William E. Gumenik

Effects of reducing the readability of the words in the Stroop Color-Word Test

Decreasing the readability of words, by partially obscuring them with a mask, increased the susceptibility of reading and decreased the susceptibility of color naming to interference in the Stroop color-word conflict situation. The conflict interfered with both reading and color-naming performance, with and without the mask, but the degree of interference was inversely related to the relative strength of the response.

The advantage of specific terms over general terms as cues for sentence recall: Instantiation or retrieval?

Anderson et al. (1976) found that specific terms, which had not appeared in but fit the context of sentences, were better sentence recall cues than the general terms appearing in the sentences. They interpreted this as indicating that general terms in context were encoded on the basis of appropriate instantiations. Experiment 1, using part of the same material, demonstrated that the advantage of specific cues increased when the general terms were omitted from the to-be-remembered materials, and that other specific terms were also effective cues for the same material. Experiment 2 demonstrated that terms that could not be possible intantiations of any words in the sentences, but that shared common meaning with the sentences as a whole, were as effective retrieval cues as the specific terms. The advantage of specific cues was interpreted as attributable to feature overlap between the specific terms and the to-be-remembered materials rather than to instantiation of the general terms.

Effects of the volunteer subject, choice, and fear arousal on attitude change

Abstract Subjects who had volunteered (volunteers) and subjects who had refused to volunteer (nonvolunteers) for a previous experiment which was not run were recruited for the present experiment as part of a class requirement. Upon reporting, both volunteers and nonvolunteers were either given or not given choice as to participation in, and selection of experiments. The volunteering and choice variables were combined factorially with high or low fear arousal. Volunteers and subjects allowed choice exhibited greater acceptance of the recommendations of the appeal than did nonvolunteers and subjects allowed no choice, respectively. Nonvolunteers allowed choice and volunteers exhibited greater acceptance of the recommendations of the high fear appeal than of the low fear appeal. The reverse occurred for nonvolunteers allowed no choice. Results were interpreted in terms of reactance theory.

A perceptual isolation effect in short-term memory

Perceptually isolating a CCC by enclosing it in a rectangle improved STM for that item. No residual effects of this isolation were found on following nonisolated items. The possibility of accounting for improved STM of items involving conceptual class change in terms of enhancement through isolation, instead of reduction of semantic interference effects of previous items, was discussed.

Verbal repetition and changes in meaning of synonyms: Satiation or set?

The effects of four different verbal repetition conditions on word association to test words were compared. The repeated word was either the test word itself, a high-related synonym of the test word, a low-related synonym, or a control word different in meaning from the test word. Repetition of low-related synonyms led to the least common responses to the test words. In addition, the percentage of associations (elicited by the test words) which also appear as associates to the high-related synonym in word association norms, was greater after repetition of high-related than low-related synonyms. The reverse was found for the percentage of asscciations (elicited by the test words) which also appear as associates to the low-related synonym. The results suggest that changes in meaning of words following continued repetition of their synonyms are an effect of set and not due to generalization of verbal satiation.

The role of verbal codes in the serial recall of pictures

Serial recall for familiar pictures having either monosyllabic or polysyllabic labels was tested in three experiments. Experiments 1 and 3 tested the effects of picture label length and rate of presentation (slow, medium, and fast) on serial recall. In Experiment 1, subjects had practice in assigning labels to the pictures prior to the test for serial recall, whereas in Experiment 3 they did not. Both experiments showed that serial recall varies inversely with label length and rate of presentation. Experiment 2 compared the effects of prior labeling practice with no prior labeling practice on the serial recall of the two types of pictures. Prior labeling practice had no effects on serial recall and serial recall of the pictures again varied inversely with the length of the picture labels. The results of all three experiments were incorporated as support for the hypotheses that verbal codes mediate the serial recall of pictures.

Imagery and association in incidental learning

Free recall of concrete and abstract words following imaginal, associative, or anagram incidental learning tasks was tested. Recall was significantly greater for concrete than abstract words, and recall for the imaginal task exceeded that of the associative task, which exceeded that of the anagram task. The interaction between kind of word and incidental task was not significant.

Connotative meaning of sentence subjects as a function of verb and object meaning under different grammatical transformations

Forty-three S s rated CVC sentence subjects, on good-bad and active-passive semantic differential scales. The sentences had good or bad predicate verbs and good or bad object nouns and were presented as active, passive, question, or negative sentences. It was found that for active and passive sentences, the subject CVCs were rated as good when the verb and object had the same evaluative meaning and as bad when they had opposite evaluative meanings. Similar results obtained with the question transformation, though to a lesser degree. The negative transformation reversed the evaluation of the subject CVCs for all verb-object combinations except for bad verbs with bad objects. Subject CVCs were rated as less active in the negative transformation than in the other three transformations, which did not significantly differ among each other. The results were discussed in terms of congruity theory and transformational theory.

Decrease in polarity of semantic differential ratings as a function of previous trials with similar materials

Eighty-eight Ss rated 10 good words and 88 Ss, 10 bad words on a 1-point good-bad semantic differential scale. In both cases, the polarity of the ratings decreased as a direct linear function of the number of words previously rated.

CONNOTATIVE MEANING OF ADJECTIVE-NOUN COMBINATIONS; TEST OF THE CONGRUITY PRINCIPLE AND BELIEF CONGRUENCE MODELS OF COGNITIVE INTERACTION

Predictions of the connotative meaning of 10 adjective-noun combinations by the congruity principle and belief congruence were compared on the evaluative, potency, and activity semantic differential dimensions. Greater accuracy of predictions was found for belief congruence than for the congruity principle on all three dimensions. Errors of prediction, for either model, which did occur were generally attributable to underestimation of the effect of the adjective component on the meaning of the combination. These errors also tended to arise from underestimation of the effects of words rated toward the bad, strong, and passive ends of the evaluative, potency and activity semantic differential dimensions, respectively.