Effect of presentation order on the construction of linear orders

Abstract

Subjects constructed four-term linear orders from three sentences expressing the relationships between adjacent elements in the order. Successful performance was more likely when the second sentence introduced only one element not mentioned in the first sentence rather than two new elements and when the second and third sentences introduced new elements as grammatical subjects rather than objects. Except for the latter result, previously proposed theories of reasoning processes primarily in three-term series problems, predict other differences that failed to appear. Apparently, in longer series, memory limitations favor conditions in which each sentence after the first presents a relationship between a new and an old element in linguistic forms that identify the new element.A number of recent studies have shown that when a subject is asked to learn or remember a set of sentences that describe a linear ordering, what is remembered is the ordering rather than the individual sentences (Barclay, 1973;Potts, 1972). For example, when presented with the sentences, "The bear is smarter than the hawk, the hawk is smarter than the wolf, and the wolf is smarter than the deer," subjects construct and retain the following linear order: bear, hawk, wolf, deer. The evidence for the foregoing hypothesis consists of two types of findings. Potts (1972) showed that subjects who had studied sentences such as those given above were faster and more accurate in judging the truth of sentences describing nonadjacent members of the order, e.g., "The bear is smarter than the wolf," which they had not seen before, than in judging comparable sentences describing adjacent members, e.g., "The bear is smarter than the hawk," which they had seen. Barclay (1973) showed that subjects who had learned a set of sentences derived. from a five-term linear ordering responded in a sentence memory test solely on the basis of whether the sentences were true of the the ordering as opposed to their actual presence on the learning list. The best explanation of these findings is to assume that subjects construct their own linear array and respond to test items on the basis of whether the item is true or false of the array.Although a great deal of effort and discussion has been devoted to discovering the exact nature of the subject's mental representation of the order (Barclay & Reid, 1974;Potts, 1974;Scholz & Potts, 1974), somewhat less attention has been given to the question of how the mental ordering is constructed, and very little research has been conducted to determine what variables influence these constructive processes. Barclay (1973) has shown that instructions to the subjects can influence to some extent whether or not the linear order is constructed. But in cases where it is clear that subjects are engaged in constructing a linear order, there remains the question of how the constructive process operates. More to the point, Potts (1972) found that overall performance was poorer for subjects who received as input a compound sentence in which the s...

Discourse organization in the comprehension of temporal order in narrative texts

“…Examination of the recall data in Smith and Foos (1975) and Foos et al (1976) shows that the linear order equivalent of our canonical organization gives higher recall than any of the other orders. Linear orders that correspond to our backward and flashback organizations show roughly equivalent recall.…”

“…Within this literature, there is one set of studies that seems to tap many of the same psychological processes as the experiment in this article. These experiments used an arbitrary underlying linear ordering (as in the previous example) and studied all possible orderings of the three pairs (Foos, Smith, Sabol, & Mynatt, 1976;Smith & Foos, 1975). Thus, if this example is represented as AB, BC, CD, then this ordering of the three pairs is equivalent to our canonical discourse organization.…”

Acquiring complex partial orderings in comparison with acquiring similar-sized linear orderings

“…Learning the partial ordering was found to be more difficult because of two factors: (1) Subjects do not appear to have in their knowledge systems a prototype or rule for representing a long list of comparative relations as a partial ordering structure, and (2) the partial ordering must be presented so that some of the adjacently presented premises do not contain a common element. When these two factors were controlled, the partial ordering was as easy to learn as the linear ordering.…”

On the time required to construct a simple linear order

“…These orders are shown in Table I, where they are identified by the numbers and names used by Foos et a1. (1976) and Smith and Foos (1975) . In one block of 24 trials, array elements were the five two-syllable common words, doctor, farmer, leader, soldier, teacher (AA words, Thorndike-Lorge, 1944).…”

“…There have also been several investigations of presentation order effects in linear-order problems using sentences to present the relationships between adjacent elements (Mynatt & Smith, in press;Smith & Foos, 1975). These studies used a small set of familiar profession names as elements.…”