Ralph E. Geiselman

Primary versus secondary rehearsal in imagined voices: differential effects on recognition.

Abstract Subjects were asked to rehearse word trigrams in a particular prefamiliarized male or female voice for 5, 10, or 15 sec. In Experiment 1, recognition performance improved with the amount of primary (maintenance) rehearsal only if the speakers voice at test matched the rehearsal voice, but recognition performance improved with the amount of secondary (elaborative) rehearsal regardless of the sex of the speaker at test. With a visual testing procedure in Experiments 2 and 3, the amount of primary rehearsal given to a trigram had no effect on recognition performance unless the original voice context was reinstated mentally at test. These results suggest that: (a) Secondary rehearsal builds up semantic associations, whereas primary rehearsal serves to associate items with their physical characteristics at presentation. (b) There is an important memory search component in recognition as well as in recall. (c) Imaginal operations can yield a product in memory that is similar to that left by perceptual operations.

Effects of imagining speakers' voices on the retention of words presented visually.

Subjects were introduced to one male and one female voice by a tape recording with instructions to attend to characteristics of the voices. Then 18 pairs of words were presented visually on slides. The subject’s task during each 10-sec interslide interval was to repeat silently the pair of words over and over again in the male voice, in the female voice, or in the subject’s own voice. A surprise recognition test for the words indicated that the words were more likely to be recognized if they were spoken in the same Voice at test as was used to repeat them during presentation. Recognition of the words repeated in the subject’s own voice was not affected by the sex of the speaker at test. In Experiment 2, different speakers were used at test than those used by the subjects to repeat the words. The interaction between the sex of voice used at encoding and at test was again significant, but recognition was generally lower than in Experiment 1. It was concluded that it is not necessary to assume that subjects have literal copies of spoken words in memory but speaker’s voice does form an integral part of the verbal memory code and its influence is specific to a given speaker as well as to a given class of speakers (male or female).

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.

Perceptual Discriminability as a Basis for Selecting Graphic Symbols

The purpose of this research was to develop a performance-based criterion for selecting among alternative symbols to be used in graphic displays. The specific criterion developed was an index of perceptual discriminability. Through regression analyses of an intersymbol similarity-rating matrix, it was concluded that symbols are judged more or less similar on the basis of the number of shared versus unique configural attributes (an X, a triangle, etc.), as opposed to primitive attributes (number of lines, arcs, etc.). An easy-to-use discriminability-index formula was derived from the regression analysis involving the configural attributes, and this formula was used to predict the results of an experiment involving a search for specific symbols embedded in an array. Indices obtained from a formula such as the one developed here could be used as part of the basis for choosing among alternative candidate symbols for inclusion in an existing symbol domain.

Summarizing Military Information: An Application of Schema Theory

This study was conducted to support the development of guidelines for summarizing tactical intelligence data. Sixteen staff officers were asked to read a description of a tactical scenario and to examine 30 enemy situation data (ESD) messages describing the beginning of an enemy border crossing and attack. Each officer summarized the intelligence in preparation for a briefing, and these summaries were evaluated by five knowledgeable military analysts. Collectively, the evaluators favored summaries presented in conversational style, with hard facts and an interpretation of what the intelligence implied. A more specific two-dimensional outline for summarizing was derived by applying recently refined principles of schema theory to the contents of the summaries judged “good” by the evaluators. It was suggested that these prescriptive norms provide the basis for the development of guidelines for staff officers to enable them to produce more useful and effective intelligence-message summaries.

Inhibition of the automatic storage of speaker’s voice

The voice-connotation hypothesis of Geiselman and Bellezza (1976, 1977) states that a speaker’s voice is sometimes remembered without intent because the connotation of the voice automatically influences the meaning of what is said. Results from the present experiment suggest that subjects have the option to prevent the speaker’s-voice attribute from being stored with the contents of what is said when such processing would interfere with other cognitive operations.

A Human Performance Evaluation of Graphic Symbol-Design Features

16 subjects learned each of two tactical display symbol sets (conventional symbols and iconic symbols) in turn and were then shown a series of graphic displays containing various symbol configurations. For each display, the subject was asked questions corresponding to different behavioral processes relating to symbol use (identification, search, comparison, pattern recognition). The results indicated that: (a) conventional symbols yielded faster pattern-recognition performance than iconic symbols, and iconic symbols did not yield faster identification than conventional symbols, and (b) the portrayal of additional feature information (through the use of perimeter density or vector projection coding) slowed processing of the core symbol information in four tasks, but certain symbol-design features created less perceptual interference and had greater correspondence with the portrayal of specific tactical concepts than others. The results were discussed in terms of the complexities involved in the selection of symbol design features for use in graphic tactical displays.

Effects of sentence ordering on thematic decisions to remember and forget prose

Sentences from each of two different passages were intermixed and presented to subjects auditorily. During each intersentence interval, the subjects made a to-be-remembered (TBR) vs to-be-forgotten (TBF) decision on the basis of theme membership and then selectively rehearsed the TBR sentences for later recall. Presenting either the TBR or TBF sentences in a logical order facilitated sentence recall of both types but had little effect on recognition. The within-subject relationships between decision time and recall were consistent with the between-subject effects of presenting either passage in a logical order on the recall of the remaining passage. Shorter decision times were associated with greater TBR recall but longer decision times were associated with greater TBF recall. It was concluded that processing during the decision phase was different from the maintenance rehearsal found during the TBR-TBF cue-delay interval in directed-forgetting tasks. Ordering of the TBF message did not affect processing if its general theme was not known.

Eye movements under different rehearsal strategies.

Eye movements were recorded while subjects studied lists of simultaneously presented words. The 24 subjects in the storage group studied for immediate recall, and the 24 subjects in the coding group studied primarily for a later, final recall. Those subjects in the coding group had longer eye fixations and fewer regressions than did subjects in the storage group. In addition, the subjects in the coding group recalled fewer words in immediate recall and more words in final recall than did the subjects in the storage group. These results were interpreted as supporting the elaboration hypothesis of coding in rehearsal, which states that coding into long-term store consists of rehearsing both old and new information in short-term store. The results did not support the concentration hypothesis, which states that coding into long-term store consists of intensively rehearsing a smaller number of items than rehearsed under a storage strategy. The eye movement data also indicate that subjects read about twice as many words as they overtly rehearse.

Personalized versus Fixed Formats for Computer-Displayed Intelligence Messages

An experiment was performed to evaluate the usefulness of an option for users of an automated information system to construct their own preferred formats for receiving intelligence messages. It was hypothesized that such an option would enhance the acquisition and comprehension of intelligence data from each message. The results indicated that users who personalized the format arranged the message elements in an interpretable manner, and they took fewer notes during the subsequent paced presentation of messages in their individualized formats than users who received the messages in a reasonable, pre-experimentally fixed format. In addition, the users with personalized formats learned more from viewing the messages, independently of notes, than did the users with the fixed format. These data suggest that the personalization of the message format was useful and led to improved subjective organization of the intelligence data.