Components of events and processes.

Full Abstract

Rips and Estin (1998) provided evidence that mental events such as dreaming are more homogeneous than physical events such as checking out a book; that is, their parts are more difficult to distinguish. In their experiment, participants listed more distinctive properties for the parts of physical events than for the parts of mental events. However, the physicality of stimuli was confounded with temporal aspects. Mental stimuli tended to be processes, and physical stimuli, events. This study tested homogeneity with new stimuli separating out the factors of physicality and aspect. Consistently, both physicality and aspect had significant effects on the perceived homogeneity of activities, as measured by the number of listed parts, the number of distinctive properties of each part, and homogeneity ratings. The study shows that homogeneity is strongly influenced by aspect but that physicality remains a robust factor for homogeneity, even after taking aspect into account.

Author information

Author/s: Xu, Xu (X); Wiemer-Hastings, Katja (K); Magliano, Joseph P (JP); Birner, Betty (B);

Affiliation: School of Behavioral Sciences and Education, Pennsylvania State University, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania 17057, USA. xuxu(-atsign-)psu.edu

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article

Journal: Memory & cognition (Mem Cognit), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2007-Mar; vol 35 (issue 2) : pp 317-25

Dates: Created 2007/07/24; Completed 2007/08/27;

PMID: 17645172, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 2/18/2009, IMS Date: )

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

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