Biomedical subjects

Maura Pilotti

Publications and source records attributed to Maura Pilotti.

9 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2006

Does the effect of familiarity on proofreading change with encoding task and time?

The authors examined whether the beneficial effect of text familiarity on proofreading is dependent on the type of encoding operations performed on the text prior to proofreading (i.e., surface vs. deep), and on the time elapsed between encoding and proofreading. In the present study, familiarity, irrespective of the nature of the encoding operations and delay, improved proofreading times, whereas only surface encoding made proofreading more accurate. These results represent a challenge for the transfer-appropriate processing model of memory.

Attention↗

PubMed2004

Semantic satiation effect in young and older adults.

Auditory and auditory+visual massed repetition served to examine semantic satiation in young and older adults and to understand the possible sources of this phenomenon. In Exp. 1, participants either heard or heard and saw prime words (ROYALTY) repeated 2, 15, or 30 times and made relatedness judgments on targets that were either semantically related (queen) or unrelated (box) to the repeated word. To distinguish satiation from general boredom, semantic satiation was operationally defined as a repetition-induced change in the difference between related and unrelated pairs (relatedness effect). Auditory massed repetition, either alone or in conjunction with prolonged visual exposure, produced semantic satiation effects in both young and older adults. In Exp. 2, participants heard the prime words of the earlier experiment, each repeated 30 times and reported perceptual changes (verbal transformations) during the repetition treatment. In this experiment, older adults were less susceptible to this type of habituation. The discussion focuses on the mechanisms that may be responsible for producing semantic satiation effects in young and older adults with different forms of massed repetition.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2004

Priming and the predictability of contextual information.

Past research has indicated that repetition priming is disrupted by variable contextual information such as word-to-word changes in voice. In three experiments, we examined whether subjects' prediction of contextual changes could attenuate this effect. Predictability of contextual changes was accomplished either by presenting speakers' voices in a fixed sequential order or by giving subjects prior knowledge of which voice would produce the next word. In these experiments, predictability attenuated the disruptive effect that changes in voice had on priming, suggesting the processes which underlie this memory phenomenon are modulated by expectations that selectively optimize subjects' processing of incoming information.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2004

Error detection in text: do feedback and familiarity help?

In the present study, the authors examined the extent to which familiarity and feedback (auditory and/or articulatory) might be beneficial to proofreading. Participants proofread unfamiliar and familiar (repeated) passages while (a) concurrently reading either aloud or silently, (b) concurrently listening to the passages being read to them, or (c) reading without either auditory or articulatory feedback. Errors were one-letter changes that transformed function words into contextually inappropriate words. Familiarity improved reading times largely irrespective of feedback, and it enhanced error detection only when auditory feedback was available to participants. Proofreaders' enhanced error detection in familiar text reflected a change in their sensitivity to errors rather than any change in the placement of the response criterion for reporting errors. These findings suggest that familiarity can produce two kinds of functional fluency, one involving speed of processing, which is largely independent of feedback, and the other concerned with accuracy of processing, which relies on feedback.

Adult↗

PubMed2004

Asymmetric interference in implicit memory: effects of study-test awareness and stimulus order.

This study examined the extent to which fragment completion performance is susceptible to the effects of two different forms of interference (proactive and retroactive) and whether any of these effects depend on participants' awareness of the relationship between study and test. Unaware participants were found to be susceptible to proactive but not retroactive interference. Aware participants did not show evidence of susceptibility to either form of interference. These results contribute to the debate about whether implicit memory is immune to interference effects by demarcating the limits of such an immunity.

Awareness↗

PubMed2004

Asymmetric interference effects in fragment completion: the consequences of recognition failures and successes.

We examined the extent to which implicit and explicit memory performance is susceptible to the effects of proactive and retroactive interference produced by orthographic similarity. Participants studied target and nontarget words that were orthographically similar or dissimilar. At test, they were given fragments of the target words intermixed with fragments of nonstudied words. Participants' initial task was to determine whether each fragment was a studied word. If they recognized it, they were to complete the fragment with the studied word; if not, they were to complete the fragment with the first word that came to mind. Completion rates including both recognized and nonrecognized target fragments provided evidence of proactive but not retroactive interference. The implicit processing engaged by the nonrecognized target fragments was found to be the primary source of the proactive interference effect.

Achievement↗

PubMed2002

Top-down processing and the suffix effect in young and older adults.

The suffix effect has generally been viewed as reflecting an automatic component involving the terminal item and a component susceptible to top-down influences involving the preterminal items (Balota & Engle, 1981). Recent findings have raised questions about this widely accepted view of the suffix effect by showing that the terminal component is not insensitive to top-down influences (Bloom & Watkins, 1999). In the present study, we attempted to uncover the source of these contradictory findings by assessing whether the terminal item's susceptibility to top-down influences might depend on subjects' first-hand experience of the extent to which recall is affected by the suffix. Furthermore, we examined whether age differences in the suffix effect could be attributed to age-related declines in inhibitory processes. Our findings supported both predictions.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2002

Perceptual and lexical components of auditory repetition priming in young and older adults.

In the present study, we examined whether age modulates the processing of lexical and perceptual information in auditory implicit and explicit memory tests. Young and older adults performed a surface encoding task on spoken and printed words and then either identified degraded words or made explicit recognition judgments. The implicit test of perceptual identification yielded no evidence of age-related declines in the processing of either lexical information or coarse perceptual details (modality of presentation). The same test, however, produced marked age-related declines in the processing of fine-grained perceptual details (voice) when subjects were not familiarized with the talkers' voices prior to the encoding task. Marked age differences were also observed in recognition memory. These findings suggest that although aging preserves the encoding and incidental retrieval of lexical and coarse perceptual information, it affects the encoding of fine-grained perceptual information and deliberate retrieval processes.

Adolescent↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Implicit and explicit measures of memory for perceptual information in young adults, healthy older adults, and patients with Alzheimer's disease.

In this study, we examined how implicit and explicit memory for perceptual information (modality and voice) and lexical information varied across three subject groups: healthy young adults, healthy older adults, and age-matched older adults with dementia of the Alzheimer's type (DAT). These groups exhibited cross-modality (abstract) priming of the same magnitude. However, young adults produced greater modality- and voice-specific priming than the other two groups, whose performance was equivalent, suggesting that aging, but not DAT, reduced form-specific priming. Young adults demonstrated better recognition memory than healthy older adults, who in turn exhibited better recognition memory than older adults with DAT. In young adults, recognition memory was also sensitive to perceptual information. These findings indicate that aging can affect implicit memory for perceptual information, whereas DAT magnifies the effect of aging on explicit memory.

Adult↗