PSY 332: Essay Q Exam 2
Based on the dissertation studies by J.R. Anderson (1974) investigating the fan effect, identify and explain the 4 discrete steps of the spreading activation theory related to recognizing a sentence
1) Presentation of a sentence activates the representations of the concepts in the sentence. 2) Activation spreads from these source concepts to memory structures representing the associated structure. The total amount of activation that can spread from a source is limited. 3) As activation spreads down the pathways it converges on the memory structures, the memory structures are activated to various levels. These activations sum to produce overall activation level which is inversely related to the sum association of the source concept. 4) Sentence is recognized in the amount of time related to its activation level. The greater the activation levels, or number of association of source concepts, the more time required to recognize the sentence
Describe the methods and results of Corbett and Chang's (1983) experiment investigating how people identify the referent of ambiguous pronouns in sentences.
After reading a sentence with an ambiguous pronoun (Scott stole the basketball from Warren and he sank a jump shot) , participants received a probe word and had to decide whether that word appeared in the sentence. Time to recognize either Scott or Warren decreased after reading the sentence. They then read a control sentence where the referent of the pronoun was given (..Scott sank a jump shot). Only the recognition of the more recently mentioned word, Scott, was facilitated. This indicates that the processing involved in determine pronoun reference lasts beyond the reading of the pronoun and that the processing is not always as immediate
Describe the methods and results of Mason, Just, Keller and Carpenter (2003) fMRI study comparing people's comprehension between Unambiguous, Ambiguous Preferred and Ambiguous Unpreferred sentences.
Collected fMRI measures of activation in the Broca's area of participants as a function of time since sentence onset. They received unambiguous, ambiguous preferred, and ambiguous unpreferred types of sentences. The sentences lasted around 6-7 seconds Level of activation increases with difficulty processing and is greatest for the ambiguous unpreferred sentence. This confirms the critical role of Broca's area in processing sentences. Activation was the least for unambiguous sentences
According to the research by Warrington & Shallice (1984) and by Saffran & Schwatz (1994), damage to what region of the brain causes deficits in biological categories (ex. Animals, fruits and vegetables)? According to the research by Warrington & Shallice (1984) and by Saffran & Schwarz (1994), damage to what region of the brain causes deficits in artifacts (ex. Tools and furniture)?
Damage to temporal lobes show deficits in their knowledge about biological categories Damage to frontoparietal lesions show deficits in their knowledge about artifact categories
Describe and explain Barsalou's (1999) amodal symbol system
Elements within the system are inherently non perceptual. This means that the representation is abstracted away from verbal or visual modality even if the stimulus was a picture or sentence. We can predict that participants would be unable to remember the exact words they heard or picture they saw. Propositional representations are examples of amodal symbol systems.
Describe the methods and results of Bradshaw and Anderson (1982) experiment the contrasting effects of redundant versus irrelevant information.
Measured participants' ability to learn little known information about famous people under 3 conditions: single, unrelated, and related. In the single condition, participants remembered only one fact about Newton. In the unrelated condition, they remembered a target fact and two unrelated facts about Locke. In the related condition, they remembered a target fact and two related facts about Mozart. Asked to recall what they studied immediately after and after a week delay what they studied about the presented name. Immediately after 1 week, a higher percentage of participants recalled the target fact from the related condition compared to the single condition. A higher percentage of participants recalled the fact from the single condition compared to the target fact from the unrelated condition. This shows that recall was worse when there were facts to be learned about an item unless the additional facts are causally related
Identify and explain the methods and results from Kahneman and Tversky (1973) research study on base rate neglect
One group (engineer-high group) of participants told that in a set of 100 people, 70 are engineers and 30 are lawyers. The second group (engineer-low group) was told in the set of 100, 30 are engineers and 70 are lawyers. Both groups were asked to determine the probability of an engineer being chosen from the set of 10 based on two conditions: one with an informative description of the person being chosen and the other with an uninformative description. Without the conditions, engineer-high gave a probability of 0.7 while engineer-low gave 0.3 With an informative description, both groups gave a probability of 0.9 With an uninformative description, both groups have a probability of 0.5 People fail to take into account prior probabilities
Describe the methods and results of Reder (1982) study on plausible inference versus exact recall for information
Participants asked to study a passage and had to judge 3 sentences; the first was studied in the passage, the second was not studied but plausible. And the third was not studied and not plausible. In the exact conditions, they had to make exact recognition judgments, in which the correct response would be to accept the first two sentences and reject the last two. In the plausible condition, they were asked to judge if the sentence was plausible to the story, in which the correct response would be to accept the first two sentences and reject the last. The participants were tested immediately after studying, 20 min later or 2 days later. Response time increases with delay in exact condition while it decreases in plausible condition with delay. It started off slower in plausible rather than exact condition but after 2 days, response time decreased with plausible while increased with exact. With delay, participants' memory becomes weaker and immediately begins using inferences which are b
Describe the methods and results of J.D. Johnson, McDuff, Rugg and Norman (2009) study using brain imaging to investigate if the brain records experiences that we can no longer Remember.
