A meta-analysis and systematic review of reactivity to judgements of learning.

PubMed

Double, Kit S; Birney, Damian P; Walker, Sarah A

2018-07-01

Judgements of learning (JoL) are often used in memory research as a means for assessing an individual's metacognitive beliefs about their learning. JoL have been shown to reliably predict performance as well as learning behaviours and decisions . Participants may, however, modify their behaviour in response to performing JoL. There has, however, been little consensus as to the reliability and direction of the effect. We report on a meta-analyses that assesses the evidence that memory performance is reactive to JoL. The results indicate that overall providing JoL does not have a significant effect on memory performance (g = 0.054, 95% CI -0.027 to 0.135). However, sub-groups analysis showed that this effect depends on the nature of the stimuli to be recalled, with moderate positive reactivity observed for related word pairs (g = 0.323, 95% CI 0.083 to 0.563) and word lists (g = 0.384, 95% CI 0.146 to 0.622) but no reactivity when pairs were unrelated or a mixture of related and unrelated pairs. These results indicate that researchers should be aware that eliciting JoL may well influence participants' underlying encoding processes, especially when using related word pairs or word lists.

Theoretical and Methodological Implications of Language Experience and Vocabulary Skill: Priming of Strongly and Weakly Associated Words

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Devitto, Zana; Burgess, Curt

2004-01-01

The effect of second language experience and vocabulary ability was investigated in a semantic priming experiment with weakly related English word pairs (e.g., "city"-"grass"). Participants made lexical decisions to targets preceded by unrelated or weakly related primes or to nonword targets preceded by words. Reliable priming was found for…

Attention and Semantic Processing during Speech: An fMRI Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rama, Pia; Relander-Syrjanen, Kristiina; Carlson, Synnove; Salonen, Oili; Kujala, Teija

2012-01-01

This fMRI study was conducted to investigate whether language semantics is processed even when attention is not explicitly directed to word meanings. In the "unattended" condition, the subjects performed a visual detection task while hearing semantically related and unrelated word pairs. In the "phoneme" condition, the subjects made phoneme…

Genetic influences on free and cued recall in long-term memory tasks.

PubMed

Volk, Heather E; McDermott, Kathleen B; Roediger, Henry L; Todd, Richard D

2006-10-01

Long-term memory (LTM) problems are associated with many psychiatric and neurological illnesses and are commonly measured using free and cued recall tasks. Although LTM has been linked with biologic mechanisms, the etiology of distinct LTM tasks is unknown. We studied LTM in 95 healthy female twin pairs identified through birth records in the state of Missouri. Performance on tasks of free recall of unrelated words, free and cued recall of categorized words, and the vocabulary section of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS-R) were examined using structural equation modeling. Additive genetic and unique environmental factors influenced LTM and intelligence. Free recall of unrelated and categorized words, and cued recall of categorized words, were moderately heritable (55%, 38%, and 37%). WAIS-R vocabulary score was highly heritable (77%). Controlling for verbal intelligence in multivariate analyses of recall, two components of genetic influence on LTM were found; one for all three recall scores and one for free and cued categorized word recall. Recall of unrelated and categorized words is influenced by different genetic and environmental factors indicating heterogeneity in LTM. Verbal intelligence is etiologically different from LTM indicating that these two abilities utilize different brain functions.

Words Get in the Way: Linguistic Effects on Talker Discrimination.

PubMed

Narayan, Chandan R; Mak, Lorinda; Bialystok, Ellen

2017-07-01

A speech perception experiment provides evidence that the linguistic relationship between words affects the discrimination of their talkers. Listeners discriminated two talkers' voices with various linguistic relationships between their spoken words. Listeners were asked whether two words were spoken by the same person or not. Word pairs varied with respect to the linguistic relationship between the component words, forming either: phonological rhymes, lexical compounds, reversed compounds, or unrelated pairs. The degree of linguistic relationship between the words affected talker discrimination in a graded fashion, revealing biases listeners have regarding the nature of words and the talkers that speak them. These results indicate that listeners expect a talker's words to be linguistically related, and more generally, indexical processing is affected by linguistic information in a top-down fashion even when listeners are not told to attend to it. Copyright © 2016 Cognitive Science Society, Inc.

To predict or not to predict: influences of task and strategy on the processing of semantic relations.

PubMed

Roehm, Dietmar; Bornkessel-Schlesewsky, Ina; Rösler, Frank; Schlesewsky, Matthias

2007-08-01

We report a series of event-related potential experiments designed to dissociate the functionally distinct processes involved in the comprehension of highly restricted lexical-semantic relations (antonyms). We sought to differentiate between influences of semantic relatedness (which are independent of the experimental setting) and processes related to predictability (which differ as a function of the experimental environment). To this end, we conducted three ERP studies contrasting the processing of antonym relations (black-white) with that of related (black-yellow) and unrelated (black-nice) word pairs. Whereas the lexical-semantic manipulation was kept constant across experiments, the experimental environment and the task demands varied: Experiment 1 presented the word pairs in a sentence context of the form The opposite of X is Y and used a sensicality judgment. Experiment 2 used a word pair presentation mode and a lexical decision task. Experiment 3 also examined word pairs, but with an antonymy judgment task. All three experiments revealed a graded N400 response (unrelated > related > antonyms), thus supporting the assumption that semantic associations are processed automatically. In addition, the experiments revealed that, in highly constrained task environments, the N400 gradation occurs simultaneously with a P300 effect for the antonym condition, thus leading to the superficial impression of an extremely "reduced" N400 for antonym pairs. Comparisons across experiments and participant groups revealed that the P300 effect is not only a function of stimulus constraints (i.e., sentence context) and experimental task, but that it is also crucially influenced by individual processing strategies used to achieve successful task performance.

Retrieval-induced forgetting in schizophrenia

PubMed Central

Nestor, Paul G.; Piech, Richard; Allen, Christopher; Niznikiewicz, Margaret; Shenton, Martha; McCarley, Robert W.

2009-01-01

Retrieving category associates (e.g., FRUIT-ORANGE) may induce forgetting other category members (e.g., FRUIT-BANANA), a phenomenon known as retrieval-induced forgetting (RIF). We designed 2 experiments to examine the role of RIF in the associative memory impairment of schizophrenia (SZ). Subjects studied 36 category-exemplar pairs, generated from 6 categories composed of 6 members each. For half of the studied category-exemplar pairs, subjects practiced retrieval by completing word stems, followed by a delayed category-cued recall on all of the practiced and unpracticed items. Experiment 1 used unrelated category exemplars-pairs (e.g., FRUIT-ORANGE, METALS-IRON), whereas experiment 2 included related category exemplar pairs (e.g., COTTON-SHIRT, LEATHER-SKIRT). SZ showed reduced associative memory but normal RIF for unrelated categories used in experiment 1. For experiment 2, SZ showed a significant decline in associative memory for related but not unrelated category-exemplars in comparison to controls. Results suggested faulty specificity/distinctiveness for encoding and retrieval, but not abnormal RIF in the associative memory disturbance of SZ. PMID:15885511

Retrieval-induced forgetting in schizophrenia.

PubMed

Nestor, Paul G; Piech, Richard; Allen, Christopher; Niznikiewicz, Margaret; Shenton, Martha; McCarley, Robert W

2005-06-15

Retrieving category associates (e.g., FRUIT-ORANGE) may induce forgetting other category members (e.g., FRUIT-BANANA), a phenomenon known as retrieval-induced forgetting (RIF). We designed 2 experiments to examine the role of RIF in the associative memory impairment of schizophrenia (SZ). Subjects studied 36 category-exemplar pairs, generated from 6 categories composed of 6 members each. For half of the studied category-exemplar pairs, subjects practiced retrieval by completing word stems, followed by a delayed category-cued recall on all of the practiced and unpracticed items. Experiment 1 used unrelated category exemplars-pairs (e.g., FRUIT-ORANGE, METALS-IRON), whereas experiment 2 included related category exemplar pairs (e.g., COTTON-SHIRT, LEATHER-SKIRT). SZ showed reduced associative memory but normal RIF for unrelated categories used in experiment 1. For experiment 2, SZ showed a significant decline in associative memory for related but not unrelated category-exemplars in comparison to controls. Results suggested faulty specificity/distinctiveness for encoding and retrieval, but not abnormal RIF in the associative memory disturbance of SZ.

The Interplay between Value and Relatedness as Bases for Metacognitive Monitoring and Control: Evidence for Agenda-Based Monitoring

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Soderstrom, Nicholas C.; McCabe, David P.

2011-01-01

Two experiments are reported examining how value and relatedness interact to influence metacognitive monitoring and control processes. Participants studied unrelated and related word pairs, each accompanied by point values denoting how important the items were to remember. These values were presented either before or after each pair in a…

Semantic processing of unattended parafoveal words.

PubMed

Di Pace, E; Longoni, A M; Zoccolotti, P

1991-08-01

The influence that a context word presented either foveally or parafoveally, may exert on the processing of a subsequent target word was studied in a semantic decision task. Fourteen subjects participated in the experiment. They were presented with word-nonword pairs (prime). One member of the pair (which the subjects had to attend to) appeared centrally, the other parafoveally. The prime was followed by a target at two inter-stimulus intervals (ISI; 200 and 2000 msec). The word stimulus of the pair could be semantically related or unrelated to the target. The subjects' task was to classify the target as animal or not animal by pressing one of two buttons as quickly as possible. When the target word was semantically associated with the foveal (attended) word the reaction times were faster for both ISIs; when it was associated with the parafoveal (unattended) word in the prime pair, there were facilitatory effects only in the short ISI condition. A second experiment was run in order to evaluate the possibility that the obtained results were due to identification of the parafoveal stimulus. The same prime-target pairs of experiment 1 (without the target stimuli) were used. The prime-target pairs were presented to fourteen subjects who were requested to name the foveal (attended) stimulus and subsequently, if possible, the parafoveal (unattended) one. Even in this condition, percentage of identification of the unattended word was only 15%, suggesting that previous findings were not due to identification of unattended stimuli. Results are discussed in relation to Posner and Snyder's (1975) dual coding theory.

Memory effects of sleep, emotional valence, arousal and novelty in children.

PubMed

Vermeulen, Marije C M; van der Heijden, Kristiaan B; Benjamins, Jeroen S; Swaab, Hanna; van Someren, Eus J W

2017-06-01

Effectiveness of memory consolidation is determined by multiple factors, including sleep after learning, emotional valence, arousal and novelty. Few studies investigated how the effect of sleep compares with (and interacts with) these other factors, of which virtually none are in children. The present study did so by repeated assessment of declarative memory in 386 children (45% boys) aged 9-11 years through an online word-pair task. Children were randomly assigned to either a morning or evening learning session of 30 unrelated word-pairs with positive, neutral or negative valenced cues and neutral targets. After immediately assessing baseline recognition, delayed recognition was recorded either 12 or 24 h later, resulting in four different assessment schedules. One week later, the procedure was repeated with exactly the same word-pairs to evaluate whether effects differed for relearning versus original novel learning. Mixed-effect logistic regression models were used to evaluate how the probability of correct recognition was affected by sleep, valence, arousal, novelty and their interactions. Both immediate and delayed recognition were worse for pairs with negatively valenced or less arousing cue words. Relearning improved immediate and delayed word-pair recognition. In contrast to these effects, sleep did not affect recognition, nor did sleep moderate the effects of arousal, valence and novelty. The findings suggest a robust inclination of children to specifically forget the pairing of words to negatively valenced cue words. In agreement with a recent meta-analysis, children seem to depend less on sleep for the consolidation of information than has been reported for adults, irrespective of the emotional valence, arousal and novelty of word-pairs. © 2017 European Sleep Research Society.

Semantic processing in native and second language: evidence from hemispheric differences in fine and coarse semantic coding.

PubMed

Faust, Miriam; Ben-Artzi, Elisheva; Vardi, Nili

2012-12-01

Previous studies suggest that whereas the left hemisphere (LH) is involved in fine semantic processing, the right hemisphere (RH) is uniquely engaged in coarse semantic coding including the comprehension of distinct types of language such as figurative language, lexical ambiguity and verbal humor (e.g., Chiarello, 2003; Faust, 2012). The present study examined the patterns of hemispheric involvement in fine/coarse semantic processing in native and non-native languages using a split visual field priming paradigm. Thirty native Hebrew speaking students made lexical decision judgments of Hebrew and English target words preceded by strongly, weakly, or unrelated primes. Results indicated that whereas for Hebrew pairs, priming effect for the weakly-related word pairs was obtained only for RH presented target words, for English pairs, no priming effect for the weakly-related pairs emerged for either LH or RH presented targets, suggesting that coarse semantic coding is much weaker for a non-native than native language. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Cross-cultural differences in categorical memory errors.

PubMed

Schwartz, Aliza J; Boduroglu, Aysecan; Gutchess, Angela H

2014-06-01

Cultural differences occur in the use of categories to aid accurate recall of information. This study investigated whether culture also contributed to false (erroneous) memories, and extended cross-cultural memory research to Turkish culture, which is shaped by Eastern and Western influences. Americans and Turks viewed word pairs, half of which were categorically related and half unrelated. Participants then attempted to recall the second word from the pair in response to the first word cue. Responses were coded as correct, as blanks, or as different types of errors. Americans committed more categorical errors than did Turks, and Turks mistakenly recalled more non-categorically related list words than did Americans. These results support the idea that Americans use categories either to organize information in memory or to support retrieval strategies to a greater extent than Turks and suggest that culture shapes not only accurate recall but also erroneous distortions of memory. © 2014 Cognitive Science Society, Inc.

Implicit co-activation of American Sign Language in deaf readers: An ERP study.

PubMed

Meade, Gabriela; Midgley, Katherine J; Sevcikova Sehyr, Zed; Holcomb, Phillip J; Emmorey, Karen

2017-07-01

In an implicit phonological priming paradigm, deaf bimodal bilinguals made semantic relatedness decisions for pairs of English words. Half of the semantically unrelated pairs had phonologically related translations in American Sign Language (ASL). As in previous studies with unimodal bilinguals, targets in pairs with phonologically related translations elicited smaller negativities than targets in pairs with phonologically unrelated translations within the N400 window. This suggests that the same lexicosemantic mechanism underlies implicit co-activation of a non-target language, irrespective of language modality. In contrast to unimodal bilingual studies that find no behavioral effects, we observed phonological interference, indicating that bimodal bilinguals may not suppress the non-target language as robustly. Further, there was a subset of bilinguals who were aware of the ASL manipulation (determined by debrief), and they exhibited an effect of ASL phonology in a later time window (700-900ms). Overall, these results indicate modality-independent language co-activation that persists longer for bimodal bilinguals. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Repetition-lag training to improve recollection memory in older people with amnestic mild cognitive impairment. A randomized controlled trial.

PubMed

Finn, Maurice; McDonald, Skye

2015-01-01

The results of a randomized controlled trial of repetition-lag training in older adults with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) are reported. A modified repetition-lag training procedure with extended encoding time and strategy choice was used. The training required discriminating studied words from non-studied lures that were repeated at varying intervals during the test phase. Participants were assessed pre/post using untrained measures of cognition and self-report questionnaires. Primary outcome measures were recall of unrelated word pairs both immediately following presentation and following a delay. Secondary outcomes were a measure of attention, cognitive flexibility, and visual working memory. Participants were also asked to report on the frequency of cognitive failures and mood before and after training. Participants (N = 31) were randomized into either the treatment or a no-contact control group and attended the clinic twice per week over a four week period. Twenty-four participants completed the study (twelve in each group). Results indicated that the training group improved at recalling unrelated word pairs after a delay. There were no significant effects of training on other outcomes, self-reported cognitive failures or mood. The results are discussed along with suggestions for future research.

The Effects of Context, Meaning Frequency, and Associative Strength on Semantic Selection: Distinct Contributions from each Cerebral Hemisphere

PubMed Central

Meyer, Aaron M.; Federmeier, Kara D.

2008-01-01

The visual half-field procedure was used to examine hemispheric asymmetries in meaning selection. Event-related potentials were recorded as participants decided if a lateralized ambiguous or unambiguous prime was related in meaning to a centrally-presented target. Prime-target pairs were preceded by a related or unrelated centrally-presented context word. To separate the effects of meaning frequency and associative strength, unambiguous words were paired with concordant weakly-related context words and strongly-related targets (e.g., taste-sweet-candy) that were similar in associative strength to discordant subordinate-related context words and dominant-related targets (e.g., river-bank-deposit) in the ambiguous condition. Context words and targets were reversed in a second experiment. In an unrelated (neutral) context, N400 responses were more positive than baseline (facilitated) in all ambiguous conditions except when subordinate targets were presented on left visual field-right hemisphere (LVF-RH) trials. Thus, in the absence of biasing context information, the hemispheres seem to be differentially affected by meaning frequency, with the left maintaining multiple meanings and the right selecting the dominant meaning. In the presence of discordant context information, N400 facilitation was absent in both visual fields, indicating that the contextually-consistent meaning of the ambiguous word had been selected. In contrast, N400 facilitation occurred in all of the unambiguous conditions; however, the left hemisphere (LH) showed less facilitation for the weakly-related target when a strongly-related context was presented. These findings indicate that both hemispheres use context to guide meaning selection, but that the LH is more likely to focus activation on a single, contextually-relevant sense. PMID:17936727

Perception of Lexical Stress by Brain-Damaged Individuals: Effects on Lexical-Semantic Activation

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Shah, Amee P.; Baum, Shari R.

2006-01-01

A semantic priming, lexical-decision study was conducted to examine the ability of left- and right-brain damaged individuals to perceive lexical-stress cues and map them onto lexical-semantic representations. Correctly and incorrectly stressed primes were paired with related and unrelated target words to tap implicit processing of lexical prosody.…

Aberrant N400 responses to phonological overlap during rhyme judgements in children at risk for dyslexia.

PubMed

Noordenbos, Mark W; Segers, Eliane; Wagensveld, Barbara; Verhoeven, Ludo

2013-11-06

It is widely accepted that dyslexia is associated with difficulties in phonological awareness and that rhyme awareness in young children can predict later reading success. However, little is known regarding the underlying phonological mechanisms of rhyme awareness in dyslexia, as rhyme awareness is typically assessed using explicit behavioural measures that represent only the endpoint of processing and often lack phonological distracters. We examined event-related potentials (ERPs) in response to auditory word pairs that differed in phonological overlap during a rhyme judgement task given to 6-year-old beginning readers who were at risk for dyslexia (n=30) and typical-reading age-matched controls (n=29). ERPs were recorded in response to word pairs with various types of phonological overlap, including rhyming (e.g., wall-ball), non-rhyming overlapping (e.g., bell-ball) and non-rhyming unrelated (e.g., sock-ball) word pairs. Both groups of participants exhibited N400 responses for basic rhyme judgements vs. unrelated targets. In the typical-reading controls, the neural responses also differed between the rhyming targets and the non-rhyming overlapping targets, whereas neural responses to these targets were similar in the group of children at risk for dyslexia, indicating difficulties in their ability to process similar-sounding, non-rhyming targets. These findings suggest that typical-reading children solve the rhyme judgement task using a more analytical approach, whereas children who are at risk for dyslexia base their judgments on a comparison of overall sound similarity. © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Chinese Learners of English See Chinese Words When Reading English Words.

PubMed

Ma, Fengyang; Ai, Haiyang

2018-06-01

The present study examines when second language (L2) learners read words in the L2, whether the orthography and/or phonology of the translation words in the first language (L1) is activated and whether the patterns would be modulated by the proficiency in the L2. In two experiments, two groups of Chinese learners of English immersed in the L1 environment, one less proficient and the other more proficient in English, performed a translation recognition task. In this task, participants judged whether pairs of words, with an L2 word preceding an L1 word, were translation words or not. The critical conditions compared the performance of learners to reject distractors that were related to the translation word (e.g., , pronounced as /bei 1/) of an L2 word (e.g., cup) in orthography (e.g., , bad in Chinese, pronounced as /huai 4/) or phonology (e.g., , sad in Chinese, pronounced as /bei 1/). Results of Experiment 1 showed less proficient learners were slower and less accurate to reject translation orthography distractors, as compared to unrelated controls, demonstrating a robust translation orthography interference effect. In contrast, their performance was not significantly different when rejecting translation phonology distractors, relative to unrelated controls, showing no translation phonology interference. The same patterns were observed in more proficient learners in Experiment 2. Together, these results suggest that when Chinese learners of English read English words, the orthographic information, but not the phonological information of the Chinese translation words is activated. In addition, this activation is not modulated by L2 proficiency.

Age Differences in the Monitoring of Learning: Cross-Sectional Evidence of Spared Resolution across the Adult Life Span

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hertzog, Christopher; Sinclair, Starlette M.; Dunlosky, John

2010-01-01

Researchers of metacognitive development in adulthood have exclusively used extreme-age-groups designs. We used a full cross-sectional sample (N = 285, age range: 18-80) to evaluate how associative relatedness and encoding strategies influence judgments of learning (JOLs) in adulthood. Participants studied related and unrelated word pairs and made…

Dual-Process Models of Associative Recognition in Young and Older Adults: Evidence from Receiver Operating Characteristics

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Healy, Michael R.; Light, Leah L.; Chung, Christie

2005-01-01

In 3 experiments, young and older adults studied lists of unrelated word pairs and were given confidence-rated item and associative recognition tests. Several different models of recognition were fit to the confidence-rating data using techniques described by S. Macho (2002, 2004). Concordant with previous findings, item recognition data were best…

Test-retest reliability and stability of N400 effects in a word-pair semantic priming paradigm.

PubMed

Kiang, Michael; Patriciu, Iulia; Roy, Carolyn; Christensen, Bruce K; Zipursky, Robert B

2013-04-01

Elicited by any meaningful stimulus, the N400 event-related potential (ERP) component is reduced when the stimulus is related to a preceding one. This N400 semantic priming effect has been used to probe abnormal semantic relationship processing in clinical disorders, and suggested as a possible biomarker for treatment studies. Validating N400 semantic priming effects as a clinical biomarker requires characterizing their test-retest reliability. We assessed test-retest reliability of N400 semantic priming in 16 healthy adults who viewed the same related and unrelated prime-target word pairs in two sessions one week apart. As expected, N400 amplitudes were smaller for related versus unrelated targets across sessions. N400 priming effects (amplitude differences between unrelated and related targets) were highly correlated across sessions (r=0.85, P<0.0001), but smaller in the second session due to larger N400s to related targets. N400 priming effects have high reliability over a one-week interval. They may decrease with repeat testing, possibly because of motivational changes. Use of N400 priming effects in treatment studies should account for possible magnitude decreases with repeat testing. Further research is needed to delineate N400 priming effects' test-retest reliability and stability in different age and clinical groups, and with different stimulus types. Copyright © 2012 International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology. Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

A pool of pairs of related objects (POPORO) for investigating visual semantic integration: behavioral and electrophysiological validation.

PubMed

Kovalenko, Lyudmyla Y; Chaumon, Maximilien; Busch, Niko A

2012-07-01

Semantic processing of verbal and visual stimuli has been investigated in semantic violation or semantic priming paradigms in which a stimulus is either related or unrelated to a previously established semantic context. A hallmark of semantic priming is the N400 event-related potential (ERP)--a deflection of the ERP that is more negative for semantically unrelated target stimuli. The majority of studies investigating the N400 and semantic integration have used verbal material (words or sentences), and standardized stimulus sets with norms for semantic relatedness have been published for verbal but not for visual material. However, semantic processing of visual objects (as opposed to words) is an important issue in research on visual cognition. In this study, we present a set of 800 pairs of semantically related and unrelated visual objects. The images were rated for semantic relatedness by a sample of 132 participants. Furthermore, we analyzed low-level image properties and matched the two semantic categories according to these features. An ERP study confirmed the suitability of this image set for evoking a robust N400 effect of semantic integration. Additionally, using a general linear modeling approach of single-trial data, we also demonstrate that low-level visual image properties and semantic relatedness are in fact only minimally overlapping. The image set is available for download from the authors' website. We expect that the image set will facilitate studies investigating mechanisms of semantic and contextual processing of visual stimuli.

Development of lexical-semantic language system: N400 priming effect for spoken words in 18- and 24-month old children.

PubMed

Rämä, Pia; Sirri, Louah; Serres, Josette

2013-04-01

Our aim was to investigate whether developing language system, as measured by a priming task for spoken words, is organized by semantic categories. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded during a priming task for spoken words in 18- and 24-month-old monolingual French learning children. Spoken word pairs were either semantically related (e.g., train-bike) or unrelated (e.g., chicken-bike). The results showed that the N400-like priming effect occurred in 24-month-olds over the right parietal-occipital recording sites. In 18-month-olds the effect was observed similarly to 24-month-olds only in those children with higher word production ability. The results suggest that words are categorically organized in the mental lexicon of children at the age of 2 years and even earlier in children with a high vocabulary. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Priming production: Neural evidence for enhanced automatic semantic activity preceding language production in schizophrenia.

