Evidence For Context Effects Research Articles

Immigrants\u2019 Labour Market Disadvantages Across Western Europe: the Role of Composition and Context

This paper examines why some Western European countries are more successful in integrating immigrants into the labour market than others. Using data from the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), we show how the country-specific immigrant composition and context of reception contribute to immigrants’ disadvantages across receiving countries. Because the data provide extensive information about relevant characteristics that were often considered unobservable, we can comprehensively model the immigrant composition in receiving countries. We find considerable cross-country differences in immigrants’ disadvantages, both in terms of employment and occupational status. Multivariate analyses highlight that a large part of this variation is explained by differences in immigrant compositions, whereas we find little evidence for context effects. Counterfactual simulations corroborate that the extent to which countries succeed with integrating immigrants into the labour market strongly depends on the composition of the immigrants that they receive.

A change of scenery: Does the setting of an instructional video affect learning?

Two experiments investigated the effects of an instructional video’s setting on learners’ retention and application of the video content. Experiment 1 explored competing hypotheses based on theoretical assumptions about whether an authentic setting would serve as a distraction or as a cue for the instructor’s expertise. Participants (N = 59) watched a video about floral diagrams and floral formulas that was either shot in a greenhouse (authentic setting) or in front of a white wall (neutral setting). Results showed a beneficial effect of the authentic setting on retention, but not on the application of the video content. Experiment 2 aimed to replicate and extend these findings by investigating whether reinstating the authentic setting as a contextual cue during the test phase would further improve test performance. After watching a video that was either shot in an authentic or a neutral setting, participants (N = 149) worked on the retention and application test while a screenshot of the authentic or the neutral setting was presented as a background. Contrary to our expectations, the effect of setting on retention did not replicate and there was no evidence for context effects, despite using the same learning materials and a comparable sample as in Experiment 1. Findings are discussed with regard to potential boundary conditions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved)

Do Changes in Language Context Affect Visual Memory in Bilinguals?

Language is often present when people are encoding visual memories. For bilinguals, this language context can have different forms (i.e., Language A, Language B, or both Language A and B), and can change over the course of events. The current study examined whether a change in language context during a visual event or between visual events affects a bilingual’s ability to remember visual information. English-Spanish bilinguals and control participants encoded three lists of novel shapes amid different task-irrelevant language contexts. Following each list, participants completed a free recall test in which they drew the novel shapes they remembered. Results indicated that a change in language context between events, but not during events, affected visual memory. Specifically, the switch in language context between the second and third event (such as an English context in list 2 switching to a Spanish context in list 3) produced a reliable memory advantage for the English-Spanish bilinguals (relative to the control participants). The results offer preliminary evidence that task-irrelevant language context can influence a bilingual’s ability to remember non-linguistic information, as well as further evidence for context effects and multi-sensory effects in memory.

I’d know that face anywhere!

Mandler (1980) provided the classic "butcher on the bus" example illustrating the feeling of familiarity without recollection that may arise when an acquaintance is encountered in an unusual context. We studied this phenomenon by pairing photos of faces with photos of distinctive contexts at study and later testing recognition memory and remember/know judgments for faces presented with studied, switched, or new contexts. Estimates of recollection and familiarity, based on the assumption that these processes are independent, showed that switching contexts significantly lowered recollection while leaving familiarity intact, just as Mandler described. False alarm rates were higher with old contexts, suggesting that subjects tended to misattribute memories of contexts to memories of faces. These results provide the first evidence of context effects on the subjective experience of recognizing faces. One-dimensional signal-detection models fit the data, but such models do not explain the difference in remember responses between studied and switched items, whereas dual-process models (which also fit the data) do whilealso capturing the phenomenology of the butcher-on-the-bus experience in an intuitively appealing way.

Electrophysiological evidence of an early effect of sentence context in reading

Recognition Potential is an electrophysiological response of the brain that is sensitive to semantic aspects of stimuli. According to its peak values (about 250 ms), Recognition Potential appears as a good candidate to reflect lexical selection processes. Consequently, Recognition Potential might be sensitive to contextual information during reading a sentence. In present study, the standard procedures to improve the visibility of Recognition Potential (Rapid Stream Stimulation paradigm) were used in a task in which sentence context was crucial. A parieto-occipital Recognition Potential was observed to peak about 264 ms after stimulus onset, followed by a centro-parietal N400 peaking at about 450 ms. Recognition Potential was affected by contextual information though, contrary to N400, presenting larger amplitude to contextually congruous words. These results support the assumption that Recognition Potential may reflect lexical selection processes, representing also evidence of context effects on ERP around 250 ms after stimulus onset during sentence reading.

Children's responses to different forms of expression of anger between adults.

Anger is not a homogeneous stimulus, but can vary on a variety of dimensions and domains. This study examined children's responses to anger as a function of: (a) the mode of expression of anger (nonverbal, verbal, verbal-physical), and (b) whether or not anger between others was resolved. Children were presented with videotaped segments of angry and friendly interactions and asked questions concerning their responses. All angry interactions, including non-verbal anger, were perceived as negative events and elicited negative emotions. Unresolved anger was perceived as a far more negative event than resolved anger and induced greater feelings of anger and distress in children. Verbal-physical anger was perceived as the most negative form of expression of anger. Boys reported more angry feelings in response to anger than girls. Distress responding was greater in children from homes in which there was interparent physical aggression and in children with behavior problems. Finally, the utility of this methodology is supported by relatively high test-retest reliability and limited evidence of context effects.

Context effects in two-month-old infants' perception of labiodental/interdental fricative contrasts.

We investigated 2-month-old infants' perception of a subset of highly confusable English fricatives. In Experiment 1, infants discriminated modified natural tokens of the voiceless fricative pair [fa]/[oa] but only when the syllables included their frication noises. They also discriminated the voiced pair [va]/[oa] both with and without fricative noises. These results parallel those found with adults by Carden, Levitt, Jusczyk, and Walley (1981). In Experiment 2 [f] and [o] noises were appended to [a], and the same [f] noise was appended to the previously indiscriminable fricationless versions of [fa] and [oa]. Infants discriminated both pairs of stimuli, indicating that (a) the frication is a sufficient cue for [fa]/[oa] discrimination and that (b) it provides a context for discriminating the [f] and [o] formant transitions. We conclude that infants' perception of labiodental/interdental fricative contrasts show evidence of context effects similar to those observed with adults.

Perception of the duration of rapid spectrum changes: Evidence for context effects with speech and nonspeech signals

For a number of years investigators have focused attention on the effects one acoustic segment has on the perception of other acoustic segments. In one study, Miller and Liberman [Percept. Psychophys. 25, 457–465 (1979)] reported that overall syllable duration influences the location of the labeling boundary between the stop /b/ and the semivowel /w/. They claim that this “context effect” reflects a form of perceptual normalization whereby the listener somehow readjusts his perceptual apparatus to take account of the difference in rate of articulation of the talker. More recently, Eimas and Miller [Science (in press)] have reported that prelinguistic infants also show similar context effects in discrimination of these stimuli. The inference drawn from the latter study is that infants perceive these speech sounds like adults and the context effects reflect the operation of perceptual mechanisms that underlie a phonetic‐like mode of processing specific to speech. In the present study, we carried out several critical comparisons between speech and nonspeech signals and observed comparable context effects for perception of the duration of rapid spectrum changes as a function of overall duration of the stimulus. Our results with nonspeech signals falsify both of the earlier claims by demonstrating clearly that these sorts of context effects are not peculiar to the perception of speech signals or to normalization of speaking rate. [Work supported by NIMH Research Grant MH‐24027‐06.]