Role of Inferences in Advertising
Harris (1977) let students listen to commercials about various products and later to determine whether statements about the products were true, false, or of indeterminate truth value (Carroll 150). Findings – People were generally not very good at distinguishing between claims directly asserted and those implied.
Fillenbaum's(1966) 966)
◆ 1 The ▲2The
window is not closed.
window is closed. Closer in form ▲3The window is not open. ▲4 The window is open. Closer in meaning The study found that most people correctly remember 1 as what they heard, but if they made an error, they were much more likely to choose 4 than either 2 or 3.
Greater elaboration of processing leads to better retention.
Inferences and False Recognition Errors
Experimental procedure: Present people with long lists of sentences and later probe their tendency to make FRE (Bransford 1972). FRE – errors people make by believing that they saw or heard something that was actually not presented. Long list – to encourage participants to attend to meaning, not just the form of the sentences.
Wanner’s study (1974) Participants hear: When you score the results, do nothing to your correct answer but mark carefully those which are wrong. Your correct or correct your ? (meaning-significant)
Sachs’s study (1967)
Time course of retention
Experimenal Procedure:Students were asked to listen to taperecorded passage and were interrupted at various intervals. She varied two factors: types of sentences and the retention interval (time between presentation and test).
Keenan, Mac Whinney, Mayhew's study (1977) Pragmatic Factors
They recorded lunch e o n discussion (natural conversation) and constructed recognition memory tests from the recordings. Findings – It is not the syntactic or semantic aspects that make the statements memorable but rather the pragmatic functions they play.
Mark carefully or carefully mark? (form-significant)
Findings – 100% correct for your correct , 50% for mark carefully. People primarily retain the meaning, not the surface form.
Role of Inferences in Advertising
Studies have shown that we are often unable to distinguish easily between linguistic messages and the inferences we draw from them. Psychologists have explored the question of whether our tendency to draw inferences might influence our beliefs about commercial products.
Inferences and Sentence Memory
Elaboration is thought of as a process by which incoming information is related to information already stored in permanent memory, thereby enriching the memory representation of the new material.
Inferences and False Recognition Errors
Explanation:
Why people believe they have heard the second sentence?
The result suggests that an inference about the instrument used in fixing the birdhouse was drawn during comprehension.
Propositional Model of Sentence Representation
In comprehension, we first encounter a sentence. We extract its meaning and construct a proposition that represents this meaning. Meanwhile, the surface form of the sentence is being recessing resources are devoted to the meaning than to the surface form. With a long interval, only the propositional representation along with any inferences that were drawn will be stored.
Memory for Sentences
Introduction: In this section, we will examine what we remrember and what we do not from sentences and the way sentences are ultimately stored in permanent memory.
Basic Idea: Whether we retain the exact or verbatim wording of a sentence or simply its meaning? Fillenbaum(1966) 9 Wanner’s study (1974) Sachs’s study (1967) Keenan, Mac Whinney, Mayhew's study (1977)
Inferences and False Recognition Errors
Example:
Original sentence – John was trying to fix the birdhouse. He was looking for the nail when his father came out to watch and to help him do the work. Test sentence – John was using the hammer to fix the birdhouse when his father…
Findings – Immediate presentation of the test sentence after the study sentence, retention of both form and meaning was excellent, but memory for form declined substantially with 40 syllables of retention interval (about 12.5 seconds).
Propositional Model of Sentence Representation
Anderson (1976): A sentence can be represented as a proposition consisting of two or more concepts and some form of relation between them. Examples: George hit Harry. Hit (George, Harry)