PubMed

Kuperberg, Gina R; Delaney-Busch, Nathaniel; Fanucci, Kristina; Blackford, Trevor

2018-01-01

Lexico-semantic disturbances are considered central to schizophrenia. Clinically, their clearest manifestation is in language production. However, most studies probing their underlying mechanisms have used comprehension or categorization tasks. Here, we probed automatic semantic activity prior to language production in schizophrenia using event-related potentials (ERPs). 19 people with schizophrenia and 16 demographically-matched healthy controls named target pictures that were very quickly preceded by masked prime words. To probe automatic semantic activity prior to production, we measured the N400 ERP component evoked by these targets. To determine the origin of any automatic semantic abnormalities, we manipulated the type of relationship between prime and target such that they overlapped in (a) their semantic features (semantically related, e.g. "cake" preceding a < picture of a pie >, (b) their initial phonemes (phonemically related, e.g. "stomach" preceding a < picture of a starfish >), or (c) both their semantic features and their orthographic/phonological word form (identity related, e.g. "socks" preceding a < picture of socks >). For each of these three types of relationship, the same targets were paired with unrelated prime words (counterbalanced across lists). We contrasted ERPs and naming times to each type of related target with its corresponding unrelated target. People with schizophrenia showed abnormal N400 modulation prior to naming identity related (versus unrelated) targets: whereas healthy control participants produced a smaller amplitude N400 to identity related than unrelated targets, patients showed the opposite pattern, producing a larger N400 to identity related than unrelated targets. This abnormality was specific to the identity related targets. Just like healthy control participants, people with schizophrenia produced a smaller N400 to semantically related than to unrelated targets, and showed no difference in the N400 evoked by phonemically related and unrelated targets. There were no differences between the two groups in the pattern of naming times across conditions. People with schizophrenia can show abnormal neural activity associated with automatic semantic processing prior to language production. The specificity of this abnormality to the identity related targets suggests that that, rather than arising from abnormalities of either semantic features or lexical form alone, it may stem from disruptions of mappings (connections) between the meaning of words and their form.

Multiple ways to the prior occurrence of an event: an electrophysiological dissociation of experimental and conceptually driven familiarity in recognition memory.

PubMed

Wiegand, Iris; Bader, Regine; Mecklinger, Axel

2010-11-11

Recent research has shown that familiarity contributes to associative memory when the to-be-associated stimuli are unitized during encoding. However, the specific processes underlying familiarity-based recognition of unitized representations are still indefinite. In this study, we present electrophysiologically dissociable early old/new effects, presumably related to two different kinds of familiarity inherent in associative recognition tasks. In a study-test associative recognition memory paradigm, we employed encoding conditions that established unitized representations of two pre-experimentally unrelated words, e.g. vegetable-bible. We compared event-related potentials (ERP) during the retrieval of these unitized word pairs using different retrieval cues. Word pairs presented in the same order as during unitization at encoding elicited a parietally distributed early old/new effect which we interpret as reflecting conceptually driven familiarity for newly formed concepts. Conversely, word pairs presented in reversed order only elicited a topographically dissociable early effect, i.e. the mid-frontal old/new effect, the putative correlate of experimental familiarity. The late parietal old/new effect, the putative ERP correlate of recollection, was obtained irrespective of word order, though it was larger for words presented in same order. These results indicate that familiarity may not be a unitary process and that different task demands can promote the assessment of conceptually driven familiarity for novel unitized concepts or experimentally-induced increments of experimental familiarity, respectively. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The semantic distance task: Quantifying semantic distance with semantic network path length.

PubMed

Kenett, Yoed N; Levi, Effi; Anaki, David; Faust, Miriam

2017-09-01

Semantic distance is a determining factor in cognitive processes, such as semantic priming, operating upon semantic memory. The main computational approach to compute semantic distance is through latent semantic analysis (LSA). However, objections have been raised against this approach, mainly in its failure at predicting semantic priming. We propose a novel approach to computing semantic distance, based on network science methodology. Path length in a semantic network represents the amount of steps needed to traverse from 1 word in the network to the other. We examine whether path length can be used as a measure of semantic distance, by investigating how path length affect performance in a semantic relatedness judgment task and recall from memory. Our results show a differential effect on performance: Up to 4 steps separating between word-pairs, participants exhibit an increase in reaction time (RT) and decrease in the percentage of word-pairs judged as related. From 4 steps onward, participants exhibit a significant decrease in RT and the word-pairs are dominantly judged as unrelated. Furthermore, we show that as path length between word-pairs increases, success in free- and cued-recall decreases. Finally, we demonstrate how our measure outperforms computational methods measuring semantic distance (LSA and positive pointwise mutual information) in predicting participants RT and subjective judgments of semantic strength. Thus, we provide a computational alternative to computing semantic distance. Furthermore, this approach addresses key issues in cognitive theory, namely the breadth of the spreading activation process and the effect of semantic distance on memory retrieval. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

Word Reading Fluency: Role of Genome-Wide Single-Nucleotide Polymorphisms in Developmental Stability and Correlations with Print Exposure

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Harlaar, Nicole; Trzaskowski, Maciej; Dale, Philip S.; Plomin, Robert

2014-01-01

The genetic effects on individual differences in reading development were examined using genome-wide complex trait analysis (GCTA) in a twin sample. In unrelated individuals (one twin per pair, n = 2,942), the GCTA-based heritability of reading fluency was ~20%-29% at ages 7 and 12. GCTA bivariate results showed that the phenotypic stability of…

Associative processing and paranormal belief.

PubMed

Gianotti, L R; Mohr, C; Pizzagalli, D; Lehmann, D; Brugger, P

2001-12-01

In the present study we introduce a novel task for the quantitative assessment of both originality and speed of individual associations. This 'BAG' (Bridge-the-Associative-Gap) task was used to investigate the relationships between creativity and paranormal belief. Twelve strong 'believers' and 12 strong 'skeptics' in paranormal phenomena were selected from a large student population (n > 350). Subjects were asked to produce single-word associations to word pairs. In 40 trials the two stimulus words were semantically indirectly related and in 40 other trials the words were semantically unrelated. Separately for these two stimulus types, response commonalities and association latencies were calculated. The main finding was that for unrelated stimuli, believers produced associations that were more original (had a lower frequency of occurrence in the group as a whole) than those of the skeptics. For the interpretation of the result we propose a model of association behavior that captures both 'positive' psychological aspects (i.e., verbal creativity) and 'negative' aspects (susceptibility to unfounded inferences), and outline its relevance for psychiatry. This model suggests that believers adopt a looser response criterion than skeptics when confronted with 'semantic noise'. Such a signal detection view of the presence/absence of judgments for loose semantic relations may help to elucidate the commonalities between creative thinking, paranormal belief and delusional ideation.

The role of semantically related distractors during encoding and retrieval of words in long-term memory.

PubMed

Meade, Melissa E; Fernandes, Myra A

2016-07-01

We examined the influence of divided attention (DA) on recognition of words when the concurrent task was semantically related or unrelated to the to-be-recognised target words. Participants were asked to either study or retrieve a target list of semantically related words while simultaneously making semantic decisions (i.e., size judgements) to another set of related or unrelated words heard concurrently. We manipulated semantic relatedness of distractor to target words, and whether DA occurred during the encoding or retrieval phase of memory. Recognition accuracy was significantly diminished relative to full attention, following DA conditions at encoding, regardless of relatedness of distractors to study words. However, response times (RTs) were slower with related compared to unrelated distractors. Similarly, under DA at retrieval, recognition RTs were slower when distractors were semantically related than unrelated to target words. Unlike the effect from DA at encoding, recognition accuracy was worse under DA at retrieval when the distractors were related compared to unrelated to the target words. Results suggest that availability of general attentional resources is critical for successful encoding, whereas successful retrieval is particularly reliant on access to a semantic code, making it sensitive to related distractors under DA conditions.

Age of Acquisition Effects on Word Processing for Chinese Native Learners’ English: ERP Evidence for the Arbitrary Mapping Hypothesis

PubMed Central

Xue, Jin; Liu, Tongtong; Marmolejo-Ramos, Fernando; Pei, Xuna

2017-01-01

The present study aimed at distinguishing processing of early learned L2 words from late ones for Chinese natives who learn English as a foreign language. Specifically, we examined whether the age of acquisition (AoA) effect arose during the arbitrary mapping from conceptual knowledge onto linguistic units. The behavior and ERP data were collected when 28 Chinese-English bilinguals were asked to perform semantic relatedness judgment on word pairs, which represented three stages of word learning (i.e., primary school, junior and senior high schools). A 3 (AoA: early vs. intermediate vs. late) × 2 (regularity: regular vs. irregular) × 2 (semantic relatedness: related vs. unrelated) × 2 (hemisphere: left vs. right) × 3 (brain area: anterior vs. central vs. posterior) within-subjects design was adopted. Results from the analysis of N100 and N400 amplitudes showed that early learned words had an advantage in processing accuracy and speed; there is a tendency that the AoA effect was more pronounced for irregular word pairs and in the semantic related condition. More important, ERP results showed early acquired words induced larger N100 amplitudes for early AoA words in the parietal area and more negative-going N400 than late acquire words in the frontal and central regions. The results indicate the locus of the AoA effect might derive from the arbitrary mapping between word forms and semantic concepts, and early acquired words have more semantic interconnections than late acquired words. PMID:28572785

Interference of spoken word recognition through phonological priming from visual objects and printed words.

PubMed

McQueen, James M; Huettig, Falk

2014-01-01

Three cross-modal priming experiments examined the influence of preexposure to pictures and printed words on the speed of spoken word recognition. Targets for auditory lexical decision were spoken Dutch words and nonwords, presented in isolation (Experiments 1 and 2) or after a short phrase (Experiment 3). Auditory stimuli were preceded by primes, which were pictures (Experiments 1 and 3) or those pictures' printed names (Experiment 2). Prime-target pairs were phonologically onset related (e.g., pijl-pijn, arrow-pain), were from the same semantic category (e.g., pijl-zwaard, arrow-sword), or were unrelated on both dimensions. Phonological interference and semantic facilitation were observed in all experiments. Priming magnitude was similar for pictures and printed words and did not vary with picture viewing time or number of pictures in the display (either one or four). These effects arose even though participants were not explicitly instructed to name the pictures and where strategic naming would interfere with lexical decision making. This suggests that, by default, processing of related pictures and printed words influences how quickly we recognize spoken words.

An investigation of the measurement properties of the Spot-the-Word test in a community sample.

PubMed

Mackinnon, Andrew; Christensen, Helen

2007-12-01

Intellectual ability is assessed with the Spot-the-Word (STW) test (A. Baddeley, H. Emslie, & I. Nimmo Smith, 1993) by asking respondents to identify a word in a word-nonword item pair. Results in moderate-sized samples suggest this ability is resistant to decline due to dementia. The authors used a 3-parameter item response theory model to investigate the measurement properties of the STW in a large community-dwelling sample (n=2,480) 60 to 64 years of age. A number of poorly performing items were identified. Substantial guessing was present; however, the number of words correctly identified was found to be an accurate index of ability. Performance was moderately related to a number of tests of cognitive performance and was effectively unrelated to visual acuity and to physical or mental health status. The STW is a promising test of ability that, in the future, may be refined by the deletion or replacement of poorly functioning items.

The Effect of Signal-to-Noise Ratio on Linguistic Processing in a Semantic Judgment Task: An Aging Study.

PubMed

Stanley, Nicholas; Davis, Tara; Estis, Julie

2017-03-01

Aging effects on speech understanding in noise have primarily been assessed through speech recognition tasks. Recognition tasks, which focus on bottom-up, perceptual aspects of speech understanding, intentionally limit linguistic and cognitive factors by asking participants to only repeat what they have heard. On the other hand, linguistic processing tasks require bottom-up and top-down (linguistic, cognitive) processing skills and are, therefore, more reflective of speech understanding abilities used in everyday communication. The effect of signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) on linguistic processing ability is relatively unknown for either young (YAs) or older adults (OAs). To determine if reduced SNRs would be more deleterious to the linguistic processing of OAs than YAs, as measured by accuracy and reaction time in a semantic judgment task in competing speech. In the semantic judgment task, participants indicated via button press whether word pairs were a semantic Match or No Match. This task was performed in quiet, as well as, +3, 0, -3, and -6 dB SNR with two-talker speech competition. Seventeen YAs (20-30 yr) with normal hearing sensitivity and 17 OAs (60-68 yr) with normal hearing sensitivity or mild-to-moderate sensorineural hearing loss within age-appropriate norms. Accuracy, reaction time, and false alarm rate were measured and analyzed using a mixed design analysis of variance. A decrease in SNR level significantly reduced accuracy and increased reaction time in both YAs and OAs. However, poor SNRs affected accuracy and reaction time of Match and No Match word pairs differently. Accuracy for Match pairs declined at a steeper rate than No Match pairs in both groups as SNR decreased. In addition, reaction time for No Match pairs increased at a greater rate than Match pairs in more difficult SNRs, particularly at -3 and -6 dB SNR. False-alarm rates indicated that participants had a response bias to No Match pairs as the SNR decreased. Age-related differences were limited to No Match pair accuracies at -6 dB SNR. The ability to correctly identify semantically matched word pairs was more susceptible to disruption by a poor SNR than semantically unrelated words in both YAs and OAs. The effect of SNR on this semantic judgment task implies that speech competition differentially affected the facilitation of semantically related words and the inhibition of semantically incompatible words, although processing speed, as measured by reaction time, remained faster for semantically matched pairs. Overall, the semantic judgment task in competing speech elucidated the effect of a poor listening environment on the higher order processing of words. American Academy of Audiology

Memory performance in Holocaust survivors with posttraumatic stress disorder.

PubMed

Golier, Julia A; Yehuda, Rachel; Lupien, Sonia J; Harvey, Philip D; Grossman, Robert; Elkin, Abbie

2002-10-01

The authors evaluated memory performance in Holocaust survivors and its association with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and age. Memory performance was measured in Holocaust survivors with PTSD (N=31) and without PTSD (N=16) and healthy Jewish adults not exposed to the Holocaust (N=35). Explicit and implicit memory were measured by paired-associate recall and word stem completion, respectively. The groups did not differ by age or gender, but the survivors with PTSD had significantly fewer years of education and had lower estimated IQs than the survivors without PTSD and the nonexposed group. There was a significant overall group effect for paired-associate recall but not word stem completion. The survivors with PTSD recalled fewer semantically unrelated words than did the survivors without PTSD and the nonexposed group and fewer semantically related words than the nonexposed group. Of the survivors with PTSD, 36% performed at a level indicative of frank cognitive impairment. Older age was significantly associated with poorer paired-associate recall in the survivors with PTSD but not in the other two groups. Markedly poorer explicit but not implicit memory was found in Holocaust survivors with PTSD, which may be a consequence of or a risk factor for chronic PTSD. Accelerated memory decline is one of several explanations for the significantly greater association of older age with poorer explicit memory in survivors with PTSD, which, if present, could increase the cognitive burden of this illness with aging.

The Influence of Concreteness of Concepts on the Integration of Novel Words into the Semantic Network

PubMed Central

Ding, Jinfeng; Liu, Wenjuan; Yang, Yufang

2017-01-01

On the basis of previous studies revealing a processing advantage of concrete words over abstract words, the current study aimed to further explore the influence of concreteness on the integration of novel words into semantic memory with the event related potential (ERP) technique. In the experiment during the learning phase participants read two-sentence contexts and inferred the meaning of novel words. The novel words were two-character non-words in Chinese language. Their meaning was either a concrete or abstract known concept which could be inferred from the contexts. During the testing phase participants performed a lexical decision task in which the learned novel words served as primes for either their corresponding concepts, semantically related or unrelated targets. For the concrete novel words, the semantically related words belonged to the same semantic categories with their corresponding concepts. For the abstract novel words, the semantically related words were synonyms of their corresponding concepts. The unrelated targets were real words which were concrete or abstract for the concrete or abstract novel words respectively. The ERP results showed that the corresponding concepts and the semantically related words elicited smaller N400s than the unrelated words. The N400 effect was not modulated by the concreteness of the concepts. In addition, the concrete corresponding concepts elicited a smaller late positive component (LPC) than the concrete unrelated words. This LPC effect was absent for the abstract words. The results indicate that although both concrete and abstract novel words can be acquired and linked to their related words in the semantic network after a short learning phase, the concrete novel words are learned better. Our findings support the (extended) dual coding theory and broaden our understanding of adult word learning and changes in concept organization. PMID:29255440

The Influence of Concreteness of Concepts on the Integration of Novel Words into the Semantic Network.

PubMed

Ding, Jinfeng; Liu, Wenjuan; Yang, Yufang

2017-01-01

On the basis of previous studies revealing a processing advantage of concrete words over abstract words, the current study aimed to further explore the influence of concreteness on the integration of novel words into semantic memory with the event related potential (ERP) technique. In the experiment during the learning phase participants read two-sentence contexts and inferred the meaning of novel words. The novel words were two-character non-words in Chinese language. Their meaning was either a concrete or abstract known concept which could be inferred from the contexts. During the testing phase participants performed a lexical decision task in which the learned novel words served as primes for either their corresponding concepts, semantically related or unrelated targets. For the concrete novel words, the semantically related words belonged to the same semantic categories with their corresponding concepts. For the abstract novel words, the semantically related words were synonyms of their corresponding concepts. The unrelated targets were real words which were concrete or abstract for the concrete or abstract novel words respectively. The ERP results showed that the corresponding concepts and the semantically related words elicited smaller N400s than the unrelated words. The N400 effect was not modulated by the concreteness of the concepts. In addition, the concrete corresponding concepts elicited a smaller late positive component (LPC) than the concrete unrelated words. This LPC effect was absent for the abstract words. The results indicate that although both concrete and abstract novel words can be acquired and linked to their related words in the semantic network after a short learning phase, the concrete novel words are learned better. Our findings support the (extended) dual coding theory and broaden our understanding of adult word learning and changes in concept organization.

Primary phonological planning units in spoken word production are language-specific: Evidence from an ERP study.

PubMed

Wang, Jie; Wong, Andus Wing-Kuen; Wang, Suiping; Chen, Hsuan-Chih

2017-07-19

It is widely acknowledged in Germanic languages that segments are the primary planning units at the phonological encoding stage of spoken word production. Mixed results, however, have been found in Chinese, and it is still unclear what roles syllables and segments play in planning Chinese spoken word production. In the current study, participants were asked to first prepare and later produce disyllabic Mandarin words upon picture prompts and a response cue while electroencephalogram (EEG) signals were recorded. Each two consecutive pictures implicitly formed a pair of prime and target, whose names shared the same word-initial atonal syllable or the same word-initial segments, or were unrelated in the control conditions. Only syllable repetition induced significant effects on event-related brain potentials (ERPs) after target onset: a widely distributed positivity in the 200- to 400-ms interval and an anterior positivity in the 400- to 600-ms interval. We interpret these to reflect syllable-size representations at the phonological encoding and phonetic encoding stages. Our results provide the first electrophysiological evidence for the distinct role of syllables in producing Mandarin spoken words, supporting a language specificity hypothesis about the primary phonological units in spoken word production.

Lax decision criteria lead to negativity bias: evidence from the emotional stroop task.

PubMed

Liu, Guofang; Xin, Ziqiang; Lin, Chongde

2014-06-01

Negativity bias means that negative information is usually given more emphasis than comparable positive information. Under signal detection theory, recent research found that people more frequently and incorrectly identify negative task-related words as having been presented originally than positive words, even when they were not presented. That is, people have lax decision criteria for negative words. However, the response biases for task-unrelated negative words and for emotionally important words are still unclear. This study investigated response bias for these two kinds of words. Study 1 examined the response bias for task-unrelated negative words using an emotional Stroop task. Proportions of correct recognition to negative and positive words were assessed by non-parametric signal detection analysis. Participants have lower (i.e., more lax) decision criteria for task-unrelated negative words than for positive words. Study 2 supported and expanded this result by investigating participants' response bias for highly emotional words. Participants have lower decision criteria for highly emotional words than for less emotional words. Finally, possible evolutionary sources of the response bias were discussed.

Cross-language message- and word-level transfer effects in bilingual text processing.

PubMed

Friesen, Deanna C; Jared, Debra

2007-10-01

The present study examined the nature of the mental representations bilinguals form when reading a text and to what extent they are language specific. English-French bilinguals read five pairs of passages in succession while their eye movements were tracked. Dependent measures were overall reading times on second passages and fixation latencies on target cognates embeddedin second passages. The first passage w as (1) identical tothe second passage in the pair, (2) related in content only (i.e., a translation), (3) related in content and some words (i.e., translation with cognates), (4) related in words only (i.e., different content with the same cognates), or (5) unrelated. There was substantial cross-language facilitation for passages that shared meaning, but the amount of transfer was less than that for identical passages, indicating that memory representations are largely meaning based but do contain some information about surface form. Cross-language transfer for cognates was observed but depended on the skill of the bilinguals in their second language, the direction of transfer, and whether the passages shared meaning. These results are discussed in relation to Raney's (2003) model of text representation.

Lexical Selection Differences between Monolingual and Bilingual Listeners

PubMed Central

Friesen, Deanna C.; Chung-Fat-Yim, Ashley; Bialystok, Ellen

2015-01-01

Three studies are reported investigating how monolinguals and bilinguals resolve within-language competition when listening to isolated words. Participants saw two pictures that were semantically-related, phonologically-related, or unrelated and heard a word naming one of them while event-related potentials were recorded. In Studies 1 and 2, the pictures and auditory cue were presented simultaneously and the related conditions produced interference for both groups. Monolinguals showed reduced N400s to the semantically-related pairs but there was no modulation in this component by bilinguals. Study 3 inserted an interval between picture and word onset. For picture onset, both groups exhibited reduced N400s to semantically-related pictures; for word onset, both groups showed larger N400s to phonologically-related pictures. Overall, bilinguals showed less integration of related items in simultaneous (but not sequential) presentation, presumably because of interference from the activated non-English language. Thus, simple lexical selection for bilinguals includes more conflict than it does for monolinguals. PMID:26684415

Effect of semantic coherence on episodic memory processes in schizophrenia.

PubMed

Battal Merlet, Lâle; Morel, Shasha; Blanchet, Alain; Lockman, Hazlin; Kostova, Milena

2014-12-30

Schizophrenia is associated with severe episodic retrieval impairment. The aim of this study was to investigate the possibility that schizophrenia patients could improve their familiarity and/or recollection processes by manipulating the semantic coherence of to-be-learned stimuli and using deep encoding. Twelve schizophrenia patients and 12 healthy controls of comparable age, gender, and educational level undertook an associative recognition memory task. The stimuli consisted of pairs of words that were either related or unrelated to a given semantic category. The process dissociation procedure was used to calculate the estimates of familiarity and recollection processes. Both groups showed enhanced memory performances for semantically related words. However, in healthy controls, semantic relatedness led to enhanced recollection, while in schizophrenia patients, it induced enhanced familiarity. The familiarity estimates for related words were comparable in both groups, indicating that familiarity could be used as a compensatory mechanism in schizophrenia patients. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Detecting Analogies Unconsciously

PubMed Central

Reber, Thomas P.; Luechinger, Roger; Boesiger, Peter; Henke, Katharina

2014-01-01

Analogies may arise from the conscious detection of similarities between a present and a past situation. In this functional magnetic resonance imaging study, we tested whether young volunteers would detect analogies unconsciously between a current supraliminal (visible) and a past subliminal (invisible) situation. The subliminal encoding of the past situation precludes awareness of analogy detection in the current situation. First, participants encoded subliminal pairs of unrelated words in either one or nine encoding trials. Later, they judged the semantic fit of supraliminally presented new words that either retained a previously encoded semantic relation (“analog”) or not (“broken analog”). Words in analogs versus broken analogs were judged closer semantically, which indicates unconscious analogy detection. Hippocampal activity associated with subliminal encoding correlated with the behavioral measure of unconscious analogy detection. Analogs versus broken analogs were processed with reduced prefrontal but enhanced medial temporal activity. We conclude that analogous episodes can be detected even unconsciously drawing on the episodic memory network. PMID:24478656

Late positive slow waves as markers of chunking during encoding

PubMed Central

Nogueira, Ana M. L.; Bueno, Orlando F. A.; Manzano, Gilberto M.; Kohn, André F.; Pompéia, Sabine

2015-01-01

Electrophysiological markers of chunking of words during encoding have mostly been shown in studies that present pairs of related stimuli. In these cases it is difficult to disentangle cognitive processes that reflect distinctiveness (i.e., conspicuous items because they are related), perceived association between related items and unified representations of various items, or chunking. Here, we propose a paradigm that enables the determination of a separate Event-related Potential (ERP) marker of these cognitive processes using sequentially related word triads. Twenty-three young healthy individuals viewed 80 15-word lists composed of unrelated items except for the three words in the middle serial positions (triads), which could be either unrelated (control list), related perceptually, phonetically or semantically. ERP amplitudes were measured at encoding of each one of the words in the triads. We analyzed two latency intervals (350–400 and 400–800 ms) at midline locations. Behaviorally, we observed a progressive facilitation in the immediate free recall of the words in the triads depending on the relations between their items (control < perceptual < phonetic < semantic), but only semantically related items were recalled as chunks. P300-like deflections were observed for perceptually deviant stimuli. A reduction of amplitude of a component akin to the N400 was found for words that were phonetically and semantically associated with prior items and therefore were not associated to chunking. Positive slow wave (PSW) amplitudes increased as successive phonetically and semantically related items were presented, but they were observed earlier and were more prominent at Fz for semantic associates. PSWs at Fz and Cz also correlated with recall of semantic word chunks. This confirms prior claims that PSWs at Fz are potential markers of chunking which, in the proposed paradigm, were modulated differently from the detection of deviant stimuli and of relations between stimuli. PMID:26283984

Does recall after sleep-dependent memory consolidation reinstate sensitivity to retroactive interference?

PubMed

Deliens, Gaétane; Schmitz, Rémy; Caudron, Isaline; Mary, Alison; Leproult, Rachel; Peigneux, Philippe

2013-01-01

Previous studies have shown that newly encoded memories are more resistant to retroactive interference when participants are allowed to sleep after learning the original material, suggesting a sleep-related strengthening of memories. In the present study, we investigated delayed, long-term effects of sleep vs. sleep deprivation (SD) on the first post-training night on memory consolidation and resistance to interference. On day 1, participants learned a list of unrelated word pairs (AB), either in the morning or in the evening, then spent the post-training night in a sleep or sleep deprivation condition, in a within-subject paradigm. On day 4, at the same time of day, they learned a novel list of word pairs (AC) in which 50% of the word pairs stemmed with the same word than in the AB list, resulting in retroactive interference. Participants had then to recall items from the AB list upon presentation of the "A" stem. Recall was marginally improved in the evening, as compared to the morning learning group. Most importantly, retroactive interference effects were found in the sleep evening group only, contrary to the hypothesis that sleep exerts a protective role against intrusion by novel but similar learning. We tentatively suggest that these results can be explained in the framework of the memory reconsolidation theory, stating that exposure to similar information sets back consolidated items in a labile form again sensitive to retroactive interference. In this context, sleep might not protect against interference but would promote an update of existing episodic memories while preventing saturation of the memory network due to the accumulation of dual traces.

