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Subjects in an impression formation task were timed as they read a list of behaviors attributed to a fictional target person. Reading times were longer for early behaviors than for behaviors later in the list (Experiment I), and longer for behaviors inconsistent with the target's personality (Experiment 2), Moreover, inconsistent behaviors were studied longer when they occurred late in the list during on-line impression formation. These results provide direct support for an attentional account of the primacy effect in impression formation and for the recall advantage for inconsistent behaviors in person memory (Anderson & Hubert, 1963). An impression-sensitivity hypothesis is proposed that predicts that the salience of inconsistent information depends upon the state of an evolving impression.

After reading short prose passages, older (M = 66.5 years) and younger (M = 18.3 years) adults verified the meaning of a test sentence which represented either a paraphrase or an inference from the preceding passage. There were no age differences in accuracy of verification performance with immediate testing, but older subjects made significantly more errors on a delayed test. Verification latency was longer for inference than paraphrase test sentences for both age groups, and older subjects were slower than younger for both types of information. There was no evidence for a selective deficit in processing implicit versus explicit meaning. It was concluded that older persons may be deficient in the retention of meaningful information, but that this deficit is not based on an inability to comprehend linguistic meaning.

No abstract

This experiment compared self-paced reading time and comprehension for subjects who read both paper-and computer-displayed passages. Reading time was longer and comprehension was less accurate for computer presentation than for paper presentation, but only when subjects were tested on the computer-presented texts first. These data raise the possibility that the processes involved in reading video text may not be comparable to traditional reading, especially without extensive practice on a given task. It is suggested that data from computer-controlled reading experiments that use relatively brief testing sessions should be viewed with caution.