Abstract
The encoding and comparison strategies used by observers in matching pictures and sentences were investigated. The location of the mismatch or difference between a sentence and a picture was varied, and the latencies of “same”-“different” responses were compared as a function of whether the mismatch occurred in the sentence subject, verb, or object. Sentences were presented auditorily and varied in both voice and reversibility. Pictures either preceded or were presented simultaneously with the sentences. In all cases, Ss adopted a serial self-terminating comparison strategy and a surface structure encoding strategy: The comparison was terminated as soon as a mismatch was encountered, and actives were processed in the order subject-verb-object, whereas passives were processed in the order object-verb-subject.
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I am indebted to Peter D. Eimas for his careful and thoughtful criticisms of this research, this paper, and the doctoral dissertation on which it is based (Brown University, 1973). I also wish to thank the consulting editor and Howard S. Hoffman for their helpful advice regarding an earlier version of this paper, This research was supported by PHS Grant HD 05531 to Peter D. Eimas from the National Institutes of Child Health and Human Development.
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Wannemacher, J.T. Processing strategies in picture-sentence verification tasks. Memory & Cognition 2, 554–560 (1974). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03196920
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03196920