Semantic priming, not repetition priming, is to blame for false hearing.

PubMed

Rogers, Chad S

2017-08-01

Contextual and sensory information are combined in speech perception. Conflict between the two can lead to false hearing, defined as a high-confidence misidentification of a spoken word. Rogers, Jacoby, and Sommers (Psychology and Aging, 27(1), 33-45, 2012) found that older adults are more susceptible to false hearing than are young adults, using a combination of semantic priming and repetition priming to create context. In this study, the type of context (repetition vs. sematic priming) responsible for false hearing was examined. Older and young adult participants read and listened to a list of paired associates (e.g., ROW-BOAT) and were told to remember the pairs for a later memory test. Following the memory test, participants identified words masked in noise that were preceded by a cue word in the clear. Targets were semantically associated to the cue (e.g., ROW-BOAT), unrelated to the cue (e.g., JAW-PASS), or phonologically related to a semantic associate of the cue (e.g., ROW-GOAT). How often each cue word and its paired associate were presented prior to the memory test was manipulated (0, 3, or 5 times) to test effects of repetition priming. Results showed repetitions had no effect on rates of context-based listening or false hearing. However, repetition did significantly increase sensory information as a basis for metacognitive judgments in young and older adults. This pattern suggests that semantic priming dominates as the basis for false hearing and highlights context and sensory information operating as qualitatively different bases for listening and metacognition.

Semantic and Syntactic Associations During Word Search Modulate the Relationship Between Attention and Subsequent Memory.

PubMed

Zhou, Wei; Mo, Fei; Zhang, Yunhong; Ding, Jinhong

2017-01-01

Two experiments were conducted to investigate how linguistic information influences attention allocation in visual search and memory for words. In Experiment 1, participants searched for the synonym of a cue word among five words. The distractors included one antonym and three unrelated words. In Experiment 2, participants were asked to judge whether the five words presented on the screen comprise a valid sentence. The relationships among words were sentential, semantically related or unrelated. A memory recognition task followed. Results in both experiments showed that linguistically related words produced better memory performance. We also found that there were significant interactions between linguistic relation conditions and memorization on eye-movement measures, indicating that good memory for words relied on frequent and long fixations during search in the unrelated condition but to a much lesser extent in linguistically related conditions. We conclude that semantic and syntactic associations attenuate the link between overt attention allocation and subsequent memory performance, suggesting that linguistic relatedness can somewhat compensate for a relative lack of attention during word search.

Conceptual processing in music as revealed by N400 effects on words and musical targets.

PubMed

Daltrozzo, Jérôme; Schön, Daniele

2009-10-01

The cognitive processing of concepts, that is, abstract general ideas, has been mostly studied with language. However, other domains, such as music, can also convey concepts. Koelsch et al. [Koelsch, S., Kasper, E., Sammler, D., Schulze, K., Gunter, T., & Friederici, A. D. Music, language and meaning: Brain signatures of semantic processing. Nature Neuroscience, 7, 302-307, 2004] showed that 10 sec of music can influence the semantic processing of words. However, the length of the musical excerpts did not allow the authors to study the effect of words on musical targets. In this study, we decided to replicate Koelsch et al. findings using 1-sec musical excerpts (Experiment 1). This allowed us to study the reverse influence, namely, of a linguistic context on conceptual processing of musical excerpts (Experiment 2). In both experiments, we recorded behavioral and electrophysiological responses while participants were presented 50 related and 50 unrelated pairs (context/target). Experiments 1 and 2 showed a larger N400 component of the event-related brain potentials to targets following a conceptually unrelated compared to a related context. The presence of an N400 effect with musical targets suggests that music may convey concepts. The relevance of these results for the comprehension of music as a structured set of conceptual units and for the domain specificity of the mechanisms underlying N400 effects are discussed.

Implicit phonological priming during visual word recognition.

PubMed

Wilson, Lisa B; Tregellas, Jason R; Slason, Erin; Pasko, Bryce E; Rojas, Donald C

2011-03-15

Phonology is a lower-level structural aspect of language involving the sounds of a language and their organization in that language. Numerous behavioral studies utilizing priming, which refers to an increased sensitivity to a stimulus following prior experience with that or a related stimulus, have provided evidence for the role of phonology in visual word recognition. However, most language studies utilizing priming in conjunction with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) have focused on lexical-semantic aspects of language processing. The aim of the present study was to investigate the neurobiological substrates of the automatic, implicit stages of phonological processing. While undergoing fMRI, eighteen individuals performed a lexical decision task (LDT) on prime-target pairs including word-word homophone and pseudoword-word pseudohomophone pairs with a prime presentation below perceptual threshold. Whole-brain analyses revealed several cortical regions exhibiting hemodynamic response suppression due to phonological priming including bilateral superior temporal gyri (STG), middle temporal gyri (MTG), and angular gyri (AG) with additional region of interest (ROI) analyses revealing response suppression in the left lateralized supramarginal gyrus (SMG). Homophone and pseudohomophone priming also resulted in different patterns of hemodynamic responses relative to one another. These results suggest that phonological processing plays a key role in visual word recognition. Furthermore, enhanced hemodynamic responses for unrelated stimuli relative to primed stimuli were observed in midline cortical regions corresponding to the default-mode network (DMN) suggesting that DMN activity can be modulated by task requirements within the context of an implicit task. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The semantic origin of unconscious priming: Behavioral and event-related potential evidence during category congruency priming from strongly and weakly related masked words.

PubMed

Ortells, Juan J; Kiefer, Markus; Castillo, Alejandro; Megías, Montserrat; Morillas, Alejandro

2016-01-01

The mechanisms underlying masked congruency priming, semantic mechanisms such as semantic activation or non-semantic mechanisms, for example response activation, remain a matter of debate. In order to decide between these alternatives, reaction times (RTs) and event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded in the present study, while participants performed a semantic categorization task on visible word targets that were preceded either 167 ms (Experiment 1) or 34 ms before (Experiment 2) by briefly presented (33 ms) novel (unpracticed) masked prime words. The primes and targets belonged to different categories (unrelated), or they were either strongly or weakly semantically related category co-exemplars. Behavioral (RT) and electrophysiological masked congruency priming effects were significantly greater for strongly related pairs than for weakly related pairs, indicating a semantic origin of effects. Priming in the latter condition was not statistically reliable. Furthermore, priming effects modulated the N400 event-related potential (ERP) component, an electrophysiological index of semantic processing, but not ERPs in the time range of the N200 component, associated with response conflict and visuo-motor response priming. The present results demonstrate that masked congruency priming from novel prime words also depends on semantic processing of the primes and is not exclusively driven by non-semantic mechanisms such as response activation. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The Processing of Visual and Phonological Configurations of Chinese One- and Two-Character Words in a Priming Task of Semantic Categorization.

PubMed

Ma, Bosen; Wang, Xiaoyun; Li, Degao

2015-01-01

To separate the contribution of phonological from that of visual-orthographic information in the recognition of a Chinese word that is composed of one or two Chinese characters, we conducted two experiments in a priming task of semantic categorization (PTSC), in which length (one- or two-character words), relation, prime (related or unrelated prime-target pairs), and SOA (47, 87, or 187 ms) were manipulated. The prime was similar to the target in meaning or in visual configuration in Experiment A and in meaning or in pronunciation in Experiment B. The results indicate that the two-character words were similar to the one-character words but were less demanding of cognitive resources than the one-character words in the processing of phonological, visual-orthographic, and semantic information. The phonological primes had a facilitating effect at the SOA of 47 ms but an inhibitory effect at the SOA of 187 ms on the participants' reaction times; the visual-orthographic primes only had an inhibitory influence on the participants' reaction times at the SOA of 187 ms. The visual configuration of a Chinese word of one or two Chinese characters has its own contribution in helping retrieve the word's meanings; similarly, the phonological configuration of a one- or two-character word plays its own role in triggering activations of the word's semantic representations.

An fMRI examination of the effects of acoustic-phonetic and lexical competition on access to the lexical-semantic network.

PubMed

Minicucci, Domenic; Guediche, Sara; Blumstein, Sheila E

2013-08-01

The current study explored how factors of acoustic-phonetic and lexical competition affect access to the lexical-semantic network during spoken word recognition. An auditory semantic priming lexical decision task was presented to subjects while in the MR scanner. Prime-target pairs consisted of prime words with the initial voiceless stop consonants /p/, /t/, and /k/ followed by word and nonword targets. To examine the neural consequences of lexical and sound structure competition, primes either had voiced minimal pair competitors or they did not, and they were either acoustically modified to be poorer exemplars of the voiceless phonetic category or not. Neural activation associated with semantic priming (Unrelated-Related conditions) revealed a bilateral fronto-temporo-parietal network. Within this network, clusters in the left insula/inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), left superior temporal gyrus (STG), and left posterior middle temporal gyrus (pMTG) showed sensitivity to lexical competition. The pMTG also demonstrated sensitivity to acoustic modification, and the insula/IFG showed an interaction between lexical competition and acoustic modification. These findings suggest the posterior lexical-semantic network is modulated by both acoustic-phonetic and lexical structure, and that the resolution of these two sources of competition recruits frontal structures. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Flexible conceptual combination: Electrophysiological correlates and consequences for associative memory

PubMed Central

Lucas, Heather D.; Hubbard, Ryan J.; Federmeier, Kara D.

2017-01-01

When meaningful stimuli such as words are encountered in groups or pairs (e.g., “elephant-ferry”), they can be processed either separately or as an integrated concept (“an elephant ferry”). Prior research suggests that memory for integrated associations is supported by different mechanisms than is memory for nonintegrated associations. However, little is known about the neurocognitive mechanisms that support the integration of novel stimulus pairs. We recorded ERPs while participants memorized sequentially presented, unrelated noun pairs using a strategy that either did or did not involve attempting to construct coherent definitions. We varied the concreteness of the first noun in each pair to examine whether conceptual combination instructions would induce compositional concreteness effects, or differences in ERPs evoked by the second noun as a function of the concreteness of the first noun. We found that the conceptual combination task, but not the noncombinatory encoding task, produced compositional concreteness effects on a late frontal negativity previously linked to visual imagery. Moreover, word pairs studied under conceptual combination instructions showed evidence of more unitized or holistic memory representations on associative recognition and free recall tests. Finally, item analyses indicated that (a) items with higher normed imageability ratings were rated by participants as easier to conceptually combine, and (b) in the conceptual combination task, ease-of-combination ratings mediated an indirect relationship between imageability and subsequent associative memory. These data are suggestive of a role of compositional imagery in the online formation of novel concepts via conceptual combination. PMID:28191647

Does Recall after Sleep-Dependent Memory Consolidation Reinstate Sensitivity to Retroactive Interference?

PubMed Central

Deliens, Gaétane; Schmitz, Rémy; Caudron, Isaline; Mary, Alison; Leproult, Rachel; Peigneux, Philippe

2013-01-01

Previous studies have shown that newly encoded memories are more resistant to retroactive interference when participants are allowed to sleep after learning the original material, suggesting a sleep-related strengthening of memories. In the present study, we investigated delayed, long-term effects of sleep vs. sleep deprivation (SD) on the first post-training night on memory consolidation and resistance to interference. On day 1, participants learned a list of unrelated word pairs (AB), either in the morning or in the evening, then spent the post-training night in a sleep or sleep deprivation condition, in a within-subject paradigm. On day 4, at the same time of day, they learned a novel list of word pairs (AC) in which 50% of the word pairs stemmed with the same word than in the AB list, resulting in retroactive interference. Participants had then to recall items from the AB list upon presentation of the “A” stem. Recall was marginally improved in the evening, as compared to the morning learning group. Most importantly, retroactive interference effects were found in the sleep evening group only, contrary to the hypothesis that sleep exerts a protective role against intrusion by novel but similar learning. We tentatively suggest that these results can be explained in the framework of the memory reconsolidation theory, stating that exposure to similar information sets back consolidated items in a labile form again sensitive to retroactive interference. In this context, sleep might not protect against interference but would promote an update of existing episodic memories while preventing saturation of the memory network due to the accumulation of dual traces. PMID:23874738

Semantic Ambiguity: Do Multiple Meanings Inhibit or Facilitate Word Recognition?

PubMed

Haro, Juan; Ferré, Pilar

2018-06-01

It is not clear whether multiple unrelated meanings inhibit or facilitate word recognition. Some studies have found a disadvantage for words having multiple meanings with respect to unambiguous words in lexical decision tasks (LDT), whereas several others have shown a facilitation for such words. In the present study, we argue that these inconsistent findings may be due to the approach employed to select ambiguous words across studies. To address this issue, we conducted three LDT experiments in which we varied the measure used to classify ambiguous and unambiguous words. The results suggest that multiple unrelated meanings facilitate word recognition. In addition, we observed that the approach employed to select ambiguous words may affect the pattern of experimental results. This evidence has relevant implications for theoretical accounts of ambiguous words processing and representation.

An ERP investigation of visual word recognition in syllabary scripts.

PubMed

Okano, Kana; Grainger, Jonathan; Holcomb, Phillip J

2013-06-01

The bimodal interactive-activation model has been successfully applied to understanding the neurocognitive processes involved in reading words in alphabetic scripts, as reflected in the modulation of ERP components in masked repetition priming. In order to test the generalizability of this approach, in the present study we examined word recognition in a different writing system, the Japanese syllabary scripts hiragana and katakana. Native Japanese participants were presented with repeated or unrelated pairs of Japanese words in which the prime and target words were both in the same script (within-script priming, Exp. 1) or were in the opposite script (cross-script priming, Exp. 2). As in previous studies with alphabetic scripts, in both experiments the N250 (sublexical processing) and N400 (lexical-semantic processing) components were modulated by priming, although the time course was somewhat delayed. The earlier N/P150 effect (visual feature processing) was present only in "Experiment 1: Within-script priming", in which the prime and target words shared visual features. Overall, the results provide support for the hypothesis that visual word recognition involves a generalizable set of neurocognitive processes that operate in similar manners across different writing systems and languages, as well as pointing to the viability of the bimodal interactive-activation framework for modeling such processes.

An ERP Investigation of Visual Word Recognition in Syllabary Scripts

PubMed Central

Okano, Kana; Grainger, Jonathan; Holcomb, Phillip J.

2013-01-01

The bi-modal interactive-activation model has been successfully applied to understanding the neuro-cognitive processes involved in reading words in alphabetic scripts, as reflected in the modulation of ERP components in masked repetition priming. In order to test the generalizability of this approach, the current study examined word recognition in a different writing system, the Japanese syllabary scripts Hiragana and Katakana. Native Japanese participants were presented with repeated or unrelated pairs of Japanese words where the prime and target words were both in the same script (within-script priming, Experiment 1) or were in the opposite script (cross-script priming, Experiment 2). As in previous studies with alphabetic scripts, in both experiments the N250 (sub-lexical processing) and N400 (lexical-semantic processing) components were modulated by priming, although the time-course was somewhat delayed. The earlier N/P150 effect (visual feature processing) was present only in Experiment 1 where prime and target words shared visual features. Overall, the results provide support for the hypothesis that visual word recognition involves a generalizable set of neuro-cognitive processes that operate in a similar manner across different writing systems and languages, as well as pointing to the viability of the bi-modal interactive activation framework for modeling such processes. PMID:23378278

Associative priming in a masked perceptual identification task: evidence for automatic processes.

PubMed

Pecher, Diane; Zeelenberg, René; Raaijmakers, Jeroen G W

2002-10-01

Two experiments investigated the influence of automatic and strategic processes on associative priming effects in a perceptual identification task in which prime-target pairs are briefly presented and masked. In this paradigm, priming is defined as a higher percentage of correctly identified targets for related pairs than for unrelated pairs. In Experiment 1, priming was obtained for mediated word pairs. This mediated priming effect was affected neither by the presence of direct associations nor by the presentation time of the primes, indicating that automatic priming effects play a role in perceptual identification. Experiment 2 showed that the priming effect was not affected by the proportion (.90 vs. .10) of related pairs if primes were presented briefly to prevent their identification. However, a large proportion effect was found when primes were presented for 1000 ms so that they were clearly visible. These results indicate that priming in a masked perceptual identification task is the result of automatic processes and is not affected by strategies. The present paradigm provides a valuable alternative to more commonly used tasks such as lexical decision.

Exploring the additive effects of stimulus quality and word frequency: the influence of local and list-wide prime relatedness.

PubMed

Scaltritti, Michele; Balota, David A; Peressotti, Francesca

2013-01-01

Stimulus quality and word frequency produce additive effects in lexical decision performance, whereas the semantic priming effect interacts with both stimulus quality and word frequency effects. This pattern places important constraints on models of visual word recognition. In Experiment 1, all three variables were investigated within a single speeded pronunciation study. The results indicated that the joint effects of stimulus quality and word frequency were dependent upon prime relatedness. In particular, an additive effect of stimulus quality and word frequency was found after related primes, and an interactive effect was found after unrelated primes. It was hypothesized that this pattern reflects an adaptive reliance on related prime information within the experimental context. In Experiment 2, related primes were eliminated from the list, and the interactive effects of stimulus quality and word frequency found following unrelated primes in Experiment 1 reverted to additive effects for the same unrelated prime conditions. The results are supportive of a flexible lexical processor that adapts to both local prime information and global list-wide context.

Human hippocampus associates information in memory

PubMed Central

Henke, Katharina; Weber, Bruno; Kneifel, Stefan; Wieser, Heinz Gregor; Buck, Alfred

1999-01-01

The hippocampal formation, one of the most complex and vulnerable brain structures, is recognized as a crucial brain area subserving human long-term memory. Yet, its specific functions in memory are controversial. Recent experimental results suggest that the hippocampal contribution to human memory is limited to episodic memory, novelty detection, semantic (deep) processing of information, and spatial memory. We measured the regional cerebral blood flow by positron-emission tomography while healthy volunteers learned pairs of words with different learning strategies. These led to different forms of learning, allowing us to test the degree to which they challenge hippocampal function. Neither novelty detection nor depth of processing activated the hippocampal formation as much as semantically associating the primarily unrelated words in memory. This is compelling evidence for another function of the human hippocampal formation in memory: establishing semantic associations. PMID:10318979

The Benefits of Targeted Memory Reactivation for Consolidation in Sleep are Contingent on Memory Accuracy and Direct Cue-Memory Associations.

PubMed

Cairney, Scott A; Lindsay, Shane; Sobczak, Justyna M; Paller, Ken A; Gaskell, M Gareth

2016-05-01

To investigate how the effects of targeted memory reactivation (TMR) are influenced by memory accuracy prior to sleep and the presence or absence of direct cue-memory associations. 30 participants associated each of 50 pictures with an unrelated word and then with a screen location in two separate tasks. During picture-location training, each picture was also presented with a semantically related sound. The sounds were therefore directly associated with the picture locations but indirectly associated with the words. During a subsequent nap, half of the sounds were replayed in slow wave sleep (SWS). The effect of TMR on memory for the picture locations (direct cue-memory associations) and picture-word pairs (indirect cue-memory associations) was then examined. TMR reduced overall memory decay for recall of picture locations. Further analyses revealed a benefit of TMR for picture locations recalled with a low degree of accuracy prior to sleep, but not those recalled with a high degree of accuracy. The benefit of TMR for low accuracy memories was predicted by time spent in SWS. There was no benefit of TMR for memory of the picture-word pairs, irrespective of memory accuracy prior to sleep. TMR provides the greatest benefit to memories recalled with a low degree of accuracy prior to sleep. The memory benefits of TMR may also be contingent on direct cue-memory associations. © 2016 Associated Professional Sleep Societies, LLC.

Transient and sustained neural responses to death-related linguistic cues

PubMed Central

Shi, Zhenhao

2013-01-01

Recent research showed that perception of death-related vs death-unrelated linguistic cues produced increased frontoparietal activity but decreased insular activity. This study investigated (i) whether the increased frontoparietal and decreased insular activities are, respectively, associated with transient trial-specific processes of death-related linguistic cues and sustained death-related thought during death-relevance judgments on linguistic cues and (ii) whether the neural activity underlying death-related thought can predict individuals’ dispositional death anxiety. Participants were presented with death-related/unrelated words, life-related/unrelated words, and negative-valence/neutral words in separate sessions. Participants were scanned using functional magnetic resonance imaging while performing death-relevance, life-relevance, and valence judgments on the words, respectively. The contrast of death-related vs death-unrelated words during death-relevance judgments revealed transient increased activity in the left inferior parietal lobule, the right frontal eye field, and the right superior parietal lobule. The contrast of death-relevance judgments vs life-relevance/valence judgments showed decreased activity in the bilateral insula. The sustained insular activity was correlated with dispositional death anxiety, but only in those with weak transient frontoparietal responses to death-related words. Our results dissociate the transient and sustained neural responses to death-related linguistic cues and suggest that the combination of the transient and sustained neural activities can predict dispositional death anxiety. PMID:22422804

Sugar ingestion and dichotic listening: Increased perceptual capacity is more than motivation.

PubMed

Scheel, Matthew H; Ambrose, Aimee L

2014-01-01

Participants ingested a sugar drink or a sugar-free drink and then engaged in a pair of dichotic listening tasks. Tasks presented category labels then played a series of word pairs, one in the left ear and one in the right. Participants attempted to identify pairs containing a target category member. Target category words were homonyms. For example, arms appeared as a target in the "body parts" category. Nontargets that played along with targets were related to a category-appropriate version of the target (e.g., sleeves), a category-inappropriate version (e.g., weapons), or were unrelated to either version of the target (e.g., plant). Hence, an effect of nontarget type on number of targets missed was evidence that participants processed nontargets for meaning. In the divided attention task, participants monitored both ears. In the focused attention task, participants monitored the left ear. Half the participants in each group had the divided attention task before the focused attention task; the other half had the focused attention task before the divided attention task. We set task lengths to about 12 min so working on the first task would give sufficient time for metabolizing sugar from the drink before the start of the second task. Nontarget word type significantly affected targets missed in both tasks. Drink type affected performance in the divided attention task only after sufficient time for converting sugar into blood glucose. The result supports an energy model for the effect of sugar ingestion on perceptual tasks rather than a motivational model.

Neural correlates of semantic associations in patients with schizophrenia.

PubMed

Sass, Katharina; Heim, Stefan; Sachs, Olga; Straube, Benjamin; Schneider, Frank; Habel, Ute; Kircher, Tilo

2014-03-01

Patients with schizophrenia have semantic processing disturbances leading to expressive language deficits (formal thought disorder). The underlying pathology has been related to alterations in the semantic network and its neural correlates. Moreover, crossmodal processing, an important aspect of communication, is impaired in schizophrenia. Here we investigated specific processing abnormalities in patients with schizophrenia with regard to modality and semantic distance in a semantic priming paradigm. Fourteen patients with schizophrenia and fourteen demographically matched controls made visual lexical decisions on successively presented word-pairs (SOA = 350 ms) with direct or indirect relations, unrelated word-pairs, and pseudoword-target stimuli during fMRI measurement. Stimuli were presented in a unimodal (visual) or crossmodal (auditory-visual) fashion. On the neural level, the effect of semantic relation indicated differences (patients > controls) within the right angular gyrus and precuneus. The effect of modality revealed differences (controls > patients) within the left superior frontal, middle temporal, inferior occipital, right angular gyri, and anterior cingulate cortex. Semantic distance (direct vs. indirect) induced distinct activations within the left middle temporal, fusiform gyrus, right precuneus, and thalamus with patients showing fewer differences between direct and indirect word-pairs. The results highlight aberrant priming-related brain responses in patients with schizophrenia. Enhanced activation for patients possibly reflects deficits in semantic processes that might be caused by a delayed and enhanced spread of activation within the semantic network. Modality-specific decreases of activation in patients might be related to impaired perceptual integration. Those deficits could induce and increase the prominent symptoms of schizophrenia like impaired speech processing.

Affective priming using a color-naming task: a test of an affective-motivational account of affective priming effects.

PubMed

Hermans, D; Van den Broeck, A; Eelen, P

1998-01-01

The affective priming effect, i.e. shorter response latencies for affectively congruent as compared to affectively incongruent prime-target pairs, is now a well-documented phenomenon. Nevertheless, little is known about the specific processes that underlie the affective priming effect. Several mechanisms have been put forward by different authors, but these theoretical accounts only apply to specific types of tasks (e.g. evaluation lexical decisions) or are rather unparsimonious. Hermans, De Houwer, and Eelen (1996) recently proposed a model of the affective priming effect that is based on the idea of the activation of corresponding or conflicting affective-motivational action tendencies. According to this model, affectively incongruent prime-target pairs should not only lead to relatively longer response latencies on tasks that concern the target word itself (target-specific tasks, e.g. evaluation pronunciation), but also on tasks that are unrelated to the actual identity of the specific target word. This hypothesis was tested in a series of four experiments in which participants had to name the color in which the target word was printed. In spite of procedural variations, results showed that the congruence between the valence of prime and target did not influence the color-naming times. The present results therefore provide no direct support for the affective-motivational account of the affective priming effect. Suggestions for future research are provided.

Iconic gestures prime related concepts: an ERP study.

