Visual Similarity Effects Research Articles

Serial Position Memory in the Visual—Spatial Domain: Reconstructing Sequences of Unfamiliar Faces

In two studies we presented pictures of unfamiliar faces one at a time, then presented the complete set at test and asked for serial reconstruction of the order of presentation. Serial position functions were similar to those found with verbal materials, with considerable primacy and one item recency, position errors that were mainly to the adjacent serial position, a visual similarity effect, and effects of articulatory suppression that did not interact with the serial position effect or with the similarity effect. Serial position effects were found when faces had been seen for as little as 300 ms and after a 6-s retention interval filled with articulatory suppression. Serial position effects found with unfamiliar faces are not based on verbal encoding strategies, and important elements of serial memory may be general across modalities.

Word length, phonemic, and visual similarity effects in poor and normal readers

Serial order recall for visually and auditorily presented stimuli was examined in a group of 12-year-old poor readers and 7-year-old reading-age controls. With pictorial presentation, the poor readers showed a visual similarity effect, no word length effect, and a smaller phonemic similarity effect than that of controls. However, with visual presentation of printed words and with auditory presentation, poor readers showed word length and phonemic similarity effects of similar magnitude to that of controls. It is concluded that poor readers rely on visual information in tasks where the presented images are highly codable, and where verbal recoding is not obligatory, but that they will make use of phonological coding when the stimuli are not as easily codable visually in memory.

Phonological and Visuo-Spatial Working Memory in Individuals With Intellectual Disability

Differences in the storage and rehearsal components of the phonological loop and visuo-spatial sketchpad were investigated in individuals with and without intellectual disability matched on memory span. The group with intellectual disability had specific difficulty in the rehearsal component of the phonological loop, as demonstrated by a weak word length effect compared to the group without intellectual disability. Groups did not differ in the storage component of the phonological loop as indexed by the phonological similarity effect. Also, groups did not differ in the storage or maintenance components of the visuo-spatial sketchpad, having comparable visual similarity and visual complexity effects. However, visual complexity task performance suggested that some aspects of visual processing surpass developmental level expectations for individuals with intellectual disability.

Insensitivity of visual short-term memory to irrelevant visual information.

Several authors have hypothesized that visuo-spatial working memory is functionally analogous to verbal working memory. Irrelevant background speech impairs verbal short-term memory. We investigated whether irrelevant visual information has an analogous effect on visual short-term memory, using a dynamic visual noise (DVN) technique known to disrupt visual imagery (Quinn & McConnell, 1996b). Experiment I replicated the effect of DVN on pegword imagery. Experiments 2 and 3 showed no effect of DVN on recall of static matrix patterns, despite a significant effect of a concurrent spatial tapping task. Experiment 4 showed no effect of DVN on encoding or maintenance of arrays of matrix patterns, despite testing memory by a recognition procedure to encourage visual rather than spatial processing. Serial position curves showed a one-item recency effect typical of visual short-term memory. Experiment 5 showed no effect of DVN on short-term recognition of Chinese characters, despite effects of visual similarity and a concurrent colour memory task that confirmed visual processing of the characters. We conclude that irrelevant visual noise does not impair visual short-term memory. Visual working memory may not be functionally analogous to verbal working memory, and different cognitive processes may underlie visual short-term memory and visual imagery.

Are There Orthographic Impairments in Phonological Dyslexia?

Two hypotheses have been advanced concerning the basis of acquired phonological dyslexia. According to the dual-route model, the pattern derives from impaired grapheme-phoneme conversion. According to the phonological impairment hypothesis, it derives from impaired representation and use of phonology. Effects of graphemic complexity and visual similarity observed in studies by Howard and Best (1996), orthographic effects on phoneme counting (Berndt, Haendiges, Mitchum, & Wayland, 1996), and data from patient LB (Derouesné & Beauvois, 1985) have been taken as evidence for an orthographic impairment in phonological dyslexia and therefore against the impaired phonology hypothesis (Coltheart, 1996). We present a computational simulation, results of two behavioral studies, and a critical analysis of the MJ and LB data, which suggest that the "orthographic" deficits in such patients arise from phonological impairments that interact with orthographic properties of stimuli.

