Ronald A. Hoppe

Racial Identification, Preference, and Self-Concept Canadian Indian and White Schoolchildren

A two-phase study was undertaken to test white and Canadian Indian school-children for racial identification and self-concept. The objective was to establish attitudinal patterns and correlations using children in grades two, four and six at two schools (one integrated and one not). The first phase, using a picture test to measure preference, rejection, and identification found significant age, race, school, and sex differences in both preference and rejection. The second phase, using a short measure of self-concept, found sex, age, and school differences. Significant correlations between the two measures were found at the young age levels. Overall, with a few exceptions, the significant age, sex, race, and school differences were consistent with the conclusions drawn from previous research.

The combined effect of audience and anxiety on paired-associates learning

Zajonc’s (1965) hypothesis was combined with a postulate of general drive theory to predict that the effects of anxiety and an audience would summate to increase the level of drive. Eighty Ss were used in a 2 by 2 by 2 design that had audience, anxiety, and list as factors. For one list competitive responses were high, and for the other they were low. Analysis of variance results and the order of the mean trials to criterion were consistent with the prediction based on the summation hypothesis, e.g., of the eight conditions, the presence of an audience produced the best learning of the noncompetitive list and the poorest learning of the competitive list by high-anxious Ss. However, the lack of significant differences in the learning of the noncompetitive list did not support the summation hypothesis for this task.

The Effect of Regional Similarity-Dissimilarity on Communicator Credibility

Using English Canadian university students as subjects, an experiment was conducted to examine the effects of regional identification in responses to written communications relevant and irrelevant to regional norms. For a communication advocating separatism for Quebec, an English Canadian communicator was judged to be both more trustworthy and more competent than a French Canadian communicator. For the other communication, advocating obligatory financial contributions by alumni to their Alma Mater, no communicator differences were found. Inconsistencies between these findings and previous findings led to the view that the emotional tone of the communications was an important operating variable.

Bias, individual differences, and ‘shared knowledge’ in ambiguity

Abstract This paper deals with two types of shared knowledge in the light of psycholinguistic investigations in ambiguity detection and ambiguity resolution. The first type of shared knowledge is the generally shared knowledge of the world type, an array of facts and related inferences that allow reader/hearers to detect alternate interpretations for sentences with multiple readings. This type of shared knowledge allows for a hierarchically ordered set of choices for likely interpretations of ambiguous sentences in isolation; in context, this shared knowledge provides for the interaction of bias with context to make for a likely interpretation. Secondly, shared knowledge may also be of a second type - that metalinguistic knowledge or ability which is shared and demonstrated by all members of the linguistic community to some degree, but which elicits individual differences. The role of individual differences in ambiguity detection and resolution in English and Japanese is discussed as an example of the range of individual differences in ‘shared knowledge’ of the metalinguistic type.

Differential detection of ambiguity in Japanese

The ease of detecting ambiguity in Japanese by Japanese subjects was examined. A total of 20 Japanese adults detected the ambiguity in 60 Japanese sentences. The results were in marked contrast to the earlier results of MacKay and Bever (1967), who found lexical ambiguity the easiest, surface ambiguity the next easiest, and underlying ambiguity the most difficult to detect. Two types of Japanese lexical ambiguity were used in the present study, and the results showed that the surface ambiguity was the easiest to detect and one form of lexical ambiguity was the most difficult to detect. A second form of lexical ambiguity was the second easiest to detect and underlying ambiguity was more difficult to detect than this second form but easier than the first form of lexical ambiguity. Implications of these results are discussed.

Artificial Humor and Uncertainty

It was suggested that incongruity varies curvilinearly with uncertainty and humor varies directly with incongruity. Therefore, it was predicted that by varying the uncertainty of strings of words in one study and the grammaticality of sentences in another study, a curvilinear relationship between uncertainty-grammaticality and judged humor would occur. The results of the two studies confirmed the prediction.

On psycholinguistic experiments in ambiguity

Abstract This paper reviews theoretical and methodological considerations in psycholinguistic experiments on ambiguity over the last decade. The treatment of ambiguity is assessed as to whether it should be considered analogous in any significant way to sentence production and processing. The results of this experimental paradigm are also considered to see to what degree they may be artifacts of examining isolated sentences in artificial tasks. The paper suggests that the more interesting questions to be pursued relate to how ambiguity is resolved. Psycholinguistic tasks designed to date differ in their specific conclusions, but most are agreed that ambiguity is not a problematic source of difficulty for individuals. What is it then that makes it not a problem? If almost every sentence is potentially vague at some level, then the study of the resolution of ambiguity may be a useful tool in the comprehension of sentence processing in general.

Biasing thematic contexts for ambiguous sentences in a dichotic listening experiment

In an experiment derived from Lackner and Garrett (1972) 80 subjects were given a dichotic listening task where they were presented with ambiguous sentences to an attended ear and disambiguating sentences to the other, unattended, ear. Each of the sentences was preceded by a thematic context that was biased for one meaning of the ambiguous sentence. In one-half of the instances the contexts biased a meaning consistent with that of the disambiguating sentence, and in the remaining one-half they biased the meaning of the ambiguous sentence in a way that was inconsistent with the meaning of the ambiguous sentence. The meanings of the ambiguous sentences the subjects perceived tended to be those that were consistent with the biasing context, even when that meaning was inconsistent with the meaning of the disambiguating sentence. Therefore, when ambiguous sentences are preceded by a thematic context, a single-reading explanation of the processing is more appropriate than a multiple-reading explanation.