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R A Chechile

Publications and source records attributed to R A Chechile.

8 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2000

"Aha" effects in the generation of pictures.

An "aha" effect in memory was first reported by Auble, Franks, and Soraci (1979). They demonstrated that recall was greater for sentences that were initially incomprehensible but which were eventually comprehended, as compared with sentences that were understood from the outset. The present studies extend this "aha" effect to memory for pictorial stimuli. In Experiment 1, a recall advantage for pictures encoded by connecting the dots as compared with those encoded by tracing or visual scanning occurred only in the absence of foreknowledge of the picture (i.e., an "aha" effect). In Experiment 2, we replicated this finding and obtained evidence that conceptually based, verbal foreknowledge does not function in a similar manner as does pictorial foreknowledge in suppressing the "aha" recall advantage. These results place important constraints on previous research on generation effects for visual stimuli and attest to the cross-modal generalizability of the "aha" effect.

Attention↗
PubMed1996

A syntactic complexity effect with visual patterns: evidence for the syntactic nature of the memory representation.

In a series of 3 experiments, participants learned visual patterns that contained the same number of visual features but varied in the complexity of the interrelations among the features. The results indicate a large and orderly effect of the pattern's syntactic complexity on recognition speed. Evidence is provided that this effect was not due to physical characteristics, target-foil similarity, speed-accuracy trade-off, or level of pattern learning. A multiple-encoding explanation of the effect is described. According to this framework, there is an initial, automatically generated encoding of the pattern as a short-term pictorial representation that becomes the basis for the construction of a second syntactic-propositional encoding. In this model, the participant's "sense of familiarity" for a particular stimulus is associated only with the syntactic-propositional encoding.

Adult↗
PubMed1994

Incongruous item generation effects: a multiple-cue perspective.

In a series of studies, generation effects were obtained under encoding conditions designed to induce incongruous, unrelated item generation. Experiments 1 and 2, using free- and cued-recall measures, respectively, provided evidence that this unrelated generation effect was due to response-specific processing. Experiment 3 demonstrated a lack of relation between free recall and indices of clustering. A preliminary protocol study suggested that Ss generate multiple items in their search for appropriate unrelated responses. In Experiments 4 and 5, conditions designed to produce more extensive multiple generations demonstrated enhanced free recall. These results supported a multiple-cue account of facilitated recall for incongruous item generation. The multiple-cue perspective is consistent with traditional conceptualizations of memory, such as the principle of congruity, and contemporary distinctions between cue-target relational and item-specific processing.

Adult↗
PubMed1989

Modeling the cognitive content of displays.

An approach for measuring the cognitive complexity of visual displays is discussed and applied to a dynamic display of avionic information. A semantic network formalism is used to model two interrelated knowledge systems, world knowledge and display knowledge. The information the operator receives during training about the general display format characteristics and the task requirements, along with other previously stored information, constitutes world knowledge. The semantic content of a particular configuration of information encountered during task performance constitutes display knowledge. Four orthogonal predictor measures of cognitive complexity were derived from the networks. In an experiment three of the orthogonal predictors were significantly correlated with task performance. After averaging across operators, the three significant predictors accounted for 99% of the variation of display effectiveness. Results indicate that a model of cognitive complexity based on a semantic network formalism may provide a useful technique for quantitatively evaluating the quality of competing display format concepts.

Adult↗
PubMed1987

Trace susceptibility theory.

A new theory for the dynamics of trace susceptibility to storage loss is developed and tested. According to the trace susceptibility theory, storage loss occurs when a critical feature for the support of recall is no longer bound to the other features of the trace. The storage loss occurs because of the retroactive influence of other traces, and the storage retention function is precisely characterized by an underlying Weibull distribution. Predictions of the trace susceptibility theory were tested against predictions of a multistore model. The results support the trace susceptibility theory. Finally, the relation between the trace susceptibility theory and proactive interference effects was developed.

Attention↗
PubMed1987

Encoding, storage, and retrieval components of associative memory deficits of mildly mentally retarded adults.

Using a modified procedure developed by Chechile and Meyer (1976), we assessed the relative importance of encoding, storage, and retrieval processes to overall short-term and long-term memory deficits of mildly mentally retarded adults in a continuous paired-associate task. The basic analysis revealed deficits in each process, with storage the most important and encoding the least important at all retention intervals. Additional analyses showed that retrieval deficits are present in both short- and long-term retention but that storage deficits are primarily short-term in nature. The overall pattern of results suggests that short-term storage is the most likely locus of structurally based limitations of mildly retarded adults.

Adult↗