PubMed

Wu, Ying Croon; Coulson, Seana

2007-02-01

To assess priming by iconic gestures, we recorded EEG (at 29 scalp sites) in two experiments while adults watched short, soundless videos of spontaneously produced, cospeech iconic gestures followed by related or unrelated probe words. In Experiment 1, participants classified the relatedness between gestures and words. In Experiment 2, they attended to stimuli, and performed an incidental recognition memory test on words presented during the EEG recording session. Event-related potentials (ERPs) time-locked to the onset of probe words were measured, along with response latencies and word recognition rates. Although word relatedness did not affect reaction times or recognition rates, contextually related probe words elicited less-negative ERPs than did unrelated ones between 300 and 500 msec after stimulus onset (N400) in both experiments. These findings demonstrate sensitivity to semantic relations between iconic gestures and words in brain activity engendered during word comprehension.

Are independent probes truly independent?

PubMed

Camp, Gino; Pecher, Diane; Schmidt, Henk G; Zeelenberg, René

2009-07-01

The independent cue technique has been developed to test traditional interference theories against inhibition theories of forgetting. In the present study, the authors tested the critical criterion for the independence of independent cues: Studied cues not presented during test (and unrelated to test cues) should not contribute to the retrieval process. Participants first studied a subset of cues (e.g., rope) that were subsequently studied together with a target in a 2nd study phase (e.g., rope-sailing, sunflower-yellow). In the test phase, an extralist category cue (e.g., sports, color) was presented, and participants were instructed to recall an item from the study list that was a member of the category (e.g., sailing, yellow). The experiments showed that previous study of the paired-associate word (e.g., rope) enhanced category cued recall even though this word was not presented at test. This experimental demonstration of covert cuing has important implications for the effectiveness of the independent cue technique.

Structure at every scale: A semantic network account of the similarities between unrelated concepts.

PubMed

De Deyne, Simon; Navarro, Daniel J; Perfors, Amy; Storms, Gert

2016-09-01

Similarity plays an important role in organizing the semantic system. However, given that similarity cannot be defined on purely logical grounds, it is important to understand how people perceive similarities between different entities. Despite this, the vast majority of studies focus on measuring similarity between very closely related items. When considering concepts that are very weakly related, little is known. In this article, we present 4 experiments showing that there are reliable and systematic patterns in how people evaluate the similarities between very dissimilar entities. We present a semantic network account of these similarities showing that a spreading activation mechanism defined over a word association network naturally makes correct predictions about weak similarities, whereas, though simpler, models based on direct neighbors between word pairs derived using the same network cannot. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

The priming of priming: Evidence that the N400 reflects context-dependent post-retrieval word integration in working memory.

PubMed

Steinhauer, Karsten; Royle, Phaedra; Drury, John E; Fromont, Lauren A

2017-06-09

Which cognitive processes are reflected by the N400 in ERPs is still controversial. Various recent articles (Lau et al., 2008; Brouwer et al., 2012) have revived the idea that only lexical pre-activation processes (such as automatic spreading activation, ASA) are strongly supported, while post-lexical integrative processes are not. Challenging this view, the present ERP study replicates a behavioral study by McKoon and Ratcliff (1995) who demonstrated that a prime-target pair such as finger - hand shows stronger priming when a majority of other pairs in the list share the analogous semantic relationship (here: part-whole), even at short stimulus onset asynchronies (250ms). We created lists with four different types of semantic relationship (synonyms, part-whole, category-member, and opposites) and compared priming for pairs in a consistent list with those in an inconsistent list as well as unrelated items. Highly significant N400 reductions were found for both relatedness priming (unrelated vs. inconsistent) and relational priming (inconsistent vs. consistent). These data are taken as strong evidence that N400 priming effects are not exclusively carried by ASA-like mechanisms during lexical retrieval but also include post-lexical integration in working memory. We link the present findings to a neurocomputational model for relational reasoning (Knowlton et al., 2012) and to recent discussions of context-dependent conceptual activations (Yee and Thompson-Schill, 2016). Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

An ERP study of passive creative conceptual expansion using a modified alternate uses task.

PubMed

Kröger, Sören; Rutter, Barbara; Hill, Holger; Windmann, Sabine; Hermann, Christiane; Abraham, Anna

2013-08-21

A novel ERP paradigm was employed to investigate conceptual expansion, a central component of creative thinking. Participants were presented with word pairs, consisting of everyday objects and uses for these objects, which had to be judged based on the two defining criteria of creative products: unusualness and appropriateness. Three subject-determined trial types resulted from this judgement: high unusual and low appropriate (nonsensical uses), low unusual and high appropriate (common uses), and high unusual and high appropriate (creative uses). Word pairs of the creative uses type are held to passively induce conceptual expansion. The N400 component was not specifically modulated by conceptual expansion but was, instead, generally responsive as a function of unusualness or novelty of the stimuli (nonsense=creative>common). Explorative analyses in a later time window (500-900 ms) revealed that ERP activity in this phase indexes appropriateness (nonsense>creative=common). In the discussion of these findings with reference to the literature on semantic cognition, both components are proposed as indexing processes relevant to conceptual expansion as they are selectively involved in the encoding and integration of a newly established semantic connection between two previously unrelated concepts. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Monitoring memory errors: the influence of the veracity of retrieved information on the accuracy of judgements of learning.

PubMed

Rhodes, Matthew G; Tauber, Sarah K

2011-11-01

The current study examined the degree to which predictions of memory performance made immediately or at a delay are sensitive to confidently held memory illusions. Participants studied unrelated pairs of words and made judgements of learning (JOLs) for each item, either immediately or after a delay. Half of the unrelated pairs (deceptive items; e.g., nurse-dollar) had a semantically related competitor (e.g., doctor) that was easily accessible when given a test cue (e.g., nurse-do_ _ _r) and half had no semantically related competitor (control items; e.g., subject-dollar). Following the study phase, participants were administered a cued recall test. Results from Experiment 1 showed that memory performance was less accurate for deceptive compared with control items. In addition, delaying judgement improved the relative accuracy of JOLs for control items but not for deceptive items. Subsequent experiments explored the degree to which the relative accuracy of delayed JOLs for deceptive items improved as a result of a warning to ensure that retrieved memories were accurate (Experiment 2) and corrective feedback regarding the veracity of information retrieved prior to making a JOL (Experiment 3). In all, these data suggest that delayed JOLs may be largely insensitive to memory errors unless participants are provided with feedback regarding memory accuracy.

The serial order of response units in word production: The case of typing.

PubMed

Scaltritti, Michele; Longcamp, Marieke; Alario, F-Xavier

2018-05-01

The selection and ordering of response units (phonemes, letters, keystrokes) represents a transversal issue across different modalities of language production. Here, the issue of serial order was investigated with respect to typewriting. Following seminal investigations in the spoken modality, we conducted an experiment where participants typed as many times as possible a pair of words during a fixed time-window. The 2 words shared either their first 2 keystrokes, the last 2 ones, all the keystrokes, or were unrelated. Fine-grained performance measures were recorded at the level of individual keystrokes. In contrast with previous results from the spoken modality, we observed an overall facilitation for words sharing the initial keystrokes. In addition, the initial overlap briefly delayed the execution of the following keystroke. The results are discussed with reference to different theoretical perspectives on serial order, with a particular attention to the competing accounts offered by position coding models and chaining models. Our findings point to potential major differences between the speaking and typing modalities in terms of interactive activation between lexical and response units processing levels. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

Phonological Priming and Cohort Effects in Toddlers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mani, Nivedita; Plunkett, Kim

2011-01-01

Adult word recognition is influenced by prior exposure to phonologically or semantically related words ("cup" primes "cat" or "plate") compared to unrelated words ("door"), suggesting that words are organised in the adult lexicon based on their phonological and semantic properties and that word recognition implicates not just the heard word, but…

How are 'Barack Obama' and 'President Elect' differentially stored in the brain? An ERP investigation on the processing of proper and common noun pairs.

PubMed

Proverbio, Alice Mado; Mariani, Serena; Zani, Alberto; Adorni, Roberta

2009-09-23

One of the most debated issues in the cognitive neuroscience of language is whether distinct semantic domains are differentially represented in the brain. Clinical studies described several anomic dissociations with no clear neuroanatomical correlate. Neuroimaging studies have shown that memory retrieval is more demanding for proper than common nouns in that the former are purely arbitrary referential expressions. In this study a semantic relatedness paradigm was devised to investigate neural processing of proper and common nouns. 780 words (arranged in pairs of Italian nouns/adjectives and the first/last names of well known persons) were presented. Half pairs were semantically related ("Woody Allen" or "social security"), while the others were not ("Sigmund Parodi" or "judicial cream"). All items were balanced for length, frequency, familiarity and semantic relatedness. Participants were to decide about the semantic relatedness of the two items in a pair. RTs and N400 data suggest that the task was more demanding for common nouns. The LORETA neural generators for the related-unrelated contrast (for proper names) included the left fusiform gyrus, right medial temporal gyrus, limbic and parahippocampal regions, inferior parietal and inferior frontal areas, which are thought to be involved in the conjoined processing a familiar face with the relevant episodic information. Person name was more emotional and sensory vivid than common noun semantic access. When memory retrieval is not required, proper name access (conspecifics knowledge) is not more demanding. The neural generators of N400 to unrelated items (unknown persons and things) did not differ as a function of lexical class, thus suggesting that proper and common nouns are not treated differently as belonging to different grammatical classes.

How Are ‘Barack Obama’ and ‘President Elect’ Differentially Stored in the Brain? An ERP Investigation on the Processing of Proper and Common Noun Pairs

PubMed Central

Proverbio, Alice Mado; Mariani, Serena; Zani, Alberto; Adorni, Roberta

2009-01-01

Background One of the most debated issues in the cognitive neuroscience of language is whether distinct semantic domains are differentially represented in the brain. Clinical studies described several anomic dissociations with no clear neuroanatomical correlate. Neuroimaging studies have shown that memory retrieval is more demanding for proper than common nouns in that the former are purely arbitrary referential expressions. In this study a semantic relatedness paradigm was devised to investigate neural processing of proper and common nouns. Methodology/Principal Findings 780 words (arranged in pairs of Italian nouns/adjectives and the first/last names of well known persons) were presented. Half pairs were semantically related (“Woody Allen” or “social security”), while the others were not (“Sigmund Parodi” or “judicial cream”). All items were balanced for length, frequency, familiarity and semantic relatedness. Participants were to decide about the semantic relatedness of the two items in a pair. RTs and N400 data suggest that the task was more demanding for common nouns. The LORETA neural generators for the related-unrelated contrast (for proper names) included the left fusiform gyrus, right medial temporal gyrus, limbic and parahippocampal regions, inferior parietal and inferior frontal areas, which are thought to be involved in the conjoined processing a familiar face with the relevant episodic information. Person name was more emotional and sensory vivid than common noun semantic access. Conclusions/Significance When memory retrieval is not required, proper name access (conspecifics knowledge) is not more demanding. The neural generators of N400 to unrelated items (unknown persons and things) did not differ as a function of lexical class, thus suggesting that proper and common nouns are not treated differently as belonging to different grammatical classes. PMID:19774070

Relationships Between Oral Reading Rates for Letters, Words, and Simple Text, and the Development of Reading Ability.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Biemiller, Andrew

The development of oral reading speed in the early elementary years and an examination of some underlying abilities that may be involved in individual differences in reading speed and ability are the concerns of this study. Cross-sectional and longitudinal data relating the time required to read orally 50 unrelated letters, 50 unrelated words, and…

A funny thing happened on the way to articulation: N400 attenuation despite behavioral interference in picture naming

PubMed Central

Blackford, Trevor; Holcomb, Phillip J.; Grainger, Jonathan; Kuperberg, Gina R.

2013-01-01

We measured Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) and naming times to picture targets preceded by masked words (stimulus onset asynchrony: 80 ms) that shared one of three different types of relationship with the names of the pictures: (1) Identity related, in which the prime was the name of the picture (“socks” – ), (2) Phonemic Onset related, in which the initial segment of the prime was the same as the name of the picture (“log” – ), and (3) Semantically related in which the prime was a co–category exemplar and associated with the name of the picture (“cake” – ). Each type of related picture target was contrasted with an Unrelated picture target, resulting in a 3 × 2 design that crossed Relationship Type between the word and the target picture (Identity, Phonemic Onset and Semantic) with Relatedness (Related and Unrelated). Modulation of the N400 component to related (versus unrelated) pictures was taken to reflect semantic processing at the interface between the picture's conceptual features and its lemma, while naming times reflected the end product of all stages of processing. Both attenuation of the N400 and shorter naming times were observed to pictures preceded by Identity related (versus Unrelated) words. No ERP effects within 600 ms, but shorter naming times, were observed to pictures preceded by Phonemic Onset related (versus Unrelated) words. An attenuated N400 (electrophysiological semantic priming) but longer naming times (behavioral semantic interference) were observed to pictures preceded by Semantically related (versus Unrelated) words. These dissociations between ERP modulation and naming times suggest that (a) phonemic onset priming occurred late, during encoding of the articulatory response, and (b) semantic behavioral interference was not driven by competition at the lemma level of representation, but rather occurred at a later stage of production. PMID:22245030

Distinct morphological processing of recently learned compound words: An ERP study.

PubMed

Kaczer, Laura; Timmer, Kalinka; Bavassi, Luz; Schiller, Niels O

2015-12-10

Our vocabulary is, at least in principle, infinite. We can create new words combining existing ones in meaningful ways to form new linguistic expressions. The present study investigated the morphological processing of novel compound words in overt speech production. Native speakers of Dutch learned a series of new compounds (e.g. appelgezicht, 'apple-face') that were later used as primes in a morphological priming task. In this protocol, primes were compound words morphologically related to a target's picture name (e.g. appelgezicht was used for a picture of an apple, Dutch appel). The novel primes were compared with corresponding familiar compounds sharing a free morpheme (e.g. appelmoes, 'applesauce') and with unrelated compounds. Participants were required to read aloud words and to name pictures in a long-lag design. Behavioral and event-related potentials (ERPs) data were collected in two sessions, separated by 48h. Clear facilitation of picture naming latencies was obtained when pictures were paired with morphological related words. Notably, our results show that novel compounds have a stronger priming effect than familiar compounds in both sessions, which is expressed in a marked reduction in target naming latencies and a decrease in the N400 amplitude. These results suggest that participants focused more on the separate constituents when reading novel primes than in the case of existing compounds. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Masked Morphological Priming in German-Speaking Adults and Children: Evidence from Response Time Distributions

PubMed Central

Hasenäcker, Jana; Beyersmann, Elisabeth; Schroeder, Sascha

2016-01-01

In this study, we looked at masked morphological priming effects in German children and adults beyond mean response times by taking into account response time distributions. We conducted an experiment comparing suffixed word primes (kleidchen-KLEID), suffixed nonword primes (kleidtum-KLEID), nonsuffixed nonword primes (kleidekt-KLEID), and unrelated controls (träumerei-KLEID). The pattern of priming in adults showed facilitation from suffixed words, suffixed nonwords, and nonsuffixed nonwords relative to unrelated controls, and from both suffixed conditions relative to nonsuffixed nonwords, thus providing evidence for morpho-orthographic and embedded stem priming. Children also showed facilitation from real suffixed words, suffixed nonwords, and nonsuffixed nonwords compared to unrelated words, but no difference between the suffixed and nonsuffixed conditions, thus suggesting that German elementary school children do not make use of morpho-orthographic segmentation. Interestingly, for all priming effects, a shift of the response time distribution was observed. Consequences for theories of morphological processing are discussed. PMID:27445899

Finding Words in a Language that Allows Words without Vowels

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

El Aissati, Abder; McQueen, James M.; Cutler, Anne

2012-01-01

Across many languages from unrelated families, spoken-word recognition is subject to a constraint whereby potential word candidates must contain a vowel. This constraint minimizes competition from embedded words (e.g., in English, disfavoring "win" in "twin" because "t" cannot be a word). However, the constraint would be counter-productive in…

A Test of the Sophisticated Guessing Theory of Word Perception

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Johnston, James C.

1978-01-01

Experiments tested the predictions that words are perceived more accurately in strongly constraining word contexts than in weakly constraining word contexts, and that a strong perceptual advantage would be present for letters in words vs. letters alone or in unrelated-letter strings. Several alternative theories of word perception are discussed.…

Semantic Ambiguity: Do Multiple Meanings Inhibit or Facilitate Word Recognition?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Haro, Juan; Ferré, Pilar

2018-01-01

It is not clear whether multiple unrelated meanings inhibit or facilitate word recognition. Some studies have found a disadvantage for words having multiple meanings with respect to unambiguous words in lexical decision tasks (LDT), whereas several others have shown a facilitation for such words. In the present study, we argue that these…

Vowelling and semantic priming effects in Arabic.

PubMed

Mountaj, Nadia; El Yagoubi, Radouane; Himmi, Majid; Lakhdar Ghazal, Faouzi; Besson, Mireille; Boudelaa, Sami

2015-01-01

In the present experiment we used a semantic judgment task with Arabic words to determine whether semantic priming effects are found in the Arabic language. Moreover, we took advantage of the specificity of the Arabic orthographic system, which is characterized by a shallow (i.e., vowelled words) and a deep orthography (i.e., unvowelled words), to examine the relationship between orthographic and semantic processing. Results showed faster Reaction Times (RTs) for semantically related than unrelated words with no difference between vowelled and unvowelled words. By contrast, Event Related Potentials (ERPs) revealed larger N1 and N2 components to vowelled words than unvowelled words suggesting that visual-orthographic complexity taxes the early word processing stages. Moreover, semantically unrelated Arabic words elicited larger N400 components than related words thereby demonstrating N400 effects in Arabic. Finally, the Arabic N400 effect was not influenced by orthographic depth. The implications of these results for understanding the processing of orthographic, semantic, and morphological structures in Modern Standard Arabic are discussed. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The Benefits of Targeted Memory Reactivation for Consolidation in Sleep are Contingent on Memory Accuracy and Direct Cue-Memory Associations

PubMed Central

Cairney, Scott A.; Lindsay, Shane; Sobczak, Justyna M.; Paller, Ken A.; Gaskell, M. Gareth

2016-01-01

Study Objectives: To investigate how the effects of targeted memory reactivation (TMR) are influenced by memory accuracy prior to sleep and the presence or absence of direct cue-memory associations. Methods: 30 participants associated each of 50 pictures with an unrelated word and then with a screen location in two separate tasks. During picture-location training, each picture was also presented with a semantically related sound. The sounds were therefore directly associated with the picture locations but indirectly associated with the words. During a subsequent nap, half of the sounds were replayed in slow wave sleep (SWS). The effect of TMR on memory for the picture locations (direct cue-memory associations) and picture-word pairs (indirect cue-memory associations) was then examined. Results: TMR reduced overall memory decay for recall of picture locations. Further analyses revealed a benefit of TMR for picture locations recalled with a low degree of accuracy prior to sleep, but not those recalled with a high degree of accuracy. The benefit of TMR for low accuracy memories was predicted by time spent in SWS. There was no benefit of TMR for memory of the picture-word pairs, irrespective of memory accuracy prior to sleep. Conclusions: TMR provides the greatest benefit to memories recalled with a low degree of accuracy prior to sleep. The memory benefits of TMR may also be contingent on direct cue-memory associations. Citation: Cairney SA, Lindsay S, Sobczak JM, Paller KA, Gaskell MG. The benefits of targeted memory reactivation for consolidation in sleep are contingent on memory accuracy and direct cue-memory associations. SLEEP 2016;39(5):1139–1150. PMID:26856905

How Orthography Modulates Morphological Priming: Subliminal Kanji Activation in Japanese.

PubMed

Nakano, Yoko; Ikemoto, Yu; Jacob, Gunnar; Clahsen, Harald

2016-01-01

The current study investigates to what extent masked morphological priming is modulated by language-particular properties, specifically by its writing system. We present results from two masked priming experiments investigating the processing of complex Japanese words written in less common (moraic) scripts. In Experiment 1, participants performed lexical decisions on target verbs; these were preceded by primes which were either (i) a past-tense form of the same verb, (ii) a stem-related form with the epenthetic vowel -i, (iii) a semantically-related form, and (iv) a phonologically-related form. Significant priming effects were obtained for prime types (i), (ii), and (iii), but not for (iv). This pattern of results differs from previous findings on languages with alphabetic scripts, which found reliable masked priming effects for morphologically related prime/target pairs of type (i), but not for non-affixal and semantically-related primes of types (ii), and (iii). In Experiment 2, we measured priming effects for prime/target pairs which are neither morphologically, semantically, phonologically nor - as presented in their moraic scripts-orthographically related, but which-in their commonly written form-share the same kanji, which are logograms adopted from Chinese. The results showed a significant priming effect, with faster lexical-decision times for kanji-related prime/target pairs relative to unrelated ones. We conclude that affix-stripping is insufficient to account for masked morphological priming effects across languages, but that language-particular properties (in the case of Japanese, the writing system) affect the processing of (morphologically) complex words.

How Orthography Modulates Morphological Priming: Subliminal Kanji Activation in Japanese

PubMed Central

Nakano, Yoko; Ikemoto, Yu; Jacob, Gunnar; Clahsen, Harald

2016-01-01

The current study investigates to what extent masked morphological priming is modulated by language-particular properties, specifically by its writing system. We present results from two masked priming experiments investigating the processing of complex Japanese words written in less common (moraic) scripts. In Experiment 1, participants performed lexical decisions on target verbs; these were preceded by primes which were either (i) a past-tense form of the same verb, (ii) a stem-related form with the epenthetic vowel -i, (iii) a semantically-related form, and (iv) a phonologically-related form. Significant priming effects were obtained for prime types (i), (ii), and (iii), but not for (iv). This pattern of results differs from previous findings on languages with alphabetic scripts, which found reliable masked priming effects for morphologically related prime/target pairs of type (i), but not for non-affixal and semantically-related primes of types (ii), and (iii). In Experiment 2, we measured priming effects for prime/target pairs which are neither morphologically, semantically, phonologically nor - as presented in their moraic scripts—orthographically related, but which—in their commonly written form—share the same kanji, which are logograms adopted from Chinese. The results showed a significant priming effect, with faster lexical-decision times for kanji-related prime/target pairs relative to unrelated ones. We conclude that affix-stripping is insufficient to account for masked morphological priming effects across languages, but that language-particular properties (in the case of Japanese, the writing system) affect the processing of (morphologically) complex words. PMID:27065895

Processing negative valence of word pairs that include a positive word.

PubMed

Itkes, Oksana; Mashal, Nira

2016-09-01

Previous research has suggested that cognitive performance is interrupted by negative relative to neutral or positive stimuli. We examined whether negative valence affects performance at the word or phrase level. Participants performed a semantic decision task on word pairs that included either a negative or a positive target word. In Experiment 1, the valence of the target word was congruent with the overall valence conveyed by the word pair (e.g., fat kid). As expected, response times were slower in the negative condition relative to the positive condition. Experiment 2 included target words that were incongruent with the overall valence of the word pair (e.g., fat salary). Response times were longer for word pairs whose overall valence was negative relative to positive, even though these word pairs included a positive word. Our findings support the Cognitive Primacy Hypothesis, according to which emotional valence is extracted after conceptual processing is complete.

The Grammar of Fantasy.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rodari, Gianni

1998-01-01

Depicts how any word chosen by chance can function as a magical word to exhume fields of memory and excite imagination. Details several word games of invention for children (such as the "fantastic binomial," using creative errors, and "Little Red Riding Hood in a Helicopter") that juxtapose normally unrelated words and that can…

Differences in binding and monitoring mechanisms contribute to lifespan age differences in false memory.

PubMed

Fandakova, Yana; Shing, Yee Lee; Lindenberger, Ulman

2013-10-01

Based on a 2-component framework of episodic memory development across the lifespan (Shing & Lindenberger, 2011), we examined the contribution of memory-related binding and monitoring processes to false memory susceptibility in childhood and old age. We administered a repeated continuous recognition task to children (N = 20, 10-12 years), younger adults (N = 20, 20-27 years), and older adults (N = 21, 68-76 years). Participants saw the same set of unrelated word pairs in 3 consecutive runs and their task was to identify pair reoccurrences within runs. Across runs, correct detection of repeated pairs decreased in children only, whereas false recognition of lure pairs showed a greater increase in older adults than in children or younger adults. False recognition of rearranged pairs decreased across runs for all participants. This decrease was most pronounced in children, in particular for high-confidence memory errors. We conclude that memory binding mechanisms are sufficiently developed in children to facilitate memory monitoring and reduce false memory for associative information. In contrast, older adults show senescent impairments in both binding and monitoring mechanisms that both contribute to elevated illusory recollections in old age. We conclude that binding and monitoring processes during memory performance follow different developmental trajectories from childhood to old age.

Attention Demands of Spoken Word Planning: A Review

PubMed Central

Roelofs, Ardi; Piai, Vitória

2011-01-01

Attention and language are among the most intensively researched abilities in the cognitive neurosciences, but the relation between these abilities has largely been neglected. There is increasing evidence, however, that linguistic processes, such as those underlying the planning of words, cannot proceed without paying some form of attention. Here, we review evidence that word planning requires some but not full attention. The evidence comes from chronometric studies of word planning in picture naming and word reading under divided attention conditions. It is generally assumed that the central attention demands of a process are indexed by the extent that the process delays the performance of a concurrent unrelated task. The studies measured the speed and accuracy of linguistic and non-linguistic responding as well as eye gaze durations reflecting the allocation of attention. First, empirical evidence indicates that in several task situations, processes up to and including phonological encoding in word planning delay, or are delayed by, the performance of concurrent unrelated non-linguistic tasks. These findings suggest that word planning requires central attention. Second, empirical evidence indicates that conflicts in word planning may be resolved while concurrently performing an unrelated non-linguistic task, making a task decision, or making a go/no-go decision. These findings suggest that word planning does not require full central attention. We outline a computationally implemented theory of attention and word planning, and describe at various points the outcomes of computer simulations that demonstrate the utility of the theory in accounting for the key findings. Finally, we indicate how attention deficits may contribute to impaired language performance, such as in individuals with specific language impairment. PMID:22069393

Choose and choose again: appearance-reality errors, pragmatics and logical ability.

