We live in a linguistically-deprived environment, in which the ability to distinguish reality from illusion is vital to survival.

Subjects completed sentences of the form NP1 aux V NP2 because (but) Pro...(e.g., John may scold Bill because he...) with a reason or motive for the action described. A basic perceptual strategy was hypothesized to underlie the comprehension of these sentences which have a potentially ambiguous pronoun in the subject position of the subordinate…

A series of experiments was reported in which three models of word identification were evaluated: the direct-semantic-access model, the visual-features stage model, and the phonemic-recoding stage model. A modified Stroop task was used to contrast these three models. (Editor/RK)

Two experiments examined the effects of level of processing and uniqueness of encoding on the ability to recognize the nominal stimulus among either semantically similar or structurally similar distractor items. (Author/NCR)

1,242 subjects, in five experiments plus a pilot study, saw a series of slides depicting a single auto-pedestrian accident. These experiments investigate how information supplied after an event influences a witness's memory for that event. Results suggest that information supplied a witness after an event, whether inconsistent or misleading, is…

This study was designed to determine whether infants could perceive action role reversals when the direction of action is ruled out as a cue; whether infants consider inanimate, nonpotent objects to be unlikely agents; and whether both these discriminations could be reliably reflected in the heart rate response. (Author/SB)

A model is proposed in which information processing is accompanied by dynamic processes, including the reorganization of items into active patterns and their subsequent displacement. Research using category names and instances showed that reaction times decreased with each successive repetition under one condition, but longer latencies were…

Assesses three papers in this volume, those by Wellman and Estes, Olson and Torrance, and Hall and Nagy, for their treatment of the following: (1) definition of semantic space, (2) defining children's processes of understanding that space, and (3) describing the contexts in which cognitive language is used. (AEW)

Fifteen exercises are presented that are intended to increase reading comprehension in seventh and eighth graders via emphasis on word recognition, language comprehension (syntax and semantics), and reasoning skills (including inference, analogies, relationships, and direction following). (CL)

Describes an experiment to test two assumptions concerning what is stored in the memory with regard to sentence structure: (1) that the linear effect observed is based on a tally model rather than on an integrationist mechanism; (2) that this linear effect is not uniquely the result of a mechanism operating at comprehension. (CLK)

Reports on an experiment in which performance on abstract and concrete sentences was compared in a sentence meaning classification task and in a free recall task. Results show that concrete sentences were classified significantly faster than abstract ones. (CLK)

Paper presented in part at the Annual Meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association, Cleveland, Ohio, May 1972. (DD)

Concerns the small proportion of phonemes in any given language, as compared to the number of morphemes, lexemes, and sememes. (DD)