Tachistoscopic Presentation Research Articles

Poor and Normal Readers Achievement on Visual Tasks Involving High Frequency, Low Discriminability Words

Previous studies have demonstrated that poor and normal readers do not differ significantly on various perceptual tasks involving visual stimuli. However, the stimulus employed has generally been a novel or low frequency word. Thus, visual attention to a stimulus may have increased as a function of novelty. This study presented subjects with high frequency, low discriminability words in four conditions. It was hypothesized that poor and normal readers would differ in the ability to read these words presented tachistoscopically in isolation, but would not differ in their abilities to match the words to form, graphically reproduce the words following a tachistoscopic presentation, or select the appropriate word from a group of distractor words after a tachistoscopic presentation. The hypotheses were supported. It was concluded that a visual perceptual deficit is unlikely to be a major factor in reading disability.

Laterality effects in judgment of the identity and position of letters: a signal detection analysis.

In two experiments subjects received 100 ms tachistoscopic presentations, either to left or right of fixation, of a rectangular matrix of 12 cells. On each trial three cells were filled, each with a different symbol drawn from a set of 12 letters and digits. In one (the “letter” experiment) subjects had to decide whether a particular letter (nominated at the end of the trial) had been one of the three presented. In a second (the “position” experiment) they had to decide whether a cell in the matrix (again nominated at the end of the trial) had been one of those that contained a symbol. Judgments were made on a four-point rating scale, and measures of sensitivity and response bias were calculated. In the letter experiment sensitivity was greater for presentations to right of fixation, and in the position experiment for those to left.

Processing order in visual perception.

Initial increases in the availability of items for report following tachistoscopic presentation of centrally-fixated rows of seven random letters were directly evaluated by measuring report accuracy following exposure durations of 10, 20, 40, 80 and 160 ms. A partial-report technique was used, and each presentation of a letter row was immediately followed by the presentation of a masking stimulus. Each of 10 subjects received 840 trials which reflected 24 trials for each exposure-duration by position-probed combination. The letters at both ends of a row became available for report prior to the centre letters. In addition, report of the left-most letter was consistently better than report of the right-most letter, and report of the centre item at fixation improved at a more rapid rate with increased exposure duration than report of the other centre letters. This pattern of results provides support for certain components of several different previous proposals concerning the order in which individual items from multi-element displays become available for report.

Spatio-temporal differentiation and integration in visual motion perception. An experimental and theoretical analysis of calculus-like functions in visual data processing.

Perceptual organization during short tachistoscopic presentation of stimulus patterns formed by ten moving bright spots, representing a human body in walking, running, etc. was investigated. Exposure times were .1 sec to .5 sec. The results reveal that in all Ss the dot pattern is perceptually organized to a “gestalt”, a walking, running, etc., person at an exposure time of .2 sec. 40% of Ss perceived a human body in such motion at presentation times as short as 0.1 sec. Under the experimental conditions used the track length of the bright spots at the threshold of integration to a moving unit was of the size order 10′ visual angle. This result is regarded as indicating that a complex vector analysis of the proximal motion pattern is accomplished at the initial stage of physiological signal recording and that it is a consequence of receptive field organization. It is discussed in terms of vector calculus.

Recognition after tachistoscopic presentations of complex pictorial stimuli.

Recognition after tachistoscopic presentations of complex pictorial stimuli.

Superiority of recognition over detection in judgments of visual orientation.

2 human subjects were tested in two separate visual psychophysical tasks--detection and recognition. Using tachistoscopic presentation, single lines were shown at five different exposure durations. It was determined that it is easier to judge which of two lines, differing only in orientation, was flashed than to judge whether or not a given line was presented. The statistically significant superiority of recognition over detection occurred along a wide performance range, roughly from 60% to 95% correct. The data indicate that the effect is not peculiar to a simultaneous detection-recognition task or to a midrange performance level, both of which were used in a previous study. Other relevant data and theoretical explanations of the effect are discussed.

