Two tachistoscopic studies assessed the effects of motivation on high-speed word processing. Study 1 assessed the effect of anxiety and Study 2 the effect of hunger compared to satiation. Words differed in interletter associative frequency (generated value), Thorndike-Lorge word frequency, and categories. In both studies, all three word variables yielded significant main effects. Motivational relevance of words did not significantly alter word recognition, the food words being most readily recognized and negatively emotional words least readily recognized in both studies. Anxiety did not have a significant effect, but hunger in interaction with word characteristics was found to be facilitating. Contrary to Hullian theory regarding word dominance and drive interaction and to Broadbent's "filtering" hypothesis, hunger in comparison to satiation increasingly facilitated word recognition the more infrequent the words and the more rare were the interletter associations.
Lewin's (1948) three styles of leadership and group dynamics provided the basis for Dreikurs' (1995) formulation concerning parental styles. Baumrind's (1971) later parenting typology, also based on Lewin, focused on parent-child dyads, whereas Dreikurs referred to the total family patterning with parents as group leaders. The present article measured young adults' perceived parenting values that occurred in childhood and corresponded to Dreikurs' and Lewin's leadership styles: autocratic, democratic, and laissez-faire. This investigation was the foundation for a long-term program of research. Two large samples of college students in a midwestern university provided data that partially supported the Lewin-Dreikurs three-factor formulation for leadership styles and that, interestingly, also revealed an independent individualism factor described by Triandis (1995). Implications of the findings are discussed.
Food and water deprived and satiated subjects, as well as control subjects, were shown words presented tachistoscopically for .01 sec until word recognition. Five food-relevant, five water-relevant, and five neutral (animal) words of high string frequency were matched for letter confusability and letter predictability. Analyses of the data, in terms of number of presentations until recognition as well as number of words recognized at selected presentations, revealed that the amount but not the type of deprivation significantly altered word recognition. Moreover, the effect of motivation was significant already on the first slide presentation, while the effects of word characteristics (word category and generated value) occurred only after a number of presentations.
The effects of motivation and affective word content on tachistoscopic recognition were assessed in two experiments. Even with arousal heightened by white noise and with the word exposure slowed (15 vs. 10 msec) per trial, the earlier finding (Ferguson, 1988) was replicated, that under parafoveal viewing hunger, compared to satiation, fails to have a significant effect. Hemispheric asymmetry in affective bias for pleasant and unpleasant words was not found. However, strong evidence was found for significant affective word coding at the lexical stage: for categories with comparable interletter and word frequencies, food words required fewer trials for word recognition, and negatively emotional words required the most trials. In contrast, the reaction times, which likely are more representative of postlexical processing, were fastest for animal words.Previous work by Ferguson (1983Ferguson ( , 1988 has revealed that hunger as an approach motivation facilitates word recognition, but only under foveal, not parafoveal, viewing. Moreover, in two of the foveal-viewing experiments, under separate motivation manipulations of hunger and anxiety, affective word content had a significant effect. When food words, animal words, and negatively emotional words were equated across affective categories for word frequency and interletter associations, food words were most easily recognized, whereas negatively emotional words were least readily recognized. No needrelevance effects were evident, and affective word content had a comparable and significant effect regardless of which type of motivation was examined. Affective word content had less effect with laterally presented stimuli, for both foveal and parafoveal viewing (Ferguson, 1988), possibly due to differential recognition difficulty of left and right off-center word presentation.In the above studies, the stimuli were presented very rapidly (for 10 msec) and repeated until correct word recognition occurred. The task differs in crucial ways from lexical decisions and word-naming studies. This task is akin to the purchasing of information until no more information is needed for correct recognition. Each trial consists of a stimulus exposure that provides a small amount of information. The dependent variable consists of trials to word recognition rather than reaction time (RT), with the two measures yielding somewhat disparate effects. For example, under foveal viewing, hungry subjects required less information purchasing (fewer trials to correct recognition) than did satiated subjects, but the recognized words were not named faster (Ferguson, 1988 In following up the above research concerning motivational influences on word recognition, the present investigation additionally addresses itself to questions concerning affective word content. One question is whether affective word content provides a code for lexical processing (see Chiarello, 1988, on the differentiation of prelexical, lexical, and postlexical processes). If recognition difficulty for off-center parafoveal present...
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
customersupport@researchsolutions.com
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
Copyright © 2025 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.