Papers by Scott Fraundorf
Journal of Memory and Language
We investigated how decision-makers use multiple opportunities to judge a quantity. Decision-mak... more We investigated how decision-makers use multiple opportunities to judge a quantity. Decision-makers undervalue the benefit of combining their own judgment with an advisor’s, but theories disagree about whether this bias would apply to combining several of one’s own judgments. Participants estimated percentage answers to general knowledge questions (e.g., What percent of the world's population uses the Internet?) on two occasions. In a final decision phase, they selected their first, second, or average estimate to report for each question. We manipulated the cues available for this final decision. Given cues to general theories (the labels first guess, second guess, average), participants mostly averaged, but no more frequently on trials where the average was most accurate. Given item-specific cues (numerical values of the options), metacognitive accuracy was at chance. Given both cues, participants mostly averaged and switched strategies based on whichever yielded the most accurate value on a given trial. These results indicate that underappreciation of averaging estimates does not stem only from social differences between the self and an advisor and that combining general and item-specific cues benefits metacognition.
Language and Cognitive Processes
This study tests the hypothesis that three common types of disfluency (fillers, silent pauses, an... more This study tests the hypothesis that three common types of disfluency (fillers, silent pauses, and repeated words) reflect variance in what strategies are available to the production system for responding to difficulty in language production. Participants' speech in a storytelling paradigm was coded for the three disfluency types. Repeats occurred most often when difficult material was already being produced and could be repeated, but fillers and silent pauses occurred most when difficult material was still being planned. Fillers were associated only with conceptual
difficulties, consistent with the proposal that they reflect a communicative signal whereas silent pauses and repeats were also related to lexical and phonological difficulties. These differences are discussed in terms of different strategies available to the language production system.
Journal of Memory and Language
Three experiments investigated how font emphasis influences reading and remembering discourse. Al... more Three experiments investigated how font emphasis influences reading and remembering discourse. Although past work suggests that contrastive pitch contours benefit memory by promoting encoding of salient alternatives, it is unclear both whether this effect generalizes to other forms of linguistic prominence and how the set of alternatives is constrained. Participants read discourses in which some true propositions had salient alternatives (e.g., British scientists found the endangered monkey when the discourse also mentioned French scientists) and completed a recognition memory test. In Experiments 1 and 2, font emphasis in the initial presentation increased participants’ ability to later reject false statements about salient alternatives but not about unmentioned items (e.g., Portuguese scientists). In Experiment 3, font emphasis helped reject false statements about plausible alternatives, but not about less plausible alternatives that were nevertheless established in the discourse. These results suggest readers encode a narrow set of only those alternatives plausible in the particular discourse. They also indicate that multiple manipulations of linguistic prominence, not just prosody, can lead to consideration of alternatives.
Memory & Cognition
Recognition of own-race faces is superior to recognition of other-race faces. In the present expe... more Recognition of own-race faces is superior to recognition of other-race faces. In the present experiments, we explore the role of top-down social information in the encoding and recognition of racially ambiguous faces. Hispanic and African-American participants studied and were tested on computer-generated, ambiguous-race faces (composed of 50% Hispanic and 50% African- American features; MacLin & Malpass, 2001). In Experiment 1, faces were randomly assigned to two study blocks. In each block, a group label was provided that indicated that those faces belonged to African-American or to Hispanic individuals. Both participant groups exhibited superior memory for faces studied in the block with the own-race label. In Experiment 2, faces were studied in a single block with no labels, but tested in two blocks in which labels were provided. Recognition performance was not influenced by the labeled race at test. Taken together, these results confirm the claim that purely top-down information can yield the well documented cross-race effect in recognition, and additionally suggest that the bias takes place at encoding rather than testing.
Page 1. Assess 4 constructs proposed to explain individual differences: Reading experience1,2: ��... more Page 1. Assess 4 constructs proposed to explain individual differences: Reading experience1,2: ��� Vocabulary5 ��� Self-reported reading frequency6 Executive control3: ��� Stroop7 ��� Antisaccade8 Scott H. Fraundorf, Eun-Kyung Lee, and Duane G.
Psychology …, Jan 1, 2011
In two experiments, we investigated age-related changes in how prosodic pitch accents affect memo... more In two experiments, we investigated age-related changes in how prosodic pitch accents affect memory. Participants listened to recorded discourses that contained two contrasts between pairs of items (e.g., one story contrasted British scientists with French scientists and Malaysia with Indonesia). The end of each discourse referred to one item from each pair; these references received a pitch accent that either denoted contrast (L+H* in the ToBI system) or did not (H*). A contrastive accent on a particular pair improved later recognition memory equally for young and older adults. However, older adults showed decreased memory if the other pair received a contrastive accent (Experiment 1). Young adults with low working memory performance also showed this penalty (Experiment 2). These results suggest that pitch accents guide processing resources to important information for both older and younger adults but diminish memory for less important information in groups with reduced resources, including older adults.
