Can participants retrieve information about the 2nd of 2 stimuli while they are processing the 1st? Four experiments suggest they can. Reaction times to the 1st stimulus were faster if it came from the same category as the 2nd than if it came from a different category. This category-match effect was observed for letter-digit discrimination (Experiment 1), magnitude and parity judgments about di...

This paper demonstrates the advantages of using on-line arithmetic for traditional and advanced detection algorithms for communication systems. Detection is one of the core computationallyintensive physical layer operations in a communication receiver and determines the communication data rates. Detection algorithms typically involve hard decisions (sign based testing) to find the sign of the t...

In a previous study, it was shown that the attentional blink (AB)--the failure to recall the 2nd of 2 visual targets (T1 and T2) presented within 500 ms in rapid serial visual presentation--is reduced when T2 is preceded by a distractor that shares a feature with T2 (e.g., color; Nieuwenstein, Chun, van der Lubbe & Hooge, 2005). Here, this cuing effect is shown to be contingent on attentional s...

The paper-and-pencil digit-comparison task for assessing negative priming (NP) was introduced, using a referent-size-selection procedure that was demonstrated to enhance the effect. NP is indicated by slower responses to recently ignored items, and proposed within the clinical-experimental framework as a major cognitive index of active suppression of distracting information, critical to executi...

Test of digit retention was carried out to investigate if the usually accepted norm of 7 forward digit retention holds true in our population. The highest mean score of 8.85 was obtained by executives. Professionals scored a mean of 8.08 followed by students (7.81). Housewives, skilled workers and unskilled workers scored less than the accepted norm of 7 digit forward retention. A strong influe...

UNLABELLED Studies of human primary somatosensory cortex (S1) have placed a strong emphasis on the cortical representation of the hand and the propensity for plasticity therein. Despite many reports of group differences and experience-dependent changes in cortical digit somatotopy, relatively little work has considered the variability of these maps across individuals and to what extent this det...

The attentional blink (AB) refers to a deficit in the ability to identify a second target following a first target when both appear randomly within a rapid sequence of distractor items. The AB of five adults with dyslexia (ADys) was compared with that of a group of normal adult readers. Two tasks were completed which differed in the conceptual category of the target items (a red digit or letter...

OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study was to examine differences between older and younger listeners in the ability to sequentially attend to and ignore words. DESIGN Participants (n = 13 older adults and 13 younger adults) completed a temporally interleaved word recognition task. On each trial, 10 words were presented, and participants were instructed to repeat back every other word while igno...

Challenges to random digit dialing have been documented, but the reliability of random digit dialing outcomes from telephone number calling, household identification, and enumeration has never been addressed, despite its potential to bias population representativeness by affecting completeness of coverage. The authors explored interobserver reliability of calls to numbers generated by random di...

Letters and digits, although similar in many respects, also differ in potentially significant ways. Most importantly, letters are elements of an alphabetic writing system, whereas digits are logographs. In this article, we explore whether letters and digits are identified by a single character identification process that makes no fundamental distinction between the two types of characters, or w...