Visual similarity effects in immediate verbal serial recall.

The role of visual working memory in temporary serial retention of verbal information was examined in four experiments on immediate serial recall of words that varied in visual similarity and letters that varied in the visual consistency between upper and lower case. Experiments 1 and 2 involved words that were either visually similar (e.g. fly, cry, dry; hew, new, few) or were visually distinct (e.g. guy, sigh, lie; who, blue, ewe). Experiments 3 and 4 involved serial recall of both letter and case from sequences of letters chosen such that the upper- and lower-case versions were visually similar, for example Kk, Cc, Zz, Ww, or were visually dissimilar, for example Dd, Hh, Rr, Qq. Hence in the latter set, case information was encoded in terms of both the shape and the size of the letters. With both words and letters, the visually similar items resulted in poorer recall both with and without concurrent articulatory suppression. This visual similarity effect was robust and was replicated across the four experiments. The effect was not restricted to any particular serial position and was particularly salient in the recall of letter case. These data suggest the presence of a visual code for retention of visually presented verbal sequences in addition to a phonological code, and they are consistent with the use of a visual temporary memory, or visual "cache", in verbal serial recall tasks.

Visual similarity effects in immediate verbal serial recall

Visual similarity effects in immediate verbal serial recall

Phonological recoding deficit in working memory of dyslexic teenagers

The picture span performance of developmental dyslexic teenagers (mean age 14 years 1 month) was compared to the picture span performance of both RA (mean age 9 years 0 month) and chronological age match controls (mean age 14 years 1 month). Three stimulus lists were manipulated for visual and phonological similarity. Findings indicated that all three groups showed a significant phonological similarity effect but only the dyslexic group showed a significant visual similarity effect. The presence of dual visual‐verbal coding is postulated to be responsible for the ‘noisy’ encoding which others (e.g. Johnston and Anderson, 1998; Swan and Goswami, 1997) have suggested is a root cause of dyslexia. The results are discussed in terms of developmental deficits in the central executive of the working memory system.

Orthographic and Phonological Activation in the Semantic Processing of Korean Hanja and Hangul

The Korean orthography includes alphabetic Hangul and logographic Hanja scripts. Two experiments investigated whether (a) the role of phonological and orthographic activation differs during semantic processing of Hangul and Hanja and (b) proficiency in Hanja would affect the way that phonology is used in the comprehension of Hanja characters. In Experiment 1, in which Hanja was tested, less-skilled Hanja readers produced more false positive categorisation errors on homophone foils, as well as on visually similar foils, than on their corresponding controls. Skilled Hanja readers however, produced reliable visual similarity effects, but not homophonic effects. These results indicate that phonology plays a prominent role in the semantic processing of logographic Hanja for the less-skilled readers, but not for the skilled readers. In Experiment 2, in which Hangul was tested, both skilled and less-skilled Hanja readers displayed strong homophonic effects for pseudohomophones, suggesting that phonology plays a crucial role in the semantic processing of Hangul. Overall, the results indicate that both language proficiency and script difference can affect the pattern of semantic processing of written language.

Visual effects in picture and word categorization.

Two experiments are reported in which participants categorized stimuli as belonging or not belonging to the category of fruits. Blocks of pictures and words were used, with items referring to exemplars having either high or low intercategory visual similarity and/or semantic relatedness. For both pictures and words, response time was longer in the semantically related conditions than in the unrelated condition. Furthermore, there was a strong effect of visual similarity for pictures but not for words when semantic relatedness was held constant: Participants took longer to classify pictures of fruits when these were mixed with visually similar vegetables than when they were mixed with visually dissimilar vegetables. Reducing the stimulus visibility by adding a dot pattern had an additive effect for words but an interactive effect for pictures. The results are explained in terms of a unique locus for category decisions about pictures and words.

