Function Of Priority Research Articles

Retrograde amnesia in free recall as a function of priority and "posteriority" instruction.

The present study supports earlier reports showing poorer free recall for the item preceding a unique item in an otherwise homogeneous list. Subjects were shown lists of common nouns and instructed either prior to or immediately following list presentation to be aware of a word in the list from a particular taxonomic category. Recall of the unique item was improved both by priority and “posteriority” instructions, whereas recall was depressed for the immediately preceding item in both conditions. It was concluded that encoding failures are sufficient but not necessary to produce induced retrograde amnesia.

Teaching the Learner to Ask for Information

Although asking for information is a function of first priority in almost all forms of dialogue, it is generally admitted that the teaching of questions is not very successful. A survey of widely used textbooks showed that the techniques most commonly employed were transformational and that they failed to satisfy four major criteria when they: 1) provided the learner with no motives for asking questions; 2) inhibited spontaneity in their asking; 3) provided no instructions for following up initial questions with further inquiries; and 4) actively encouraged error by cross-association. Some alternative exercises which avoid these criticisms are put forward.

Noise exposure, monitoring and tracking performance as a function of signal bias and task priority.

Abstract An experiment was conducted to extend some findings reported by Hockey (1970 a, b) who employed a primary tracking and secondary watchkeeping task. He found that when signals were more probable in the centre and subjects were asked to perform a central tracking task, they missed peripheral signals while in noise. When signals were equally probable at all loci this effect did not occur. Hockey concluded that the effect reflects a funnelling of attention rather than of vision. In the present experiment similar tracking and watchkeeping tasks were employed, but for separate groups either the watchkeeping or tracking was primary and the other task secondary. In the primary tracking group there was a subgroup for which signal probability was higher in the centre and one in which there was no bias; for the primary watchkeeping group there was a subgroup for which signal probability was higher in the periphery and a subgroup for which there was no bias. In each subgroup there were 12 subjects, who performed the tasks on different days under three Noise Conditions (75 dBA background noise, 136 dB (SPL) peak periodic impulse noise, and 105 dBA recorded continuous noise). Results quite different from those reported by Hockey were obtained: there was no effect of noise on quality of monitoring, but tracking performance was impaired. Possible explanations are advanced.

Reasoning as an Associative Process: I. “Direction” in a Simple Verbal Problem

Two investigations are described in which series of verbal classification problems were used to study two hypotheses concerning the nature of set or direction in problem solving. The evidence is considered to support the hypotheses, which state that direction is a function of priority of stimulus activation of response systems under certain conditions and of activation of strong and pervasive response systems previously acquired by Ss under other conditions.