Roger Chaffin

Only Connections: A Critique of Semantic Networks

This article examines theories that assume that semantic networks account for the mental representation of meaning. It assesses their similarities and divergencies, and argues that as a class of theories they remain too powerful to be refuted by empirical evidence. The theories are also confronted by a number of problematical semantic phenomena that arise because networks deal with the connections between concepts rather than with their connections to the world. The solution to these problems could be embodied in a new network system, but such a system would differ in both structure and function from current network theories.

Practicing Perfection: Piano Performance as Expert Memory

A concert pianist recorded her practice as she learned the third movement, Presto, of J.S. Bachs Italian Concerto. She also described the formal structure of the piece and reported her decisions about basic features (e.g., fingering), interpretive features (e.g., phrasing), and cues to attend to during performance (performance cues). These descriptions were used to identify which locations, features, and cues she practiced most, which caused hesitations when she first played from memory, and which affected her recall 2 years later. Effects of the formal structure and performance cues on all three activities indicated that the pianist used the formal structure as a retrieval scheme and performance cues as retrieval cues. Like expert memorists in other domains, she engaged in extended retrieval practice, going to great lengths to ensure that retrieval was as rapid and automatic from conceptual (declarative) memory as from motor and auditory memory.

The similarity and diversity of semantic relations

There is a rich variety of semantic relations in natural languages. Subjects’ perceptions of similarities among relations were studied for a wider variety of relations than had been used in previous studies. Forty subjects sorted 31 cards bearing five example pairs of each of 31 semantic relations. Subjects were able both to distinguish the relations and to perceive their similarities. A hierarchical clustering analysis of the sorting data indicated that the subjects perceived five families of semantic relations (contrasts, class inclusion, similars, case relations, and part-wholes). The five families were distinguished in terms of three properties of semantic relations: contrasting/noncontrasting, logical/pragmatic, and inclusion/noninclusion. Within each family, relations also were sorted in ways consistent with their defining properties. Relations were therefore viewed not as unanalyzable primitives, but in terms of the relational properties that distinguished them.

Cognitive and psychometric analysis of analogical problem solving

The major objective of the investigation presented in this book is to assess the validity of analogies, a component of the GRE General Test, from a perspective other than the prediction of grade-point averages. The text examines a very practical problem in test construction: the apparent inability of item writers to regularly and predictably construct verbal items in general, and analogy items in particular, that are both difficult and sufficiently discriminating. The authors demonstrate that the incorporation of results from the cognitive laboratory into the test development process is a natural step and should be attempted.

Rocking to the beat: effects of music and partner's movements on spontaneous interpersonal coordination.

People move to music and coordinate their movements with others spontaneously. Does music enhance spontaneous coordination? We compared the influence of visual information (seeing or not seeing another person) and auditory information (hearing movement or music or hearing no sound) on spontaneous coordination. Pairs of participants were seated side by side in rocking chairs, told a cover story, and asked to rock at a comfortable rate. Both seeing and hearing the other person rock elicited spontaneous coordination, and effects of hearing amplified those of seeing. Coupling with the music was weaker than with the partner, and the music competed with the partners influence, reducing coordination. Music did, however, function as a kind of social glue: participants who synchronized more with the music felt more connected.

A Comparison of Practice and Self-Report as Sources of Information About the Goals of Expert Practice

A concert pianist recorded her practice as she learned the Italian Concerto (Presto) by J. S. Bach for performance, commenting on what she was doing as she practised. After the performance the pianist reported decisions made during practice on three basic dimensions (fingering, technical difficulties, familiar patterns of notes), four interpretative dimensions (phrasing, dynamics, tempo, pedal), and three performance dimensions representing features of the music attended to during performance (basic, interpretative, expressive). Number of features per bar served as predictor variables in regression analyses in which the predicted variables were number of starts, stops, and repetitions. Practice was divided into three separate learning periods. Practice was affected by basic dimensions in the first two periods and by interpretative dimensions in the last two periods, while performance dimensions affected practice throughout. The frequency of comments made while practising showed similar patterns, providing converging evidence for changes in the pianists goals across the learning process. Practice and self-reports did not, however, entirely agree. Self-reports failed to mention practice of dynamics and indicated that selection of performance features occurred late in the learning process whereas practice data showed that both dynamics and performance features were practised right from the start. Practice sometimes provides information not available in self-reports.