Effects of Visual Similarity on Serial Report and Item Recognition

Four experiments examined the sensitivity of visual short-term memory to visual pattern similarity. Experiment 1 showed that immediate serial memory for novel visual patterns was sensitive to similarity. Using an item reocgnition task, Experiment 2 showed that subjects learned the descriptions of sets of similar and dissimilar patterns at the same rate. But repeated presentations of patterns in a serial memory task again showed a marked and persistent similarity effect (Experiment 3). The final experiment showed the visual similarity effect in serial memory for patterns that had been previously learned. The results show that (a) serial memory for patterns is sensitive to visual similarity, (b) the visual similarity effect is not due to perceptual confusions but originates in memory, (c) there is a clear dissociation between item and order errors, and (d) the visual similarity effect survives articulatory suppression. Visual serial order memory and verbal serial recall appear to share several of these properties, suggesting that the same constraints govern serial memory in each modality. Implications for the understanding of short-term memory are discussed.

Effects of Visual Similarity on Serial Report and Item Recognition

Four experiments examined the sensitivity of visual short-term memory to visual pattern similarity. Experiment 1 showed that immediate serial memory for novel visual patterns was sensitive to similarity. Using an item reocgnition task, Experiment 2 showed that subjects learned the descriptions of sets of similar and dissimilar patterns at the same rate. But repeated presentations of patterns in a serial memory task again showed a marked and persistent similarity effect (Experiment 3). The final experiment showed the visual similarity effect in serial memory for patterns that had been previously learned. The results show that (a) serial memory for patterns is sensitive to visual similarity, (b) the visual similarity effect is not due to perceptual confusions but originates in memory, (c) there is a clear dissociation between item and order errors, and (d) the visual similarity effect survives articulatory suppression. Visual serial order memory and verbal serial recall appear to share several of these prop...

The effect of visual similarity on picture categorization and identification

Two experiments were conducted to examine the effect of visual similarity on picture categorization (Experiment 1) and picture identification (Experiment 2). In Experiment 1 subjects took more time to categorize the pictures of fruits, visually similar to vegetables, than the words which showed their names. On the contrary, subjects took less time to categorize the pictures of animals, visually dissimilar to fruits and vegetables, than the words. In Experiment 2, it took more time for subjects to identify the pictures of animals primed by the same category members than those primed by fruits. The pictures of animals showed the highest visual similarity among three categories. Those results suggest that visual similarity could affect picture categorization and identification as semantic similarity could. We also discussed the notions of visual representation and category specificity in semantic processing.

Orthographic and phonological activation in recognizing Chinese characters

This paper is a contribution to the study of whether visual contact with lexical units in any writing system necessarily arouses their corresponding phonological information. In two experiments it was investigated whether phonological information is automatically activated during the semantic processing of Chinese characters. In these experiments, both using a semantic-categorization task, subjects produced the same proportion of false positive categorization errors and showed the same decision latencies on homophone foils and their non-homophonic controls, thus indicating that phonological information does not seem to affect the semantic task. Experiment 2 further revealed that subjects made more errors and produced longer response times on graphemically similar foils than on the corresponding controls. The absence of phonological effects and the presence of clear effects of visual similarity for Chinese characters in semantic tasks can be taken to indicate that phonological information may not be automatically activated during the processing of meanings of Chinese characters. The present results also cast serious doubts on the hypothesis that phonological activation is a universal principle of lexical processing.

Developmental Aspects of Phonemic and Visual Similarity Effects: Further Evidence in Italian Children

Phonemic and visual similarity effects were investigated in Italian children of different ages. In Experiment 1, two groups of children (mean age 5;1 and 10;3 years) were asked to recall either pictures of common objects with phonemically similar or dissimilar names, or the spoken names of the pictures. Although a similarity effect was present in older children for both words and drawings, in younger children only a tendency in the expected direction occurred. The lack of a phonemic similarity effect for spoken words was attributed to the presence of a ceiling effect. In addition, results showed a significant superior recall for words in younger children and for drawings in older ones. An additional group of 5-year-old children was tested, increasing the list length to four items. Results indicated a significant similarity effect for words but not for drawings, together with a superior recall for words. These findings, in agreement with previous results, suggest that phonological memory traces contribute to performance of younger children only when material to be recalled is in the auditory modality, whereas in older children phonological coding is independent in the input modality. In Experiment 2 the performance of 5-and 10-year-old children was compared for immediate recall of two different sets of visually similar and dissimilar drawings. Results showed a significant effect of visual similarity in younger children only, for both sets of drawings, extending previously obtained results (e.g. Hitch, Halliday, Schaaftal, & Scrhaagen, 1988) to different materials and to Italian subjects. In Experiment 3, the visual similarity effect was investigated with a delayed recall procedure in a 5-year-old group. Four delay intervals (0, 5, 10, 15 seconds) and two activities during delay (articulatory suppression and a tapping task) were considered. Results obtained indicated that the visual similarity effect is present at all delay intervals for both activities during delay; and are discussed in terms of alternative interpretations of the visual similarity effect.