PubMed

Deák, Gedeon O; Enright, Brian

2006-05-01

In the Appearance/Reality (AR) task some 3- and 4-year-old children make perseverative errors: they choose the same word for the appearance and the function of a deceptive object. Are these errors specific to the AR task, or signs of a general question-answering problem? Preschoolers completed five tasks: AR; simple successive forced-choice question pairs (QP); flexible naming of objects (FN); working memory (WM) span; and indeterminacy detection (ID). AR errors correlated with QP errors. Insensitivity to indeterminacy predicted perseveration in both tasks. Neither WM span nor flexible naming predicted other measures. Age predicted sensitivity to indeterminacy. These findings suggest that AR tests measure a pragmatic understanding; specifically, different questions about a topic usually call for different answers. This understanding is related to the ability to detect indeterminacy of each question in a series. AR errors are unrelated to the ability to represent an object as belonging to multiple categories, to working memory span, or to inhibiting previously activated words.

Co-occurrence frequency evaluated with large language corpora boosts semantic priming effects.

PubMed

Brunellière, Angèle; Perre, Laetitia; Tran, ThiMai; Bonnotte, Isabelle

2017-09-01

In recent decades, many computational techniques have been developed to analyse the contextual usage of words in large language corpora. The present study examined whether the co-occurrence frequency obtained from large language corpora might boost purely semantic priming effects. Two experiments were conducted: one with conscious semantic priming, the other with subliminal semantic priming. Both experiments contrasted three semantic priming contexts: an unrelated priming context and two related priming contexts with word pairs that are semantically related and that co-occur either frequently or infrequently. In the conscious priming presentation (166-ms stimulus-onset asynchrony, SOA), a semantic priming effect was recorded in both related priming contexts, which was greater with higher co-occurrence frequency. In the subliminal priming presentation (66-ms SOA), no significant priming effect was shown, regardless of the related priming context. These results show that co-occurrence frequency boosts pure semantic priming effects and are discussed with reference to models of semantic network.

Morpho-Semantic Processing in Word Recognition: Evidence from Balanced and Biased Ambiguous Morphemes

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tsang, Yiu-Kei; Chen, Hsuan-Chih

2013-01-01

The role of morphemic meaning in Chinese word recognition was examined with the masked and unmasked priming paradigms. Target words contained ambiguous morphemes biased toward the dominant or the subordinate meanings. Prime words either contained the same ambiguous morphemes in the subordinate interpretations or were unrelated to the targets. In…

Establishing causal coherence across sentences: an ERP study

PubMed Central

Kuperberg, Gina R.; Paczynski, Martin; Ditman, Tali

2011-01-01

This study examined neural activity associated with establishing causal relationships across sentences during online comprehension. ERPs were measured while participants read and judged the relatedness of three-sentence scenarios in which the final sentence was highly causally related, intermediately related and causally unrelated to its context. Lexico-semantic co-occurrence was matched across the three conditions using a Latent Semantic Analysis. Critical words in causally unrelated scenarios evoked a larger N400 than words in both highly causally related and intermediately related scenarios, regardless of whether they appeared before or at the sentence-final position. At midline sites, the N400 to intermediately related sentence-final words was attenuated to the same degree as to highly causally related words, but otherwise the N400 to intermediately related words fell in between that evoked by highly causally related and intermediately related words. No modulation of the Late Positivity/P600 component was observed across conditions. These results indicate that both simple and complex causal inferences can influence the earliest stages of semantically processing an incoming word. Further, they suggest that causal coherence, at the situation level, can influence incremental word-by-word discourse comprehension, even when semantic relationships between individual words are matched. PMID:20175676

Automatic processing of semantic relations in fMRI: neural activation during semantic priming of taxonomic and thematic categories.

PubMed

Sachs, Olga; Weis, Susanne; Zellagui, Nadia; Huber, Walter; Zvyagintsev, Mikhail; Mathiak, Klaus; Kircher, Tilo

2008-07-07

Most current models of knowledge organization are based on hierarchical or taxonomic categories (animals, tools). Another important organizational pattern is thematic categorization, i.e. categories held together by external relations, a unifying scene or event (car and garage). The goal of this study was to compare the neural correlates of these categories under automatic processing conditions that minimize strategic influences. We used fMRI to examine neural correlates of semantic priming for category members with a short stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) of 200 ms as subjects performed a lexical decision task. Four experimental conditions were compared: thematically related words (car-garage); taxonomically related (car-bus); unrelated (car-spoon); non-word trials (car-derf). We found faster reaction times for related than for unrelated prime-target pairs for both thematic and taxonomic categories. However, the size of the thematic priming effect was greater than that of the taxonomic. The imaging data showed signal changes for the taxonomic priming effects in the right precuneus, postcentral gyrus, middle frontal and superior frontal gyri and thematic priming effects in the right middle frontal gyrus and anterior cingulate. The contrast of neural priming effects showed larger signal changes in the right precuneus associated with the taxonomic but not with thematic priming response. We suggest that the greater involvement of precuneus in the processing of taxonomic relations indicates their reduced salience in the knowledge structure compared to more prominent thematic relations.

Adaptive genetic complementarity in mate choice coexists with selection for elaborate sexual traits

PubMed Central

Oh, Kevin P; Badyaev, Alexander V

2006-01-01

Choice of genetically unrelated mates is widely documented, yet it is not known how self-referential mate choice can co-occur with commonly observed directional selection on sexual displays. Across 10 breeding seasons in a wild bird population, we found strong fitness benefits of matings between genetically unrelated partners and show that self-referential choice of genetically unrelated mates alternates with sexual selection on elaborate plumage. Seasonal cycles of diminishing variation in ornamentation, caused by early pairing of the most elaborated males, and influx of increasingly genetically unrelated available mates caused by female-biased dispersal, lead to temporal fluctuations in the target of mate choice and enabled coexistence of directional selection for ornament elaboration with adaptive pairing of genetically unrelated partners. PMID:16822752

Character order processing in Chinese reading.

PubMed

Gu, Junjuan; Li, Xingshan; Liversedge, Simon P

2015-02-01

We explored how character order information is encoded in isolated word processing or Chinese sentence reading in 2 experiments using a masked priming paradigm and a gaze-contingent display-change paradigm. The results showed that response latencies in the lexical decision task and reading times on the target word region were longer in the unrelated condition (the prime or the preview was unrelated with the target word) than the transposed-character condition (the prime or the preview was a transposition of the 2 characters of the target word), which were respectively longer than in the identity condition (the prime or preview was identical to the target word). These results show that character order is encoded at an early stage of processing in Chinese reading, but character position encoding was not strict. We also found that character order encoding was similar for single-morpheme and multiple-morpheme words, suggesting that morphemic status does not affect character order encoding. The current results represent an early contribution to our understanding of character order encoding during Chinese reading.

The influence of autonomic arousal and semantic relatedness on memory for emotional words.

PubMed

Buchanan, Tony W; Etzel, Joset A; Adolphs, Ralph; Tranel, Daniel

2006-07-01

Increased memory for emotional stimuli is a well-documented phenomenon. Emotional arousal during the encoding of a stimulus is one mediator of this memory enhancement. Other variables such as semantic relatedness also play a role in the enhanced memory for emotional stimuli, especially for verbal stimuli. Research has not addressed the contributions of emotional arousal, indexed by self-report and autonomic measures, and semantic relatedness on memory performance. Twenty young adults (10 women) were presented neutral-unrelated words, school-related words, moderately arousing emotional words, and highly arousing taboo words while heart rate and skin conductance were measured. Memory was tested with free recall and recognition tests. Results showed that taboo words, which were both semantically related and high arousal were remembered best. School-related words, which were high on semantic relatedness but low on arousal, were remembered better than the moderately arousing emotional words and semantically unrelated neutral words. Psychophysiological responses showed that within the moderately arousing emotional and neutral word groups, those words eliciting greater autonomic activity were better remembered than words that did not elicit such activity. These results demonstrate additive effects of semantic relatedness and emotional arousal on memory. Relatedness confers an advantage to memory (as in the school-words), but the combination of relatedness and arousal (as in the taboo words) results in the best memory performance.

Co-sensitization and cross-reactivity between related and unrelated food allergens in dogs - a serological study.

PubMed

Bexley, Jennifer; Nuttall, Timothy J; Hammerberg, Bruce; Halliwell, Richard E

2017-02-01

Knowledge of cross-reactivity between foods is useful so that potentially cross-reactive allergens can be avoided in diet trials. To evaluate allergenic cross-reactivity in related foods. Sera from 469 dogs with suspected adverse food reactions. An IgE-based serological assay using 19 food allergens was performed in 469 dogs. Pairwise comparisons were used to calculate the odds ratios (ORs) for each food pair, with significance at P < 0.0002 by Holm-Bonferroni correction, both in all 469 dogs and in the 261 of 469 dogs with at least one positive reaction. One-way ANOVA with Tukey's post hoc tests (significance at P < 0.05) were used to test for differences between mean logE ORs in different food groups. Inhibition enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISAs) were performed to assess allergenic cross-reactivity between beef, lamb and cow's milk. Significant associations were observed between both related and unrelated food pairs. Associations were, however, more frequent and stronger among related than unrelated foods. In all 469 dogs, 38 of 43 related food pairs were significantly associated [mean (SD) logE OR 3.4 (0.9)] compared with 79 of 128 unrelated pairs [2.7 (1.0)], P < 0.0002. In positive dogs, 32 of 43 related pairs were significantly associated [2.7 [1.0)] compared with 49 of 128 unrelated pairs [1.8 (1.0)], P < 0.0002. Inhibition ELISAs confirmed the presence of cross-reactive IgE-binding epitopes in beef, lamb and cow's milk. The results suggest that related and potentially cross-reactive foods should be avoided in elimination diets. © 2016 ESVD and ACVD.

Decision-making in information seeking on texts: an eye-fixation-related potentials investigation.

PubMed

Frey, Aline; Ionescu, Gelu; Lemaire, Benoit; López-Orozco, Francisco; Baccino, Thierry; Guérin-Dugué, Anne

2013-01-01

Reading on a web page is known to be not linear and people need to make fast decisions about whether they have to stop or not reading. In such context, reading, and decision-making processes are intertwined and this experiment attempts to separate them through electrophysiological patterns provided by the Eye-Fixation-Related Potentials technique (EFRPs). We conducted an experiment in which EFRPs were recorded while participants read blocks of text that were semantically highly related, moderately related, and unrelated to a given goal. Participants had to decide as fast as possible whether the text was related or not to the semantic goal given at a prior stage. Decision making (stopping information search) may occur when the paragraph is highly related to the goal (positive decision) or when it is unrelated to the goal (negative decision). EFRPs were analyzed on and around typical eye fixations: either on words belonging to the goal (target), subjected to a high rate of positive decisions, or on low frequency unrelated words (incongruent), subjected to a high rate of negative decisions. In both cases, we found EFRPs specific patterns (amplitude peaking between 51 to 120 ms after fixation onset) spreading out on the next words following the goal word and the second fixation after an incongruent word, in parietal and occipital areas. We interpreted these results as delayed late components (P3b and N400), reflecting the decision to stop information searching. Indeed, we show a clear spill-over effect showing that the effect on word N spread out on word N + 1 and N + 2.

Decision-making in information seeking on texts: an eye-fixation-related potentials investigation

PubMed Central

Frey, Aline; Ionescu, Gelu; Lemaire, Benoit; López-Orozco, Francisco; Baccino, Thierry; Guérin-Dugué, Anne

2013-01-01

Reading on a web page is known to be not linear and people need to make fast decisions about whether they have to stop or not reading. In such context, reading, and decision-making processes are intertwined and this experiment attempts to separate them through electrophysiological patterns provided by the Eye-Fixation-Related Potentials technique (EFRPs). We conducted an experiment in which EFRPs were recorded while participants read blocks of text that were semantically highly related, moderately related, and unrelated to a given goal. Participants had to decide as fast as possible whether the text was related or not to the semantic goal given at a prior stage. Decision making (stopping information search) may occur when the paragraph is highly related to the goal (positive decision) or when it is unrelated to the goal (negative decision). EFRPs were analyzed on and around typical eye fixations: either on words belonging to the goal (target), subjected to a high rate of positive decisions, or on low frequency unrelated words (incongruent), subjected to a high rate of negative decisions. In both cases, we found EFRPs specific patterns (amplitude peaking between 51 to 120 ms after fixation onset) spreading out on the next words following the goal word and the second fixation after an incongruent word, in parietal and occipital areas. We interpreted these results as delayed late components (P3b and N400), reflecting the decision to stop information searching. Indeed, we show a clear spill-over effect showing that the effect on word N spread out on word N + 1 and N + 2. PMID:23966913

Neural correlates of the modified Stroop effect in post-traumatic stress disorder: an event-related potential study.

PubMed

Chen, Xiaoyi; Wei, Dongtao; Dupuis-Roy, Nicolas; Du, Xue; Qiu, Jiang; Zhang, Qinglin

2012-12-19

Previous studies have provided electrophysiological evidence for attentional abnormalities in patients with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The present study examined the electrophysiological activity of trauma-exposed patients with or without a PTSD during a modified Stroop task. The PTSD group showed a reduced P2 and P3 amplitude relative to the non-PTSD group under both the earthquake-related and earthquake-unrelated words conditions. Importantly, the earthquake-related words elicited a greater P3 amplitude (350-450 ms after stimulus) than did unrelated words in the non-PTSD group, whereas no significant difference was found in the PTSD group. This indicates that PTSD patients had some attention deficits compared with non-PTSD individuals, and that these attention deficits were not just limited to earthquake-related words.

Hemispheric asymmetry in event knowledge activation during incremental language comprehension: A visual half-field ERP study.

PubMed

Metusalem, Ross; Kutas, Marta; Urbach, Thomas P; Elman, Jeffrey L

2016-04-01

During incremental language comprehension, the brain activates knowledge of described events, including knowledge elements that constitute semantic anomalies in their linguistic context. The present study investigates hemispheric asymmetries in this process, with the aim of advancing our understanding of the neural basis and functional properties of event knowledge activation during incremental comprehension. In a visual half-field event-related brain potential (ERP) experiment, participants read brief discourses in which the third sentence contained a word that was either highly expected, semantically anomalous but related to the described event (Event-Related), or semantically anomalous but unrelated to the described event (Event-Unrelated). For both visual fields of target word presentation, semantically anomalous words elicited N400 ERP components of greater amplitude than did expected words. Crucially, Event-Related anomalous words elicited a reduced N400 relative to Event-Unrelated anomalous words only with left visual field/right hemisphere presentation. This result suggests that right hemisphere processes are critical to the activation of event knowledge elements that violate the linguistic context, and in doing so informs existing theories of hemispheric asymmetries in semantic processing during language comprehension. Additionally, this finding coincides with past research suggesting a crucial role for the right hemisphere in elaborative inference generation, raises interesting questions regarding hemispheric coordination in generating event-specific linguistic expectancies, and more generally highlights the possibility of functional dissociation of event knowledge activation for the generation of elaborative inferences and for linguistic expectancies. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Age differences in false memory: The importance of retrieval monitoring processes and their modulation by memory quality.

PubMed

Fandakova, Yana; Sander, Myriam C; Grandy, Thomas H; Cabeza, Roberto; Werkle-Bergner, Markus; Shing, Yee Lee

2018-02-01

Older adults are more likely than younger adults to falsely recall past episodes that occurred differently or not at all. We examined whether older adults' propensity for false associative memory is related to declines in postretrieval monitoring processes and their modulation with varying memory representations. Younger (N = 20) and older adults (N = 32) studied and relearned unrelated scene-word pairs, followed by a final cued recall that was used to distribute the pairs for an associative recognition test 24 hours later. This procedure allowed individualized formation of rearranged pairs that were made up of elements of pairs that were correctly recalled in the final cued recall ("high-quality" pairs), and of pairs that were not correctly recalled ("low-quality" pairs). Both age groups falsely recognized more low-quality than high-quality rearranged pairs, with a less pronounced reduction in false alarms to high-quality pairs in older adults. In younger adults, cingulo-opercular activity was enhanced for false alarms and for low-quality correct rejections, consistent with its role in postretrieval monitoring. Older adults did not show such modulated recruitment, suggesting deficits in their selective engagement of monitoring processes given variability in the fidelity of memory representations. There were no age differences in hippocampal activity, which was higher for high-quality than low-quality correct rejections in both age groups. These results demonstrate that the engagement of cingulo-opercular monitoring mechanisms varies with memory representation quality and contributes to age-related deficits in false associative memory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

Flooding Vocabulary Gaps to Accelerate Word Learning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Brabham, Edna; Buskist, Connie; Henderson, Shannon Coman; Paleologos, Timon; Baugh, Nikki

2012-01-01

Students entering school with limited vocabularies are at a disadvantage compared to classmates with robust knowledge of words and meanings. Teaching a few unrelated words at a time is insufficient for catching these students up with peers and preparing them to comprehend texts they will encounter across the grades. This article presents…

Effects of ecstasy/polydrug use on memory for associative information.

PubMed

Gallagher, Denis T; Fisk, John E; Montgomery, Catharine; Judge, Jeannie; Robinson, Sarita J; Taylor, Paul J

2012-08-01

Associative learning underpins behaviours that are fundamental to the everyday functioning of the individual. Evidence pointing to learning deficits in recreational drug users merits further examination. A word pair learning task was administered to examine associative learning processes in ecstasy/polydrug users. After assignment to either single or divided attention conditions, 44 ecstasy/polydrug users and 48 non-users were presented with 80 word pairs at encoding. Following this, four types of stimuli were presented at the recognition phase: the words as originally paired (old pairs), previously presented words in different pairings (conjunction pairs), old words paired with new words, and pairs of new words (not presented previously). The task was to identify which of the stimuli were intact old pairs. Ecstasy/ploydrug users produced significantly more false-positive responses overall compared to non-users. Increased long-term frequency of ecstasy use was positively associated with the propensity to produce false-positive responses. It was also associated with a more liberal signal detection theory decision criterion value. Measures of long term and recent cannabis use were also associated with these same word pair learning outcome measures. Conjunction word pairs, irrespective of drug use, generated the highest level of false-positive responses and significantly more false-positive responses were made in the divided attention condition compared to the single attention condition. Overall, the results suggest that long-term ecstasy exposure may induce a deficit in associative learning and this may be in part a consequence of users adopting a more liberal decision criterion value.

Phonological Contribution during Visual Word Recognition in Child Readers. An Intermodal Priming Study in Grades 3 and 5

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sauval, Karinne; Casalis, Séverine; Perre, Laetitia

2017-01-01

This study investigated the phonological contribution during visual word recognition in child readers as a function of general reading expertise (third and fifth grades) and specific word exposure (frequent and less-frequent words). An intermodal priming in lexical decision task was performed. Auditory primes (identical and unrelated) were used in…

Stress priming in picture naming: an SOA study.

PubMed

Schiller, Niels O; Fikkert, Paula; Levelt, Clara C

2004-01-01

This study investigates whether or not the representation of lexical stress information can be primed during speech production. In four experiments, we attempted to prime the stress position of bisyllabic target nouns (picture names) having initial and final stress with auditory prime words having either the same or different stress as the target (e.g., WORtel-MOtor vs. koSTUUM-MOtor; capital letters indicate stressed syllables in prime-target pairs). Furthermore, half of the prime words were semantically related, the other half unrelated. Overall, picture names were not produced faster when the prime word had the same stress as the target than when the prime had different stress, i.e., there was no stress-priming effect in any experiment. This result would not be expected if stress were stored in the lexicon. However, targets with initial stress were responded to faster than final-stress targets. The reason for this effect was neither the quality of the pictures nor frequency of occurrence or voice-key characteristics. We hypothesize here that this stress effect is a genuine encoding effect, i.e., words with stress on the second syllable take longer to be encoded because their stress pattern is irregular with respect to the lexical distribution of bisyllabic stress patterns, even though it can be regular with respect to metrical stress rules in Dutch. The results of the experiments are discussed in the framework of models of phonological encoding.

Print exposure modulates the effects of repetition priming during sentence reading.

PubMed

Lowder, Matthew W; Gordon, Peter C

2017-12-01

Individual readers vary greatly in the quality of their lexical representations, and consequently in how quickly and efficiently they can access orthographic and lexical knowledge. This variability may be explained, at least in part, by individual differences in exposure to printed language, because practice at reading promotes the development of stronger reading skills. In the present eyetracking experiment, we tested the hypothesis that the efficiency of word recognition during reading improves with increases in print exposure, by determining whether the magnitude of the repetition-priming effect is modulated by individual differences in scores on the author recognition test (ART). Lexical repetition of target words was manipulated across pairs of unrelated sentences that were presented on consecutive trials. The magnitude of the repetition effect was modulated by print exposure in early measures of processing, such that the magnitude of the effect was inversely related to scores on the ART. The results showed that low levels of print exposure, and thus lower-quality lexical representations, are associated with high levels of difficulty recognizing words, and thus with the greatest room to benefit from repetition. Furthermore, the interaction between scores on the ART and repetition suggests that print exposure is not simply an index of general reading speed, but rather that higher levels of print exposure are associated with an enhanced ability to access lexical knowledge and recognize words during reading.

Effects of Sleep on Word Pair Memory in Children - Separating Item and Source Memory Aspects.

PubMed

Wang, Jing-Yi; Weber, Frederik D; Zinke, Katharina; Noack, Hannes; Born, Jan

2017-01-01

Word paired-associate learning is a well-established task to demonstrate sleep-dependent memory consolidation in adults as well as children. Sleep has also been proposed to benefit episodic features of memory, i.e., a memory for an event (item) bound into the spatiotemporal context it has been experienced in (source). We aimed to explore if sleep enhances word pair memory in children by strengthening the episodic features of the memory, in particular. Sixty-one children (8-12 years) studied two lists of word pairs with 1 h in between. Retrieval testing comprised cued recall of the target word of each word pair (item memory) and recalling in which list the word pair had appeared in (source memory). Retrieval was tested either after 1 h (short retention interval) or after 11 h, with this long retention interval covering either nocturnal sleep or daytime wakefulness. Compared with the wake interval, sleep enhanced separate recall of both word pairs and the lists per se , while recall of the combination of the word pair and the list it had appeared in remained unaffected by sleep. An additional comparison with adult controls ( n = 37) suggested that item-source bound memory (combined recall of word pair and list) is generally diminished in children. Our results argue against the view that the sleep-induced enhancement in paired-associate learning in children is a consequence of sleep specifically enhancing the episodic features of the memory representation. On the contrary, sleep in children might strengthen item and source representations in isolation, while leaving the episodic memory representations (item-source binding) unaffected.

Deficits in free recall persist in Asperger's syndrome despite training in the use of list-appropriate learning strategies.

PubMed

Smith, Brenda J; Gardiner, John M; Bowler, Dermot M

2007-03-01

Free recall in adults with Asperger's Syndrome (AS) was compared with that in matched controls in an experiment including semantically similar, phonologically similar and unrelated word lists. Without supportive instructions, adults with AS were significantly impaired in their recall of phonologically and semantically related lists, but not unrelated lists. Even when trained to make use at study of the relations among the words, the adults with AS recalled fewer words than the control group. Participants rehearsed the study lists out loud and the rehearsal data was analysed. Despite a very slight trend for adults with AS to engage in less elaborative rehearsal and more rote rehearsal, their rehearsal did not differ significantly from that of controls.

Polysemy Advantage with Abstract but Not Concrete Words

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jager, Bernadet; Cleland, Alexandra A.

2016-01-01

It is a robust finding that ambiguous words are recognized faster than unambiguous words. More recent studies (e.g., Rodd et al. in "J Mem Lang" 46:245-266, 2002) now indicate that this "ambiguity advantage" may in reality be a "polysemy advantage": caused by related senses (polysemy) rather than unrelated meanings…

Semantic Facilitation in Category and Action Naming: Testing the Message-Congruency Account

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kuipers, Jan-Rouke; La Heij, Wido

2008-01-01

Basic-level picture naming is hampered by the presence of a semantically related context word (compared to an unrelated word), whereas picture categorization is facilitated by a semantically related context word. This reversal of the semantic context effect has been explained by assuming that in categorization tasks, basic-level distractor words…

Preserved semantic priming effect in alexia.

PubMed

Mimura, M; Goodglass, H; Milberg, W

1996-09-01

BH, a left-handed patient with alexia and nonfluent aphasia, was presented with a lexical-decision task in which words and pronounceable pseudowords were preceded by semantically related or unrelated picture primes (Experiment 1). In Experiment 2, BH was given an explicit reading task using the word lists from Experiment 1. Performance on Experiment 2 disclosed severe reading deficits in both oral reading and semantic matching of the words to pictures. However, in Experiment 1, BH demonstrated a significant semantic priming effect, responding more accurately and more quickly to words preceded by related primes than by unrelated primes. The present results suggest that even in a patient with severe alexia, implicit access to semantic information can be preserved in the absence of explicit identification. The possibility of categorical gradient in implicit activation (living vs. nonliving) in BH was also discussed, which, however, needs to be clarified in the further investigation.

An investigation of phonology and orthography in spoken-word recognition.

