The specificity of memories has been identified as a factor affecting reality monitoring performance. To examine the reality monitoring model of Johnson and Raye (1981) and to explore the relationship between memory specificity and reality monitoring, the amount of cognitive operations involved in processing information was manipulated for 72…

Priming is a nonconscious form of human memory. Presents evidence and reasoning that priming and perceptual identification are expressions of a single perceptual representation system. (YP)

Studies children's inductive inferences in order to investigate the development of the expectation that members of a category share unforeseen properties. Results indicate that preschoolers drew more inferences based on category membership than on perceptual appearances. (PCB)

A developmental progression in 6-, 8-, and 10-year-old children's use of strategies for gathering information was revealed in a study involving partial recall, total recall, and similarity/difference judgments. When subjects chose stimuli for exposure from an array, older children showed more ability to match strategy to task demands. Strategy…

Older adults are significantly slower than young adults in the naming response in the Stroop Color Word Interference Test. Hypotheses attempting to explain this age-related difference in a perceptual-cognitive task have included orthogenic principle, response-competition, and cautiousness. This study examines whether there are any significant…

Describes subjective-contour illusions and gives explanations for perception of shape and brightness in these figures. Supports cognitive mechanisms rather than psychological mechanisms. Gives examples of subjective-contour illusions and summarizes explanations of other psychologists with regard to this topic. (CW)

In comparative judgments of two stimuli separated by a time interval, there is often a systematic asymmetry (time-order error). From a review of the literature it is concluded that the time-order error should be classified as a perceptual phenomenon that can be predicted with adaptation-level theory and sensation weighting. (Author/CB)

This study examined the effects of the cochlear hearing loss of 12 adults on two measures of sequential processing that rely on spectro-temporal information: a gap-detection discrimination task and a melody recognition task. It was concluded that cochlear hearing loss deleteriously affects the processes underlying perceptual organization of…

The principle of cognitive consistency, formulated by Jack Snyder, explains decision-making under stressful conditions. Snyder contends that decision-making under stressful conditions creates a drive toward cognitive consistency and brings into operation tendencies: (1) toward a perception of certainty about an opponent's intention and the…

Summarizes and critiques Berberich's dissertation on cognitive effects on music perception. Comments on the study's unusual data analysis and presentation. States that the main arguments are presented elegantly and clearly, but the study overlooked other issues such as a chapter on related literature. (LS)

Cognitive psychologists believe that knowledge is multifaceted and that people process more than just semantic content from a stimulus array. To investigate the implications of recall and impression formation processing objectives on the representation of serial order in memory and judgment, subjects participated in two recall and impression…

The processing of mental structures in perception appears to be serial, in that viewers can fill in missing parts from an impoverished stimulus following a top down process. To investigate the effects of unfamiliarity, complexity, and legibility on object and layout perception of unfamiliar stimuli, ten subjects were shown one of four ribbon…

Experiments were conducted on the speed of encoding differences between 15 school-age individuals with and 15 individuals without mental retardation, while retaining a full memory load or half memory load. Subjects with mental retardation allocated fewer attentional resources to encoding, even though encoding may require more of their resources…

Explains the hierarchic structure of the mammalian visual system. Proposes a model in which feedback pathways serve to modify sensory stimuli in ways that enhance and complete sensory input patterns. Investigates the functioning of the system through computer simulations. (ML)

The problems which emerge in a critical assessment of social perception research reflect limitations at both the theoretical and implementational levels. Traditionally, social perception research has focused on conscious, cognitive, and linguistic processes in studying the perception of psychological qualities of people. Such a focus leaves…