George Stuart - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by George Stuart
International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction
While comorbidity of problematic alcohol and gambling use is well established, much less is known... more While comorbidity of problematic alcohol and gambling use is well established, much less is known about the way in which alcohol consumption while gambling interacts with problem-gambling severity and other individual differences. We hypothesised three factors that would interact with alcohol consumption while gambling on electronic gaming machines (EGMs) to influence four behavioural gambling measures: preferred number of lines bet, average duration of play, average spend per session and preferred electronic gaming machine denomination. The latter is a measure of gambler’s preference for the monetary denomination in which EGM bets are placed (e.g. 1 cent, 2 cents, 5 cents, 10 cents, 20 cents, $1), with higher denomination EGMs being higher risk since bets can be placed in larger amounts and money can be lost more rapidly. The three hypothesised interacting factors were problem-gambling severity, presence/absence of alcohol use disorder and biological gender. A total of 1557 male an...
Protective Action and Risky Beliefs: The Relationship Between Religion and Gambling Fallacies
Journal of Gambling Studies
A number of studies have explored the relationship between religious beliefs and gambling (includ... more A number of studies have explored the relationship between religious beliefs and gambling (including gambling fallacies and gambling harm) but report seemingly contradictory findings. While some studies have found religious belief to be positively associated with gambling fallacies, others have found it to be a protective factor from gambling harms. One explanation for these differing effects is that gambling fallacies and metaphysical religious belief share properties of supernatural and magical thinking. Nevertheless, social support and moral strictures associated with religion might help protect against an unhealthy engagement with gambling. Using a multidimensional measure of religiosity, we hypothesised that only the supernatural facet of religious adherence would present a risk for gambling fallacies. We analysed two archival data sources collected in Canada (Quinte Longitudinal Study: N = 4121, M age = 46, SD age = 14, Female = 54%; Leisure, Lifestyle and Lifecycle Project: N = 1372, M age = 37, SD age = 17, Female = 56%). Using the Rohrbaugh–Jessor Religiosity Scale, we confirmed that the supernatural theistic domain of religion was a positive risk factor for gambling fallacies. However, participation in ritual (behavioural) aspects, such as churchgoing, was negatively associated with risk, and no effect was observed for the consequential (moral) domain. We conclude that multidimensional aspects in religious measures may account for conflicting prior findings.
We tested the hypothesis that expectancy-violation is key to understanding those conditions under... more We tested the hypothesis that expectancy-violation is key to understanding those conditions under which instrumental music disrupts immediate serial-recall. Using isochronic presentation of irrelevant-sound stimuli during encoding and retention, recall was found to be impaired following both piano-note sequences (Experiment 1) and pure-tone sequences (Experiment 2). However, whereas intervallic organisation was determinant for pure-tones (randomly-ordered frequencies caused recall impairment while repeated frequency or ascending-frequency sequences did not) there was no effect of intervallic organisation of piano-note sequences. When the to-be-ignored sequences were presented with random anisochrony, the disruptive effect was absent for both piano notes (Experiment 3) and pure tones (Experiment 4). It is proposed that the irrelevant sound effect can be explained in terms of stimulus specific expectancy violation.
Journal of Gambling Studies, 2019
Free-spins on slot machines introduce a salient moment of potentially large wins that might influ... more Free-spins on slot machines introduce a salient moment of potentially large wins that might influence people to either quit or continue a gambling session. Two theoretical models make different predictions about why people quit a gambling session. From a behaviourist perspective, people quit a session when they are either satiated or the lack of rewards lead to the extinction of behaviour. Alternatively, from a behavioural-finance perspective, people quit due to the disposition effect: a general finding whereby investors tend to sell shares or other assets when the price has increased, but keep assets that have dropped in value. From the behaviourist perspective, we predict that people experience free spins as a moment of intermittent reinforcement, which should encourage them to continue gambling longer. According to the disposition effect, however, the large win would trigger risk-aversion, signalling an opportunity to "cash out" and lock-in the gain. In the present study, 188 gamblers (72 female) were randomly allocated to one of three conditions: control, early free-spins and late free-spins, in an online EGM simulation (points only). Consistent with the disposition effect, participants who received early free-spins quit earlier, placing significantly fewer bets, than those in control condition. The study suggests that free-spins, rather than being reinforcing within session, may signal an opportunity to quit early. In the discussion, however, we speculate on whether future research could demonstrate that a perceived lack of free spins in a session may keep players engaged longer.
