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Biomedical subjects

S A Duffy

Publications and source records attributed to S A Duffy.

10 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1989

Semantic facilitation of lexical access during sentence processing.

In three experiments we investigated the effect of a sentence context on naming time for a target word. Contexts were presented by using a rapid serial visual presentation; subjects named the last word of the sentence. In the first two experiments, facilitation was observed for a fully congruent context containing a subject and verb that were weakly related to the target word. No facilitation was observed when either the subject or verb was replaced with a more neutral word. In the third experiment, the fully congruent contexts were modified either to preserve or to disrupt the original relation between the subject and verb. Facilitation was observed in both conditions. The full pattern of results suggests that a combination of lexical items can prime a target word in the absence of priming by any of the lexical items individually. This combination priming is not dependent upon the overall meaning of the sentence.

Adult↗
PubMed1989

Educational needs of community health nursing supervisors.

Recent legislative trends toward early hospital dismissal and cost containment have shifted the setting for health care from the hospital to the home. Consequently, community health nursing supervisors are becoming increasingly responsible both for coordinating care for sicker clients with fewer available resources, and for guiding staff nurses who provide high-tech nursing skills in the home. This has resulted in new educational needs for these supervisors. To determine their educational needs and the barriers to implementing their roles, 160 community health nursing supervisors employed by community health nursing agencies in Michigan were surveyed. They reported educational needs related to labor relations, reimbursement procedures, fiscal management, marketing, and computer systems. Several types of educational experiences were found to influence their abilities to handle supervisory responsibilities, including enrollment in an educational program, highest level of education, and selected content areas taught in their formal educational programs. Nursing implications include using the research results to develop educational programs to meet the needs of community health nursing supervisors. Those who are adequately prepared educationally will be better able to provide effective supervision of staff nurses and ultimately, coordinate high-level client home care.

Community Health Nursing↗
PubMed1989

Minimizing the time to search visual displays: the role of highlighting.

Office computer users frequently need to search long lists of options for a particular target. Highlighting a subset of the options can shorten the average display search time. The goal of the current research was to identify the subset of options to highlight that minimizes users' average search time for any given display. To begin, a mathematical model of the visual search process was constructed which could be used to predict the average search time for a target in a display with or without highlighted options. The predictions of this model were then compared with the results of a visual search experiment that varied the type of highlighting (blocked, random, or no highlighting), the number of highlighted options, and the probability that a target was highlighted. Overall the predictions of the model were consistent with the results from the experiment. Finally, procedures based on the model were developed which could be used to find the optimal subset of options to highlight for a given display--that is, the subset of highlighted options that minimizes users' search times.

Computers↗
PubMed1988

Understanding the central processing limit in consistent-mapping visual search tasks.

Effects of load (i.e., the number of stimuli in the display) have been observed in multiple-frame studies using a consistent mapping of stimuli to responses (e.g., Fisher, 1982, 1984). In a series of four experiments, it is shown that these effects are not the consequence of differences across the high- and low-load conditions in either decision noise or peripheral masking. Additionally, it is shown that of two modes of limited capacity (a limited-channel and divided-capacity model) considered as possible explanations of load effects in tasks where subjects are required to locate a target, only one--the limited-channel model--is consistent with the results from all three location tasks. Finally, it is argued that the limited-channel model predicts not only the behavior observed in the four consistent-mapping experiments reported in this article but also the behavior observed in several related consistent-mapping tasks (Kleiss & Lane, 1986; Shiffrin & Gardner, 1972).

Attention↗
PubMed1986

Role of expectations in sentence integration.

Three experiments examined the role of causal expectations in sentence integration. Subjects read narratives that did or did not elicit strong expectations about upcoming events (high-expectation vs. low-expectation texts). Subjects were faster to judge a target sentence to be unrelated when it followed a high-expectation text than when it followed a low-expectation text. Subjects were slower to read an unimportant, expectation-violating sentence embedded in a high-expectation text. Subjects were faster both to read and to judge an expectation-fulfilling target sentence when it followed a high-expectation text. Three models of the generation and use of expectations are considered. The results support a model in which expectations are generated selectively. Once generated, expectations become the focus of upcoming sentence integration processes such that correct expectations help and incorrect expectations interfere. A third experiment found no evidence that expectations took the form of highly specific predictions.

Emotions↗
PubMed1986

Anaphoric inference during reading.

Three experiments provide evidence that an anaphoric noun phrase reinstates its antecedent in the course of comprehension. Subjects read a series of texts each containing a target item. Immediately after the last line of each text, the item was probed using a recognition task in Experiment 1 and a naming task in Experiment 2. Subjects were faster to respond to the item when the last line contained an anaphoric reference to it than when the last line referred to a different item from the text. Additional control conditions ensured that the effect was not due to semantic priming and that the probed item was not in working memory when the last line was encountered. A third experiment suggested that previous evidence for reinstatement reflected interference from a change of topic in the last line rather than facilitation due to reinstatement of the probed item.

Cognition↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Eye movements and anaphor resolution: effects of antecedent typicality and distance.

The coordination of the eye movement control system with comprehension processes was studied. Eye movements were monitored while subjects read paragraphs containing an anaphoric noun phrase. In Experiment 1, fixations on the anaphoric noun were shorter when its antecedent was close and typical of the noun category than when it was distant and/or atypical. Subjects took longer reading the words following the anaphoric noun when the antecedent was atypical than when it was typical. In Experiment 2, distance of antecedent affected anaphor fixation times for category name anaphors but not for general noun anaphors (e.g., "object"). The results suggest that the eyes do not wait for the completion of anaphor resolution processes. Rather, these processes are completed after the eyes have left the anaphoric noun. The different patterns of effects on the anaphors themselves and the post-anaphor region were interpreted to reflect two different stages in anaphor resolution.

Eye Movements↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Comprehension of synthetic speech produced by rule: a review and theoretical interpretation.

In this paper, we review research on the perception and comprehension of synthetic speech produced by rule. We discuss the difficulties that synthetic speech causes for the listener and the evidence that the immediate result of those difficulties is a delay in the point at which words are recognized. We then argue that this delay in processing affects not only lexical access but also comprehension processes. We consider the mechanisms by which the comprehension system adjusts to this delay, the resulting costs to higher level comprehension processes, and the changes that occur in the language processing system as its familiarity with synthetic speech increases. Based on the framework we have developed, we suggest several directions for future research on the comprehension of synthetic speech.

Female↗
PubMedDate not supplied

The recovery of highly purified biopharmaceuticals from perfusion cell culture bioreactors.

The impact of continuous perfusion cell culture technology on production of one and two chain human rtPA, as well as monoclonal IgG and IgM, will be reviewed. Perfusion as compared to batch systems improve the quality of the product in the conditioned media in terms of biological activity and structural integrity. This significantly increases downstream recovery and daily production output of final purified material. These findings are a consequence of the ability of perfusion technology to 1) maintain cells intact at high cell density; 2) effectively reduce serum content to approximate serum free conditions; and 3) minimize residency time of labile product within the 37 degrees C environment of the bioreactor.

Biological Products↗