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Cross-task strategic effects.

Kathleen Rastle1, Sachiko Kinoshita, Stephen J Lupker

  • 1Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, Surrey, England. kathy.rastle@rhul.ac.uk

Memory & Cognition
|December 4, 2003
PubMed
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Mixing easy and difficult words in reading tasks makes response times more similar. This study explored the "blocking effect" in reading aloud and visual lexical decision tasks, finding it generalizes across different cognitive processes.

Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Psycholinguistics
  • Human Information Processing

Background:

  • The "blocking effect" describes how mixing item difficulties leads to more homogeneous response times compared to pure lists.
  • Previous research (Lupker et al., 1997) demonstrated this effect in reading aloud tasks.
  • The underlying mechanisms of this list composition effect require further investigation.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the nature of the mechanism behind the list composition (blocking) effect.
  • To determine if the blocking effect extends to the visual lexical decision task.
  • To examine whether blocking effects generalize across different reading-related tasks.

Main Methods:

  • Experiment 1: Replicated the blocking effect in reading aloud and extended it to the visual lexical decision task.

Related Experiment Videos

  • Experiment 2: Presented reading aloud and visual lexical decision trials alternately within the same experiment to assess cross-task generalization.
  • Measured reading aloud latencies and visual lexical decision performance.

    • Main Results:

    • The blocking effect was successfully replicated in the reading aloud task and observed in the visual lexical decision task.
    • Blocking effects generalized across tasks; stimuli characteristics in one task influenced performance in the other.
    • This cross-task generalization occurred when tasks were interleaved within a single experimental session.

    Conclusions:

    • The list composition (blocking) effect is a robust phenomenon present in both reading aloud and visual lexical decision tasks.
    • Blocking effects are not task-specific and demonstrate a generalized strategic processing mechanism.
    • Findings support theories of strategic processing, including time-criterion and strength-of-processing models.