Priming the Identification of Environmental Sounds
The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology Section A, 1995
Three experiments were conducted using a repetition priming paradigm: Auditory word or environmen... more Three experiments were conducted using a repetition priming paradigm: Auditory word or environmental sound stimuli were identified by subjects in a pre-test phase, which was followed by a perceptual identification task using either sounds or words in the test phase. Identification of an environmental sound was facilitated by prior presentation of the same sound, but not by prior presentation of a spoken label (Experiments 1 and 2). Similarly, spoken word identification was facilitated by previous presentation of the same word, but not when the word had been used to label an environmental sound (Experiment 1). A degree of abstraction was demonstrated in Experiment 3, which revealed a facilitation effect between similar sounds produced by the same type of source. These results are discussed in terms of the Transfer Appropriate Processing, activation, and systems approaches.
Ageing affects conceptual but not perceptual memory processes
Memory, 2006
Whereas age effects commonly occur in tests of explicit memory, tests of implicit memory often sh... more Whereas age effects commonly occur in tests of explicit memory, tests of implicit memory often show age invariance. In two experiments, the traditional confound between test type (implicit vs explicit) and retrieval process (conceptually driven vs perceptually driven) was removed by using conceptually driven and perceptually driven tests of both implicit and explicit memory. Experiment 1 revealed a significant age effect for conceptually driven retrieval and no age effect for perceptually driven retrieval, regardless of the type of memory being measured. Experiment 2 highlighted a difference between the two age groups in their ability to utilise semantic encoding in a nominally perceptually driven explicit memory test. The paper concludes that although perceptually driven processing is stable over age, particular care must be taken to minimise contamination from conceptually driven retrieval processes in such investigations.
Journal of Memory and Language, 2003
Three experiments investigate the effects of mixing items of different types in the same list. Ex... more Three experiments investigate the effects of mixing items of different types in the same list. Experiments 1 and 2 compare the immediate serial recall of high-and low-frequency words in pure and alternating lists. In pure lists highfrequency words are better recalled, but in alternating lists the two types of words are recalled at intermediate, and identical, levels. Experiment 3 compares the recall of words and nonwords. In pure lists nonwords are recalled substantially less well than words. In alternating lists nonwords gain a substantial recall advantage compared to pure lists but are still less well recalled than words, which are recalled at identical levels in both mixed and alternating lists. The results refute item-based redintegration accounts of frequency effects in immediate serial recall and provide evidence for the importance of inter-item associative mechanisms.
Abolishing the Word-Length Effect
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 2004
The authors report 2 experiments that compare the recall of long and short words in pure and mixe... more The authors report 2 experiments that compare the recall of long and short words in pure and mixed lists. In pure lists, long words were much more poorly remembered than short words. In mixed lists, this word-length effect was abolished and both the long and short words were recalled as well as short words in pure lists. These findings contradict current models that seek to explain the word-length effect in terms of item-based effects such as difficulty in assembling items, or in terms of list-based accounts of rehearsal speed. An alternative explanation, drawing on ideas of item complexity and item distinctiveness, is proposed.
Think before you speak: Pauses, memory search, and trace redintegration processes in verbal memory span
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 1999
Immediate memory span and speed of memory search were assessed for words and nonwords of short an... more Immediate memory span and speed of memory search were assessed for words and nonwords of short and long spoken duration. Memory span was substantially greater for words than for nonwords and for short than for long items, though speed of memory search was unaffected by either length or lexicality. An analysis of the temporal pattern of responses in the memory span task indicated that inter-item pauses were longer between nonwords than words but that these pause durations were unaffected by item length. A model of verbal short-term memory span is described in which trace selection from a short-term store and the redintegration (restoration) of degraded phonological traces both occur in the pauses between saying successive items. Both trace selection and trace redintegration appear to play important roles in accounting for individual differences in memory span.
The effects of word co-occurance on short-term memory: Associative links in long-term memory affect short-term memory performance
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 2000
In immediate serial recall tasks, high-frequency words are recalled better than low-frequency wor... more In immediate serial recall tasks, high-frequency words are recalled better than low-frequency words. This has been attributed to high-frequency words' being better represented and providing more effective support to a redintegration process at retrieval (C. Hulme et al., 1997). In studies of free recall, there is evidence that frequency of word co-occurrence, rather than word frequency per se, may explain
Word-frequency effects on short-term memory tasks: Evidence for a redintegration process in immediate serial recall
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 1997
Four experiments investigated the mechanisms responsible for the advantage enjoyed by high-freque... more Four experiments investigated the mechanisms responsible for the advantage enjoyed by high-frequency words in short-term memory tasks. Experiment 1 demonstrated effects of word frequency on memory span that were independent of differences in speech rate. Experiments 2 and 3 showed that word frequency has an increasing effect on serial recall across serial positions, but Experiment 4 showed that this effect was abolished for backward recall. A model that includes a redintegration process that operates to "clean up" decayed short-term memory traces is proposed, and the multinomial processing tree model described by R. Schweickert (1993) is used to provide a quantitative fit to data from Experiments 2, 3, and 4.