PubMed

Slowiaczek, Louisa M; Soltano, Emily G; Wieting, Shani J; Bishop, Karyn L

2003-02-01

The possible influence of initial phonological and/or orthographic information on spoken-word processing was examined in six experiments modelled after and extending the work Jakimik, Cole, and Rudnicky (1985). Following Jakimik et al., Experiment 1 used polysyllabic primes with monosyllabic targets (e.g., BUCKLE-BUCK/[symbol: see text]; MYSTERY-MISS,/[symbol: see text]). Experiments 2, 3, and 4 used polysyllabic primes and polysyllabic targets whose initial syllables shared phonological information (e.g., NUISANCE-NOODLE,/[symbol: see text]), orthographic information (e.g., RATIO-RATIFY,/[symbol: see text]), both (e.g., FUNNEL-FUNNY,/[symbol: see text]), or were unrelated (e.g., SERMON-NOODLE,/[symbol: see text]). Participants engaged in a lexical decision (Experiments 1, 3, and 4) or a shadowing (Experiment 2) task with a single-trial (Experiments 2 and 3) or subsequent-trial (Experiments 1 and 4) priming procedure. Experiment 5 tested primes and targets that varied in the number of shared graphemes while holding shared phonemes constant at one. Experiment 6 used the procedures of Experiment 2 but a low proportion of related trials. Results revealed that response times were facilitated for prime-target pairs that shared initial phonological and orthographic information. These results were confirmed under conditions when strategic processing was greatly reduced suggesting that phonological and orthographic information is automatically activated during spoken-word processing.

Interactions between mood and the structure of semantic memory: event-related potentials evidence

PubMed Central

Pinheiro, Ana P.; del Re, Elisabetta; Nestor, Paul G; McCarley, Robert W.; Gonçalves, Óscar F.

2013-01-01

Recent evidence suggests that affect acts as modulator of cognitive processes and in particular that induced mood has an effect on the way semantic memory is used on-line. We used event-related potentials (ERPs) to examine affective modulation of semantic information processing under three different moods: neutral, positive and negative. Fifteen subjects read 324 pairs of sentences, after mood induction procedure with 30 pictures of neutral, 30 pictures of positive and 30 pictures of neutral valence: 108 sentences were read in each mood induction condition. Sentences ended with three word types: expected words, within-category violations, and between-category violations. N400 amplitude was measured to the three word types under each mood induction condition. Under neutral mood, a congruency (more negative N400 amplitude for unexpected relative to expected endings) and a category effect (more negative N400 amplitude for between- than to within-category violations) were observed. Also, results showed differences in N400 amplitude for both within- and between-category violations as a function of mood: while positive mood tended to facilitate the integration of unexpected but related items, negative mood made their integration as difficult as unexpected and unrelated items. These findings suggest the differential impact of mood on access to long-term semantic memory during sentence comprehension. PMID:22434931

Interactions between mood and the structure of semantic memory: event-related potentials evidence.

PubMed

Pinheiro, Ana P; del Re, Elisabetta; Nestor, Paul G; McCarley, Robert W; Gonçalves, Óscar F; Niznikiewicz, Margaret

2013-06-01

Recent evidence suggests that affect acts as modulator of cognitive processes and in particular that induced mood has an effect on the way semantic memory is used on-line. We used event-related potentials (ERPs) to examine affective modulation of semantic information processing under three different moods: neutral, positive and negative. Fifteen subjects read 324 pairs of sentences, after mood induction procedure with 30 pictures of neutral, 30 pictures of positive and 30 pictures of neutral valence: 108 sentences were read in each mood induction condition. Sentences ended with three word types: expected words, within-category violations, and between-category violations. N400 amplitude was measured to the three word types under each mood induction condition. Under neutral mood, a congruency (more negative N400 amplitude for unexpected relative to expected endings) and a category effect (more negative N400 amplitude for between- than to within-category violations) were observed. Also, results showed differences in N400 amplitude for both within- and between-category violations as a function of mood: while positive mood tended to facilitate the integration of unexpected but related items, negative mood made their integration as difficult as unexpected and unrelated items. These findings suggest the differential impact of mood on access to long-term semantic memory during sentence comprehension.

Episodic Specificity in Acquiring Thematic Knowledge of Novel Words from Descriptive Episodes

PubMed Central

Zhang, Meichao; Chen, Shuang; Wang, Lin; Yang, Xiaohong; Yang, Yufang

2017-01-01

The current study examined whether thematic relations of the novel words could be acquired via descriptive episodes, and if yes, whether it could be generalized to thematically related words in a different scenario. In Experiment 1, a lexical decision task was used where the novel words served as primes for target words in four conditions: (1) corresponding concepts of the novel words, (2) thematically related words in the same episodes as that in learning condition, (3) thematically related words in different episodes, or (4) unrelated words served as targets. Event related potentials elicited by the targets revealed that compared to the unrelated words, the corresponding concepts and thematically related words in the same episodes elicited smaller N400s with a frontal-central distribution, whereas the thematically related words in different episodes elicited an enhanced late positive component. Experiment 2 further showed a priming effect of the corresponding concepts on the thematically related words in the same episodes as well as in a different episode, indicating that the absence of a priming effect of the learned novel words on the thematically related words in different episode could not be attributed to inappropriate selection of thematically related words in the two conditions. These results indicate that only the corresponding concepts and the thematically related words in the learning episodes were successfully primed, whereas the thematic association between the novel words and the thematically related words in different scenarios could only be recognized in a late processing stage. Our findings suggest that thematic knowledge of novel words is organized via separate scenarios, which are represented in a clustered manner in the semantic network. PMID:28428766

Episodic Specificity in Acquiring Thematic Knowledge of Novel Words from Descriptive Episodes.

PubMed

Zhang, Meichao; Chen, Shuang; Wang, Lin; Yang, Xiaohong; Yang, Yufang

2017-01-01

The current study examined whether thematic relations of the novel words could be acquired via descriptive episodes, and if yes, whether it could be generalized to thematically related words in a different scenario. In Experiment 1, a lexical decision task was used where the novel words served as primes for target words in four conditions: (1) corresponding concepts of the novel words, (2) thematically related words in the same episodes as that in learning condition, (3) thematically related words in different episodes, or (4) unrelated words served as targets. Event related potentials elicited by the targets revealed that compared to the unrelated words, the corresponding concepts and thematically related words in the same episodes elicited smaller N400s with a frontal-central distribution, whereas the thematically related words in different episodes elicited an enhanced late positive component. Experiment 2 further showed a priming effect of the corresponding concepts on the thematically related words in the same episodes as well as in a different episode, indicating that the absence of a priming effect of the learned novel words on the thematically related words in different episode could not be attributed to inappropriate selection of thematically related words in the two conditions. These results indicate that only the corresponding concepts and the thematically related words in the learning episodes were successfully primed, whereas the thematic association between the novel words and the thematically related words in different scenarios could only be recognized in a late processing stage. Our findings suggest that thematic knowledge of novel words is organized via separate scenarios, which are represented in a clustered manner in the semantic network.

Electrophysiological evidence for phonological priming in Spanish Sign Language lexical access.

PubMed

Gutiérrez, Eva; Müller, Oliver; Baus, Cristina; Carreiras, Manuel

2012-06-01

Interactive activation models of lexical access assume that the presentation of a given word activates not only its lexical representation but also those corresponding to words similar in form. Current theories are based on data from oral and written languages, and therefore signed languages represent a special challenge for existing theories of word recognition and lexical access since they allow us to question what the genuine fundamentals of human language are and what might be modality-specific adaptation. The aim of the present study is to determine the electrophysiological correlates and time course of phonological processing of Spanish Sign Language (LSE). Ten deaf native LSE signers and ten deaf non-native but highly proficient LSE signers participated in the experiment. We used the ERP methodology and form-based priming in the context of a delayed lexical decision task, manipulating phonological overlap (i.e. related prime-target pairs shared either handshape or location parameters). Results showed that both parameters under study modulated brain responses to the stimuli in different time windows. Phonological priming of location resulted in a higher amplitude of the N400 component (300-500 ms window) for signs but not for non-signs. This effect may be explained in terms of initial competition among candidates. Moreover, the fact that a higher amplitude N400 for related pairs was found for signs but not for non-signs points to an effect at the lexical level. Handshape overlap produced a later effect (600-800 ms window). In this window, a more negative-going wave for the related condition than for the unrelated condition was found for non-signs in the native signers group. The findings are discussed in relation to current models of lexical access and word recognition. Finally, differences between native and non-native signers point to a less efficient use of phonological information among the non-native signers. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Acquiring concepts and features of novel words by two types of learning: direct mapping and inference.

PubMed

Chen, Shuang; Wang, Lin; Yang, Yufang

2014-04-01

This study examined the semantic representation of novel words learnt in two conditions: directly mapping a novel word to a concept (Direct mapping: DM) and inferring the concept from provided features (Inferred learning: IF). A condition where no definite concept could be inferred (No basic-level meaning: NM) served as a baseline. The semantic representation of the novel word was assessed via a semantic-relatedness judgment task. In this task, the learned novel word served as a prime, while the corresponding concept, an unlearned feature of the concept, and an unrelated word served as targets. ERP responses to the targets, primed by the novel words in the three learning conditions, were compared. For the corresponding concept, smaller N400s were elicited in the DM and IF conditions than in the NM condition, indicating that the concept could be obtained in both learning conditions. However, for the unlearned feature, the targets in the IF condition produced an N400 effect while in the DM condition elicited an LPC effect relative to the NM learning condition. No ERP difference was observed among the three learning conditions for the unrelated words. The results indicate that conditions of learning affect the semantic representation of novel word, and that the unlearned feature was only activated by the novel word in the IF learning condition. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

An associative model of adaptive inference for learning word-referent mappings.

PubMed

Kachergis, George; Yu, Chen; Shiffrin, Richard M

2012-04-01

People can learn word-referent pairs over a short series of individually ambiguous situations containing multiple words and referents (Yu & Smith, 2007, Cognition 106: 1558-1568). Cross-situational statistical learning relies on the repeated co-occurrence of words with their intended referents, but simple co-occurrence counts cannot explain the findings. Mutual exclusivity (ME: an assumption of one-to-one mappings) can reduce ambiguity by leveraging prior experience to restrict the number of word-referent pairings considered but can also block learning of non-one-to-one mappings. The present study first trained learners on one-to-one mappings with varying numbers of repetitions. In late training, a new set of word-referent pairs were introduced alongside pretrained pairs; each pretrained pair consistently appeared with a new pair. Results indicate that (1) learners quickly infer new pairs in late training on the basis of their knowledge of pretrained pairs, exhibiting ME; and (2) learners also adaptively relax the ME bias and learn two-to-two mappings involving both pretrained and new words and objects. We present an associative model that accounts for both results using competing familiarity and uncertainty biases.

The Role of the Left Head of Caudate in Suppressing Irrelevant Words

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ali, Nilufa; Green, David W.; Kherif, Ferath; Devlin, Joseph T.; Price, Cathy J.

2010-01-01

Suppressing irrelevant words is essential to successful speech production and is expected to involve general control mechanisms that reduce interference from task-unrelated processing. To investigate the neural mechanisms that suppress visual word interference, we used fMRI and a Stroop task, using a block design with an event-related analysis.…

Preview Fixation Duration Modulates Identical and Semantic Preview Benefit in Chinese Reading

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yan, Ming; Risse, Sarah; Zhou, Xiaolin; Kliegl, Reinhold

2012-01-01

Semantic preview benefit from parafoveal words is critical for proposals of distributed lexical processing during reading. Semantic preview benefit has been demonstrated for Chinese reading with the boundary paradigm in which unrelated or semantically related previews of a target word "N" + 1 are replaced by the target word once the eyes cross an…

Seeing for speaking: Semantic and lexical information provided by briefly presented, naturalistic action scenes

PubMed Central

Bölte, Jens; Hofmann, Reinhild; Meier, Claudine C.; Dobel, Christian

2018-01-01

At the interface between scene perception and speech production, we investigated how rapidly action scenes can activate semantic and lexical information. Experiment 1 examined how complex action-scene primes, presented for 150 ms, 100 ms, or 50 ms and subsequently masked, influenced the speed with which immediately following action-picture targets are named. Prime and target actions were either identical, showed the same action with different actors and environments, or were unrelated. Relative to unrelated primes, identical and same-action primes facilitated naming the target action, even when presented for 50 ms. In Experiment 2, neutral primes assessed the direction of effects. Identical and same-action scenes induced facilitation but unrelated actions induced interference. In Experiment 3, written verbs were used as targets for naming, preceded by action primes. When target verbs denoted the prime action, clear facilitation was obtained. In contrast, interference was observed when target verbs were phonologically similar, but otherwise unrelated, to the names of prime actions. This is clear evidence for word-form activation by masked action scenes. Masked action pictures thus provide conceptual information that is detailed enough to facilitate apprehension and naming of immediately following scenes. Masked actions even activate their word-form information–as is evident when targets are words. We thus show how language production can be primed with briefly flashed masked action scenes, in answer to long-standing questions in scene processing. PMID:29652939

Truthiness and falsiness of trivia claims depend on judgmental contexts.

PubMed

Newman, Eryn J; Garry, Maryanne; Unkelbach, Christian; Bernstein, Daniel M; Lindsay, D Stephen; Nash, Robert A

2015-09-01

When people rapidly judge the truth of claims presented with or without related but nonprobative photos, the photos tend to inflate the subjective truth of those claims--a "truthiness" effect (Newman et al., 2012). For example, people more often judged the claim "Macadamia nuts are in the same evolutionary family as peaches" to be true when the claim appeared with a photo of a bowl of macadamia nuts than when it appeared alone. We report several replications of that effect and 3 qualitatively new findings: (a) in a within-subjects design, when people judged claims paired with a mix of related, unrelated, or no photos, related photos produced truthiness but unrelated photos had no significant effect relative to no photos; (b) in a mixed design, when people judged claims paired with related (or unrelated) and no photos, related photos produced truthiness and unrelated photos produced "falseness;" and (c) in a fully between design, when people judged claims paired with either related, unrelated, or no photos, neither truthiness nor falsiness occurred. Our results suggest that photos influence people's judgments when a discrepancy arises in the expected ease of processing, and also support a mechanism in which-against a backdrop of an expected standard-related photos help people generate pseudoevidence to support claims. (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).

Perceiving non-native speech: Word segmentation

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Mondini, Michèle; Miller, Joanne L.

2004-05-01

One important source of information listeners use to segment speech into discrete words is allophonic variation at word junctures. Previous research has shown that non-native speakers impose their native-language phonetic norms on their second language; as a consequence, non-native speech may (in some cases) exhibit altered patterns of allophonic variation at word junctures. We investigated the perceptual consequences of this for word segmentation by presenting native-English listeners with English word pairs produced either by six native-English speakers or six highly fluent, native-French speakers of English. The target word pairs had contrastive word juncture involving voiceless stop consonants (e.g., why pink/wipe ink; gray ties/great eyes; we cash/weak ash). The task was to identify randomized instances of each individual target word pair (as well as control pairs) by selecting one of four possible choices (e.g., why pink, wipe ink, why ink, wipe pink). Overall, listeners were more accurate in identifying target word pairs produced by the native-English speakers than by the non-native English speakers. These findings suggest that one contribution to the processing cost associated with listening to non-native speech may be the presence of altered allophonic information important for word segmentation. [Work supported by NIH/NIDCD.

Manipulability impairs association-memory: revisiting effects of incidental motor processing on verbal paired-associates.

PubMed

Madan, Christopher R

2014-06-01

Imageability is known to enhance association-memory for verbal paired-associates. High-imageability words can be further subdivided by manipulability, the ease by which the named object can be functionally interacted with. Prior studies suggest that motor processing enhances item-memory, but impairs association-memory. However, these studies used action verbs and concrete nouns as the high- and low-manipulability words, respectively, confounding manipulability with word class. Recent findings demonstrated that nouns can serve as both high- and low-manipulability words (e.g., CAMERA and TABLE, respectively), allowing us to avoid this confound. Here participants studied pairs of words that consisted of all possible pairings of high- and low-manipulability words and were tested with immediate cued recall. Recall was worse for pairs that contained high-manipulability words. In free recall, participants recalled more high- than low-manipulability words. Our results provide further evidence that manipulability influences memory, likely occurring through automatic motor imagery. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Task choice and semantic interference in picture naming.

PubMed

Piai, Vitória; Roelofs, Ardi; Schriefers, Herbert

2015-05-01

Evidence from dual-task performance indicates that speakers prefer not to select simultaneous responses in picture naming and another unrelated task, suggesting a response selection bottleneck in naming. In particular, when participants respond to tones with a manual response and name pictures with superimposed semantically related or unrelated distractor words, semantic interference in naming tends to be constant across stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) between the tone stimulus and the picture-word stimulus. In the present study, we examine whether semantic interference in picture naming depends on SOA in case of a task choice (naming the picture vs reading the word of a picture-word stimulus) based on tones. This situation requires concurrent processing of the tone stimulus and the picture-word stimulus, but not a manual response to the tones. On each trial, participants either named a picture or read aloud a word depending on the pitch of a tone, which was presented simultaneously with picture-word onset or 350 ms or 1000 ms before picture-word onset. Semantic interference was present with tone pre-exposure, but absent when tone and picture-word stimulus were presented simultaneously. Against the background of the available studies, these results support an account according to which speakers tend to avoid concurrent response selection, but can engage in other types of concurrent processing, such as task choices. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Maintenance Rehearsal: The Key to the Role Attention Plays in Storage and Forgetting

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

McFarlane, Kimberley A.; Humphreys, Michael S.

2012-01-01

Research with the maintenance-rehearsal paradigm, in which word pairs are rehearsed as distractor material during a series of digit recall trials, has previously indicated that low frequency and new word pairs capture attention to a greater degree than high frequency and old word pairs. This impacts delayed recognition of the pairs and interferes…

Aging and IQ effects on associative recognition and priming in item recognition

PubMed Central

McKoon, Gail; Ratcliff, Roger

2012-01-01

Two ways to examine memory for associative relationships between pairs of words were tested: an explicit method, associative recognition, and an implicit method, priming in item recognition. In an experiment with both kinds of tests, participants were asked to learn pairs of words. For the explicit test, participants were asked to decide whether two words of a test pair had been studied in the same or different pairs. For the implicit test, participants were asked to decide whether single words had or had not been among the studied pairs. Some test words were immediately preceded in the test list by the other word of the same pair and some by a word from a different pair. Diffusion model (Ratcliff, 1978; Ratcliff & McKoon, 2008) analyses were carried out for both tasks for college-age participants, 60–74 year olds, and 75–90 year olds, and for higher- and lower-IQ participants, in order to compare the two measures of associative strength. Results showed parallel behavior of drift rates for associative recognition and priming across ages and across IQ, indicating that they are based, at least to some degree, on the same information in memory. PMID:24976676

Activating Situation Schemas: The Effects of Multiple Thematic Roles on Related Verbs in a Continuous Priming Paradigm

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Herlofsky, Stacey M.; Edmonds, Lisa A.

2013-01-01

Extensive evidence has shown that presentation of a word (target) following a related word (prime) results in faster reaction times compared to unrelated words. Two primes preceding a target have been used to examine the effects of multiple influences on a target. Several studies have observed greater, or additive, priming effects of multiple…

Effects on Vocabulary Acquisition of Presenting New Words in Semantic Sets versus Semantically Unrelated Sets

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Erten, Ismail Hakki; Tekin, Mustafa

2008-01-01

This paper reports on a study which investigated the effect on vocabulary recall of introducing new words via two different methods. A one-group quasi-experimental research design with alternating time series measures was employed. A group of 60 fourth graders were taught 80 carefully selected words either in semantically related sets or…

Form Overrides Meaning When Bilinguals Monitor for Errors

PubMed Central

Ivanova, Iva; Ferreira, Victor S.; Gollan, Tamar H.

2016-01-01

Bilinguals rarely produce unintended language switches, which may in part be because switches are detected and corrected by an internal monitor. But are language switches easier or harder to detect than within-language semantic errors? To approximate internal monitoring, bilinguals listened (Experiment 1) or read aloud (Experiment 2) stories, and detected language switches (translation equivalents or semantically unrelated to expected words) and within-language errors (semantically related or unrelated to expected words). Bilinguals detected semantically related within-language errors most slowly and least accurately, language switches more quickly and accurately than within-language errors, and (in Experiment 2), translation equivalents as quickly and accurately as unrelated language switches. These results suggest that internal monitoring of form (which can detect mismatches in language membership) completes earlier than, and is independent of, monitoring of meaning. However, analysis of reading times prior to error detection revealed meaning violations to be more disruptive for processing than language violations. PMID:28649169

Reconsidering the role of temporal order in spoken word recognition.

PubMed

Toscano, Joseph C; Anderson, Nathaniel D; McMurray, Bob

2013-10-01

Models of spoken word recognition assume that words are represented as sequences of phonemes. We evaluated this assumption by examining phonemic anadromes, words that share the same phonemes but differ in their order (e.g., sub and bus). Using the visual-world paradigm, we found that listeners show more fixations to anadromes (e.g., sub when bus is the target) than to unrelated words (well) and to words that share the same vowel but not the same set of phonemes (sun). This contrasts with the predictions of existing models and suggests that words are not defined as strict sequences of phonemes.

Level of Formal Thought and Organizational Memory Strategies.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wyatt, Kathryn B.; Geis, Mary Fulcher

1978-01-01

Early and late formal-operational adolescents having similar ages and IQs were presented tasks to assess their use of organizational memory strategies: multitrial free recall of unrelated and categorized words and a sorting task followed by free recall of the sorted words. (Author/SS)

Picture-Induced Semantic Interference Reflects Lexical Competition during Object Naming

PubMed Central

Aristei, Sabrina; Zwitserlood, Pienie; Rahman, Rasha Abdel

2012-01-01

With a picture–picture experiment, we contrasted competitive and non-competitive models of lexical selection during language production. Participants produced novel noun–noun compounds in response to two adjacently displayed objects that were categorically related or unrelated (e.g., depicted objects: apple and cherry; naming response: “apple–cherry”). We observed semantic interference, with slower compound naming for related relative to unrelated pictures, very similar to interference effects produced by semantically related context words in picture–word-interference paradigms. This finding suggests that previous failures to observe reliable interference induced by context pictures may be due to the weakness of lexical activation and competition induced by pictures, relative to words. The production of both picture names within one integrated compound word clearly enhances lexical activation, resulting in measurable interference effects. We interpret this interference as resulting from lexical competition, because the alternative interpretation, in terms of response-exclusion from the articulatory buffer, does not apply to pictures, even when they are named. PMID:22363304

A Bootstrapping Model of Frequency and Context Effects in Word Learning.

PubMed

Kachergis, George; Yu, Chen; Shiffrin, Richard M

2017-04-01

Prior research has shown that people can learn many nouns (i.e., word-object mappings) from a short series of ambiguous situations containing multiple words and objects. For successful cross-situational learning, people must approximately track which words and referents co-occur most frequently. This study investigates the effects of allowing some word-referent pairs to appear more frequently than others, as is true in real-world learning environments. Surprisingly, high-frequency pairs are not always learned better, but can also boost learning of other pairs. Using a recent associative model (Kachergis, Yu, & Shiffrin, 2012), we explain how mixing pairs of different frequencies can bootstrap late learning of the low-frequency pairs based on early learning of higher frequency pairs. We also manipulate contextual diversity, the number of pairs a given pair appears with across training, since it is naturalistically confounded with frequency. The associative model has competing familiarity and uncertainty biases, and their interaction is able to capture the individual and combined effects of frequency and contextual diversity on human learning. Two other recent word-learning models do not account for the behavioral findings. Copyright © 2016 Cognitive Science Society, Inc.

Detecting causality from online psychiatric texts using inter-sentential language patterns

PubMed Central

2012-01-01

Background Online psychiatric texts are natural language texts expressing depressive problems, published by Internet users via community-based web services such as web forums, message boards and blogs. Understanding the cause-effect relations embedded in these psychiatric texts can provide insight into the authors’ problems, thus increasing the effectiveness of online psychiatric services. Methods Previous studies have proposed the use of word pairs extracted from a set of sentence pairs to identify cause-effect relations between sentences. A word pair is made up of two words, with one coming from the cause text span and the other from the effect text span. Analysis of the relationship between these words can be used to capture individual word associations between cause and effect sentences. For instance, (broke up, life) and (boyfriend, meaningless) are two word pairs extracted from the sentence pair: “I broke up with my boyfriend. Life is now meaningless to me”. The major limitation of word pairs is that individual words in sentences usually cannot reflect the exact meaning of the cause and effect events, and thus may produce semantically incomplete word pairs, as the previous examples show. Therefore, this study proposes the use of inter-sentential language patterns such as ≪broke up, boyfriend>,

Functions of graphemic and phonemic codes in visual word-recognition.

PubMed

Meyer, D E; Schvaneveldt, R W; Ruddy, M G

1974-03-01

Previous investigators have argued that printed words are recognized directly from visual representations and/or phonological representations obtained through phonemic recoding. The present research tested these hypotheses by manipulating graphemic and phonemic relations within various pairs of letter strings. Ss in two experiments classified the pairs as words or nonwords. Reaction times and error rates were relatively small for word pairs (e.g., BRIBE-TRIBE) that were both graphemically, and phonemically similar. Graphemic similarity alone inhibited performance on other word pairs (e.g., COUCH-TOUCH). These and other results suggest that phonological representations play a significant role in visual word recognition and that there is a dependence between successive phonemic-encoding operations. An encoding-bias model is proposed to explain the data.

Mind wandering and retrieval from episodic memory: a pilot event-related potential study.

PubMed

Riby, Leigh Martin; Smallwood, Jonathan; Gunn, Valerie P

2008-06-01

The present study investigated the effects of mind wandering (task-unrelated thought) on the subcomponents of episodic memory as reflected by event-related potentials (ERPs). Specifically, individual differences in the pattern of ERP episodic 'old/new' effects (left-parietal, right-frontal and central-negativity effects) were examined across groups of participants experiencing either high or low frequencies of task-unrelated thought during encoding. Twenty participants studied lists of words and line drawings in one of two contexts (red versus green coloured boxes). At test, participants discriminated between target (old words or line drawings presented in one colour) and nontargets (old items from the other colour and new items). On completion of the memory task, participants completed the 'thinking' component of the Dundee Stress State Questionnaire to provide a retrospective measure of task-unrelated thought. Behavioural data indicated that irrespective of the presence of task-unrelated thought, participants were able to complete the memory task equally well. However, an analysis of ERPs across High and Low task-unrelated thought groups revealed differences in retrieval strategy. Those individuals with infrequent episodes of task-unrelated thought at study used a 'pure' recollection strategy (left-parietal effect only). Conversely, those participants experiencing frequent episodes of task-unrelated thought were unable to recollect the stimuli with ease, as indexed by a diminished parietal effect. As a consequence, these participants employed additional strategic processes for task completion, as indexed by an elevated amplitude of central negativity effects. These data are consistent with the decoupling hypothesis of mind wandering which suggests impaired recollection when attention becomes directed away from the task.

