PsyScope is an integrated environment for designing and running psychology experiments on Macintosh computers. The primary goal ofPsyScope is to give both psychology students and trained researchers a tool that allows them to design experiments without the need for programming. PsyScope relies on the interactive graphic environment provided by Macintosh computers to accomplish this goal. The standard components of a psychology experiment-groups, blocks, trials, and factors-are all represented graphically, and experiments are constructed by working with these elements in interactive windows and dialogs. In this article, we describe the overall organization of the program, provide an example of how a simple experiment can be constructed within its graphic environment, and discuss some of its technical features (such as its underlying scripting language, timing characteristics, etc.), PsyScope is available for noncommercial purposes free of charge and unsupported to the general research community. Information about how to obtain the program and its documentation is provided.

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We investigated the online relationship between overt articulation and the central processes of speech production. In two experiments manipulating the timing of Stroop interference in color naming, we found that naming behavior can shift between exhibiting a staged or cascaded mode of processing, depending on task demands: an effect of Stroop interference on naming durations arose only when there was increased pressure for speeded responding. In a simple connectionist model of information processing applied to color naming, we accounted for the current results by manipulating a single parameter, termed gain, modulating the rate of information accrual within the network. We discuss our results in relation to mechanisms of strategic control and the link between cognition and action. 1 This is just a list of candidate cognitive entities that researchers have proposed. For the purposes of this study, we are agnostic as to the architecture and representations that actually compose "central processes" because we believe that the nature of their properties are not relevant to addressing the research question. We simply define central processes to include any computations over internal representations (i.e., more abstract than purely sensory or motor processes).

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Second through 6th graders were presented with nonword primes (orthographic, pseudohomophone, and control) and target words displayed for durations (30 and 60 ms) that were brief enough to prevent complete processing. Word reading skills were assessed by 3 word and nonword naming tasks. Good readers exhibited more orthographic priming than poor readers at both durations and more pseudohomophone priming at the short duration only. This suggests that good readers activate letter and phonemic information more efficiently than poor readers. Good readers also exhibited an equal amount of priming at both durations, whereas poor readers showed greater priming at the longer duration. This suggests that activation was not under strategic control. Finally, priming was reliable for both high- and low-frequency targets. This suggests that readers activate consistent information regardless of target word characteristics. Thus, quick, automatic, and general activation of orthographic and phonological information in skilled readers results from the precision and redundancy of their lexical representations.