Francis S. Bellezza

Words high and low in pleasantness as rated by male and female college students

No catalog of words currently available contains normative data for large numbers of words rated low or high in affect. A preliminary sample of 1,545 words was rated for pleasantness by 26–33 college students. Of these words, 274 were selected on the basis of their high or low ratings. These words, along with 125 others (Rubin, 1981), were then rated by additional groups of 62–76 college students on 5-point rating scales for the dimensions of pleasantness, imagery, and familiarity. The resulting mean ratings were highly correlated with the ratings obtained by other investigators using some of the same words. However, systematic differences in the ratings were found for male versus female raters. Females tended to use more extreme ratings than did males when rating words on the pleasantness scale. Also, females tended to rate words higher on the imagery and familiarity scales. Whether these sex differences in ratings represent cognitive differences between the sexes or merely differences in response style is a question that can be determined only by further research.

The detection model of recognition using know and remember judgments

The signal detection model forknow andremember recognition judgments was tested in two experiments. In Experiment 1, two predictions of the model were tested: (1) that measures of memory sensitivity,A′, are equivalent in value when based on either the recognition (know or remember) criterion or on the remember criterion; and (2) that there is a positive correlation between recognition bias and the proportion of know judgments that are hits, but no correlation between recognition bias and proportion of remember hits (Donaldson, 1996). Both predictions were supported by the data. In Experiment 2, the context of test items was manipulated to make it more or less similar to learning context. The detection model requires that memory sensitivity be the same for both recognition and remember judgments, regardless of test context. Alternatively, if remember judgments reflect only the retrieval of episodic information from memory, the two measures of memory sensitivity should become more disparate in value as learning and test context are made more similar. Memory sensitivity was generally the same in value for recognition and remember criteria but different across context conditions, thus supporting the detection model. The nature of the memory continuum used in detection theory is also discussed.

Person stereotypes and memory for people.

Snyder and Uranowitz have proposed a memory-priming mechanism by which information about a person that is normally unavailable in episodic memory is made available by the activation of a person stereotype that subsumes that information. In our two experiments subjects read a biography of Betty K, who was later labeled as either a heterosexual or a lesbian before the subjects took a recognition memory test. A signal-detection model was used to assess the effects of labeling on response bias as well as on the amount of information available in memory. Neither experiment produced any improved recognition memory for biographic information due to activation of a sexual stereotype. Both experiments found a response bias (guessing), however, acting in the direction of the label the subject received. It is concluded that at this time no clear empirical support exists for the memory-priming mechanism proposed by Snyder and Uranowitz. In an important and influential article, Snyder and Uranowitz (1978) proposed a person-memory retrieval mechanism based on the operation of person stereotypes. According to their hypothesis previously presented information stored in memory but not available in a recognition task may become available after a person stereotype is activated. It is not necessary that this person stereotype play a role in encoding the information. So long as the information presented is relevant to the stereotype, the learner need not think of this relation at the time of presentation. This hypothesis thus goes against the encoding-specificity principle (Tulving & Thomson, 1973). Although Snyder and Uranowitz used person stereotypes as the activated structures to influence memory re

Long-term memory for speaker’s voice and source location

One hundred and twenty-eight subjects tried to recall 20 simple sentences that for some subjects were presented in two different voices or were presented from two loudspeakers on different sides of the room. In addition, some subjects were instructed to remember not only the sentences, but also their voice and location attributes. Intentional instructions for location resulted in poorer recall of the sentences, but intentional instructions for voice did not. The voice attribute seemed to be automatically coded under both intentional and incidental instructions for remembering the attribute, whereas the location attribute seemed to require cognitive processing in addition to that required for encoding the meaning of the sentence. A test for clustering by voice in recall was done to determine if the evidence for automatic ceding of voice was merely an artifact resulting from better recall because of organization. However, no clustering was found. The ideas that speaker’s voice and sentence meaning were processed in parallel by different hemispheres of the brain and that the connotation of the voice influenced the meaning of each sentence were offered as two possible explanations of the results.

Incidental retention of speaker's voice.

