Biomedical subjects

G M Reicher

Publications and source records attributed to G M Reicher.

2 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed1976

Flexible coding in word recognition.

An experiment was designed to examine the contribution of phonetic information in the processing of words in tachistoscopic recognition masking. Following stimulus presentation, subjects were required to indicate which of two alternatives had appeared. On trials containing word stimuli, the alternatives were either phonetically identical (SENT, CENT) or not (SOLD, COLD). Recognition performance was inferior in the former case, provided conditions were not structured to discourage reliance on phonetic information. The findings were interpreted as showing that more than one type of coding process can underly the word superiority effect. Phonetic information is ordinarily used to code words in this type of task, but an alternative processing tactic (e.g., one relying on visual or perhaps semantic codes) can also be effectively used in word recognition when phonetic information does not discriminate well among response alternatives.

Discrimination, Psychological↗

PubMed1976

Familiarity of background characters in visual scanning.

It is much easier to look for an unfamiliar character (upsidedown A) embedded among familiar ones than to look for a familiar character (A) among unfamiliar ones. Furthermore, the nature of the background seems more important to performance than the nature of the target. The basic experiments involved showing subjects a matrix with nine characters. On target-present trials, eight of the characters were background items and one character was a target item. On target-absent trials, all nine matrix positions were filled by background characters. The types of unfamiliar characters used were rotated English letters, partial letters, and Gibson figures. The familiar characters were upright English letters or digits. Search was easier through familiar backgrounds than through unfamiliar backgrounds with all of the character types used and whether measuring speed or accuracy.

Attention↗