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Description:
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A visually degraded stimuli task (Vokey , Baker , Hayman , & Jacoby , 1986 ) was used to test ifferences that might exist between two age groups , gender , three picture priming conditions and two picture feature types in the ability to identify pictures . The test is a pictorial priming task that presents primes in the form of whole pictures and target items in the form of degraded pictures . The priming conditions consisted of identical , similar , and no prime . Pictures consisted of either contour or internal detail . Young subjects were 18 males and 18 females ages 17 -26 yrs . (x=20 .58 , sd=2 .41 ) . Older subjects were 18 males and 18 females , ages 60 -80 yrs . (x=68 .42 , sd=5 .26 ) . The Shipley Institute of Living Scale (Shipley , 1953 ) and the Self Evaluation of Life Function Scale (Linn & Linn , 1984 ) were also administered . Mean keystrokes to identification of a picture and time to solution were the dependent variables . Keystrokes were the number of times that the subject depressed the space bar . Each depression of the space bar resulted in seven pixels appearing on the computer screen . Main effects were observed for age group , feature type , and prime type for both of the dependent variables . |