A technique commonly used to study the structure of memory entails preceding a task by a brief masked presentation of a potentially relevant stimulus. In two experiments, I examined the type of facilitation obtained on a picture fragment completion task by prior presentation of either the name of the completed object, a complete picture of the object, or the fragment itself. In Experiment 1a significantly more ambiguous picture fragments (i.e. fragments supporting a number of interpretations) were identified after exposure to pictures than to picture names or picture fragments. Experiment 1b verified that the information in the masked primes was not available to conscious awareness. These results suggest that under limited encoding conditions only bottom-up activation provided by prior presentation of the fragments aids shape recognition under degraded conditions. Implications for the structures and processes involved in shape recognition are discussed.

The effect of human emotional states has been little investigated in the past. Recent research indicates that emotional responses to various stimuli may influence a broad range of human behavior including communication. Severe limitations in the effort investigate these effects has been caused by the lack of a theoretical frame of appropriate methodologies. / A solution to this problem has been recently offered by Mehrabian. Within this theory, all human emotion is conceptualized as being composed of various combinations of pleasure, arousal, and dominance. Combinations of these three dimensions are systematically related to a set of behaviors that can be broadly classed as approach-avoidance. / The function of pleasure and arousal have been investigated in previous research. The function of dominance and its relationship to the other dimensions has not been examined. It was the purpose of this study to investigate the effect of dominance on approach and the relationship of dominance to the other two dimensions. / Stimuli were constructed that elicited all possible combinations two levels, high and low, of each emotional dimension. This resulted in a 2 x 2 x 2 fully crossed factorial design. Stimuli consisted of verbal descriptions of various situations. Subjects responded by completing a dependent measure that asked five questions about desire to approach the conditions. / A manipulation check was conducted and the stimuli were found to have performed as desired. The reliability of the dependent measure was examined and found to be acceptable. Data was aggregated and results calculated using ANOVA and Scheffe tests. / Of importance were the findings that dominance was a more important dimension than previously thought. Dominance accounted a significant proportion of variance. The conceptualization of dominance as a permission state seems to be supported. A significant interaction between dominance and pleasure was also observed. The finding that dominance and arousal do not interact has led to the speculation that dominance and arousal are additive when predicting approach. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 42-11, Section: B, page: 4597. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1981.

The motor programming specification process was analyzed in the present study. More specifically, determined was the order for prescribing or assigning response parameters: (a) hands-index fingers and (b) movement directions (up and down). Two viable specification hypotheses, variable order and fixed order, were tested with a movement precuing letter discrimination paradigm. Presentation of the letter stimuli varied according to name ("C" or "H") and size (uppercase or lowercase) characteristics. By varying the assignment of letters to the response parameters, four letter conditions were manipulated: (1) same name-hand, (2) same name-direction, (3) same size-hand, and (4) same size-direction. / Subjects performed 69 trials in each of three consecutive test sessions. The dependent measures were RT and percentage of errors. Trials were blocked across foreperiods (300, 500, and 700 msec) and analyzed in a 4 x 3 x 3 (Letter Conditions x Test Sessions x Foreperiods) ANOVA with repeated measures on the last two factors. Significant letter conditions and test sessions main effects were found. As indicated by Newman-Keuls procedures, subjects in the same name-hand condition demonstrated faster mean RTs than those in the other conditions. RTs significantly decreased across the test sessions. Similar results were found in the error rate analyses. These findings are consistent with previous results (Miller, 1982, 1983) and lend support to the fixed order hypothesis. The evidence showed that RTs were facilitated when preliminary letter name information was used to efficiently prepare (prime) the specific response hand-finger. The results indicated that the specification of the hand-finger parameter occurs prior to the specification of movement direction. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 45-08, Section: B, page: 2715. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1984.

An effort was made to identify the determinants of response programming time (RPT) which varies as a function of the nature of a response to be produced, i.e., response complexity (according to Henry's memory drum theory). The viability of the componential approach was tested in which RT was hypothesized to be related to the number of response elements, their constituent elements, and their interorganization involved in a particular response. Also investigated was the appropriateness of two RT paradigms (simple vs. choice) in the detection of the RPT effect. / A response element was conceptualized as a coordinative structure (Turvey, 1977) and different types of finger tapping responses (assumed to differ in relation to the number of coordinative structures involved, their constituent elements, and inter-element organization) were used as experimental tasks. Two experiments were conducted, each addressing theoretical and methodological issues, respectively. / In Experiment 1 (N = 18), tested was the validity of a coordinative structure as a real entity of a response element and as a determiner of RPT. It was shown that not all of the variables pertaining to the coordinative structure had systematic relationships with the length of simple RTs. These findings lent partial support to the hypotheses posed. Experiment 2 (N = 16), concerned the methodological issue, revealed that the response effects were different as a function of the RT conditions analyzed. That is, RT effects were significant in the simple RT condition but not in the choice RT condition. These results were neither consistent with Klapp's (1977) preprogramming interpretation nor in conformance with Henry's (1980) and Sternberg et al. (1978) interpretation based on confounding effects. Also the data were not congruent with RT patterns accountable in terms of the pattern-analytic interpretation proposed in the present investigation as an alternative to the traditional approaches. / It was concluded that a coordinative structure is not an unequivocal unit of a response which determines RPT in a systematic way. Also, the RPT effect is associated with RT paradigms utilized, for reasons that are presently unclear. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 44-09, Section: B, page: 2923. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1983.

Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 31-09, Section: B, page: 5680. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1970.

Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 31-09, Section: B, page: 5680. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1970.

Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 30-02, Section: B, page: 0859. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1968.

Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 30-10, Section: B, page: 4822. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1969.

Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 30-12, Section: B, page: 5728. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1969.

Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 31-10, Section: B, page: 6290. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1970.