Mirror neurons, the representation of word meaning, and the foot of the third left frontal convolution.

PubMed

de Zubicaray, Greig; Postle, Natasha; McMahon, Katie; Meredith, Matthew; Ashton, Roderick

2010-01-01

Previous neuroimaging research has attempted to demonstrate a preferential involvement of the human mirror neuron system (MNS) in the comprehension of effector-related action word (verb) meanings. These studies have assumed that Broca's area (or Brodmann's area 44) is the homologue of a monkey premotor area (F5) containing mouth and hand mirror neurons, and that action word meanings are shared with the mirror system due to a proposed link between speech and gestural communication. In an fMRI experiment, we investigated whether Broca's area shows mirror activity solely for effectors implicated in the MNS. Next, we examined the responses of empirically determined mirror areas during a language perception task comprising effector-specific action words, unrelated words and nonwords. We found overlapping activity for observation and execution of actions with all effectors studied, i.e., including the foot, despite there being no evidence of foot mirror neurons in the monkey or human brain. These "mirror" areas showed equivalent responses for action words, unrelated words and nonwords, with all of these stimuli showing increased responses relative to visual character strings. Our results support alternative explanations attributing mirror activity in Broca's area to covert verbalisation or hierarchical linearisation, and provide no evidence that the MNS makes a preferential contribution to comprehending action word meanings. 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Skilled adult readers activate the meanings of high-frequency words using phonology: Evidence from eye tracking.

PubMed

Jared, Debra; O'Donnell, Katrina

2017-02-01

We examined whether highly skilled adult readers activate the meanings of high-frequency words using phonology when reading sentences for meaning. A homophone-error paradigm was used. Sentences were written to fit 1 member of a homophone pair, and then 2 other versions were created in which the homophone was replaced by its mate or a spelling-control word. The error words were all high-frequency words, and the correct homophones were either higher-frequency words or low-frequency words-that is, the homophone errors were either the subordinate or dominant member of the pair. Participants read sentences as their eye movements were tracked. When the high-frequency homophone error words were the subordinate member of the homophone pair, participants had shorter immediate eye-fixation latencies on these words than on matched spelling-control words. In contrast, when the high-frequency homophone error words were the dominant member of the homophone pair, a difference between these words and spelling controls was delayed. These findings provide clear evidence that the meanings of high-frequency words are activated by phonological representations when skilled readers read sentences for meaning. Explanations of the differing patterns of results depending on homophone dominance are discussed.

Dual-process models of associative recognition in young and older adults: evidence from receiver operating characteristics.

PubMed

Healy, Michael R; Light, Leah L; Chung, Christie

2005-07-01

In 3 experiments, young and older adults studied lists of unrelated word pairs and were given confidence-rated item and associative recognition tests. Several different models of recognition were fit to the confidence-rating data using techniques described by S. Macho (2002, 2004). Concordant with previous findings, item recognition data were best fit by an unequal-variance signal detection theory model for both young and older adults. For both age groups, associative recognition performance was best explained by models incorporating both recollection and familiarity components. Examination of parameter estimates supported the conclusion that recollection is reduced in old age, but inferences about age differences in familiarity were highly model dependent. Implications for dual-process models of memory in old age are discussed. ((c) 2005 APA, all rights reserved).

The Influence of Item Properties on Association-Memory

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Madan, Christopher R.; Glaholt, Mackenzie G.; Caplan, Jeremy B.

2010-01-01

Word properties like imageability and word frequency improve cued recall of verbal paired-associates. We asked whether these enhancements follow simply from prior effects on item-memory, or also strengthen associations between items. Participants studied word pairs varying in imageability or frequency: pairs were "pure" (high-high, low-low) or…

The Inhibitory Mechanism in Learning Ambiguous Words in a Second Language

PubMed Central

Lu, Yao; Wu, Junjie; Dunlap, Susan; Chen, Baoguo

2017-01-01

Ambiguous words are hard to learn, yet little is known about what causes this difficulty. The current study aimed to investigate the relationship between the representations of new and prior meanings of ambiguous words in second language (L2) learning, and to explore the function of inhibitory control on L2 ambiguous word learning at the initial stage of learning. During a 4-day learning phase, Chinese–English bilinguals learned 30 novel English words for 30 min per day using bilingual flashcards. Half of the words to be learned were unambiguous (had one meaning) and half were ambiguous (had two semantically unrelated meanings learned in sequence). Inhibitory control was introduced as a subject variable measured by a Stroop task. The semantic representations established for the studied items were probed using a cross-language semantic relatedness judgment task, in which the learned English words served as the prime, and the targets were either semantically related or unrelated to the prime. Results showed that response latencies for the second meaning of ambiguous words were slower than for the first meaning and for unambiguous words, and that performance on only the second meaning of ambiguous words was predicted by inhibitory control ability. These results suggest that, at the initial stage of L2 ambiguous word learning, the representation of the second meaning is weak, probably interfered with by the representation of the prior learned meaning. Moreover, inhibitory control may modulate learning of the new meanings, such that individuals with better inhibitory control may more effectively suppress interference from the first meaning, and thus learn the new meaning more quickly. PMID:28496423

The Inhibitory Mechanism in Learning Ambiguous Words in a Second Language.

PubMed

Lu, Yao; Wu, Junjie; Dunlap, Susan; Chen, Baoguo

2017-01-01

Ambiguous words are hard to learn, yet little is known about what causes this difficulty. The current study aimed to investigate the relationship between the representations of new and prior meanings of ambiguous words in second language (L2) learning, and to explore the function of inhibitory control on L2 ambiguous word learning at the initial stage of learning. During a 4-day learning phase, Chinese-English bilinguals learned 30 novel English words for 30 min per day using bilingual flashcards. Half of the words to be learned were unambiguous (had one meaning) and half were ambiguous (had two semantically unrelated meanings learned in sequence). Inhibitory control was introduced as a subject variable measured by a Stroop task. The semantic representations established for the studied items were probed using a cross-language semantic relatedness judgment task, in which the learned English words served as the prime, and the targets were either semantically related or unrelated to the prime. Results showed that response latencies for the second meaning of ambiguous words were slower than for the first meaning and for unambiguous words, and that performance on only the second meaning of ambiguous words was predicted by inhibitory control ability. These results suggest that, at the initial stage of L2 ambiguous word learning, the representation of the second meaning is weak, probably interfered with by the representation of the prior learned meaning. Moreover, inhibitory control may modulate learning of the new meanings, such that individuals with better inhibitory control may more effectively suppress interference from the first meaning, and thus learn the new meaning more quickly.

Orthographic and Semantic Processing in Young Readers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Polse, Lara R.; Reilly, Judy S.

2015-01-01

This investigation examined orthographic and semantic processing during reading acquisition. Children in first to fourth grade were presented with a target word and two response alternatives, and were asked to identify the semantic match. Words were presented in four conditions: an exact match and unrelated foil (STONE-STONE-EARS), an exact match…

Tracing Attention and the Activation Flow of Spoken Word Planning Using Eye Movements

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Roelofs, Ardi

2008-01-01

The flow of activation from concepts to phonological forms within the word production system was examined in 3 experiments. In Experiment 1, participants named pictures while ignoring superimposed distractor pictures that were semantically related, phonologically related, or unrelated. Eye movements and naming latencies were recorded. The…

Sentence Context and Word-Picture Cued-Recall Paired-Associate Learning Procedure Boosts Recall in Normal and Mild Alzheimer's Disease Patients.

PubMed

Iodice, Rosario; Meilán, Juan José García; Ramos, Juan Carro; Small, Jeff A

2018-01-01

The aim of this study was to employ the word-picture paradigm to examine the effectiveness of combined pictorial illustrations and sentences as strong contextual cues. The experiment details the performance of word recall in healthy older adults (HOA) and mild Alzheimer's disease (AD). The researchers enhanced the words' recall with word-picture condition and when the pair was associated with a sentence contextualizing the two items. The sample was composed of 18 HOA and 18 people with mild AD. Participants memorized 15 pairs of words under word-word and word-picture conditions, with and without a sentence context. In the paired-associate test, the first item of the pair was read aloud by participants and used to elicit retrieval of the associated item. The findings suggest that both HOA and mild-AD pictures improved item recall compared to word condition such as sentences which further enabled item recall. Additionally, the HOA group performs better than the mild-AD group in all conditions. Word-picture and sentence context strengthen the encoding in the explicit memory task, both in HOA and mild AD. These results open a potential window to improve the memory for verbalized instructions and restore sequential abilities in everyday life, such as brushing one's teeth, fastening one's pants, or drying one's hands.

Sentence Context and Word-Picture Cued-Recall Paired-Associate Learning Procedure Boosts Recall in Normal and Mild Alzheimer's Disease Patients

PubMed Central

Meilán, Juan José García; Ramos, Juan Carro; Small, Jeff A.

2018-01-01

Introduction The aim of this study was to employ the word-picture paradigm to examine the effectiveness of combined pictorial illustrations and sentences as strong contextual cues. The experiment details the performance of word recall in healthy older adults (HOA) and mild Alzheimer's disease (AD). The researchers enhanced the words' recall with word-picture condition and when the pair was associated with a sentence contextualizing the two items. Method The sample was composed of 18 HOA and 18 people with mild AD. Participants memorized 15 pairs of words under word-word and word-picture conditions, with and without a sentence context. In the paired-associate test, the first item of the pair was read aloud by participants and used to elicit retrieval of the associated item. Results The findings suggest that both HOA and mild-AD pictures improved item recall compared to word condition such as sentences which further enabled item recall. Additionally, the HOA group performs better than the mild-AD group in all conditions. Conclusions Word-picture and sentence context strengthen the encoding in the explicit memory task, both in HOA and mild AD. These results open a potential window to improve the memory for verbalized instructions and restore sequential abilities in everyday life, such as brushing one's teeth, fastening one's pants, or drying one's hands. PMID:29849813

Fingerprinting of HLA class I genes for improved selection of unrelated bone marrow donors.

PubMed

Martinelli, G; Farabegoli, P; Buzzi, M; Panzica, G; Zaccaria, A; Bandini, G; Calori, E; Testoni, N; Rosti, G; Conte, R; Remiddi, C; Salvucci, M; De Vivo, A; Tura, S

1996-02-01

The degree of matching of HLA genes between the selected donor and recipient is an important aspect of the selection of unrelated donors for allogeneic bone marrow transplantation (UBMT). The most sensitive methods currently used are serological typing of HLA class I genes, mixed lymphocyte culture (MLC), IEF and molecular genotyping of HLA class II genes by direct sequencing of PCR products. Serological typing of class I antigenes (A, B and C) fails to detect minor differences demonstrated by direct sequencing of DNA polymorphic regions. Molecular genotyping of HLA class I genes by DNA analysis is costly and work-intensive. To improve compatibility between donor and recipient, we have set up a new rapid and non-radioisotopic application of the 'fingerprinting PCR' technique for the analysis of the polymorphic second exon of the HLA class I A, B and C genes. This technique is based on the formation of specific patterns (PCR fingerprints) of homoduplexes and heteroduplexes between heterologous amplified DNA sequences. After an electrophoretic run on non-denaturing polyacrylamide gel, different HLA class I types give allele-specific banding patterns. HLA class I matching is performed, after the gel has been soaked in ethidium bromide or silver-stained, by visual comparison of patients' fingerprints with those of donors. Identity can be confirmed by mixing donor and recipient DNAs in an amplification cross-match. To assess the technique, 10 normal samples, 22 related allogeneic bone marrow transplanted pairs and 10 unrelated HLA-A and HLA-B serologically matched patient-donor pairs were analysed for HLA class I polymorphic regions. In all the related pairs and in 1/10 unrelated pairs, matched donor-recipient patterns were identified. This new application of PCR fingerprinting may confirm the HLA class I serological selection of unrelated marrow donors.

Speech Discrimination in Preschool Children: A Comparison of Two Tasks.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Menary, Susan; And Others

1982-01-01

Eleven four-year-old children were tested for discrimination of the following word pairs: rope/robe, seat/seed, pick/pig, ice/eyes, and mouse/mouth. All word pairs were found to be discriminable, but performance on seat/seed and mouse/mouth was inferior to that of the other word pairs. (Author)

Effects of perceptual similarity but not semantic association on false recognition in aging

PubMed Central

Gill, Emma

2017-01-01

This study investigated semantic and perceptual influences on false recognition in older and young adults in a variant on the Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm. In two experiments, participants encoded intermixed sets of semantically associated words, and sets of unrelated words. Each set was presented in a shared distinctive font. Older adults were no more likely to falsely recognize semantically associated lure words compared to unrelated lures also presented in studied fonts. However, they showed an increase in false recognition of lures which were related to studied items only by a shared font. This increased false recognition was associated with recollective experience. The data show that older adults do not always rely more on prior knowledge in episodic memory tasks. They converge with other findings suggesting that older adults may also be more prone to perceptually-driven errors. PMID:29302398

Separable Processes Before, During, and After the N400 Elicited by Previously Inferred and New Information: Evidence from Time-Frequency Decompositions

PubMed Central

Steele, Vaughn R.; Bernat, Edward M.; van den Broek, Paul; Collins, Paul F.; Patrick, Christopher J.; Marsolek, Chad J.

2012-01-01

Successful comprehension during reading often requires inferring information not explicitly presented. This information is readily accessible when subsequently encountered, and a neural correlate of this is an attenuation of the N400 event-related potential (ERP). We used ERPs and time-frequency (TF) analysis to investigate neural correlates of processing inferred information after a causal coherence inference had been generated during text comprehension. Participants read short texts, some of which promoted inference generation. After each text, they performed lexical decisions to target words that were unrelated or inference-related to the preceding text. Consistent with previous findings, inference-related words elicited an attenuated N400 relative to unrelated words. TF analyses revealed unique contributions to the N400 from activity occurring at 1–6 Hz (theta) and 0–2 Hz (delta), supporting the view that multiple, sequential processes underlie the N400. PMID:23165117

Syllabic encoding during overt speech production in Cantonese: Evidence from temporal brain responses.

PubMed

Wong, Andus Wing-Kuen; Wang, Jie; Ng, Tin-Yan; Chen, Hsuan-Chih

2016-10-01

The time course of phonological encoding in overt Cantonese disyllabic word production was investigated using a picture-word interference task with concurrent recording of the event-related brain potentials (ERPs). Participants were asked to name aloud individually presented pictures and ignore a distracting Chinese character. Participants' naming responses were faster, relative to an unrelated control, when the distractor overlapped with the target's word-initial or word-final syllables. Furthermore, ERP waves in the syllable-related conditions were more positive-going than those in the unrelated control conditions from 500ms to 650ms post target onset (i.e., a late positivity). The mean and peak amplitudes of this late positivity correlated with the size of phonological facilitation. More importantly, the onset of the late positivity associated with word-initial syllable priming was 44ms earlier than that associated with word-final syllable priming, suggesting that phonological encoding in overt speech runs incrementally and the encoding duration for one syllable unit is approximately 44ms. Although the size of effective phonological units might vary across languages, as suggested by previous speech production studies, the present data indicate that the incremental nature of phonological encoding is a universal mechanism. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Subliminal semantic priming in speech.

PubMed

Daltrozzo, Jérôme; Signoret, Carine; Tillmann, Barbara; Perrin, Fabien

2011-01-01

Numerous studies have reported subliminal repetition and semantic priming in the visual modality. We transferred this paradigm to the auditory modality. Prime awareness was manipulated by a reduction of sound intensity level. Uncategorized prime words (according to a post-test) were followed by semantically related, unrelated, or repeated target words (presented without intensity reduction) and participants performed a lexical decision task (LDT). Participants with slower reaction times in the LDT showed semantic priming (faster reaction times for semantically related compared to unrelated targets) and negative repetition priming (slower reaction times for repeated compared to semantically related targets). This is the first report of semantic priming in the auditory modality without conscious categorization of the prime.

Subliminal Semantic Priming in Speech

PubMed Central

Tillmann, Barbara; Perrin, Fabien

2011-01-01

Numerous studies have reported subliminal repetition and semantic priming in the visual modality. We transferred this paradigm to the auditory modality. Prime awareness was manipulated by a reduction of sound intensity level. Uncategorized prime words (according to a post-test) were followed by semantically related, unrelated, or repeated target words (presented without intensity reduction) and participants performed a lexical decision task (LDT). Participants with slower reaction times in the LDT showed semantic priming (faster reaction times for semantically related compared to unrelated targets) and negative repetition priming (slower reaction times for repeated compared to semantically related targets). This is the first report of semantic priming in the auditory modality without conscious categorization of the prime. PMID:21655277

Time for prediction? The effect of presentation rate on predictive sentence comprehension during word-by-word reading

PubMed Central

Wlotko, Edward W.; Federmeier, Kara D.

2015-01-01

Predictive processing is a core component of normal language comprehension, but the brain may not engage in prediction to the same extent in all circumstances. This study investigates the effects of timing on anticipatory comprehension mechanisms. Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded while participants read two-sentence mini-scenarios previously shown to elicit prediction-related effects for implausible items that are categorically related to expected items (‘They wanted to make the hotel look more like a tropical resort. So along the driveway they planted rows of PALMS/PINES/TULIPS.’). The first sentence of every pair was presented in its entirety and was self-paced. The second sentence was presented word-by-word with a fixed stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) of either 500 ms or 250 ms that was manipulated in a within-subjects blocked design. Amplitudes of the N400 ERP component are taken as a neural index of demands on semantic processing. At 500 ms SOA, implausible words related to predictable words elicited reduced N400 amplitudes compared to unrelated words (PINES vs. TULIPS), replicating past studies. At 250 ms SOA this prediction-related semantic facilitation was diminished. Thus, timing is a factor in determining the extent to which anticipatory mechanisms are engaged. However, we found evidence that prediction can sometimes be engaged even under speeded presentation rates. Participants who first read sentences in the 250 ms SOA block showed no effect of semantic similarity for this SOA, although these same participants showed the effect in the second block with 500 ms SOA. However, participants who first read sentences in the 500 ms SOA block continued to show the N400 semantic similarity effect in the 250 ms SOA block. These findings add to results showing that the brain flexibly allocates resources to most effectively achieve comprehension goals given the current processing environment. PMID:25987437

A benefit of context reinstatement to recognition memory in aging: the role of familiarity processes.

PubMed

Ward, Emma V; Maylor, Elizabeth A; Poirier, Marie; Korko, Malgorzata; Ruud, Jens C M

2017-11-01

Reinstatement of encoding context facilitates memory for targets in young and older individuals (e.g., a word studied on a particular background scene is more likely to be remembered later if it is presented on the same rather than a different scene or no scene), yet older adults are typically inferior at recalling and recognizing target-context pairings. This study examined the mechanisms of the context effect in normal aging. Age differences in word recognition by context condition (original, switched, none, new), and the ability to explicitly remember target-context pairings were investigated using word-scene pairs (Experiment 1) and word-word pairs (Experiment 2). Both age groups benefited from context reinstatement in item recognition, although older adults were significantly worse than young adults at identifying original pairings and at discriminating between original and switched pairings. In Experiment 3, participants were given a three-alternative forced-choice recognition task that allowed older individuals to draw upon intact familiarity processes in selecting original pairings. Performance was age equivalent. Findings suggest that heightened familiarity associated with context reinstatement is useful for boosting recognition memory in aging.

Electrophysiological Evidence of Early Word Learning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Junge, Caroline; Cutler, Anne; Hagoort, Peter

2012-01-01

Around their first birthday infants begin to talk, yet they comprehend words long before. This study investigated the event-related potentials (ERP) responses of nine-month-olds on basic level picture-word pairings. After a familiarization phase of six picture-word pairings per semantic category, comprehension for novel exemplars was tested in a…

Degree of Illiteracy and Phonological and Metaphonological Skills in Unschooled Adults

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Loureiro, Clara de Santos; Willadino Braga, Lucia; Souza, Ligia do Nascimento; Filho, Gilberto Nunes; Queiroz, Elizabeth; Dellatolas, Georges

2004-01-01

Phonological and metaphonological skills are explored in 97 Brazilian illiterate and semiliterate adults. A simple letter- and word-reading task was used to define the degree of illiteracy. Phonemic awareness was strongly dependent on the level of letter and word reading ability. Phonological memory was very low in illiterates and unrelated to…

Suggestion-Induced Modulation of Semantic Priming during Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging

PubMed Central

Ulrich, Martin; Kiefer, Markus; Bongartz, Walter; Grön, Georg; Hoenig, Klaus

2015-01-01

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging during a primed visual lexical decision task, we investigated the neural and functional mechanisms underlying modulations of semantic word processing through hypnotic suggestions aimed at altering lexical processing of primes. The priming task was to discriminate between target words and pseudowords presented 200 ms after the prime word which was semantically related or unrelated to the target. In a counterbalanced study design, each participant performed the task once at normal wakefulness and once after the administration of hypnotic suggestions to perceive the prime as a meaningless symbol of a foreign language. Neural correlates of priming were defined as significantly lower activations upon semantically related compared to unrelated trials. We found significant suggestive treatment-induced reductions in neural priming, albeit irrespective of the degree of suggestibility. Neural priming was attenuated upon suggestive treatment compared with normal wakefulness in brain regions supporting automatic (fusiform gyrus) and controlled semantic processing (superior and middle temporal gyri, pre- and postcentral gyri, and supplementary motor area). Hence, suggestions reduced semantic word processing by conjointly dampening both automatic and strategic semantic processes. PMID:25923740

Meaningful Memory in Acute Anorexia Nervosa Patients-Comparing Recall, Learning, and Recognition of Semantically Related and Semantically Unrelated Word Stimuli.

PubMed

Terhoeven, Valentin; Kallen, Ursula; Ingenerf, Katrin; Aschenbrenner, Steffen; Weisbrod, Matthias; Herzog, Wolfgang; Brockmeyer, Timo; Friederich, Hans-Christoph; Nikendei, Christoph

2017-03-01

It is unclear whether observed memory impairment in anorexia nervosa (AN) depends on the semantic structure (categorized words) of material to be encoded. We aimed to investigate the processing of semantically related information in AN. Memory performance was assessed in a recall, learning, and recognition test in 27 adult women with AN (19 restricting, 8 binge-eating/purging subtype; average disease duration: 9.32 years) and 30 healthy controls using an extended version of the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test, applying semantically related and unrelated word stimuli. Short-term memory (immediate recall, learning), regardless of semantics of the words, was significantly worse in AN patients, whereas long-term memory (delayed recall, recognition) did not differ between AN patients and controls. Semantics of stimuli do not have a better effect on memory recall in AN compared to CO. Impaired short-term versus long-term memory is discussed in relation to dysfunctional working memory in AN. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and Eating Disorders Association. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and Eating Disorders Association.

THE EFFECT OF WORD ASSOCIATIONS ON THE RECOGNITION OF FLASHED WORDS.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

SAMUELS, S. JAY

THE HYPOTHESIS THAT WHEN ASSOCIATED PAIRS OF WORDS ARE PRESENTED, SPEED OF RECOGNITION WILL BE FASTER THAN WHEN NONASSOCIATED WORD PAIRS ARE PRESENTED OR WHEN A TARGET WORD IS PRESENTED BY ITSELF WAS TESTED. TWENTY UNIVERSITY STUDENTS, INITIALLY SCREENED FOR VISION, WERE ASSIGNED RANDOMLY TO ROWS OF A 5 X 5 REPEATED-MEASURES LATIN SQUARE DESIGN.…

Perception and the Temporal Properties of Speech.

DTIC Science & Technology

1993-01-11

conditions. In the embedded condition, phoneme sequences equivalent to these words formed the second syllable of a two-syllable word. In the unembedded ... unembedded in the sequence "warm lips". These priming sequences were based on the sequences used in Experiment 2. Each combinable priming sequence in...unrelated, to the embedded or unembedded prime word. The probes used in this experiment were identical to the ones used in Experiment 2. Subjects were tested

Spacing Effects in Vocabulary Learning: Young EFL Learners in Focus

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lotfolahi, Amir Reza; Salehi, Hadi

2017-01-01

This study used a novel method to explore different schedules of spacing in young EFL learners. In doing so, we taught young EFL learners English-Farsi word pairs using different spacing schedules (massed vs. spaced). In the massed condition, learners studied five-word pairs in session one and five-other word pairs one week later. In the spaced…

Picture-Word Differences in the Acquisition and Retention of Paired Associates

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Postman, Leo

1978-01-01

In a study of paired-associate learning and retention, the mode of presentation (pictures versus words) of the stimuli and the responses was varied factorially. Results pose difficulties for current interpretations of picture-word differences. (Editor/RK)

Changing Places: A Cross-Language Perspective on Frequency and Family Size in Dutch and Hebrew

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Moscoso del Prado Martin, Fermin; Deutsch, Avital; Frost, Ram; Schreuder, Robert; De Jong, Nivja H.; Baayen, R. Harald

2005-01-01

This study uses the morphological family size effect as a tool for exploring the degree of isomorphism in the networks of morphologically related words in the Hebrew and Dutch mental lexicon. Hebrew and Dutch are genetically unrelated, and they structure their morphologically complex words in very different ways. Two visual lexical decision…

Determinants of Multiple Semantic Priming: A Meta-Analysis and Spike Frequency Adaptive Model of a Cortical Network

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lavigne, Frederic; Dumercy, Laurent; Darmon, Nelly

2011-01-01

Recall and language comprehension while processing sequences of words involves multiple semantic priming between several related and/or unrelated words. Accounting for multiple and interacting priming effects in terms of underlying neuronal structure and dynamics is a challenge for current models of semantic priming. Further elaboration of current…

The Picture-Word Interference Paradigm: Grammatical Class Effects in Lexical Production

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

De Simone, Flavia; Collina, Simona

2016-01-01

Four picture-word interference experiments aimed to test the role of grammatical class in lexical production. In Experiment 1 target nouns and verbs were produced in presence of semantically unrelated distractors that could also be nouns and verbs. Participants were slower when the distractor was of the same grammatical category of the target. To…

Semantic preview benefit during reading.

