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R Job

Publications and source records attributed to R Job.

15 recordsLinked to original sources

Naming times and standardized norms for the Italian PD/DPSS set of 266 pictures: direct comparisons with American, English, French, and Spanish published databases.

The present study provides Italian normative measures for 266 line drawings belonging to the new set of pictures developed by Lotto, Dell'Acqua, and Job (in press). The pictures have been standardized on the following measures: number of letters, number of syllables, name frequency, within-category typically, familiarity, age of acquisition, name agreement, and naming time. In addition to providing the measures, the present study focuses on indirect and direct comparisons (i.e., correlations) of the present norms with databases provided by comparable studies in Italian (in which normative data were collected with Snodgrass & Vanderwart's set of pictures; Nisi, Longoni, & Snodgrass, 2000), in British English (Barry, Morrison, & Ellis, 1997), in American English (Snodgrass & Vanderwart, 1980; Snodgrass & Yuditsky, 1996), in French (Alario & Ferrand, 1999), and in Spanish (Sanfeliu & Fernandez, 1996).

Adult↗

Visual effects in picture and word categorization.

Two experiments are reported in which participants categorized stimuli as belonging or not belonging to the category of fruits. Blocks of pictures and words were used, with items referring to exemplars having either high or low intercategory visual similarity and/or semantic relatedness. For both pictures and words, response time was longer in the semantically related conditions than in the unrelated condition. Furthermore, there was a strong effect of visual similarity for pictures but not for words when semantic relatedness was held constant: Participants took longer to classify pictures of fruits when these were mixed with visually similar vegetables than when they were mixed with visually dissimilar vegetables. Reducing the stimulus visibility by adding a dot pattern had an additive effect for words but an interactive effect for pictures. The results are explained in terms of a unique locus for category decisions about pictures and words.

Adult↗

Category-specific form-knowledge deficit in a patient with herpes simplex virus encephalitis.

In-depth case study of a herpes simplex virus encephalitis patient who presents with a relatively clear knowledge disorder and anterograde amnesia in the absence of any other major cognitive deficit. The main neuropsychological feature is a category-specific impairment restricted to living things. The patient misnamed pictures of animals and vegetables, could not accurately draw animals from memory or verbally describe their visual appearance, and was not accurate in sorting pictures of real animals from pictures of unreal animals; conversely, in the same tasks her performance with artifactual objects was either errorless or superior to that with animals. We interpret the patient's category-specific deficit as due to a selective disturbance within the structural description system, rather than a deficit in low-level visual processing or semantic memory. From this case study and a review of other reported cases we claim that such deficit of form-knowledge is a consequence of the extensive lesions that affect bilaterally the inferior parts of the temporal lobes. The patient here described thus offers further empirical evidence for the crucial role of the inferotemporal cortex in processing visual knowledge about concepts.

Acyclovir↗

Category-specific naming impairments? Yes.

Recently, Stewart, Parkin, and Hunkin (1992) have questioned previously reported cases of selective damage in processing items from categories of animate objects, arguing that there has been a lack of adequate control for visual familiarity, visual complexity, and name frequency of the stimuli employed. When re-testing Michelangelo (see Sartori & Job, 1988), one of the patients cited by Stewart et al. (1992), with a set of materials matched on all three factors, the asymmetry in naming animal and artefact items still remains. An analogous pattern is obtained when--in addition to such factors--the visual similarity within the sub-sets of animals and artefacts is taken into account. These results constitute empirical evidence for category-specific impairments and cannot be interpreted as being due to isolated or conjoint effects of visual familiarity, visual complexity, or name frequency.

Anomia↗

On the existence of category-specific impairments. A reply to Parkin and Stewart.

Parkin and Stewart (this issue) criticize Sartori, Miozzo, and Job's (this issue) demonstration of a category-specific naming impairment for living things when sets of living and non-living things were matched for familiarity, visual complexity, name frequency, and visual similarity. In this paper we discuss the points raised by Parkin and Stewart and argue that they do not undermine our demonstration of a category-specific impairment.

Anomia↗

The picture superiority effect in categorization: visual or semantic?

Two experiments are reported whose aim was to replicate and generalize the results presented by Snodgrass and McCullough (1986) on the effect of visual similarity in the categorization process. For pictures, Snodgrass and McCullough's results were replicated because Ss took longer to discriminate elements from 2 categories when they were visually similar than when they were visually dissimilar. However, unlike Snodgrass and McCullough, an analogous increase was also observed for word stimuli. The pattern of results obtained here can be explained most parsimoniously with reference to the effect of semantic similarity, or semantic and visual relatedness, rather than to visual similarity alone.

Adult↗

New evidence for the perceptual precedence of global information.

Two experiments are reported investigating the order in which global and local information of visual forms is processed. Subjects were presented with compound stimuli and were asked to identify the local level, always consisting of small letters. At the global level, the stimuli could be either large letters, consistent or inconsistent with the local level, or meaningless patterns derived from the large letters by modifying the spatial relations among segments. Results showed that inconsistent stimuli were responded to more slowly than both consistent stimuli and meaningless patterns, which did not differ from each other. This was true both when letters and patterns were presented intermixed, as in experiment 1 or separately, as in experiment 2. The pattern obtained accords well with predictions derived from the perceptual precedence hypothesis which states that global information becomes available at a faster rate than local information. No support for the alternative, post-perceptual, hypothesis was found.

Attention↗

Schematic information, attention, and memory for places.

Recall and recognition of various aspects of three places were studied under incidental and intentional conditions. Data showed that subjects passing through a place incidentally remembered structural features such as walls better than variable features such as furniture. On the other hand, subjects passing through a place knowing they will be tested for memory of its remembered the variable elements better than the structural elements. The results are interpreted in terms of intentionally governed coding.

Attention↗

The Acid-Base Properties, Hydrolytic Mechanism, and Susceptibility to O(2) Oxidation of Fe(4)S(4)(SR)(4) Clusters.

The iron-sulfur cluster compounds Fe(4)S(4)(SR)(4) (-2) [where -SR = -SCH(3), -S-C(CH(3))(3), and -S- CH(2)-CH(CH(3))(2)] have been found to represent the base species of weak acids of pK(a) comparable to that of carboxylic acids. The acid species Fe(4)S(4)(SR)(4)H(-) is most subject to reaction with O(2) and to acid-catalyzed solvolysis, while the base species Fe(4)S(4)(SR)(4) (-2) most readily undergoes ligand exchange. The kinetics for hydrolysis of the isobutyl mercaptide cluster salt has been investigated in detail and a mechanism involving the stepwise process [Formula: see text] has been proposed. The importance of the acid-base equilibria in determining the reactivity of the iron-sulfur clusters and its possible importance as a factor in the determination of the potentials of ferredoxins and high potential iron protein are discussed.

Journal Article↗