Michael Anes - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Michael Anes

Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 1996

Researchers in psycholinguistics have speculated about the possible role of prosody in resolving ... more Researchers in psycholinguistics have speculated about the possible role of prosody in resolving syntactic ambiguities. We argue in this paper that the issue is complicated by the following considerations: first, prosody may be even more effective at conveying semantic information than syntactic structure, yet the question how prosody signals meaning is essentially unstudied. Second, the one-to-many relation between syntactic and prosodic structure leads to a great deal of variability across speakers and contexts in the way a given sentence will be produced. The parser must somehow deal with this variability. Third, resolution of architectural debates in the parsing literature requires the use of sensitive, online techniques for measuring processing load during comprehension. In the auditory domain, no optimal technique is presently available. We discuss the strengths and weaknesses of a technique we introduced in previous work, which is an analogue of the visual moving window. We present the results of an experiment demonstrating that the technique preserves some aspects of the prosody of a spoken sentence but disrupts others, and we discuss ways of dealing with this problem. We conclude that the technique is useful for studying language processing, including the use of prosody during parsing. However, we also argue that researchers should study not just the role of prosody in parsing, but also its role in establishing sentence meaning.

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 1994

Dynamic visual identification was investigated in 4 experiments. In Experiments 1 and 2, 2 percep... more Dynamic visual identification was investigated in 4 experiments. In Experiments 1 and 2, 2 perceptual objects (2 frames, each containing a letter or 1 containing a letter and the other a plus sign) were previewed in the periphery. A saccade brought these objects to central vision. During the saccade the display was changed so that 1 frame contained a letter and the other a plus sign, and the subject identified the letter by naming it aloud as rapidly as possible. In Experiment 3, the retinal events of Experiments 1 and 2 were simulated. In Experiment 4, both the preview and the target were presented centrally within a single fixation. In all experiments both object-specific and nonspecific preview benefits were observed. These results support a theory in which the preview benefits observed during visual identification arise from 2 processes, object file review and type priming.

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 1998

s False recognition occurs when people mistakenly claim that a novel item is familiar. After stud... more s False recognition occurs when people mistakenly claim that a novel item is familiar. After studying lists of semantically related words, healthy controls show extraordinarily high levels of false recognition to nonstudied lures that are semantic associates of study list words. In previous experiments, we found that both Korsakoff and non-Korsakoff amnesic patients show reduced levels of false recognition to semantic associates, implying that the medial temporal/diencephalic structures that are damaged in amnesic patients are involved in the encoding and/or retrieval of information that underlies false recognition. These data contrast with earlier results indicating greater false recognition in Korsakoff amnesics than in control subjects. The present experiment tests the hypothesis that greater or lesser false recognition of semantic associates in amnesic patients, relative to normal controls, can be demonstrated by creating conditions that are more or less conducive to allowing true recognition to suppress false recognition. With repeated presentation and testing of lists of semantic associates, control subjects and both Korsakoff and non-Korsakoff amnesics showed increasing levels of true recognition across trials. However, control subjects exhibited decreasing levels of false recognition across trials, whereas Korsakoff amnesic patients showed increases across trials and non-Korsakoff amnesics showed a ºuctuating pattern. Consideration of signal detection analyses and differences between the two types of amnesic patients provides insight into how mechanisms of veridical episodic memory can be used to suppress false recognition. s One of the most extensively studied types of memory distortions is known as false recognition. False recognition occurs when people claim incorrectly to have previously encountered a novel word, object, face, or event that is in some way related to a studied item . Recent experiments using a paradigm initially developed by , and revived and modiªed by see also Read, 1996), have demonstrated exceptionally high levels of false recognition. After studying lists of semantic associates that all converge on a nonpresented "theme word," participants frequently claim to remember the nonpresented word (cf.

JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association, 1991

To assess the effect that cigarette legislation would have on reducing merchant sales rates of ci... more To assess the effect that cigarette legislation would have on reducing merchant sales rates of cigarettes to minors and the affect on adolescent smoking behavior. Observational survey of merchant selling behaviors and adolescent smoking habits before and after passage of legislation. The setting for the merchant survey was Woodridge, Ill (population 25,200), a suburban community of Chicago. The surveys were distributed to adolescents in the local junior high school. Convenience sample of both merchants and adolescent students. Passage of community antismoking legislation. Percentage of stores selling cigarettes to minors in Woodridge and percentage of students who had experimented with cigarettes or were regular smokers. Merchant sales rates in Woodridge decreased from a baseline of 70% before legislation to less than 5% in 1.5 years of compliance checking after legislation. Student surveys showed that the rates of cigarette experimentation and regular use of cigarettes by adolescents were reduced by over 50%. Cigarette control laws can be effective in significantly reducing the rate of cigarettes sold by merchants and rates of cigarette use by adolescents. Key elements of successful legislation implementation are consistent compliance checking and heightened community awareness of the problems and prevalence of adolescent smoking.