The effect of visual similarity on short-term memory for spatial location: Implications for the capacity of visual short-term memory

Evidence from the recency effect suggests that visual short-term memory is limited to preserving information about a single pattern. Three experiments explored the capacity of visual short-term memory using a task which involved presenting a series of patterns in a random spatio-temporal sequence and probing memory for the spatial location of one of them. Experiment 1 used sequences of quasi-random block patterns which were either visually similar or dissimilar. Serial position curves showed a single-item recency effect. However, there was also a deleterious effect of visual similarity for the earlier patterns, indicating that visual short-term memory was supporting their retention. Experiment 2 showed that performance was unaffected by articulatory suppression, confirming that phonological coding is not an important factor in the localisation task. Experiment 3 switched to letter stimuli and, because of the known tendency for this type of stimulus to be phonologically recoded, required articulatory suppression. Letters were shown in a customised form in sequences which were either visually similar or visually dissimilar. The results replicated experiment 1 in showing restricted recency combined with an effect of visual similarity extending across earlier list items. When the same letters were shown in standard form, the recency effect remained but the similarity effect disappeared, ruling out possible interpretations in terms of semantic as well as phonological coding. It is concluded that the recency effect gives a misleading indication of the capacity of visual short-term memory. The visual similarity effect suggests that it is capable of supporting the retention of several patterns.

Phonologically mediated access to meaning for Kanji: Is a rows still a rose in Japanese Kanji?

It is generally assumed that access to phonology for words written in logographic Japanese Kanji must be mediated by access to their meaning. This proposal was examined in a semantic categorization task with homophones. If the assumption about Kanji processing were true, then homophony should have no effect on semantic judgments. However, there was a significant homophone effect: Reaction times (RTs) were longer and more errors occurred to homophone foils than to control foils. There was also a significant effect of visual similarity: Incorrect target words that were virually similar to correct exemplars of the category names yielded longer RTs and higher error rates. The effects of both visual similarity and homophony were obtained even under conditions of pattern masking (though only on errors)

Selective impairment of the “central executive” component of working memory: A single case study

We report the case of a head-injured patient (AM) with a specific short-term memory impairment. He did not show any deficit in long-term memory and presented no sign of either intellectual or frontal dysfunction. His spans for verbal and nonverbal material were reduced and he showed a lack of recency effect in free recall for visually presented words. We observed word length and phonological similarity effects as well as the abolition with articulatory suppression of the visual and auditory word length effect and of the visual phonological similarity effect, indicating that both the phonological store and the articulatory rehearsal mechanism were functioning. Furthermore, our investigations did not evidence any structural defect in either the control and planning functions of the central executive, or in its storage functions. The deficit AM presented on a verbal and nonverbal Brown-Peterson task, especially when the distractor tasks were more demanding, suggests that AM's central executive disposed of fewer processing resources. This resource reduction seemed to affect only short-term storage but not processing, and was interpreted as the consequence of strategic adaptation by the patient. Finally, the resource reduction did not cause interference on those divided attention tasks not requiring storage. As such, these results call for a more accurate specification of the allocation of resources in dual tasks.

