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PATTERN RECOGNITION (CONTINUED):Effects of Sentence Context

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Cognitive Psychology ­ PSY 504
VU
Lesson 22
PATTERN RECOGNITION (CONTINUED)
Effects of Sentence Context
Cognitive psychologist wants to study whether the sentence context has effect. In this order an
experiment was conducted by Tulving, Mandler & Baumal in 1964.
Tulving, Mandler & Baumal (1964) conducted an experiment to show the effect at the multiword
level. They used material in their experiment like
Countries in the United Nations form a military alliance.
The huge slum was filled with dirt and disorder.
Each sentence provides an eight-word context preceding a critical word. In various conditions
subjects would see the following:
0 Context
disorder
4 Context
Filled with dirt and disorder
8 Context
The huge slum was filled with dirt and disorder
The critical word presented after the context for a very brief period.  The experimenters
manipulated the duration of this critical word from 0 to 140 milliseconds. They were interested in
how bottom-up information interacted with context.
Results
Results were showing that the probability of a correct identification increases both as amount of
context increases and as the exposure duration increases.
Conditions
flash duration
percentage of correct identification
0 context
0ms
0%
4 context
0ms
10%
8 context
0ms
16%
0 context
140ms
70%
4 context
140ms
80%
8 context
140ms
98%
0 context
60ms
30%
4 context
60ms
60%
8 context
60ms
70%
Maximum effect of context is seen at 60ms exposure, although the effect of context doesn't
disappear at 140ms exposure. The effect diminishes somewhat between 60 and 140 milliseconds
because subjects in the eight-word context condition are performing almost perfectly and show
little benefit of further exposure, whereas subjects in the zero word condition continue to benefit
from the longer exposure. The results indicate that subjects can take advantage of the context to
improve their identification of the words.
Implications
That experiment shows that we can use sentence context to help identify words. With context we
need to extract less information the word itself in order to identify it. We can use context to fill in
words that didn't even occur.
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Cognitive Psychology ­ PSY 504
VU
We are able to fill in the missing from as we read the sentence, perhaps we did not even notice it
was missing. PDP models can help explain this effect of context better than other models while
also accounting for feature analysis.
Context and Speech
Text OK but does this work with speech. Speech is experienced sequentially in a more linear
fashion than text.
A concept Phoneme Restoration Effect demonstrated in an experiment by Warren (1970). He
had subjects listen to the sentence. The state governors met with their respective legislatures
convening in the capital city. With a 120 ms pure tone replacing the middle s in legislatures. Only
1 in 20 subjects reported hearing the pure tone and even he wasn't able to locate it clearly.
Phoneme Restoration Effect
A nice extension of this first study is an experiment by Warren & Warren (1970). They presented
subjects with sentences such as:
It was found that the eel was on the axle
It was found that the eel was on the shoe
It was found that the eel was on the orange
It was found that the eel was on the table
Wheel, heel, peel, meal
In each case, the denotes a phoneme replaced by non-speech. For the four sentences above,
subjects reported hearing wheel, heel, peel, and meal, depending on the context.
Implications
The implications of this experiment are:
Context fills in gaps and affects our perception just as in texts.
The identification of the critical word is determined by what comes after the critical
word. Heel, peel, meal and wheel are critical words.
Thus the identification of words can depend on the perception of subsequent
words.
In a nutshell when you ever face a problem you should grasp the context. When you grasp the
context you are able to understand and handle the problem.
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Table of Contents:
  1. INTRODUCTION:Historical Background
  2. THE INFORMATION PROCESSING APPROACH
  3. COGNITIVE NEUROPSYCHOLOGY:Brains of Dead People, The Neuron
  4. COGNITIVE NEUROPSYCHOLOGY (CONTINUED):The Eye, The visual pathway
  5. COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY (CONTINUED):Hubel & Wiesel, Sensory Memory
  6. VISUAL SENSORY MEMORY EXPERIMENTS (CONTINUED):Psychological Time
  7. ATTENTION:Single-mindedness, In Shadowing Paradigm, Attention and meaning
  8. ATTENTION (continued):Implications, Treisman’s Model, Norman’s Model
  9. ATTENTION (continued):Capacity Models, Arousal, Multimode Theory
  10. ATTENTION:Subsidiary Task, Capacity Theory, Reaction Time & Accuracy, Implications
  11. RECAP OF LAST LESSONS:AUTOMATICITY, Automatic Processing
  12. AUTOMATICITY (continued):Experiment, Implications, Task interference
  13. AUTOMATICITY (continued):Predicting flight performance, Thought suppression
  14. PATTERN RECOGNITION:Template Matching Models, Human flexibility
  15. PATTERN RECOGNITION:Implications, Phonemes, Voicing, Place of articulation
  16. PATTERN RECOGNITION (continued):Adaptation paradigm
  17. PATTERN RECOGNITION (continued):Gestalt Theory of Perception
  18. PATTERN RECOGNITION (continued):Queen Elizabeth’s vase, Palmer (1977)
  19. OBJECT PERCEPTION (continued):Segmentation, Recognition of object
  20. ATTENTION & PATTERN RECOGNITION:Word Superiority Effect
  21. PATTERN RECOGNITION (CONTINUED):Neural Networks, Patterns of connections
  22. PATTERN RECOGNITION (CONTINUED):Effects of Sentence Context
  23. MEMORY:Short Term Working Memory, Atkinson & Shiffrin Model
  24. MEMORY:Rate of forgetting, Size of memory set
  25. Memory:Activation in a network, Magic number 7, Chunking
  26. Memory:Chunking, Individual differences in chunking
  27. MEMORY:THE NATURE OF FORGETTING, Release from PI, Central Executive
  28. Memory:Atkinson & Shiffrin Model, Long Term Memory, Different kinds of LTM
  29. Memory:Spread of Activation, Associative Priming, Implications, More Priming
  30. Memory:Interference, The Critical Assumption, Limited capacity
  31. Memory:Interference, Historical Memories, Recall versus Recognition
  32. Memory:Are forgotten memories lost forever?
  33. Memory:Recognition of lost memories, Representation of knowledge
  34. Memory:Benefits of Categorization, Levels of Categories
  35. Memory:Prototype, Rosch and Colleagues, Experiments of Stephen Read
  36. Memory:Schema Theory, A European Solution, Generalization hierarchies
  37. Memory:Superset Schemas, Part hierarchy, Slots Have More Schemas
  38. MEMORY:Representation of knowledge (continued), Memory for stories
  39. Memory:Representation of knowledge, PQ4R Method, Elaboration
  40. Memory:Study Methods, Analyze Story Structure, Use Multiple Modalities
  41. Memory:Mental Imagery, More evidence, Kosslyn yet again, Image Comparison
  42. Mental Imagery:Eidetic Imagery, Eidetic Psychotherapy, Hot and cold imagery
  43. Language and thought:Productivity & Regularity, Linguistic Intuition
  44. Cognitive development:Assimilation, Accommodation, Stage Theory
  45. Cognitive Development:Gender Identity, Learning Mathematics, Sensory Memory