A psychological model can show the technical writer how to present information for effective communication by explaining how readers perceive, understand, learn, and remember. The principles underlying the model are the reader's psychological set, the mind's pattern-forming tendencies, the span of short-term memory, and the mind's need for…

In two experiments, recognition accuracy was compared between subjects who made frequency judgments and subjects who made recognition judgments. Results indicate that at least partially different information in memory is evaluated when judging frequency than when making recognition judgments and that this information facilitates recognition…

Research by Posner and Mitchell (1967) was used to investigate levels of noise processing in testing subjects' ability to "gate out" the processing of irrelevant and unwanted material. Three experiments are reported in which subjects had to judge whether two letters were the "same" or "different". Noise elements were included to test attention…

Two experiments demonstrate that individuals are limited in the number of unrelated words they can apprehend and assign to a particular semantic dimension and also that retrieval from long-term memory is subject to the same kind of limitation. (Author/RK)

In a factorial experiment, 90 male and 90 female subjects were given (a) either instructions to increase heart rate (HR), decrease HR, or no instructions to change their HR; (b) either true biofeedback, false biofeedback, or no biofeedback; and (c) either instructions concerning cognitions to help them change HR or no instructions concerning…

This article describes an experiment designed to define the difficulties perceived by learners in verbal learning tasks. (Text is in Spanish.) (CLK)

In 3 experiments, the authors examined the role of memory for prior instances for making relative judgments in conflict detection. Participants saw pairs of aircraft either repeatedly conflict with each other or pass safely before being tested on new aircraft pairs, which varied in similarity to the training pairs. Performance was influenced by…

Backward inhibition is proposed as a process of lateral inhibition that operates during response selection in task switching, reducing interference caused by the most recently abandoned task set. The effect has been observed across a wide range of contexts but is eliminated by using spatial location to cue tasks (K. D. Arbuthnott & T. S. Woodward,…

Although many theories of attention assume that attending to an object results in the processing of all its feature dimensions, there has been no direct evidence that the irrelevant dimensions of an attended nontarget object are encoded. This article explores factors that modulate such processing. In 6 experiments, participants made a speeded…

In this paper, a black psychologist shares his thoughts, biases, and educated guesses pertaining to experimental psychology as it might relate to the psychoeducational needs of Afro-American children. First, some of the assumptions embodied in the empirical research enterprise are examined. It is noted that empirical research is a tool for gaining…

Examines in some detail Richard Semon's analysis of human memory, places this analysis in its historical context, and discusses some reasons why this work is virtually unknown today. (Author/AM)

Attempts to measure the involvement of an active memory process in the storage of the memory stimulus and to determine if such involvement is necessary for obtaining a Posner effect, which suggest that visual memory is not damaged by distractor tasks. (Author/RK)

Using a network of comparisons, B. Hayes-Roth and F. Hayes-Roth found that subjects performed better on adjacent than on nonadjacent comparisons. Results suggested that such networks are processed in a manner fundamentally different from simple linear arrays. Here subjects were required to learn a similar knowledge structure. These results…

This research investigates whether subjects who receive the premises for a linear ordering in story format acquire a different memory structure and use a different solution algorithm than subjects who receive the same premises in equation format. (Author/RK)

From experiments showing that subjects differentially attend to parts of the visual field, psychologists have inferred a limitation on human visual information processing capacity. The model presented describes an optimal way to allocate a limited quantity of "cognitive resources", "attention" or "mental effort". An experiment tests this model.…