Geiselman and Bellezza (1976) concluded that any retention in memory of the sex of a speaker of verbal material is automatic. Two possible reasons for this were hypothesized: the voice-connotation hypothesis and the dual-hemisphere parallel-processing hypothesis. In Experiment 1, the to-be-remembered sentences contained either male or female agents. Incidental retention of sex of speaker did not occur. This result does not support the dual-hemisphere parallel-processing hypothesis, which indicates that retention of voice should be independent of sentence content. In Experiment 2, the sentences contained neutral agents and incidental retention of sex of speaker did occur. The results of Experiments 1 and 2 support the connotation hypothesis. The different results with regard to incidental retention of speakers’s voice found in Experiments 1 and 2 were replicated in Experiment 3 using a within-subjects design. Experimemt 4 was conducted to determine if a speaker’s voice does, in fact, influence the meaning of a neutral sentence. In agreement with the voice-connotation hypothesis, sentences spoken by a male were rated as having more “potent” connotations than sentences spoken by a female.

Save Angels Perhaps: A Critical Examination of Unconscious Thought Theory and the Deliberation-Without-Attention Effect

Based on Unconscious Thought Theory (UTT) and a series of experimental and correlational studies, Dijksterhuis and his colleagues conclude that when making complex choices/decisions, conscious thought—deliberation while attention is directed at the problem—leads to poorer choices/decisions than “unconscious thought”—deliberation in the absence of conscious attention directed at the problem. UTT comprises six principles said to apply to decision making, impression formation, attitude formation and change, problem solving, and creativity. Because the implications of UTT for psychological research and theory are considerable, the authors critically examined these six principles (and the studies used to support them) in light of the extant scholarship on unconscious processes, memory, attention, and social cognition. Our examination reveals that UTT is a theory of the unconscious that fails to take into account important work in cognitive psychology, particularly in the judgment and decision making area. Moreover, established literatures in social psychology that contradict fundamental tenets of UTT and its empirical basis are ignored. The authors conclude that theoretical and experimental deficiencies undermine the claims of the superiority of unconscious thinking as portrayed by UTT.

Detection of Cheating on Multiple-Choice Tests by Using Error-Similarity Analysis

Cheating on multiple-choice examinations is a serious problem not easily overcome by using more test forms, more proctors, or larger testing rooms. A statistical procedure compares answers for pairs of students using those items on which both made errors. If the number of identical wrong answers is sufficiently greater than the number expected by chance and if the students were seated close together, then cheating is likely. Using this analysis with 90 examinations has suggested ways to discourage cheating and demonstrated some limitations of the procedure.

Reliability of retrieval from semantic memory: Common categories

Permanent verbal knowledge about objects in the physical world and about the meaning of words resides in semantic memory. Little research has been done to determine how reliably such information can be retrieved from semantic memory. In the present experiment, an estimate of reliability was made. The method used was to ask subjects to perform the same retrieval task in each of two sessions separated by 1 week. In each session, the subjects were asked to generate instances of common categories. The mean correlation between the contents of the two recalls was found to be.69. As expected, consistency in the content of recall from session to session was greater within subjects than between subjects, for which the correlation value was.44. The results seem to indicate that retrieval of information from semantic memory is a probabilistic process that occurs with only a modest amount of reliability.

Remembering script-based text

Abstract The role of scripts in the remembering of text was investigated focusing on the problem of how new information relevant to a particular script is organized and stored in memory. The results of three experiments are presented. It was shown that the typically ratings of script events were inadequate in predicting what information would be recalled. Both the unusualness of the information presented in a script-based passage and the level in the script hierarchy to which it belonged seemed to be important factors determining how the information was processed. As a possible explanation of the data, it was suggested that scripts be treated as cognitive cuing structures. In this approach instantiated script events can act as recall cues for the usual information presented in the text. Also, the notion of the band width of a cuing structure indicates the range of information upon which the structure can operate. In addition, it was found that scripts do not cluster information during recall as do taxonomic categories. Finally, data was presented indicating that scripts act not only as scaffolds for new information but may also affect the allocation of attentional resources during text comprehension.

The relation between visual imagery mediators and recall

Three hypotheses are discussed as explanations for the result that pairs of concrete nouns are more easily remembered than are pairs of abstract nouns: the imagery hypothesis, the familiarity hypothesis, and the concreteness hypothesis. Two experiments are reported in which the degree of visual imagery associated with the components of paired associate items was not indicative of the degree of visual imagery experienced during their learning or with the accuracy with which they were recalled. It was found that pairs of related abstract nouns were rated higher in imagery and familiarity than were pairs of unrelated concrete nouns, but recall of the higher imagery pairs was poorer. The concreteness hypothesis is discussed as the best explanation for the results. The concreteness hypothesis proposes that people learn to associate the labels of concrete objects by using their real-world knowledge of the potential relations between categories of objects. Dual coding theory and schema theory are also discussed as explanations for mediation learning, and the issue of visual imagery as an epiphenomenon is addressed.