The Department of Psychology and the Cognitive and Behavioral Sciences (CBS) Colloquium Series will present a talk, titled “Can Reading About Gravity Help You Understand Cats? Transfer Benefits Across Seemingly Unrelated Texts,” with Gary Raney, Ph.D., on Friday, February 20, at 2 p.m. in 48 DeGarmo Hall. Raney is an associate professor in the department of psychology at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Abstract
According to Raney (2003), repetition effects and transfer benefits across texts will be larger if the situation models of the texts overlap than if they do not overlap. Klin, Ralano, and Weingartner (2007) tested this aspect of Raney’s model. They had readers read two supposedly unrelated stories that shared a sentence and measured transfer (processing time of target sentences in the second story). They concluded that transfer was found across unrelated stories.
Raney will present data from two new studies. The first shows that the story pairs used by Klin et al. were not unrelated, and therefore, their results are actually consistent with Raney (2003). The second study shows the amount of transfer between passages varies based on the degree of thematic overlap. These two studies further support the conclusion that transfer benefits are influenced by the amount of situation model overlap.
CBS Colloquium Series
The CBS Colloquium Series brings high-caliber researchers to the Illinois State University campus to share their work with the local academic community. Individual faculty members invite speakers to campus based on their interests. The Department of Psychology also invites alumni to speak in the series in an effort to maintain strong connections with former students and provide them with a chance to pass on their knowledge to current students. The series provides both faculty and students with a variety of professional development opportunities and allows students to network with professionals in their field of study.
This speaker series is funded by the Department of Psychology and the College of Arts and Sciences. To support the Department of Psychology and help enhance its educational mission with advanced teaching methods, guest speakers, and more opportunities for students to learn through research experiences, please consider making a gift to the department through the Illinois State University Foundation.
If you need a special accommodation to participate in this program, call the Department of Psychology at (309) 439-8651. Please allow sufficient time to arrange the accommodation.
