The role of spatial attention in visual word processing.

McCann, Robert S.; Folk, Charles L.; Johnston, James C.

doi:10.1037/0096-1523.18.4.1015

Cited by 258 publications

(534 citation statements)

References 90 publications

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“…The present results show that attention at encoding is necessary for perceptual implicit memory. Our results and Weldon's support the hypothesis that lexical access requires attention (see, e.g., Herdman, 1992;McCann, Folk, & Johnston, 1992). Research employing levels of processing and divided attention paradigms further suggests that perceptual implicit memory requires some minimal amount of attentional processing at encoding, but that there is no benefit from any further amount of attentional processing (see Mulligan, 1998;Mulligan & Hartman, 1996).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 76%

Perceptual implicit memory requires attentional encoding

Crabb

Dark

1999

Memory & Cognition

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Perceptual implicit memory for previously attended and unattended words was measured either in a word-stem completion task or in a perceptual fluency (perceptual identification) task Subjects (N = 144) first engaged in a focused attention task in which they were to identify one of two words presented for 100, 200, or 300 msec. Words were classified as attended if they were reported during the focused attention task and unattended if they were not. Results for both implicit memory tests indicated reliable perceptual implicit memory for attended words but not for unattended words, regardless of focused attention exposure duration. The results indicate that perceptual implicit memory tasks reflect attentional encoding processes; that is, words must undergo attentional encoding if they are to affect performance on a later perceptual implicit memory test.Implicit memory is the phenomenon in which previously encoded information affects performance on some task without the individual's consciously recollecting the information. This nonconscious, automatic retrieval contrasts with the conscious, effortful retrieval that occurs during an explicit memory test such as recognition or recall. A number of different implicit memory tests have been identified, and they have been classified into two broad categories: conceptual and perceptual. Category exemplar production, general knowledge tests, and spelling tasks are considered to be conceptual implicit memory tests; perceptual fluency (also termed perceptual identification), word-stem completion, and word-fragment completion are considered to be perceptual implicit memory tests (e.g., Roediger, 1990;Roediger, Weldon, & Challis, 1989). Conceptual implicit memory tests often are affected by encoding variables that affect explicit memory tests, whereas perceptual implicit memory tests are not affected by these variables.Attentional processing at encoding is assumed to be necessary to produce explicit memory for the encoded information (see, e.g., Fisk & Schneider, 1984;Rock & Gutman, 1981;Shiffrin & Schneider, 1977). The necessity of attentional processing at encoding also has been demonstrated for conceptual implicit memory tests (e.g., Mulligan, 1998;Mulligan & Hartman, 1996). It has beenThe 100-msec conditions of this study were presented at the April, 1996, meeting of the Iowa Academy of Science, and the entire study was presented at the May, 1997, meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association. We thank Nelson Cowan, William Johnston, and Neil Mulligan for helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper. We also thank Elizabeth Andre, Alison Bateson, Kelli Bendickson, Karla Benson, Katie Bock, Amanda Easton, Dana Hartwigsen, Brenda Jacobus, Patricia Schmidt, Molly White, and Steve Willis for their assistance in collecting the data. Correspondence concerning this article may be addressed to either author at the Department of Psychology, Iowa State University, Ames, IA 50011-3180 (e-mail: bcrabb@iastate. edu or vjdark@iastate.edu).argued, however, that whereas atte...

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 76%

Perceptual implicit memory requires attentional encoding

Crabb

Dark

1999

Memory & Cognition

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“…That is, our hypothesis is that spatial attention, at least in the context of word recognition, plays a postlexical role in processing rather than the pre lexical one envisioned by McCann, Folk, and Johnston (1992). Still, a more definitive answer to these questions awaits further investigation, because it is possible that the correct explanation for the data from the letter search prime paradigm does not apply to the present version of the Stroop paradigm, and one or the other of those paradigms might not index the same operations as the spatial cuing paradigm does.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The stroop effect and the myth of automaticity

1997

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A widespread view in cognition is that once acquired through extensive practice, mental skills such as reading are automatic. Lexical and semantic analyses of single words are said to be uncontrollable in the sense that they cannot be prevented. Over the past 60 years, apparently convincing support for this assumption has come from hundreds of experiments in which skilled readers have processed an irrelevant word in the Stroop task despite explicit instructions not to, even when so doing would hurt color identification performance. This basic effect was replicated in two experiments, which also showed that a considerable amount of semantic processing is locally controlled by elements of the task. For example, simply coloring a single letter instead of the whole word eliminated the Stroop effect. This outcome flies in the face of any automaticity account in which specified processes cannot be prevented from being set in motion, but it is consistent with the venerable idea that mental set is a powerful determinant of performance. 221Many low-level human behaviors are automatic, in that a stimulus serves to elicit the behavior in the absence of conscious awareness or intention (e.g., an eye blink in response to a puff of air; the patellar reflex; the Babinski reflex), Learned behaviors such as reading are also widely argued to be automatic in a similar sense. For example, it is well established that identifying the color of an incongruent word (e.g., green letters spelling the word "red") is slower than identifying the color of a congruent word (e.g., green letters spelling the word "green"). This Stroop effect (Stroop, 1935) and its many variants have been explored empirically, theoretically, and computationally by cognitive and developmental psychologists, psycholinguists, neuropsychologists, and cognitive scientists in more than 500 papers over the past 60 years (see MacLeod's 1991 review). A core assumption of virtually all the theoretical accounts is that skilled readers process the irrelevant word without consciousness or intent. Reading the word is said to be automatic in the sense that readers cannot refrain from computing the meaning of the word despite explicit instructions not to do SO:I Reading is such an automatic process that it is difficult to inhibit and it will interfere with processing other information about the word.

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“…Ballistic (once launched cannot be stopped) Hasher & Zacks (1979);Besner, (2001);Brown, Gore, & Carr (2002) 6. Processing is unconscious Atkinson & Shiffrin, 1968;Laberge & Samuels, 1974;McCann, Folk, & Johnston, 1992;McCann, Johnston, & VanSelst, 2000;Pashler, 1994;Posner, 1978;Stolz & McCann, 2000 7. Processing is independent of attention ; Laberge & Samuels (1974);Logan (1988) 8.…”

Section: Assessing Automaticity With the Prp Paradigmmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reading aloud is not automatic: Processing capacity is required to generate a phonological code from print.

Reynolds¹,

Besner²

2006

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfor

100

119

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ii I hereby declare that I am the sole author of this thesis. This is a true copy of the thesis, including any required final revisions, as accepted by my examiners.I understand that my thesis may be made electronically available to the public.iii AbstractThe process of generating a phonological code from print is widely described asautomatic. This claim is tested in Chapter 1 by assessing whether phonological recoding uses central attention in the context of the Psychological Refractory Period (PRP) paradigm. Task 1 was a tone discrimination task and Task 2 was reading aloud.Nonword letter length and grapheme-phoneme complexity yielded additive effects with SOA in Experiments 1 and 2 suggesting that assembled phonology uses central attention. Theoretical development in this field (and others) will be facilitated by abandoning the idea that skilled performance inevitably means that all the underlying processes are automatic.iv Acknowledgements

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The role of spatial attention in visual word processing.

Cited by 258 publications

References 90 publications

Perceptual implicit memory requires attentional encoding

Perceptual implicit memory requires attentional encoding

The stroop effect and the myth of automaticity

Reading aloud is not automatic: Processing capacity is required to generate a phonological code from print.

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