Phoneme Awareness Is a Better Predictor of Early Reading Skill Than Onset-Rime Awareness
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 2002
We present the results of a short-term longitudinal study. Children in the early stages of learni... more We present the results of a short-term longitudinal study. Children in the early stages of learning to read (5 and 6 year olds) were administered three different tasks (deletion, oddity, and detection) tapping awareness of four phonological units (initial phoneme, final phoneme, onset, and rime). Measures of phoneme awareness were the best concurrent and longitudinal predictors of reading skill with onset-rime skills making no additional predictive contribution once phonemic skills were accounted for. The findings are related to recent controversy over the role of large versus small phonological units as predictors of children's reading skills.
Inflammatory bowel diseases, 2009
Many chronic illnesses are accompanied by impaired cognitive functioning. In people with Inflamma... more Many chronic illnesses are accompanied by impaired cognitive functioning. In people with Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD), there is some research to suggest a decrement in verbal IQ (VIQ), when compared to people with Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) and healthy controls. Although this is an important finding, it is necessary to ensure that such deficits are not due to methodological problems such as the failure to take into account pre-morbid functioning.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 1995
The distinctiveness of the word-length effect
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 2006
The authors report 2 experiments that compare the serial recall of pure lists of long words, pure... more The authors report 2 experiments that compare the serial recall of pure lists of long words, pure lists of short words, and lists of long or short words containing just a single isolated word of a different length. In both experiments for pure lists, there was a substantial recall advantage for short words; the isolated words were recalled better than other words in the same list, and there was a reverse word-length effect: Isolated long words were recalled better than isolated short words. These results contradict models that seek to explain the word-length effect in terms of list-based accounts of rehearsal speed or in terms of item-based effects (such as difficulty of assembling items).
International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction
While comorbidity of problematic alcohol and gambling use is well established, much less is known... more While comorbidity of problematic alcohol and gambling use is well established, much less is known about the way in which alcohol consumption while gambling interacts with problem-gambling severity and other individual differences. We hypothesised three factors that would interact with alcohol consumption while gambling on electronic gaming machines (EGMs) to influence four behavioural gambling measures: preferred number of lines bet, average duration of play, average spend per session and preferred electronic gaming machine denomination. The latter is a measure of gambler’s preference for the monetary denomination in which EGM bets are placed (e.g. 1 cent, 2 cents, 5 cents, 10 cents, 20 cents, $1), with higher denomination EGMs being higher risk since bets can be placed in larger amounts and money can be lost more rapidly. The three hypothesised interacting factors were problem-gambling severity, presence/absence of alcohol use disorder and biological gender. A total of 1557 male an...
Protective Action and Risky Beliefs: The Relationship Between Religion and Gambling Fallacies
Journal of Gambling Studies
A number of studies have explored the relationship between religious beliefs and gambling (includ... more A number of studies have explored the relationship between religious beliefs and gambling (including gambling fallacies and gambling harm) but report seemingly contradictory findings. While some studies have found religious belief to be positively associated with gambling fallacies, others have found it to be a protective factor from gambling harms. One explanation for these differing effects is that gambling fallacies and metaphysical religious belief share properties of supernatural and magical thinking. Nevertheless, social support and moral strictures associated with religion might help protect against an unhealthy engagement with gambling. Using a multidimensional measure of religiosity, we hypothesised that only the supernatural facet of religious adherence would present a risk for gambling fallacies. We analysed two archival data sources collected in Canada (Quinte Longitudinal Study: N = 4121, M age = 46, SD age = 14, Female = 54%; Leisure, Lifestyle and Lifecycle Project: N = 1372, M age = 37, SD age = 17, Female = 56%). Using the Rohrbaugh–Jessor Religiosity Scale, we confirmed that the supernatural theistic domain of religion was a positive risk factor for gambling fallacies. However, participation in ritual (behavioural) aspects, such as churchgoing, was negatively associated with risk, and no effect was observed for the consequential (moral) domain. We conclude that multidimensional aspects in religious measures may account for conflicting prior findings.