The disfluent discourse: Effects of filled pauses on recall
We investigated the mechanisms by which fillers, such as uh and um, affect memory for discourse. ... more We investigated the mechanisms by which fillers, such as uh and um, affect memory for discourse. Participants listened to and attempted to recall recorded passages adapted from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. The type and location of interruptions were manipulated through digital splicing. In Experiment 1, we tested a processing time account of fillers’ effects. While fillers facilitated recall, coughs matched in duration to the fillers impaired recall, suggesting that fillers’ benefits cannot be attributed to adding processing time. In Experiment 2, fillers’ locations were manipulated based on norming data to be either predictive or non-predictive of upcoming material. Fillers facilitated recall in both cases, inconsistent with an account in which listeners predict upcoming material using past experience with the distribution of fillers. Instead, these results suggest an attentional orienting account in which fillers direct attention to the speech stream but do not always result in specific predictions about upcoming material.
Recognition memory reveals just how CONTRASTIVE contrastive accenting really is
The effects of pitch accenting on memory were investigated in three experiments. Participants li... more The effects of pitch accenting on memory were investigated in three experiments. Participants listened to short recorded discourses that contained contrast sets with two items (e.g. British scientists and French scientists); a continuation specified one item from the set. Pitch accenting on the critical word in the continuation was manipulated between non-contrastive (H* in the ToBI system) and contrastive (L+H*). On subsequent recognition memory tests, the L+H* accent increased hits to correct statements and correct rejections of the contrast item (Experiments 1-3), but did not impair memory for other parts of the discourse (Experiment 2). L+H* also did not facilitate correct rejections of lures not in the contrast set (Experiment 3), indicating that contrastive accents do not simply strengthen the representation of the target item. These results suggest comprehenders use pitch accenting to encode and update information about multiple elements in a contrast set.
Proceedings of LONDIAL, Jan 1, 2008
This study demonstrates that four common types of disfluency in discourse (fillers, silent pauses... more This study demonstrates that four common types of disfluency in discourse (fillers, silent pauses, repairs, and repeat- ed words) differ from one another on two dimensions related to language production processes: their temporal relation to speech production problems and the level of production at which those problems occurred. Participants' speech in a story- telling paradigm was coded for the four disfluency types. Comparisons between types in their relation to story events, to clause boundaries, to utterance length, to utterance position, and to other disfluencies suggest the four types reflect differ- ent difficulties in language production. Temporally, fillers, silent pauses, and repeats represent difficulties in upcoming speech, while repairs represent past difficulties. Fillers were most associated with discourse-level problems, while silent pauses were more associated with grammatical and phonological difficulty.
Executive attention and self-regulation in infancy
Infant Behavior and …, Jan 1, 2008
This study investigates early executive attention in infancy by studying the relations between in... more This study investigates early executive attention in infancy by studying the relations between infant sequential looking and other behaviors predictive of later self-regulation. One early marker of executive attention development is anticipatory looking, the act of looking to the location of a target prior to its appearance in that location, a process that involves endogenous control of visual orienting. Previous studies have shown that anticipatory looking is positively related to executive attention as assessed by the ability to resolve spatial conflict in 3–4-year-old children. In the current study, anticipatory looking was positively related to cautious behavioral approach in response to non-threatening novel objects in 6- and 7-month-old infants. This finding and previous findings showing the presence of error detection in infancy are consistent with the hypothesis that there is some degree of executive attention in the first year of life. Anticipatory looking was also related to the frequency of distress, to looking away from disturbing stimuli, and to some self-regulatory behaviors. These results may indicate either early attentional regulation of emotion or close relations between early developing fear and later self-regulation. Overall, the results suggest the presence of rudimentary systems of executive attention in infants and support further studies using anticipatory looking as a measure of individual differences in attention in infancy.
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Papers by Scott Fraundorf
difficulties, consistent with the proposal that they reflect a communicative signal whereas silent pauses and repeats were also related to lexical and phonological difficulties. These differences are discussed in terms of different strategies available to the language production system.
difficulties, consistent with the proposal that they reflect a communicative signal whereas silent pauses and repeats were also related to lexical and phonological difficulties. These differences are discussed in terms of different strategies available to the language production system.