Biomedical subjects

Debra L Long

Publications and source records attributed to Debra L Long.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2002

Discourse representation in the two cerebral hemispheres.

Readers construct at least two interrelated representations when they comprehend a text: (a) a propositional representation containing the individual ideas that are derived from each sentence and the relations among them and (b) a discourse model, a representation of the context or situation to which the text refers. We used a paradigm called "item priming in recognition" to examine how these representations are stored in the cerebral hemispheres. In Experiment 1, the priming paradigm was used in combination with a lateralized visual field (VF) procedure. We found evidence that readers' representations were structured according to propositional relations, but only in the left hemisphere. Item recognition was facilitated when a concept was preceded by another concept from the same proposition when targets were presented to the left, but not to the right, hemisphere. We found priming in both hemispheres, however, when targets were context-appropriate senses of ambiguous words or topics of passages. In Experiment 2, we replicated the priming effects in three callosotomy patients. We argue that the distinction between a propositional representation and a discourse model is important with respect to how discourse is represented in the brain. The propositional representation appears to reside in the left hemisphere, whereas aspects of the discourse model appear to be represented in both hemispheres.

Adult↗

PubMed2002

Memory for Star Trek: the role of prior knowledge in recognition revisited.

Prior studies have found robust knowledge effects on recall of text ideas but have seldom found comparable effects on recognition. This inconsistency was examined in light of recent research on the component processes that underlie recognition memory. Using the remember/know paradigm, the authors found that experts made more remember judgments than novices, but only in response to text ideas relevant to their domain of expertise. Using the process-dissociation procedure, the authors found knowledge effects on recollection estimates, but not on familiarity estimates. The authors contend that knowledge effects have been difficult to detect in recognition because knowledge primarily affects recollection, whereas familiarity gives rise to good performance even among novices.

Adult↗

PubMed2002

Working memory and stroop interference: an individual differences investigation.

We investigated the claim that individual differences in working-memory capacity reflect limitations on the ability to inhibit task-irrelevant information and/or to maintain activation in the face of distracting or interfering events. Specifically, we investigated whether high- and low-capacity individuals differed in their susceptibility to interference on the Stroop task and whether high-capacity individuals employed a strategy for minimizing Stroop interference. In Experiment 1, we found that high-capacity participants showed substantial interference when conflict trials were infrequent, but almost no interference when conflict trials were frequent. In contrast, low-capacity participants showed substantial interference irrespective of the proportion of conflict trials. In Experiment 2, we found that high-capacity participants experienced substantial negative priming, slow responses when the to-be-named color was the irrelevant word on the previous trial. We discuss these results and their implications for high-capacity individuals' ability to reduce Stroop interference in light of both inhibitory and noninhibitory accounts of negative priming.

Cognition↗