Decontextualized Crab; Nietzsche Dreams of Detroit

Bookmarks DECONTEXTUALIZED CRAB; NIETZSCHE DREAMS OF DETROIT Museums, particularly ethnographic museums, have become battlegrounds. Who owns their contents, who should control what's shown, and how, are hody disputed issues. In 1988 the International Center ofthe Smithsonian Institution held a conference entitled "Poetics and Politics of Representation" to thrash it all out and the results have been published as Exhibiting Cultures, a 468-page collection edited by Ivan Karp and Stephen D. Lavine (Smithsonian Institution Press, $42.00 cloth, $15.95 paper). The contributions are strung together by five excellent section introductions by the editors. Besides the introductions, the very fact that contributors often respond to one another gives the anthology an unusual coherence. The answers differ, but these people are at least worried about the same questions. There are some historical excursions, for example by Curtis M. Hinsley on the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Kenneth Hudson suggests that museums incorporate smells in their exhibitions. Well, why not? There is a set of four articles on problems in the exhibit of Hispanic art in the United States. Michael Baxandall presents a clear and sensible outline of what might be called the logic of museum exhibition, the relationship between the object exhibited and its culturalbackground, the museum exhibition and its purposes, and finally viewers and their cultural preconceptions. Among his many instructive points is one against critics who have objected to juxtaposing African art and early European modernist art (MOMAs notorious Primitivism show): "An alternative to the culturally mixed exhibition is the exhibition that thematically addresses the relationship between another culture and our own. Thus one could argue that to exhibit the Kota mbulu-ngulu with the 1907 Picasso . . . is precisely not to appropriate it but to acknowledge and signal cultural difference—any reflective viewer knowing that the circumstances of the Kota craftsperson and Picasso are different. The effect of visual similarity is to accent difference." I am reminded by Baxandall's phrase "any reflective viewer" of the extent to Philosophy and Literature, © 1992, 16: 239-249 240Philosophy and Literature which those who denounced the Primitivam exhibition implicitly gave no credit to the average viewer of the show for having any knowledge or perception at all. Some of the contributions to Exhibiting Cultures mix good empirical data with ill-digested philosophy, most irritatingly Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, whose long article has some useful accounts of cultural festivals in America and elsewhere —for example, the differences that develop between an actual fair in Northern Indiaand the same eventreproduced in a partially staged and partially enacted version on the Mall in Washington. There's a lot of ize-ing going on, e.g., "by aestheticizing folklore ... we are in danger of depoliticizing what we present by valorizing an aesthetics of marginalization." Her theme, not easy to discern in a mass of quotation and this-but-then-thatizing, seems to be that there is something wrong with folk festivals, such as Ukrainian festivals in Saskatchewan, Dutch festivals in Indiana, or pluralistic parades in New York City. Most such civic or government sponsored events these days are multicultural in nature, offering a "unity in diversity," and in this, she says, they are not unlike the "pageants of democracy so popular during the first decades of this century." Though staged in an effort to counter the "brutal efforts of nativists" to suppress ethnic pluralism in favor of Anglo-Saxon predominance, these earlier festivals had a "neutralizing effect of rendering difference 'and conflict' inconsequential." Such festivals "tend to coopt the oppositional potential that is so essential to a festival. ... In the homeland exhibitions and festivals organized during the first half of this century, cooperation between immigrant groups and organizations promoting Americanization, however well intentioned, also involved cooptation." Exacdy what was "coopted," what's so deplorable about it, or why we should be unhappy about the neutralizing of conflict is never explained by Kirshenblatt-Gimblett. Should these immigrant groups have continued their traditional feuds in Boston or Baltimore? Should they have demanded schools for their children in their homeland languages, and picketed or firebombed the brutal, nativist "Anglo" city hall if they couldn't get their way? Would they— or we their grandchildren—have been better off had...

The picture superiority effect in categorization: visual or semantic?

Two experiments are reported whose aim was to replicate and generalize the results presented by Snodgrass and McCullough (1986) on the effect of visual similarity in the categorization process. For pictures, Snodgrass and McCullough's results were replicated because Ss took longer to discriminate elements from 2 categories when they were visually similar than when they were visually dissimilar. However, unlike Snodgrass and McCullough, an analogous increase was also observed for word stimuli. The pattern of results obtained here can be explained most parsimoniously with reference to the effect of semantic similarity, or semantic and visual relatedness, rather than to visual similarity alone.