Independent Functioning of the Two Cerebral Hemispheres for Recognizing Bilaterally Presented Tachistoscopic Visual-Half-Field Stimuli

Bilateral tachistoscopic presentation of verbal stimuli produces a significantly larger right visual half-field (VHF) superiority than does unilateral presentation, when fixation is controlled by a center digit. This experiment tested whether the increased asymmetry was due to (a) subjects attending the right VHF and ignoring the left VHF or (b) interference between the hemispheres due to competition for the left hemisphere language areas. Words, shaptes, and pictures of faces were presented bilaterally to each VHF, with fixation controlled by a center digit. In three conditions, the same type of stimuli was presented in each VHF (e.g., a word in both the left and right VHF). In two conditions words were presented to one VHF and nonverbal stimuli to the opposite VHF (words paired with words and words paired with faces). It was found that the stimulus pairings did not affect VHF asymmetry for any stimulus. Words showed a large right VHF superiority in all conditions. Shapes showed a significantly smaller right VHF superiority in all conditions. Faces showed no VHF asymmetry in any condition. It was concluded that attentional factors were not important since shapes or faces could be recognized accurately from the left VHF without lowering verbal recognition from the right VHF. Thus the low recognition accuracy from the left VHF is specific for verbal stimuli rather than attentional. The interference hypothesis was also not supported since all the right VHF stimuli (words, shapes, or faces) were associated with low recognition of words from the left VHF. It was suggested instead that VHF asymmetry under unilateral and bilateral presentation reflect two different mechanisms. Under conditions of unilateral presentation, VHF asymmetries are caused by loss of information when any given stimulus must cross the callosum to reach the hemisphere specialized for its processing. However, with bilateral VHF presentation and fixation control, the two hemispheres act as independent channels for information processing. Under this condition, each hemisphere recognized the stimulus from its contralateral VHF. Thus the large right VHF superiority for words with bilateral presentation reflects the superior ability of the left hemisphere for verbal recognition.

Tachistoscopic word recognition performance under conditions of simultaneous bilateral presentation

Four experiments involving the bilateral tachistoscopic presentation of word pairs are reported. This paradigm was found to generate a right hemi-field recognition advantage across manipulations of word orientation, exposure duration, and fixation control. In two of the experiments this recognition asymmetry was maintained in spite of a significant tendency to initiate the verbal report with any available left hemi-field content. In three of the experiments the strength of the left to right order of report tendency was negatively correlated with the magnitude of the right visual field recognition advantage. A hypothesis to account for the more common finding of left hemi-field recognition superiority with bilateral displays is offered.

Surface structure and presupposition

Frequency of perceptual errors as a function of differential presupposition in descriptive sentences was measured. In Experiment I, subjects heard a cleft or pseudocleft sentence prior to tachistoscopic presentation of a picture in which the presupposed proposition or the focused proposition was misrepresented. The task was to decide if the sentence correctly described the picture. Results indicated that more errors occurred when the misrepresentation involved the presupposition than when it involved the focused proposition. Experiment II was conducted to determine if the frequency of errors was a function of the type of surface structure employed to mark the presupposition. Results indicated that several different surface structure features of English, employed in combination, increase the presuppositional strength of the sentence.

The effect of chlorpromazine on visual information processing in normal subjects.

The hypothesis that chlorpromazine (CPZ) has the effect in visual information processing of protecting the short term memory visual trace by serving to filter or habituate stimuli following an initial stimulus was tested in 40 normal college students. The method involved the tachistoscopic presentation of paired, successive 3 x 2 consonant arrays, separated by a 200-millisecond interval, with instructions to report either the first or the second array, in a double blind repeated measurement design in which Ss served as their own placebo controls and a single dose of 50 milligrams of CPZ was administered. Under the particular conditions obtaining in this investigation, the results do not support the hypothesis, but suggest that when ipsimodal, isomorphic distraction follows an initial relevant stimulus, CPZ tends to reduce STM span. The results do afford partial support for the hypothesis that CPZ has the effect of delaying the processing (coding) of visual information. A CPZ mechanism of action on response criteria in deciding the relevance of stimuli is advanced and related to clinical effects of CPZ in acute schizophrenics.

Processing of Contour Information by Human Infants Evidenced by Pattern-Dependent Evoked Potentials

