Meaningful Processing Research Articles

Effects of exact repetition and conceptual repetition on free recall and primed word-fragment completion.

Experiments are reported in which effects of repeating words exactly (e.g., elephant, elephant) or repeating some meaningful aspect--a synonym (pachyderm), an associate (tusk), or a category coordinate (hippopotamus)--were examined on free recall and word-fragment completion. In free recall, large effects of both exact repetition and conceptual repetition were found; the magnitude of the latter was about half that of the former. In contrast, in primed word-fragment completion, repetition effects were rather small and there was no evidence of indirect (or conceptual) priming. Also, presentation of synonyms, associates, and coordinates in isolation failed to prime word-fragment completion. The results provide further evidence that the basis of primed word-fragment completion is different from that of free recall; the former seems to have a perceptual (or perhaps lexical) basis, whereas the latter relies more on meaningful processing.

Memory bias in panic disorder: An investigation of the cognitive avoidance hypothesis

Individuals with panic disorder (n = 14) and normal controls (n = 14) performed two different memory tasks: a high-speed recognition task that measured perceptual memory (memory for the sensory/perceptual features of a stimulus) and a free recall task that measured semantic memory (memory for the meaning associated with the stimulus). Subjects' memory for threatening, positive, and neutral words was evaluated. In contrast to normal controls, panic disorder patients showed better perceptual memory and better semantic memory for threat words compared to positive and neutral words. These results suggest that the panic disorder individuals engaged in preferential processing of threat information at both a perceptual and semantic level of analysis. The results do not support a “cognitive avoidance” hypothesis which predicts the inhibition of more elaborate and meaningful processing of threat stimuli in anxious subjects. The conditions under which cognitive avoidance might occur are outlined.

Generating makes words memorable, but so does effective reading

In many experiments, memorial benefits have been found when subjects generate items from fragments rather than read items in their complete forms. Does generation cause this difference, or are subjects disposed to adopt different strategies when generating as opposed to reading? If generating causes the difference, items processed in the same way apart from a generative stage should therefore benefit from that generative stage. Our experiments did result in benefits for generating as opposed to reading, but only when the readers processed the words poorly--by pronouncing them. When the readers processed the items well, by imagining them, generating was no better than reading. A new generation effect was found in metamemory. Subjects thought they would remember more generated items than read items; however, the act of making the prediction entailed meaningful processing, and the generated items were not actually remembered better than the read ones.

CIM—OSA: Architecture for enterprise integration A report on current developments

The efficient integration of large, complex systems across an enterprise is hampered by the human problem of understanding complexity. Information Technology, therefore, already plays a major part in integration efforts within organizations, but what is still missing is the necessary software which allows the meaningful processing of huge amounts of information needed in a manufacturing enterprise. Limited human intellectual capabilities coupled with the difficulties of organization have meant that the role of IT is marginal in terms of enterprise operation. A means is required to support the efficient enterprise-wide interworking of IT, both to create an integrated environment description, and for its operational execution. An Open Systems Architecture for CIM with three levels of integration is described.

Topicalization and Memory for Main Ideas in Prose

Two experiments compared the effects of text structure and processing task requirements on memory for the main idea of a passage. College students identified as good or poor readers read a series of short passages in which an initial topic sentence was either present (topicalized) or absent (non-topicalized). In Experiment 1, all subjects were required to generate a title for each passage during reading and then were given a forced-choice recognition test for the main idea of each passage. The results showed that subjects performed better on topicalized passages than non-topicalized passages in both the title generation task and recognition memory. In the second experiment, subjects performed one of three meaningful processing tasks: rating comprehensibility of the passage, choosing the most appropriate main idea, or generating the main idea in their own words. There were no differences due to passage type for either processing task performance or recall of the main ideas, nor were good and poor readers differentially affected by passage type. Generating a main idea sentence following reading resulted in significantly better memory for both good and poor readers than did rating comprehensibility. These results support the position that generative activities facilitate learning of main ideas, even for passages with poor text structure. This finding is important in view of recent studies indicating that the majority of paragraphs written for both children and adults lack an explicit main idea sentence.

Effects of Orienting Tasks on Recognition of Chess Positions

Two experiments using a levels-of-processing paradigm were performed to demonstrate the existence and usefulness of a semantic component in chess knowledge. Experiment I compared forced-choice recognition of chess positions after a structural task (piece counting) as opposed to a semantic task (choosing a move). Recognition accuracy, confidence, and familiarity ratings all showed a facilitation effect in the semantic condition. By including an orienting task that did not encourage semantic processing but still allowed pattern-matching operations to occur (copying a board), Experiment II demonstrated that this task effect was a genuine enhancement of memory due to meaningful processing. One again, the processing of meaningful relations in the semantic task (positional evaluation) produced a higher level of recognition performance than did the more structural processing. These results suggest that aspects of meaning have some input into the processes that generate the memory representation of a chess position.

Queer sentences, ambiguity, and levels of processing

Subjects judged linguistic strings "meaningful" or "meaningless." Meaningful sentences were identical for all subjects; however, for each of five groups, meaningless foils containing different kinds of linguistic violation were interspersed among the meaningful sentences. Type of foil influenced processing time for meaningful items, suggesting that laboratory language processing may be determined by the entire set of linguistic materials used. Effect of foil type on comprehension depth for meaningful items was assessed from the extent to which three kinds of ambiguity slowed judgments on those items as compared to unambiguous sentences. Foil type appears to affect depth of meaningful sentence processing in such a way as to support a "levels of analysis" view of sentence comprehension. Foil type and kind of ambiguity interacted to suggest that sentence comprehension requires computation of underlying logical relationships prior to computation of surface structural relationships and the unequivocal determination of word meanings.

Meaningful processing of sentences.

Meaningful processing of sentences.

Temperature: collection of data and its analysis for the interpretation of plant growth and distribution

Suggestions for more meaningful collection, processing, and interpretation of temperature data are offered. Our suggestions are based upon characteristics of the organism under study. Research on plant–temperature interactions is reviewed and another approach is illustrated.Temperature data, collected near shoots and roots of Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii (Mirb.) Franco) seedlings in different field situations, were assembled from computer-processed temperature traces. From laboratory studies in which day and night air and soil temperatures were controlled, potential seedling growth each day during a growing season was assessed. Then, by summation, a physiological index, expressed in equivalent units, was calculated to relate the possible effect of the field temperatures to plant distribution. This index was used to interpret the effect of temperature on the distribution of vegetation and patterns of leaf initiation in the field. The importance of interactions with the other environmental factors of moisture, chemicals, light, and mechanical forces is mentioned.