We tested the hypothesis that expectancy-violation is key to understanding those conditions under... more We tested the hypothesis that expectancy-violation is key to understanding those conditions under which instrumental music disrupts immediate serial-recall. Using isochronic presentation of irrelevant-sound stimuli during encoding and retention, recall was found to be impaired following both piano-note sequences (Experiment 1) and pure-tone sequences (Experiment 2). However, whereas intervallic organisation was determinant for pure-tones (randomly-ordered frequencies caused recall impairment while repeated frequency or ascending-frequency sequences did not) there was no effect of intervallic organisation of piano-note sequences. When the to-be-ignored sequences were presented with random anisochrony, the disruptive effect was absent for both piano notes (Experiment 3) and pure tones (Experiment 4). It is proposed that the irrelevant sound effect can be explained in terms of stimulus specific expectancy violation.
Journal of Gambling Studies, 2019
Free-spins on slot machines introduce a salient moment of potentially large wins that might influ... more Free-spins on slot machines introduce a salient moment of potentially large wins that might influence people to either quit or continue a gambling session. Two theoretical models make different predictions about why people quit a gambling session. From a behaviourist perspective, people quit a session when they are either satiated or the lack of rewards lead to the extinction of behaviour. Alternatively, from a behavioural-finance perspective, people quit due to the disposition effect: a general finding whereby investors tend to sell shares or other assets when the price has increased, but keep assets that have dropped in value. From the behaviourist perspective, we predict that people experience free spins as a moment of intermittent reinforcement, which should encourage them to continue gambling longer. According to the disposition effect, however, the large win would trigger risk-aversion, signalling an opportunity to "cash out" and lock-in the gain. In the present study, 188 gamblers (72 female) were randomly allocated to one of three conditions: control, early free-spins and late free-spins, in an online EGM simulation (points only). Consistent with the disposition effect, participants who received early free-spins quit earlier, placing significantly fewer bets, than those in control condition. The study suggests that free-spins, rather than being reinforcing within session, may signal an opportunity to quit early. In the discussion, however, we speculate on whether future research could demonstrate that a perceived lack of free spins in a session may keep players engaged longer.
Priming the Identification of Environmental Sounds
The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology Section A, 1995
Three experiments were conducted using a repetition priming paradigm: Auditory word or environmen... more Three experiments were conducted using a repetition priming paradigm: Auditory word or environmental sound stimuli were identified by subjects in a pre-test phase, which was followed by a perceptual identification task using either sounds or words in the test phase. Identification of an environmental sound was facilitated by prior presentation of the same sound, but not by prior presentation of a spoken label (Experiments 1 and 2). Similarly, spoken word identification was facilitated by previous presentation of the same word, but not when the word had been used to label an environmental sound (Experiment 1). A degree of abstraction was demonstrated in Experiment 3, which revealed a facilitation effect between similar sounds produced by the same type of source. These results are discussed in terms of the Transfer Appropriate Processing, activation, and systems approaches.
Ageing affects conceptual but not perceptual memory processes
Memory, 2006
Whereas age effects commonly occur in tests of explicit memory, tests of implicit memory often sh... more Whereas age effects commonly occur in tests of explicit memory, tests of implicit memory often show age invariance. In two experiments, the traditional confound between test type (implicit vs explicit) and retrieval process (conceptually driven vs perceptually driven) was removed by using conceptually driven and perceptually driven tests of both implicit and explicit memory. Experiment 1 revealed a significant age effect for conceptually driven retrieval and no age effect for perceptually driven retrieval, regardless of the type of memory being measured. Experiment 2 highlighted a difference between the two age groups in their ability to utilise semantic encoding in a nominally perceptually driven explicit memory test. The paper concludes that although perceptually driven processing is stable over age, particular care must be taken to minimise contamination from conceptually driven retrieval processes in such investigations.
Journal of Memory and Language, 2003
Three experiments investigate the effects of mixing items of different types in the same list. Ex... more Three experiments investigate the effects of mixing items of different types in the same list. Experiments 1 and 2 compare the immediate serial recall of high-and low-frequency words in pure and alternating lists. In pure lists highfrequency words are better recalled, but in alternating lists the two types of words are recalled at intermediate, and identical, levels. Experiment 3 compares the recall of words and nonwords. In pure lists nonwords are recalled substantially less well than words. In alternating lists nonwords gain a substantial recall advantage compared to pure lists but are still less well recalled than words, which are recalled at identical levels in both mixed and alternating lists. The results refute item-based redintegration accounts of frequency effects in immediate serial recall and provide evidence for the importance of inter-item associative mechanisms.
