Placing a text in context.

Can readers accurately retrieve information about the context in which text comprehension occurs? If so, does their memory for context vary with their level of comprehension? Participants studied ambiguous passages in a high-knowledge or low-knowledge condition. They were then asked to remember the spatial location of individual sentences, the color of a border surrounding the passage, or the color of a shirt worn by the experimenter. Recall protocols were collected after participants answered the context question. Knowledge about the topic of the text facilitated both contextual retrieval and recall. Moreover, contextual retrieval and recall were correlated, primarily in the high-knowledge condition. The results suggest that personal experiences accompanying comprehension are encoded in memory along with text meaning and have implications for theories of source monitoring.

Boundary extension: the role of magnification, object size, context, and binocular information.

Boundary extension is a tendency to remember close-up scenes as if they extended beyond the occluding boundaries. The authors explored the contributing factors using brief retention intervals and computer-generated images. Boundary extension turns out to be more complex than previously thought and is not linked to the effects of image magnification and field-of-view changes. Although this is consistent with the idea that boundary extension is the product of the activation of a mental schema that provides information of what is likely to exist outside the picture boundaries, the authors also found that properties of the object at the center of the picture can affect boundary extension independently of the information at the boundaries. In a test of boundary extension using stereograms, the effect does not seem to depend on amount of perceived depth, suggesting a weaker link to perception of space than previously hypothesized.

Can reading accuracy and comprehension be separated in the Neale Analysis of Reading Ability?

BACKGROUND: The Neale Analysis of Reading Ability (NARA) (Neale, 1997) is widely used in education and research. It provides measures of reading accuracy (decoding) and comprehension, which are frequently interpreted separately. AIMS: Three studies were conducted to investigate the degree to which the NARA measures could be separated. SAMPLES: British 7- and 8-year-olds participated in Study 1 (N=114) and Study 2 (N=212). In Study 3, 16 skilled and less-skilled comprehenders were identified from the Study 2 sample. METHODS: Study 1: By investigating their contribution to silent reading comprehension, the independence of NARA decoding and comprehension scores was determined. Study 2: Decoding groups matched for listening comprehension were compared on the NARA comprehension measure, and population performance was compared across listening comprehension and NARA reading comprehension. Study 3: Comprehension groups were compared on ability to answer open-ended and forced-choice questions. RESULTS: Firstly, NARA comprehension performance depended on decoding, to the extent that children with high listening comprehension ability but low decoding ability attained low NARA comprehension scores. Secondly, 32% of children who attained low NARA comprehension scores exhibited high listening comprehension. Thirdly, comprehension groups differed when assessed with open-ended questions but not when assessed with forced-choice questions. CONCLUSIONS: The NARA can underestimate the comprehension ability of children with weak decoding skills and children who have some difficulty with open-ended questions. The decoding and comprehension measures of the NARA cannot be separated. These findings have important implications for the interpretation of the measures provided by the NARA, in education and research.

Naive optics: Predicting and perceiving reflections in mirrors.

Undergraduate students predicted what would be made visible by a planar mirror. A paper-and-pencil task confirmed previous findings that when approaching a mirror from the side, participants expected to see their reflection in the mirror earlier than they actually would. This early response was found for all mirrors when the observer moved horizontally--even when the mirror was placed on the floor or the ceiling--but not when the observer moved vertically (in a lift). The data support the hypothesis that many people imagine the world in the mirror as rotated around the vertical axis. When participants had to judge manipulated mirror reflections according to their naturalness, a high degree of tolerance was found. In contrast to the prediction task, a rotation around the vertical axis was judged to be less natural than other distortions. The authors conclude that perceptual knowledge and predictive knowledge lead to different patterns of errors. ((c) 2003 APA, all rights reserved)

The Venus effect: people's understanding of mirror reflections in paintings.

We propose the term 'Venus effect' for a common phenomenon in picture perception. It occurs when a picture shows an actor and a mirror that are not placed along the observer's line of sight, for instance a Venus admiring herself in a small mirror, and when the actor's reflection in the mirror is visible to the observer. In this situation, observers tend to report, incorrectly, that Venus is also seeing herself in the mirror in the same location as the observer. We discuss this using famous paintings as examples.