The mechanism of suppression: A component of general comprehension skill.
- 1 January 1991
- journal article
- Published by American Psychological Association (APA) in Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition
- Vol. 17 (2) , 245-262
- https://doi.org/10.1037//0278-7393.17.2.245
Abstract
We investigated whether the cognitive mechanism of suppression underlies differences in adult comprehension skill. Less skilled comprehenders reject less efficiently the inappropriate meanings of ambiguous words (e.g., the playing card vs. garden tool meaning of spade), the incorrect forms of homophones (e.g., patients vs. patience), the highly typical but absent members of scenes (e.g., a tractor in a farm scene), and words superimposed on pictures or pictures surrounding words. However, less skilled comprehenders are not less cognizant of what is contextually appropriate; in fact, they benefit from a biasing context just as much (and perhaps more) as more skilled comprehenders do. Thus, less skilled comprehenders do not have difficulty enhancing contextually appropriate information. Instead, we suggest that less skilled comprehenders suffer from a less efficient suppression mechanism, which we conclude is an important component of general comprehension skill.Keywords
This publication has 24 references indexed in Scilit:
- Age and inhibition.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 1991
- Investigating differences in general comprehension skill.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 1990
- Selection mechanisms in reading lexically ambiguous words.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 1989
- The subjective familiarity of English homophonesMemory & Cognition, 1987
- Scene perception: A failure to find a benefit from prior expectancy or familiarity.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 1983
- Differences in semantic encoding as a function of reading comprehension skillMemory & Cognition, 1981
- A standardized set of 260 pictures: Norms for name agreement, image agreement, familiarity, and visual complexity.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory, 1980
- Allocation of attention during visual word recognition.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 1976
- Some of the thousand words a picture is worth.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory, 1976
- The effects of contextual scenes on the identification of objectsMemory & Cognition, 1975