Detection of coherence-disrupting and coherence-conferring alterations in text

Culture-general and culture-specific factors in the discrimination of melodies

We examined effects of a culture-general factor, pattern redundancy (number of repeated tones), on the discrimination of 5-tone melodies that differed in their adherence to Western tonal conventions. Experiment 1 evaluated the ability of 9-month-old infants to differentiate "standard" melodies from subtly altered "comparison" melodies. Greater redundancy of the standard melodies was associated with enhanced infant performance, but musical conventionality had no effect. Experiment 2 evaluated comparable abilities in 5-year-old children and musically untrained adults. Children's performance was enhanced by the redundancy of standard melodies, but the effect was greater in conventional than in unconventional contexts. The redundancy of standard melodies facilitated adults' performance in conventional but not in unconventional contexts. Thus, increasing musical exposure seems to attenuate the effects of culture-general factors such as pattern redundancy while amplifying the influence of culture-specific factors.

Recognition of added and deleted details in scripts

Recognition of script actions that varied in specificity and expectancy of details was investigated. In Experiment 1, subjects indicated whether each action was the same or changed on an immediate or delayed yes/no recognition test. Changes that involved added details were recognized better than changes that involved deleted details. Unexpected added details were detected better than expected ones, but expectancy had no effect on deleted details. Experiment 2 tested whether the poor recognition of changes in actions with deleted details was due to a failure to retrieve those details. The recognition test was a forced-choice test with details present in the correct alternative, so their retrieval was not necessary for correct choices. Still, recognition of originally generic actions was better than recognition of originally detailed actions. Thus, a failure to retrieve details could not completely explain the results of Experiment 1. The subjects probably recognized originally generic actions better because they processed the material schematically so that the detailed actions subsumed the generic idea. Recognition decisions may then have been based either on the plausibility of the alternatives or on their familiarity within the experimental context.