KARMEL, BERNARD Z.; HOFFMANN, ROBERT F.; and FEGY, MARTIN J. Processing of Contour Information by Human Infants Evidenced by Pattern-dependent Evoked Potentials. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1974, 45, 39-48. Visually evoked potentials (VEPs) elicited by checkerboard stimuli varying in check size (from 20' to 50) or arrangement (redundant or random) were recorded from the occipital pole of 55-107-day-old infants, using 2 techniques of pattern presentation. Patterns were illuminated with either brief light flashes (tachistoscopic presentation, N = 33) or a light with intensity varying sinusoidally (modulated presentation, N = 7). Both techniques yielded similar results in that an inverted U-shaped function related contour density (as measured by the square root of the total of all lengths of black-white transitions in the pattern) to variations in the amplitude of the positive component peak (P2) which occurred 100 msec after light onset; p < .001, r = .88. The maximum P2 amplitude was found to shift toward stimuli with greater contour densities as chronological (CA) and neurological (NA) age increased where NA was based on the latency from stimulus onset of P2. This shift did not appear to be related to increases in gestational age (GA) where GA was based on reported due date. The inverted U-shaped function of VEP component amplitudes and shifts in function maximum toward increases in contour density as CA increases was identical with that reported by Karmel (1969a) for total time spent fixating comparable stimuli.

Tachistoscopic recognition of syllabicated words.

In Experiment I, two-syllable words were presented in a multi-channel tachisto-scope. The whole word (W), first syllable (S1), and second syllable (S2) were displayed independently according to various schedules of successive 50-ms exposures; the exposures were in immediate succession, with no break apparent to the subject. Accuracy of identifying the words was facilitated by presenting a syllable before or after the whole word (S1W, S2W or WS1, WS2) in comparison with presenting the whole word alone (W). Presentation of the whole word for 100 ms (WW) produced better performance than sequential presentation of the first syllable, the whole word, and the second syllable for 50 ms each (S1WS2); the whole-word presentation (WW) was also superior to the reverse sequence (S2WS1). In Experiment II, strings of random digits were presented in the formats of S1WS2, WW, and S2WS1. Unlike the results of Experiment I, performance in the sequential conditions was not different from that in the simultaneous condition. It was concluded that sequential tachistoscopic presentation does not affect identification of unrelated characters, although it does disrupt the process of word recognition. Three hypotheses to explain the disruption were discussed: distortion of phonological representation, interruption of medial letter clusters, and fragmentation of the whole word.

Application of an information model to schizophrenia: relationship of relevancy to irrelevancy.

The frequently reported inability of schizophrenics to disregard irrelevancy was investigated within the framework of information theory. Quantitative and qualitative noise levels were varied with levels of relevant information. Chronic schizophrenics ( N = 30) were compared with tubercular controls and community volunteers ( Ns = 30) on a task consisting of the tachistoscopic presentation of dots in the presence of noise. The results substantiated an earlier study that demonstrated schizophrenics have relatively more difficulty processing information under low-noise conditions. Intelligence, by covariance analysis, did not account for the low-noise effect. Institutionalization was related to information-processing deficiencies.

Extraversion and the visual figural after-effect with tachistoscopic presentation.

It may be argued that the failure of previous studies to find a significant relationship between extraversion and visual FAEs lies in their use of inspection times of ‘intermediate’ duration, where in fact the theory predicts no difference between extraverts and introverts. In the present study, where very short inspection times were used, the hypothesis that extraverts show larger FAE than introverts was not supported.

CHILDREN'S TACHISTOSCOPIC RECOGNITION THRESHOLDS FOR AND RECALL OF WORDS WHICH DIFFER IN CONNOTATIVE MEANING

FINLEY, GORDON E.; and FRENKEL, ODED J. Children's Tachistoscopic Recognition Thresholds for and Recall of Words Which Differ in Connotative Meaning. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1972, 43, 1098-1103. Tachistoscopic recognition thresholds for words that differed in connotative meaning were obtained on 48 children, 12 boys and 12 girls in each of grades 4 and 7. The results indicated that: children recognized good words more rapidly than bad words; the magnitude of the good-bad word effect decreased with increasing age; and more bad than good words were recalled after tachistoscopic presentation. The decrease in the good-bad word effect paralleled previously reported decreases in the use of extreme or dichotomized semantic differential ratings with increasing age.

Information transmission in brief exposures as a function of association value.

The amount of information Transmitted as a function of Glaze's (1928) association value of nonsense syllables was determined by tachistoscopic presentation of the syllables for 30-msec. durations. S attempted to identify which syllabic of a known set of syllables had been exposed. The information theory meaure of transmission indicated a direct relation between association value and recognizability.

