A DEVELOPMENTAL STUDY OF THE EFFECTS OF REDUNDANT AND NON-REDUNDANT INFORMATION ON VISUAL RECOGNITION MEMORY.
Item
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Title
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A DEVELOPMENTAL STUDY OF THE EFFECTS OF REDUNDANT AND NON-REDUNDANT INFORMATION ON VISUAL RECOGNITION MEMORY.
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Identifier
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AAI8112348
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identifier
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8112348
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Creator
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DAVIS, GLORIA.
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Contributor
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Prof. Joseph Glick
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Date
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1981
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Psychology, Developmental
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Abstract
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The question asked in this study was whether the young child has difficulty with a multi-stimulus array because of the additional number of features to be analyzed and encoded, or because attention must be distributed across a stimulus array. This was explored by reducing the stimulus load in a multi-stimulus array while retaining the requirement that attention be spatially distributed. Recognition memory for a given form was looked at in a few different contexts: with 1 other stimulus (PAIR condition), with 3 different stimuli (HIGH information condition), and with 3 identical stimuli (LOW information condition).;One hundred and twenty subjects (5-year-olds, 8-year-olds, and college students) were tachistoscopically presented with 2- and 4-item visual arrays, followed by a single test stimulus. The stimuli were abstract geometric forms. The subjects' task was to say whether or not the test stimulus was the same as a stimulus just seen. The time interval between the presentation of the array and the test stimulus was varied. The interstimulus intervals used represented different stages in the information processing sequence.;At each age level, there were two levels of stimulus complexity: for 5-year-olds and 8-year-olds--SIMPLE and MEDIUM, for adults--MEDIUM and COMPLEX. Half the subjects from each age group were given a LOW followed by a HIGH series of arrays; the other half were given the reverse order. The data consisted of the subjects' "same" and "different" judgments. The measure used--A'--is based on the number of hits and false alarms.;Higher mean scores were obtained with older subjects, with less complex stimuli, with less information, smaller arrays, and longer processing times (performance was significantly lower at 50 msec. than at the longer ISIs). The need to distribute attention spatially was found to be the most significant cause of lowered performance. A larger decrement in performance resulted from an increase in number of items (from two in the PAIR condition to four in the LOW) than from an increase in the amount of information (from two patterns to be discriminated in the LOW condition to four patterns in the HIGH). However, when the amount of information in a 4-item array is reduced, there is significant improvement in performance. PAIR performance is best, followed by the LOW condition, with performance worst in the HIGH condition. In all information conditions, the overall performance of 5-year-olds was significantly below that of 8-year-olds and adults.;The study points up some limitations of parallel unlimited capacity models, and the results are more consistent with parallel limited capacity and serial processing models. Within what was measured here, there was no evidence for developmental differences in perceptual processing strategies, but there were significant differences in response strategies. Five-year-olds tended to say "different" more frequently and to respond randomly or in a perseverative manner. In the last session of the experiment there appeared to be a negative "practice effect" for 5-year-olds which was related to an increase in response bias (more frequent "different" judgments). In contrast, the performance of the 8-year-olds remained steady while the performance of adults improved with practice (indicating the latter group was "learning to learn"). The results are consistent with the view that, for optimal performance, young children need novelty and item shift.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
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Program
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Psychology
