Biomedical subjects

Arnaud Rey

Publications and source records attributed to Arnaud Rey.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2006

Do distractors interfere with memory for study pairs in associative recognition?

In an associative recognition task, distractors generally consist of a rearrangement of the items composing the study pairs. This makes it possible that processing the distractors generates retroactive interference on memory for the study pairs. In Experiment 1, we explored this possibility in a yes/no recognition test concerning previously learned arbitrary associations between visual symbols and auditory syllables. Rearranged pairs had a deleterious impact on the accuracy and the speed of responses to related correct pairs. This effect did not vary as a function of the number of training blocks, and furthermore, in Experiment 2, the same effect was observed for overlearned small multiplication facts. These results suggest that exposure to potentially confounding information generates interference even if this information is known to be incorrect. Some implications are outlined, especially with regard to the widespread use of multiple-choice tests in knowledge evaluation.

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PubMed2006

Letter-by-letter processing in the phonological conversion of multiletter graphemes: searching for sounds in printed pseudowords.

Current models of word reading differ in their descriptions of how print-to-sound conversion is performed. Whereas a parallel procedure is generally assumed, the dual-route cascaded model developed by Coltheart and colleagues (Coltheart, Rastle, Perry, Langdon, and Ziegler, 2001) holds that the nonlexical conversion operates letter by letter, serially from left to right. An interesting aspect of the hypothesized serial procedure is that only the first letter of two-letter graphemes is thought to cause activation of its corresponding phonological code, the second letter of multiletter graphemes being directly merged with the preceding letter to form a complex grapheme. This hypothesis was examined in a task in which participants had to detect target phonemes in visually presented pseudowords. The data suggest that phonological codes associated with all the letters of the multiletter graphemes are activated.

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PubMed2005

Graphemic complexity and multiple print-to-sound associations in visual word recognition.

It has recently been reported that words containing a multiletter grapheme are processed slower than are words composed of single-letter graphemes (Rastle & Coltheart, 1998; Rey, Jacobs, Schmidt-Weigand, & Ziegler, 1998). In the present study, using a perceptual identification task, we found in Experiment 1 that this graphemic complexity effect can be observed while controlling for multiple print-to-sound associations, indexed by regularity or consistency. In Experiment 2, we obtained cumulative effects of graphemic complexity and regularity. These effects were replicated in Experiment 3 in a naming task. Overall, these results indicate that graphemic complexity and multiple print-to-sound associations effects are independent and should be accounted for in different ways by models of written word processing.

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PubMed2005

Does the mastery of center-embedded linguistic structures distinguish humans from nonhuman primates?

In a recent Science article, Fitch and Hauser (2004; hereafter, F&H) claimed to have demonstrated that cotton-top tamarins fail to learn an artificial language produced by a phrase structure grammar (Chomsky, 1957) generating center-embedded sentences, whereas adult humans easily learn such a language. We report an experiment replicating the results of F&H in humans but also showing that subjects learned the language without exploiting in any way the center-embedded structure. When the procedure was modified to make the processing of this structure mandatory, the subjects no longer showed evidence of learning. We propose a simple interpretation for the difference in performance observed in F&H's task between humans and tamarins and argue that, beyond the specific drawbacks inherent in F&H's study, researching the source of the inability of nonhuman primates to master language within a framework built around Chomsky's hierarchy of grammars is a conceptual dead end.

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