Understanding Written and Pictured Information

我们所看到的事物(例如，一个单词或物体)所处的语境如何影响我们所看到的，以及我们看到它的准确和快速程度？在日常经验和实验实验室中，很明显，语境，如单词周围的句子或物体出现的场景，可以帮助或损害感知，但如果不解决一些关于视觉认知的基本问题，就无法理解这种情况是如何发生的。例如，一个书面单词(例如)最初是否仅根据视觉信息进行识别，上下文具有其影响，因为该单词的含义与其所属的句子相结合？或者，语境是否决定了单词被看到的速度，甚至是哪个单词被看到？这项研究将考察在处理句子或列表的四个连续阶段中，语境和刺激信息在看到和记忆单词(有时还包括图片)时的交互作用。这四个阶段或水平将使用四种技术进行研究，从理论上讲，每一种技术都有望利用不同的阶段。第一项研究将利用一种名为“重复失明”的现象，即如果清单上两个相同的项目中的第二个项目在第一个项目之后不久到达，它往往会“消失”。这种消失似乎发生在对第二项的感知的非常早期阶段(可能在前1/20秒内)；问题是周围的环境是否会影响这一早期阶段。第二组研究将利用稍晚一些的阶段(可能在前十分之一秒)，从几个可能的单词中选择一个感知的单词，而这个单词实际上可能是。在这一阶段经常发生的一种效应是将像Dack这样的“非单词”误认为像Deck这样的真实单词；研究将考察句子上下文对这种效果的影响。第三个阶段将通过在句子中间同时简短地呈现两个单词来学习，让读者立即选择一个符合上下文的单词。一个成功的选择将表明单词必须经过处理(可能是无意识的)。在第四阶段，在单词本身被识别之后，它的意思被“调整”以适应整个句子。这一阶段将通过调查可能更适合于给定上下文的替代词的无意侵入来进行研究。本研究的意义在于帮助我们更详细地了解阅读和语言理解的过程，从而使阅读教学和书面交际的使用建立在合理的科学基础上。

How does the context in which we see something (for example, a word or an object) influence what we see and how accurately and rapidly we see it? In daily experience and in the experimental laboratory, it is clear that context, such as the sentence surrounding a word or the scene in which an object appears, can help or hurt perception, but just how that happens cannot be understood without addressing some basic questions about visual cognition. Is a written word (for example) first identified solely on the basis of the visual information, with the context having its effects as the word's meaning is integrated with the sentence of which it is a part? Or, does the context play a role in determining how fast the word is seen, or even what word is seen? This research will investigate the interaction of context and stimulus information in seeing and remembering words (and sometimes pictures) at four sequential stages in processing a sentence or list. The four stages or levels will be studied using four techniques, each of which is expected, on theoretical grounds, to tap a different stage. The first studies will make use of a phenomenon called "repetition blindness," in which the second of a pair of identical items on a list tends to "disappear" if it arrives very soon after the first one. This disappearance seems to happen at a very early stage of perception of the second item (perhaps within the first 1/20 of a second); the question is whether surrounding context can affect this early stage. The second set of studies will tap a somewhat later stage (perhaps in the first 1/10 of a second) involving selection of one perceived word from several possible words that the glimpsed word might actually be. A frequent effect that happens at this stage involves mistaking a "nonword" like DACK for a real word such as DECK; the studies will look at the influence of sentence context on that effect. A third stage will be studied by presenting two words simultaneously and briefly, in the middle of a sentence, causing the reader to make an immediate choice of the one that fits the context. A successful choice will indicate that the words must have been processed (perhaps unconsciously). At a fourth stage, after the word itself is recognized, its meaning is "tuned" to fit the sentence as a whole. This stage will be studied by investigating involuntary intrusions of substitute words that may fit better in a given context. The significance of the research lies in its role in helping us understand in detail the process of reading and language comprehension, in order to place the teaching of reading and the use of written communication on a rational scientific foundation.