List Structure, Monotony, and Levels of Processing

• Published in: Journal of psycholinguistic research 1989-05, Vol.18 (3), p.245-253
• Main Authors: DOMMERGUES, J. Y, SEGUI, J
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Biological and medical sciences; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Language; Linguistics; Production and perception of spoken language; Psycholinguistics; Psychology of language; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Speech production and perception
• ISSN: 0090-6905; 1573-6555
• DOI: 10.1007/BF01067035

Three experiments are described that studied the effect of monotony of auditorily presented experimental lists on the level of processing. Ss were presented with a list & asked to listen to it carefully, then to assess the proportion of "words" present in the list. A homogeneous list of monosyllabic items & a mixed list of monosyllabic & bisyllabic items, both with the same number of words & nonwords, were used as stimuli. In experiment 1, native French speakers (N = 36) listened to each list being read aloud in a monotone & then estimated the number of real words. In experiment 2, Ss (N = 72) heard lists similar to those used in experiment 1, except that the words used were of high frequency, rather than the relatively low frequency words used in experiment 1. In experiment 3 (N = 48), only concrete nouns were used as real words. Results of experiments 1 & 2 showed that Ss significantly underestimated the number of words in the homogeneous, but not the heterogeneous, lists. Experiment 3 showed the same trend. All findings indicated that performance differences originate at the level of encoding processes rather than at a later level. 4 References. B. Annesser Murray