Participants saw a list of words and for each word, asked either to imagine how an artist would draw the object denoted by the word or to imagine uses of the object. A trained pattern classifier, which can distinguish words from either task based on differences in brain activity, was applied when the words were shown again and asked to recall the type of task assigned to the word. Successful in recognizing both words that participants could recall studying and for words they could not remember. Accuracy was somewhat lower for words they could not remember Indicates that even though we may have no conscious memory of something, aspects of it is retained in our brain
Describe the methods and results of Allopenna, Magnuson & Tanenhaus (1998) eye fixation research study investigating the comprehension of spoken language.
Participants showed computer displays of objects and geometric shapes. They would be fixated on the center cross and would be instructed to move an object as their eye movements were being studied. For example, "pick up the beaker. Now put it below the diamond". In the beginning, before the word of the object was done being articulated, there was an increase fixation on the right word "beaker" and fixation on the wrong word with the same beginning sound "beetle". After 400 ms, when the word was finished being articulated, fixation on the wrong object decreased while the correct object shot up. This is evidence that participants are processing the meaning of the word even before it is completed
Describe the methods and results of Lewis and Anderson (1976) experiment investigating whether the fan effect could be obtained with material the participant knew before the experiment
Participants studied 0-4 fantasy facts about a public figure and proceeded to do a recognition test with 3 types of sentences: 1) fantasy statements, 2) true statements, and 3) false statements about the public figure. They had to respond to the first two types as true and last false. Recognition time for all statements increases with fan or number of fantasy facts studied. Participants responded faster to actual true statements than fantasy facts. The more fantasy facts studied, the longer they took to recognize a fact they already knew (true statements)
Describe the methodology and the results from Mandler and Johnson's study (1976) on memory for classroom scenes
Participants studied 8 pictures for 10 seconds then were presented with pictures consisting of the exact pictures they had studied (target picture), the picture with a token distracter and a picture with a type distracter. A token distracter differs from the target in an unimportant detail while a type distracter differs from the target in a relatively important detail. For the results, participants recognized the original pictures 77% of the time, rejected the token distractors 60% of the time, but rejected the type distractors 94% of the time. They were sensitive to significant changes rather than minor details.
Describe the methodology and the results from Eric Wanner's (1968) research study on sentence meaning versus sentence style
Participants were asked to listen to tape-recorded instructions and were either warned or not warned that they will be tested on their ability to recall certain sentences in the instructions. In both the warned and unwarned groups, they received four critical sentences. Sentences 1, 2 , 3 and 4 differ in style while sentences 1, 3, 2 and 4 differ in meaning. After presenting the critical sentence, they were asked to differentiate between the critical sentence they heard versus a sentence that either differs in style or meaning. For the results, the memory is better for the meaning of the sentence in the instructions than for the style of the sentence. Memory for meaning was unaffected with whether or not they were warned or not. Warning had a big effect on memory for style. Warned participants remembered their sentence 80% of the time while the unwarned participants remembered at about the level of chance
Identify and explain the methods and results from Cabeza, Rao, Wagner, Mayer and Schacter (2001) investigating the brain activation for regions of the brain for true items, new items and false memory items
Participants were given a list of words to study and then shown a series of words in which they must decide whether they had studied that word. The types of words presented after studying are true (words that were on the list), false (words that are strongly associated with word on the list), and new (words that were not on the list and unrelated) Found that 88% of the true words and 12% of the new words were accepted, but 80% of the false words were also accepted Hippocampus proper, true words and false words produce almost identical fMRI responses which were stronger than the new word responses. In parahippocampal gyrus, both false and new words produced weaker responses than new words. Suggested that parahippocampus retains original sensory experiences while hippocampus maintain more abstract representation
Describe the methods and results of Knutson, Taylor, Kaufman, Peterson and Glover (2005) fMRI experiment responding to uncertain outcomes in the context of reward Probabilities
