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Virginia Tech

Effects of semantic judgements and pair comparisons upon list differentiation

Abstract

dc:description.abstract

The present study investigated the effects of semantic and nonsemantic analyses of words on list differentiation (LD). It was suggested that the memory of when stimulus events occurred might be due to the storage of information about judgments made about words and that this information may be differentially available to subjects as a function of the number of prototypes, or instances of an orienting task's criterion. In the first experiment, subjects judged two lists of word pairs on semantic or nonsemantic criteria. The results indicated that information about these judgments about words was stored with semantic task subjects and to a lesser with nonsemantic task subjects. In the second experiment, the effects of word-pair comparisons and single word ratings on a semantic criterion were examined. It was observed that single words were later assigned correctly to lists more often than word-pairs, although information appeared to be stored with the word-pairs as well. It was also found that information about judgments about words is stored with these words regardless of their subjective relatedness to the orienting task's criterion. The results of both experiments were interpreted in terms of Anderson and Bower's (1972) which suggests that information about the context in which a stimulus is presented may become associated to that stimulus.

Degree

thesis:*
Name thesis:degree_name
Master of Science
Level thesis:degree_level
masters
Discipline thesis:degree_discipline
Psychology
Department dc:contributor.department
Psychology
Grantor dc:publisher
Virginia Tech
Year dc:date.issued
1975

Author and committee

dc:creator, dc:contributor.*
Author dc:creator
  • O'Connor, Mary Mapes
Chair dc:contributor.committeechair
  • Fritzen, James D.
Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember
  • Perlmuter, Lawrence C.
  • Pavlik, William B.

Rights

dc:rights
Statement dc:rights
  • In Copyright

Identifiers

dc:identifier.*
Dc Identifier Other
etd-06022010-020222
OAI identifier oai:identifier
oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/42844

Chain of custody

source
Harvested from
Virginia Tech
Base URL
vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/oai/request
Last updated
2026-07-22
Source record
OAI-PMH GetRecord
related terms
citation

O'Connor, Mary Mapes. Effects of semantic judgements and pair comparisons upon list differentiation. masters thesis, Virginia Tech, 1975. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/42844