texts. In Experiment 1, 24 female college students rated the importance of propositions, idea units, and sentences to the overall procedure described in the texts on a 7‐point scale. In Experiment 2, 16 female college students recalled each of the eight texts immediately after reading it. Predictors derived from the models were used to predict the ratings and the recall in multiple regression analyses. The results showed that the amount of variance accounted for by the predictors varied from text to text. For the ratings, the causal model accounted for significantly more variance than the referential model. For the recall, the causal model generally accounted for more variance but the difference was not significant. For the referential model, level within the hierarchy accounted for the most variance an...