Shared performance cues in singing and conducting: a content analysis of talk during practice

How do musicians performing together coordinate their actions to achieve a unified performance? We observed a singer (the first author) and pianist/conductor (the third author) as they prepared for two performances of Ricercar 1 from Stravinskys Cantata, one for voice and piano and one for voice and ensemble. This article reports a content analysis of the musicians’ verbal commentaries made in two individual practice sessions and their discussions during two joint rehearsals at the beginning and end of the rehearsal period. In their individual sessions, the musicians began identifying features of the music to use as performance cues that would serve as landmarks to guide their performances. In their joint sessions, some of these features were turned into shared performance cues that could be used to coordinate their actions. The musicians’ comments show how they resolved differences in their conceptualizations of the compositional structure of the piece and how they coordinated their music-making through the use of shared performance cues.

An empirical taxonomy of part-whole relations: Effects of part-whole relation type on relation identification

Abstract A taxonomy of part-whole (meronym) relations was developed (Experiment 1). Subjects sorted examples of relations and named each relation with a part-term, e.g. component, member, portion The resulting empirical taxonomy distinguished three major types of meronymy: part-whole (cup-handle), stuff (cup-china), and phase (growing up-adolescence). The part-whole relations were further subdivided into eight types: integral object-component (car-wheel), event-feature (circus-trapeze act), topological part-area (room-corner), collection-member (forest-tree), area-place (desert-oasis), time-occasion (February-Valentines Day), measure-unit (mile-yard) and mass-portion (pie-slice). Relations adjacent in the taxonomy tended to be named with the same part-term. In Experiment 2 subjects made yes/no decisions about word pairs in answer to the question, “Is A part of B?” Types of meronym pairs were presented in blocks Responses were slower at the start of a new block. This result indicated that the type of mero...

Preparing for memorized cello performance: The role of performance cues

An experienced cello soloist recorded her practice as she learned and memorized the Prelude from J.S. Bach’s Suite No. 6 for solo cello and gave 10 public performances over a period of more than three years. She described the musical structure, decisions about basic technique (e.g., bowing), interpretation (e.g., dynamics), and five kinds of performance cues she attended to during performance (expressive, interpretive, intonation, and basic technique separately for left and right hand). The 38 hours of practice provide the most comprehensive empirical account to date of preparation of a new piece of music for performance. The cellist repeatedly took the piece apart section-by-section and then re-integrated the sections into practice performances in each of five stages: exploration, smoothing out, listening, reworking and preparation for performance. The location of starts, stops and repetitions identified the changing focus of practice in each stage. The cellist organized her practice around the musical structure, developed interpretation before working on technique and practised memory retrieval at each stage. When she wrote out the score from memory, better recall of expressive and structural performance cues showed that they served as landmarks in a hierarchical memory retrieval organization.

Associations to unfamiliar words: Learning the meanings of new words

Five experiments were designed to examine whether subjects attend to different aspects of meaning for familiar and unfamiliar words. In Experiments 1–3, subjects gave free associations to high- and low-familiarity words from the same taxonomic category (e.g.,seltzer:sarsparilla; Experiment 1), from the same noun synonym set (e.g.,baby:neonate; Experiment 2), and from the same verb synonym set (e.g.,abscond:escape; Experiment 3). In Experiments 4 and 5, subjects first read a context sentence containing the stimulus word and then gave associations; stimuli were novel words or either high- or low-familiarity nouns. Low-familiarity and novel words elicited more nonsemantically based responses (e.g.,engram:graham) than did high-familiarity words. Of the responses semantically related to the stimulus, low-familiarity and novel words elicited a higher proportion of definitional responses [category (e.g.,sarsparilla:soda), synonym (e.g.,neonate:newborn), and coordinate (e.g.,armoire:dresser)], whereas high-familiarity stimuli elicited a higher proportion of event-based responses [thematic (e.g.,seltzer:glass) and noun:verb (e.g.,baby:cry)]. Unfamiliar words appear to elicit a shift of attentional resources from relations useful in understanding the message to relations useful in understanding the meaning of the unfamiliar word.