Participants were given various uncertain outcomes and trials: a high magnitude of reward (50% chance of $5 reward), a low magnitude of reward (50% chance of $1 reward), a high probability of reward (80% chance of $5 reward), and a low probability of reward (20% chance of $5 reward) Nucleus accumbens fMRI response shows different magnitudes of reward not probabilities of rewards V entromedial prefrontal cortex fMRI response reflect difference in probabilities of rewards not magnitudes of rewards
Identify and explain the methods and results from Graf and Torrey (1966) experiment investigating sentence constituent boundaries
Participants were presented with sentences a line at time in two forms. Form A had each line corresponding to a whole constituent, whereas form B, there is no correspondence and the line breaks were in the middle of the constituent. They showed better comprehension of sentences in form A, showing that the identification of constituent structure is important in the parsing stage
Identify and explain the methods and results from Greene, Sommerville, Nystrom, Darley and Cohen (2001) fMRI research study investigating the effects of framing upon people's decisions in response to ethical dilemmas
Participants were to respond to two ethical dilemmas: 1) an impersonal dilemma where you could flip a switch to save 5 people, or 2) a personal dilemma where you can push a stranger to death to save 5 people. Most of the people are willing to perform the action in dilemma 1 but not in dilemma 2. fMRI showed that in the impersonal case, the parietal cortex, associated with cold calculations, were activated. In the personal case, regions associated with emotions, such as the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, were active.
Describe and explain the results from study of Labov (1973) studying which items participants would call or identify "cups" and which items are considered as "bowls"
Percentage of cup responses gradually decreased with increasing width but there is no clear-cut point where participants stopped using cups (25% will give cup while 25% gave bowl) Fewer cup responses and more bowl responses were given when food context was provided (e.g. asked to imagine object filled with mash potatoes), but data showed the same gradual shift from cup to bowl People's classification behavior varies continuously not only with the property of objects but also the context in which it is imagined or presented
Identify and explain the results from Ainsworth-Darnell, Shulman, and Boland (1998) ERP study investigating people's auditory comprehension of control sentences, syntactic anomaly sentences, semantic anomaly sentences and double anomaly sentences.
Researchers have found two indicants of sentence processing in event-related potentials (ERPs) recorded from the brain. The first effect, called the N400, is an indicant of difficulty in semantic processing. The second effect, called the P600, occurs in response to syntactic anomalies. Methodology: Ainsworth -Darnell et al. studied how these two effects combined by comparing ERP responses to a set of sentences. Result: The two types of sentences containing a semantic anomaly evoked a negative shift (N400) at the midline site about 400 ms after the critical word. In contrast, the two types of sentences containing a syntactic anomaly were associated with a positive shift (P600) at the parietal site about 600 ms after the onset of the critical word. Based on the fact that a different brain region responds to syntactic anomalies than to semantic anomalies, Ainsworth-Darnell et al. argued that these syntactic and semantic processes are separable in the overall process of language compre
Describe and explain how Kahneman and Tversky (1984) differentiate between subjective utility versus subjective probability
Subjective utility: The value that one place on thing or whatever reason. Subjective probability: The probability that people associate with an event, which needs to be identical to the event's objective probability. Methodology: Participants were put on a game that offered a choice between great wealth, with certainty or the opportunity to toss a coin and get even more. Result: Kahneman & Tversky (1984) study showed that there were two interesting properties related to the way it curves on the "Gains" side and on the "Losses" side. On the "Losses" side, this utility function is steeper than it is on the "Gains" side, meaning that the negative subjective utility that participants assign to losses is greater than the positive subjective utility assigned to equivalent gains. Kahneman and Tversky (1984) also argued that, as with subjective utility, people associate a subjective probability with an event that is not identical with the objective probability.
Identify and explain the results from Swinney's (1979) study investigating how people determine the meaning of ambiguous words.
Swinney found that recognition of the word "spy" or "ant" was facilitated if that word was presented 400 ms after the prime "bugs" in the sentence. After 700 ms, only the word "ant" was used. During this time the correct meaning is selected and the other meaning is deactivated. This shows that the two meanings of an ambiguous word are momentarily active, but context operates fast to deactivate the inappropriate meaning