Abolishing the Word-Length Effect
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 2004
The authors report 2 experiments that compare the recall of long and short words in pure and mixe... more The authors report 2 experiments that compare the recall of long and short words in pure and mixed lists. In pure lists, long words were much more poorly remembered than short words. In mixed lists, this word-length effect was abolished and both the long and short words were recalled as well as short words in pure lists. These findings contradict current models that seek to explain the word-length effect in terms of item-based effects such as difficulty in assembling items, or in terms of list-based accounts of rehearsal speed. An alternative explanation, drawing on ideas of item complexity and item distinctiveness, is proposed.
Think before you speak: Pauses, memory search, and trace redintegration processes in verbal memory span
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 1999
Immediate memory span and speed of memory search were assessed for words and nonwords of short an... more Immediate memory span and speed of memory search were assessed for words and nonwords of short and long spoken duration. Memory span was substantially greater for words than for nonwords and for short than for long items, though speed of memory search was unaffected by either length or lexicality. An analysis of the temporal pattern of responses in the memory span task indicated that inter-item pauses were longer between nonwords than words but that these pause durations were unaffected by item length. A model of verbal short-term memory span is described in which trace selection from a short-term store and the redintegration (restoration) of degraded phonological traces both occur in the pauses between saying successive items. Both trace selection and trace redintegration appear to play important roles in accounting for individual differences in memory span.
The effects of word co-occurance on short-term memory: Associative links in long-term memory affect short-term memory performance
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 2000
In immediate serial recall tasks, high-frequency words are recalled better than low-frequency wor... more In immediate serial recall tasks, high-frequency words are recalled better than low-frequency words. This has been attributed to high-frequency words' being better represented and providing more effective support to a redintegration process at retrieval (C. Hulme et al., 1997). In studies of free recall, there is evidence that frequency of word co-occurrence, rather than word frequency per se, may explain
Word-frequency effects on short-term memory tasks: Evidence for a redintegration process in immediate serial recall
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 1997
Four experiments investigated the mechanisms responsible for the advantage enjoyed by high-freque... more Four experiments investigated the mechanisms responsible for the advantage enjoyed by high-frequency words in short-term memory tasks. Experiment 1 demonstrated effects of word frequency on memory span that were independent of differences in speech rate. Experiments 2 and 3 showed that word frequency has an increasing effect on serial recall across serial positions, but Experiment 4 showed that this effect was abolished for backward recall. A model that includes a redintegration process that operates to "clean up" decayed short-term memory traces is proposed, and the multinomial processing tree model described by R. Schweickert (1993) is used to provide a quantitative fit to data from Experiments 2, 3, and 4.
Phoneme Awareness Is a Better Predictor of Early Reading Skill Than Onset-Rime Awareness
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 2002
We present the results of a short-term longitudinal study. Children in the early stages of learni... more We present the results of a short-term longitudinal study. Children in the early stages of learning to read (5 and 6 year olds) were administered three different tasks (deletion, oddity, and detection) tapping awareness of four phonological units (initial phoneme, final phoneme, onset, and rime). Measures of phoneme awareness were the best concurrent and longitudinal predictors of reading skill with onset-rime skills making no additional predictive contribution once phonemic skills were accounted for. The findings are related to recent controversy over the role of large versus small phonological units as predictors of children's reading skills.
Inflammatory bowel diseases, 2009
Many chronic illnesses are accompanied by impaired cognitive functioning. In people with Inflamma... more Many chronic illnesses are accompanied by impaired cognitive functioning. In people with Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD), there is some research to suggest a decrement in verbal IQ (VIQ), when compared to people with Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) and healthy controls. Although this is an important finding, it is necessary to ensure that such deficits are not due to methodological problems such as the failure to take into account pre-morbid functioning.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 1995
The distinctiveness of the word-length effect
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 2006
The authors report 2 experiments that compare the serial recall of pure lists of long words, pure... more The authors report 2 experiments that compare the serial recall of pure lists of long words, pure lists of short words, and lists of long or short words containing just a single isolated word of a different length. In both experiments for pure lists, there was a substantial recall advantage for short words; the isolated words were recalled better than other words in the same list, and there was a reverse word-length effect: Isolated long words were recalled better than isolated short words. These results contradict models that seek to explain the word-length effect in terms of list-based accounts of rehearsal speed or in terms of item-based effects (such as difficulty of assembling items).