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Biomedical subjects

V A Diehl

Publications and source records attributed to V A Diehl.

3 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2001

The role of short-term memory in semantic priming.

Two theories of priming were compared: spreading activation theories, in particular ACT, and compound-cue theories. Whereas ACT assumes that priming is a result of diffusing activation in long-term memory, compound-cue models suggest that priming results from a formation process of prime and target in short-term memory. Thirty-eight participants took part in a study that combined a digit span task with a double lexical decision task consisting of a prime and a target item. Digit span length (low, medium, and high) and prime type (related or unrelated word or nonword) were both within-subject variables. As expected, results showed significant priming effects. In favor of ACT, no interaction between digit span length and prime type was found. Additionally, a nonword inhibition effect (unrelated versus nonword prime) was found, which was predicted by compound-cue theories. This finding is discussed in terms of the process interference and response competition hypotheses.

Decision Making↗
PubMed1995

The effects of interaction with the device described by procedural text on recall, true/false, and task performance.

In two experiments, subjects interacted to different extents with relevant devices while reading two complex multistep procedural texts and were then tested with task performance time, true/false, and recall measures. While reading, subjects performed the task (read and do), saw the experimenter perform the task (read and see experimenter do), imagined doing the task (read and imagine), looked at the device while reading (read and see), or only read (read only). Van Dijk and Kintsch's (1983) text representation theory led to the prediction that exposure to the task device (in the read-and-do, read-and-see, and read-and-see-experimenter-do conditions) would lead to the development of a stronger situation model and therefore faster task performance, whereas the read-only and read-and-see conditions would lead to a better textbase, and therefore better performance on the true/false and recall tasks. Paivio's (1991) dual coding theory led to the opposite prediction for recall. The results supported the text representation theory with task performance and recall. The read-and-see condition produced consistently good performance on the true/false measure. Amount of text study time contributed to recall performance. These findings support the notion that information available while reading leads to differential development of representations in memory, which, in turn, causes differences in performance on various measures.

Adult↗