Robin K. Morris - US grants

This research will explore the role of the context provided by one sentence in recognition of the words in the following sentence during silent reading. The experiments will investigate specific characteristics of the preceeding sentence context that might influence the recognition of individual words during reading. Skilled adult readers will read simple sentences presented on a computer screen, and their eye movements will be recorded as they read. The research will use information from their eye movements and the time they take to name each word to determine the influence of the context in which a word occurs on the identification of that word. The purpose of the research is to develop a more complete model of how words are identified during skilled reading and to further our understanding of the reading process in general. By understanding skilled reading, we will be better equipped to evaluate reading disability, to assist dyslexic and disabled readers trying to cope with their reading problems, and to design methods of reading instruction and remediation.

The University of South Carolina Summer Research Institute in Experimental Psychology has provided and will continue to provide a mechanism for educating undergraduate students about the field of experimental psychology. Many students, including students from underrepresented minorities, are drawn to applied psychology programs. The intent of the Institute, in contrast, is to focus student interest and enthusiasm on the basic science areas of psychology. The eight-week USC Summer Research Institute will permit well-qualified minority and non-minority undergraduate students majoring in a behavioral science an experience in graduate-level research, including an opportunity to formulate and conduct an experiment with individual guidance from an energetic and supportive research faculty mentor. The student will participate in major phases of experimental research, including literature review, hypothesis generation, data collection, data organization, statistical analysis and report writing in the style of American Psychological Association journals. Student experiences will be enriched by weekly research seminars, in which assigned readings will be discussed, and by weekly sessions on problems of research design and statistics in experimental psychology. Students will receive gratis course credit for their work. This program emphasis is much needed, as the U.S. is perceived to be the leader in the field of experimental psychology, and our universities must be able to motivate and train the best students for future careers in vital areas of behavioral science. This Summer Institute will continue to provide one vehicle to enhance these goals.

The PIs propose to investigate "decoy effects," which are the influences that a new alternative has when it is added to a set of options from which a person has to make a choice. Occasionally such decoys have quite paradoxical effects, such as increasing the likelihood of choosing an original member of the set. The investigators will use techniques which assess the information- gathering processes used by persons in such decoy effect experiments. Eye movement monitoring will also be done. A total of twelve experiments are proposed.

What a speaker communicates embraces both what a speaker says and what a speaker implicates by what is said. Linguists and philosophers of language have extensively studied sentences allegedly giving rise to generalized conversational implicatures. However, an understanding of the psychological processes underlying the interpretation of such sentences is currently lacking. This study attempts to apply well-established psycholinguistic methods to this new area.

We have identified three rival pragmatic processing models that embody features of the major competing theories. The models inspired by Gricean ideas are committed to a stage in processing at which a minimal proposition is accessed or accessible, whereas models inspired by Relevance theory deny that a minimal proposition needs to be retrieved unless the context is biased towards such an interpretation. This project proposes a series of 10 experiments, using both self-paced reading tasks and reading tasks during which eye-movements are monitored, to test the predictions of these rival models.

The University of South Carolina Summer Research Institute in Experimental Psychology has provided and will continue to provide a mechanism for educating undergraduate students about the field of experimental psychology. Many students, including students from underrepresented minorities, are drawn to applied psychology programs. The intent of the Institute, in contrast, is to focus student interest and enthusiasm on the basic science areas of psychology. The eight-week USC Summer Research Institute will permit well-qualified minority and non-minority undergraduate students majoring in a behavioral science an experience in graduate-level research, including an opportunity to formulate and conduct an experiment with individual guidance from an energetic and supportive research faculty mentor. The student will participate in major phases of experimental research, including literature review, hypothesis generation, data collection, data organization, statistical analysis and report writing in the style of American Psychological Association journals. Student experiences will be enriched by weekly research seminars, in which assigned readings will be discussed, and by weekly sessions on problems of research design and statistics in experimental psychology. Students will receive gratis course credit for their work. This program emphasis is much needed, as the U.S. is perceived to be the leader in the field of experimental psychology, and our universities must be able to motivate and train the best students for future careers in vital areas of behavioral science. This Summer Institute will continue to provide one vehicle to enhance these goals.

This award contributes to the Foundation's continuing efforts to attract talented students into careers in science through active undergraduate research experiences.

This project focuses on how the acquisition of complex skills interacts with and influences cortical organization. Borrowing a conceptual framework from evolutionary biology, both adaptive and nonadaptive skills are being considered. It has been suggested by research and in the popular press that there is sometimes a positive interaction, such as between musical and mathematical skills, and sometimes a negative interaction, such as between computer and socioemotional skills, when complex skills are acquired. This project will use both humans and rats as subjects and would examine acquisition of the skills during various times during development and in adulthood. Analyses include both behavioral and neuroanatomical measures. Cortical organization will be examined using neuroimaging and ERP technology in humans and neuroanatomical techniques in animals. Studies in humans include laboratory, field and cross-cultural studies. The planning process includes three meetings to develop concepts and define tasks and approaches, two trips to facilitate the cross-cultural studies, and initial experiments to gather pilot data from both humans and rats.
The intellectual merit of the proposal resides within the novelty and importance of the question to be answered and the interdisciplinary approach. The impact of acquisition of multiple skills on cortical organization in intact individuals is not well understood. While many studies have demonstrated effects of the acquisition of one skill on cortical organization, few, if any, have considered the possible interactions of multiple skills. The data from the proposed studies will provide information about the basic processes of cortical organization in the face of environmental demands and also about the interactions of skill acquisition on a behavioral level. The PI and co-PI bring their expertise in neuroscience and cognitive science together to propose an interdisciplinary approach to the question. The planning activities involve others with expertise in development, neuroimaging, statistical modeling, and evolutionary biology. The planning activities will be instrumental in developing the initial concepts outlined above to the point where a full proposal can be developed.
The broader impacts of this project are at several levels. Given that there is increasing pressure to acquire non-adaptive skills at younger and younger ages in Western society, understanding the effects of this pressure on other skills, both adaptive and non-adaptive, is essential. The outcome of the project will have basic implications for the education system in this society. In addition, the planning activities include recruitment of researchers outside of biology to participate and some of these individuals will be from the five traditionally black colleges within a 60 mile radius of the home institute in South Carolina. The involvement of both postdoctoral and graduate students will be crucial to the success of the full proposal and they are involved in the planning process as well. Importantly, the planning process and the actual studies proposed will involve collaboration of individuals across a number of different disciplines, including biology, psychology, education, and statistics and will require training in the various fields of all involved individuals.