Developmental Differences in the Field of View during Tachistoscopic Presentation

MILLER, LEON K. Developmental Differences in the Field of View during Tachistoscopic Presentation. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1971, 42, 1543-1551. Evidence for developmental differences in the ability to locate peripheral targets was sought under conditions of tachistoscopic presentation. Second graders, sixth graders, and college students were required to locate single target letters appearing in an array of letters. Experiment 1 revealed significant differences in performance associated with field extent and density although neither factor interacted with age. Some evidence for developmental differences in the effects of target location were found. However, these differences were highly dependent upon the nature of the display. In experiment 2, arrays shown to be relatively sensitive to the effects of target location were presented under conditions designed to elicit developmental differences in overall levels of performance. Significant differences associated with age, exposure duration, and target location were found, but little support was obtained for the hypothesis that the field of view of younger children is more limited than that of adults.

Evaluation of the psychophysiological functions in humans exposed to the 'Threshold Limit Value' of 1,1,1-trichloroethane.

<b>Salvini, M., Binaschi, S., and Riva, M. (1971).</b><i>Brit. J. industr. Med.,</i><b>28,</b> 286-292. <b>Evaluation of the psychophysiological functions in humans exposed to the `Threshold Limit Value9 of 1,1,1-trichloroethane.</b> The effects on the psychophysiological functions in human beings of exposure to 1,1,1-trichloroethane (methylchloroform; MC) were evaluated by exposing six male university students to an average vapour concentration of 450 p.p.m. for two periods of 4 hours, separated by a 1½-hour interval. Each subject was examined on two different days, one day undertaking a set of tests in an atmosphere containing MC vapour and on the other day in a `control9 atmosphere which did not contain MC. On each of the two days a series of tests was performed at 8.30 a.m. and repeated at 6 p.m. They comprised a perception test with tachistoscopic presentation, Wechsler Memory Scale, a complex reaction time test, and a manual dexterity test. A crossed scheme analysis was used. After the two exposures no disturbances in motor function, coordination, equilibrium or behaviour patterns were observed in any of the subjects; there were some complaints about eye irritation at the peak exposure periods. The following conclusion may be drawn from the results. In humans exposed to a vapour concentration of MC of 450 p.p.m. the psychophysiological functions studied were not decreased. The low percentage reduction in performance which was observed is not statistically significant. In the perception test an interaction between exposure to MC and mental fatigue was observed.

Evaluation of the psychophysiological functions in humans exposed to trichloroethylene.

Salvini, M., Binaschi, S., and Riva, M. (1971). Brit. J. industr. Med., 28, 293-295. Evaluation of the psychophysiological functions in humans exposed to trichloroethylene. To provide data on the psychophysiological efficiency of human beings exposed to solvent vapour currently used in the industry the effects of trichloroethylene (TCE) were evaluated by exposing six male university students to an average vapour concentration of 110 p.p.m. for two s4-hour exposures, separated by a 1½-hour interval. Each subject was examined on two different days, on one day undertaking a set of tests in an atmosphere contaminated with TCE vapours and on another day in a `control9 atmosphere which did not contain TCE. On each of the two days two sets of test were performed at 8.30 a.m. and at 6 p.m. The following tests were performed: perception test with tachistoscopic presentation, Wechsler Memory Scale, complex reaction time test, and manual dexterity test. A crossed scheme analysis was used. In all the tests performed a statistically very significant decrease in performance ability was seen; the greatest decrease occurred during the more complex tests. The suggested TLV for TCE (100 p.p.m) appears to be very close to the average concentration capable of interfering with psychophysiological efficiency, even in the absence of other undesirable subjective and objective manifestations.

A STUDY OF IMPERFECTLY ACQUIRED VOCABULARY

Three experiments examined behaviour with words which could be used and defined by the subjects, words which were simply ‘familiar’, and unknown words. Known and familiar words were recognized equally readily after brief tachistoscopic presentations; known words elicit semantically related responses, while familiar and unknown words usually elicit phonologically related or phonologically mediated responses. In a word‐selection task, the subjects had to choose the word most similar to the stimulus, from a set of four words: semantically related, phonologically related, phonologically mediated and unrelated. For familiar words a semantically related word was more likely to be recognized in this choice task than it was to be produced in the word‐association task. The same was true but to a lesser extent for unknown words. A simple scheme for word‐processing is proposed to fit the findings, in which there are separate stores for the surface‐structure (phonological/visual) features and dictionary entries of words. For known words there is ready access to entries in the surface‐structure stores, and ready access between surface‐structure and dictionary‐entry stores. Access to any entries which may exist is very limited in the case of unknown words. For familiar words, there is ready access to surface‐structure entries, but access to the dictionary‐entry store is limited.