PubMed

Hohenstein, Sven; Kliegl, Reinhold

2014-01-01

Word features in parafoveal vision influence eye movements during reading. The question of whether readers extract semantic information from parafoveal words was studied in 3 experiments by using a gaze-contingent display change technique. Subjects read German sentences containing 1 of several preview words that were replaced by a target word during the saccade to the preview (boundary paradigm). In the 1st experiment the preview word was semantically related or unrelated to the target. Fixation durations on the target were shorter for semantically related than unrelated previews, consistent with a semantic preview benefit. In the 2nd experiment, half the sentences were presented following the rules of German spelling (i.e., previews and targets were printed with an initial capital letter), and the other half were presented completely in lowercase. A semantic preview benefit was obtained under both conditions. In the 3rd experiment, we introduced 2 further preview conditions, an identical word and a pronounceable nonword, while also manipulating the text contrast. Whereas the contrast had negligible effects, fixation durations on the target were reliably different for all 4 types of preview. Semantic preview benefits were greater for pretarget fixations closer to the boundary (large preview space) and, although not as consistently, for long pretarget fixation durations (long preview time). The results constrain theoretical proposals about eye movement control in reading. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved).

More Limitations to Monolingualism: Bilinguals Outperform Monolinguals in Implicit Word Learning.

PubMed

Escudero, Paola; Mulak, Karen E; Fu, Charlene S L; Singh, Leher

2016-01-01

To succeed at cross-situational word learning, learners must infer word-object mappings by attending to the statistical co-occurrences of novel objects and labels across multiple encounters. While past studies have investigated this as a learning mechanism for infants and monolingual adults, bilinguals' cross-situational word learning abilities have yet to be tested. Here, we compared monolinguals' and bilinguals' performance on a cross-situational word learning paradigm that featured phonologically distinct word pairs (e.g., BON-DEET) and phonologically similar word pairs that varied by a single consonant or vowel segment (e.g., BON-TON, DEET-DIT, respectively). Both groups learned the novel word-referent mappings, providing evidence that cross-situational word learning is a learning strategy also available to bilingual adults. Furthermore, bilinguals were overall more accurate than monolinguals. This supports that bilingualism fosters a wide range of cognitive advantages that may benefit implicit word learning. Additionally, response patterns to the different trial types revealed a relative difficulty for vowel minimal pairs than consonant minimal pairs, replicating the pattern found in monolinguals by Escudero et al. (2016) in a different English accent. Specifically, all participants failed to learn vowel contrasts differentiated by vowel height. We discuss evidence for this bilingual advantage as a language-specific or general advantage.

More Limitations to Monolingualism: Bilinguals Outperform Monolinguals in Implicit Word Learning

PubMed Central

Escudero, Paola; Mulak, Karen E.; Fu, Charlene S. L.; Singh, Leher

2016-01-01

To succeed at cross-situational word learning, learners must infer word-object mappings by attending to the statistical co-occurrences of novel objects and labels across multiple encounters. While past studies have investigated this as a learning mechanism for infants and monolingual adults, bilinguals’ cross-situational word learning abilities have yet to be tested. Here, we compared monolinguals’ and bilinguals’ performance on a cross-situational word learning paradigm that featured phonologically distinct word pairs (e.g., BON-DEET) and phonologically similar word pairs that varied by a single consonant or vowel segment (e.g., BON-TON, DEET-DIT, respectively). Both groups learned the novel word-referent mappings, providing evidence that cross-situational word learning is a learning strategy also available to bilingual adults. Furthermore, bilinguals were overall more accurate than monolinguals. This supports that bilingualism fosters a wide range of cognitive advantages that may benefit implicit word learning. Additionally, response patterns to the different trial types revealed a relative difficulty for vowel minimal pairs than consonant minimal pairs, replicating the pattern found in monolinguals by Escudero et al. (2016) in a different English accent. Specifically, all participants failed to learn vowel contrasts differentiated by vowel height. We discuss evidence for this bilingual advantage as a language-specific or general advantage. PMID:27574513

Semantic and Plausibility Preview Benefit Effects in English: Evidence from Eye Movements

PubMed Central

Schotter, Elizabeth R.; Jia, Annie

2016-01-01

Theories of preview benefit in reading hinge on integration across saccades and the idea that preview benefit is greater the more similar the preview and target are. Schotter (2013) reported preview benefit from a synonymous preview, but it is unclear whether this effect occurs because of similarity between the preview and target (integration), or because of contextual fit of the preview—synonyms satisfy both accounts. Studies in Chinese have found evidence for preview benefit for words that are unrelated to the target, but are contextually plausible (Yang, Li, Wang, Slattery, & Rayner, 2014; Yang, Wang, Tong, & Rayner, 2012), which is incompatible with an integration account but supports a contextual fit account. Here, we used plausible and implausible unrelated previews in addition to plausible synonym, antonym, and identical previews to further investigate these accounts for readers of English. Early reading measures were shorter for all plausible preview conditions compared to the implausible preview condition. In later reading measures, a benefit for the plausible unrelated preview condition was not observed. In a second experiment, we asked questions that probed whether the reader encoded the preview or target. Readers were more likely to report the preview when they had skipped the word and not regressed to it, and when the preview was plausible. Thus, under certain circumstances, the preview word is processed to a high level of representation (i.e., semantic plausibility) regardless of its relationship to the target, but its influence on reading is relatively short-lived, being replaced by the target word, when fixated. PMID:27123754

Does Testing Increase Spontaneous Mediation in Learning Semantically Related Paired Associates?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cho, Kit W.; Neely, James H.; Brennan, Michael K.; Vitrano, Deana; Crocco, Stephanie

2017-01-01

Carpenter (2011) argued that the testing effect she observed for semantically related but associatively unrelated paired associates supports the mediator effectiveness hypothesis. This hypothesis asserts that after the cue-target pair "mother-child" is learned, relative to restudying mother-child, a review test in which…

Adjustment Problems of Sibling and Nonsibling Pairs Referred to a School Mental Health Program

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gallagher, Richard; Cowen, Emory L.

1976-01-01

In this study, siblings who developed school adjustment problems had more similar referral patterns than demographically matched, unrelated referral pairs. This effect was strongest among like sex pairs. Common environmental characteristics leading to similar coping patterns were seen to explain the results. (NG)

Free recall of word lists under total sleep deprivation and after recovery sleep.

PubMed

de Almeida Valverde Zanini, Gislaine; Tufik, Sérgio; Andersen, Monica Levy; da Silva, Raquel Cristina Martins; Bueno, Orlando Francisco Amodeo; Rodrigues, Camila Cruz; Pompéia, Sabine

2012-02-01

One task that has been used to assess memory effects of prior total sleep deprivation (TSD) is the immediate free recall of word lists; however, results have been mixed. A possible explanation for this is task impurity, since recall of words from different serial positions reflects use of distinct types of memory (last words: short-term memory; first and intermediate words: episodic memory). Here we studied the effects of 2 nights of TSD on immediate free recall of semantically unrelated word lists considering the serial position curve. Random allocation to a 2-night TSD protocol followed by one night of recovery sleep or to a control group. Study conducted under continuous behavioral monitoring. 24 young, healthy male volunteers. 2 nights of total sleep deprivation (TSD) and one night of recovery sleep. Participants were shown five 15 unrelated word-lists at baseline, after one and 2 nights of TSD, and after one night of recovery sleep. We also investigated the development of recall strategies (learning) and susceptibility to interference from previous lists. No free recall impairment occurred during TSD, irrespective of serial position. Interference was unchanged. Both groups developed recall strategies, but task learning occurred earlier in controls and was evident in the TSD group only after sleep recovery. Prior TSD spared episodic memory, short-term phonological memory, and interference, allowed the development of recall strategies, but may have decreased the advantage of using these strategies, which returned to normal after recovery sleep.

Orthography-Induced Length Contrasts in the Second Language Phonological Systems of L2 Speakers of English: Evidence from Minimal Pairs.

PubMed

Bassetti, Bene; Sokolović-Perović, Mirjana; Mairano, Paolo; Cerni, Tania

2018-06-01

Research shows that the orthographic forms ("spellings") of second language (L2) words affect speech production in L2 speakers. This study investigated whether English orthographic forms lead L2 speakers to produce English homophonic word pairs as phonological minimal pairs. Targets were 33 orthographic minimal pairs, that is to say homophonic words that would be pronounced as phonological minimal pairs if orthography affects pronunciation. Word pairs contained the same target sound spelled with one letter or two, such as the /n/ in finish and Finnish (both /'fɪnɪʃ/ in Standard British English). To test for effects of length and type of L2 exposure, we compared Italian instructed learners of English, Italian-English late bilinguals with lengthy naturalistic exposure, and English natives. A reading-aloud task revealed that Italian speakers of English L2 produce two English homophonic words as a minimal pair distinguished by different consonant or vowel length, for instance producing the target /'fɪnɪʃ/ with a short [n] or a long [nː] to reflect the number of consonant letters in the spelling of the words finish and Finnish. Similar effects were found on the pronunciation of vowels, for instance in the orthographic pair scene-seen (both /siːn/). Naturalistic exposure did not reduce orthographic effects, as effects were found both in learners and in late bilinguals living in an English-speaking environment. It appears that the orthographic form of L2 words can result in the establishment of a phonological contrast that does not exist in the target language. Results have implications for models of L2 phonological development.

The Weight of Cognitions in Panic: The Link between Misinterpretations and Panic Attacks

PubMed Central

De Cort, Klara; Hermans, Dirk; Noortman, Daphne; Arends, Wiesje; Griez, Eric J. L.; Schruers, Koen R. J.

2013-01-01

In cognitive theory it is hypothesized that panic attacks are provoked by catastrophic misinterpretations of bodily sensations. The aim of the present study was to investigate the ability of associated word pairs referring to catastrophic thinking (e.g. palpitations-heart attack) in producing panic attacks. Patients with PD (n = 20), patients with mixed anxiety disorders (n = 20), and a healthy control group (n = 30) participated in the present study. To enhance ecological validity we first conducted a stimulus validation experiment. Subsequently, nine suitable panic and neutral word pairs were presented in block to the participants. Anxiety levels were assessed before and after the presentation. PD patients were more anxious when reading these word pairs, compared to neutral word pairs. However, none of the participants experienced a panic attack upon reading the word pairs. From the present results it seems that catastrophic thinking is rather related to the anticipatory anxiety for panic attacks, but not necessarily with the occurrence of the panic attacks themselves. PMID:23940559

Neural Correlates of Encoding within- and across-Domain Inter-Item Associations

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Park, Heekyeong; Rugg, Michael D.

2011-01-01

The neural correlates of the encoding of associations between pairs of words, pairs of pictures, and word-picture pairs were compared. The aims were to determine, first, whether the neural correlates of associative encoding vary according to study material and, second, whether encoding of across- versus within-material item pairs is associated…

How Best to Remove the Snare from the Pair: Construction and Cognitive Load Hypotheses

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Igo, L. Brent; Kiewra, Kenneth A.; Zumbrunn, Sharon K.; Kirschbaum, Allison L.

2007-01-01

Students (N = 124) viewed 14 timed Web pages that distinguished 14 confusing word pairs. In a 2 x 2 factorial design, the authors gave all of the students matrices containing representational pictures for each pair of words, as well as examples of each word in use. One factor in the design was the absence or presence of rules of usage for each…

An event-related brain potential study of schizotypal personality and associative semantic processing

PubMed Central

Kiang, Michael; Prugh, Jocelyn; Kutas, Marta

2009-01-01

To examine whether schizotypal personality is associated with the degree to which concepts activate each other in semantic memory, event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded during a delayed lexical decision task from healthy volunteers rated for schizotypy. Each target word was directly, indirectly, or not at all related to a prime word preceding it at a 300- or 750-ms stimulus-onset asynchrony (SOA). Overall, N400 amplitudes were largest for unrelated targets, smallest for directly related targets, and intermediate for indirectly related targets. Higher total Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire (SPQ) scores correlated with smaller N400 indirect priming effects (i.e., smaller N400 amplitude differences between unrelated and indirectly related targets) at both SOAs. In addition, schizotypal subscale scores were differentially associated with N400 effects. Higher SPQ Cognitive-Perceptual scores correlated with smaller N400 direct priming effects (smaller N400 amplitude differences between unrelated and directly related targets) at both SOAs, and with smaller N400 indirect priming effects at the shorter SOA. These correlations are consistent with the hypothesis that decreased use of meaningful context to activate related concepts in general, and/or to inhibit unrelated concepts, may play some role in the development of unusual beliefs. PMID:19818815

Direct fitness benefits and kinship of social foraging groups in an Old World tropical babbler

USGS Publications Warehouse

Kaiser, Sara A.; Martin, Thomas E.; Oteyza, Juan C.; Armstad, Connor E.; Fleischer, Robert C.

2018-01-01

Molecular studies have revealed that social groups composed mainly of nonrelatives may be widespread in group-living vertebrates, but the benefits favoring such sociality are not well understood. In the Old World, birds often form conspecific foraging groups that are maintained year-round and offspring usually disperse to other social groups. We tested the hypothesis that nonbreeding group members are largely unrelated and gain direct fitness benefits through breeding opportunities (males) and brood parasitism (females) in the tropical gray-throated babbler, Stachyris nigriceps, in Malaysian Borneo. Babblers foraged in social groups containing one or more breeding pairs (median = 8 group members of equal sex ratio), but group members rarely assisted with breeding (9% of 67 breeding pairs had a third helper; exhibiting facultative cooperative breeding). Although 20% of 266 group member dyads were first-order relatives of one or both members of the breeding pairs, 80% were unrelated. Male group members gained direct fitness benefits through extrapair and extra-group paternity (25% of 73 offspring), which was independent of their relatedness to the breeding pair and increased with decreasing group size. In contrast, females did not gain direct fitness benefits through brood parasitism. The low levels of relatedness and helping in social groups suggest that most group members do not gain indirect fitness benefits by helping to raise unrelated offspring. These findings highlight the importance of examining benefits of sociality for unrelated individuals that largely do not help and broaden the direct fitness benefits of group foraging beyond assumed survival benefits.

Cross-language parafoveal semantic processing: Evidence from Korean-Chinese bilinguals.

PubMed

Wang, Aiping; Yeon, Junmo; Zhou, Wei; Shu, Hua; Yan, Ming

2016-02-01

In the present study, we aimed at testing cross-language cognate and semantic preview effects. We tested how native Korean readers who learned Chinese as a second language make use of the parafoveal information during the reading of Chinese sentences. There were 3 types of Korean preview words: cognate translations of the Chinese target words, semantically related noncognate words, and unrelated words. Together with a highly significant cognate preview effect, more critically, we also observed reliable facilitation in processing of the target word from the semantically related previews in all fixation measures. Results from the present study provide first evidence for semantic processing from parafoveally presented Korean words and for cross-language parafoveal semantic processing.

Interference and facilitation in overt speech production investigated with event-related potentials.

PubMed

Hirschfeld, Gerrit; Jansma, Bernadette; Bölte, Jens; Zwitserlood, Pienie

2008-08-06

We report an event-related potential study investigating the neural basis of interference and facilitation in the picture-word interference paradigm with immediate overt naming. We used the high temporal resolution of the electrophysiological response to dissociate general and specific interference processes, by comparing unrelated word distractors to nonlinguistic (a row of Xs), surface feature denoting, and category member distractors. Our results first indicate that the increased naming latencies for linguistic relative to nonlinguistic distractors are because of general conflict-monitoring processes, associated with early event-related potential effects (120-220 ms) and increased activity in the anterior cingulate cortex. Next, distractors specifying a surface feature of the picture seem to facilitate its identification within the same time window, which involves widespread networks. Finally, nonlinguistic and surface feature distractors also reduced the N400 amplitude, relative to unrelated word distractors. Taken together our results support the view that several distinct processes give rise to the reaction time results often observed in picture naming.

Does task-irrelevant colour information create extraneous cognitive load? Evidence from a learning task.

PubMed

Miller, Paul; Hazan-Liran, Batel; Cohen, Danielle

2018-06-01

Previous studies have shown that task-irrelevant information impedes learning by creating extraneous cognitive load. But still open is whether such intrusion reflects a purely semantic phenomenon or whether it also stands for sheer perceptual interference. Using Cognitive Load Theory as a framework, this study aimed to answer this question by examining whether and how task-irrelevant colour information modifies extraneous cognitive load in relation to a new code-learning paradigm. For this purpose, university students were asked to learn, based on an example, associations between colour-related and colour-unrelated words and digits presented in black or in a mismatched ink colour. Evident costs in learning efficacy were found in learning the associations between words and digits for colour-related, but not for colour-unrelated, word stimuli. This suggests that interference by task-irrelevant information in learning stands for a mere semantic conflict. Implications of the findings for extraneous cognitive load on learning efficacy are discussed.

Separable processes before, during, and after the N400 elicited by previously inferred and new information: evidence from time-frequency decompositions.

PubMed

Steele, Vaughn R; Bernat, Edward M; van den Broek, Paul; Collins, Paul F; Patrick, Christopher J; Marsolek, Chad J

2013-01-25

Successful comprehension during reading often requires inferring information not explicitly presented. This information is readily accessible when subsequently encountered, and a neural correlate of this is an attenuation of the N400 event-related potential (ERP). We used ERPs and time-frequency (TF) analysis to investigate neural correlates of processing inferred information after a causal coherence inference had been generated during text comprehension. Participants read short texts, some of which promoted inference generation. After each text, they performed lexical decisions to target words that were unrelated or inference-related to the preceding text. Consistent with previous findings, inference-related words elicited an attenuated N400 relative to unrelated words. TF analyses revealed unique contributions to the N400 from activity occurring at 1-6 Hz (theta) and 0-2 Hz (delta), supporting the view that multiple, sequential processes underlie the N400. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Demons, Dictionaries, and Spelling Strategies.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dodd, Anne Wescott

1988-01-01

Suggests that personal spelling dictionaries and spelling error analysis are strategies which will help students improve their spelling more than memorizing lists of unrelated words from spelling books. (MS)

Rethinking the advantage of zero-HLA mismatches in unrelated living donor kidney transplantation: implications on kidney paired donation.

PubMed

Casey, Michael Jin; Wen, Xuerong; Rehman, Shehzad; Santos, Alfonso H; Andreoni, Kenneth A

2015-04-01

The OPTN/UNOS Kidney Paired Donation (KPD) Pilot Program allocates priority to zero-HLA mismatches. However, in unrelated living donor kidney transplants (LDKT)-the same donor source in KPD-no study has shown whether zero-HLA mismatches provide any advantage over >0 HLA mismatches. We hypothesize that zero-HLA mismatches among unrelated LDKT do not benefit graft survival. This retrospective SRTR database study analyzed LDKT recipients from 1987 to 2012. Among unrelated LDKT, subjects with zero-HLA mismatches were compared to a 1:1-5 matched (by donor age ±1 year and year of transplantation) control cohort with >0 HLA mismatches. The primary endpoint was death-censored graft survival. Among 32,654 unrelated LDKT recipients, 83 had zero-HLA mismatches and were matched to 407 controls with >0 HLA mismatches. Kaplan-Meier analyses for death-censored graft and patient survival showed no difference between study and control cohorts. In multivariate marginal Cox models, zero-HLA mismatches saw no benefit with death-censored graft survival (HR = 1.46, 95% CI 0.78-2.73) or patient survival (HR = 1.43, 95% CI 0.68-3.01). Our data suggest that in unrelated LDKT, zero-HLA mismatches may not offer any survival advantage. Therefore, particular study of zero-HLA mismatching is needed to validate its place in the OPTN/UNOS KPD Pilot Program allocation algorithm. © 2014 Steunstichting ESOT.

[Schizophrenia and semantic priming effects].

PubMed

Lecardeur, L; Giffard, B; Eustache, F; Dollfus, S

2006-01-01

This article is a review of studies using the semantic priming paradigm to assess the functioning of semantic memory in schizophrenic patients. Semantic priming describes the phenomenon of increasing the speed with which a string of letters (the target) is recognized as a word (lexical decision task) by presenting to the subject a semantically related word (the prime) prior to the appearance of the target word. This semantic priming is linked to both automatic and controlled processes depending on experimental conditions (stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA), percentage of related words and explicit memory instructions). Automatic process observed with short SOA, low related word percentage and instructions asking only to process the target, could be linked to the "automatic spreading activation" through the semantic network. Controlled processes involve "semantic matching" (the number of related and unrelated pairs influences the subjects decision) and "expectancy" (the prime leads the subject to generate an expectancy set of potential target to the prime). These processes can be observed whatever the SOA for the former and with long SOA for the later, but both with only high related word percentage and explicit memory instructions. Studies evaluating semantic priming effects in schizophrenia show conflicting results: schizophrenic patients can present hyperpriming (semantic priming effect is larger in patients than in controls), hypopriming (semantic priming effect is lower in patients than in controls) or equal semantic priming effects compared to control subjects. These results could be associated to a global impairment of controlled processes in schizophrenia, essentially to a dysfunction of semantic matching process. On the other hand, efficiency of semantic automatic spreading activation process is controversial. These discrepancies could be linked to the different experimental conditions used (duration of SOA, proportion of related pairs and instructions), which influence on the degree of involvement of controlled processes and therefore prevent to really assess its functioning. In addition, manipulations of the relation between prime and target (semantic distance, type of semantic relation and strength of semantic relation) seem to influence reaction times. However, the relation between prime and target (mediated priming) frequently used could not be the most relevant relation to understand the way of spreading of activation in semantic network in patients with schizophrenia. Finally, patients with formal thought disorders present particularly high priming effects relative to controls. These abnormal semantic priming effects could reflect a dysfunction of automatic spreading activation process and consequently an exaggerated diffusion of activation in the semantic network. In the future, the inclusion of different groups schizophrenic subjects could allow us to determine whether semantic memory disorders are pathognomonic or specific of a particular group of patients with schizophrenia.

Cortisol mediates the effects of stress on the contextual dependency of memories.

PubMed

van Ast, Vanessa A; Cornelisse, Sandra; Meeter, Martijn; Kindt, Merel

2014-03-01

Stress is known to exert considerable impact on learning and memory processes. Typically, human studies have investigated memory for single items (e.g., pictures, words), but it remains unresolved how exactly stress may alter the storage of memories into their original encoding context (i.e., memory contextualization). Since neurocircuitry underlying memory contextualization processes is sensitive to the well-known stress hormone cortisol, we here investigated whether cortisol mediates stress effects on memory contextualization. Forty healthy young men were randomly assigned to a psychosocial stress or control group. Ten minutes after stress manipulation offset, participants were instructed to learn and remember neutral and negative words, each of which was depicted against a unique background picture. Approximately 24h later, memory was tested by means of cued retrieval and recognition tasks. To assess memory contextualization half of the words were tested in intact item-contexts pairs, and half in rearranged item-context combinations. Recognition data showed that cortisol, but no other indices of stress such as heart rate or subjective stress, mediated the effects of stress on contextualization of neutral and negative memories. The mediation analysis further showed that stress resulted in increases in cortisol and that cortisol was positively related to memory contextualization, but unrelated to other measures of memory. Thus, there seems to be a specific role for cortisol in the integration of a central memory into its surrounding context. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Influence of cue word perceptual information on metamemory accuracy in judgement of learning.

PubMed

Hu, Xiao; Liu, Zhaomin; Li, Tongtong; Luo, Liang

2016-01-01

Previous studies have suggested that perceptual information regarding to-be-remembered words in the study phase affects the accuracy of judgement of learning (JOL). However, few have investigated whether the perceptual information in the JOL phase influences JOL accuracy. This study examined the influence of cue word perceptual information in the JOL phase on immediate and delayed JOL accuracy through changes in cue word font size. In Experiment 1, large-cue word pairs had significantly higher mean JOL magnitude than small-cue word pairs in immediate JOLs and higher relative accuracy than small-cue pairs in delayed JOLs, but font size had no influence on recall performance. Experiment 2 increased the JOL time, and mean JOL magnitude did not reliably differ for large-cue compared with small-cue pairs in immediate JOLs. However, the influence on relative accuracy still existed in delayed JOLs. Experiment 3 increased the familiarity of small-cue words in the delayed JOL phase by adding a lexical decision task. The results indicated that cue word font size no longer affected relative accuracy in delayed JOLs. The three experiments in our study indicated that the perceptual information regarding cue words in the JOL phase affects immediate and delayed JOLs in different ways.

Interplay Between the Object and Its Symbol: The Size-Congruency Effect

PubMed Central

Shen, Manqiong; Xie, Jiushu; Liu, Wenjuan; Lin, Wenjie; Chen, Zhuoming; Marmolejo-Ramos, Fernando; Wang, Ruiming

2016-01-01

Grounded cognition suggests that conceptual processing shares cognitive resources with perceptual processing. Hence, conceptual processing should be affected by perceptual processing, and vice versa. The current study explored the relationship between conceptual and perceptual processing of size. Within a pair of words, we manipulated the font size of each word, which was either congruent or incongruent with the actual size of the referred object. In Experiment 1a, participants compared object sizes that were referred to by word pairs. Higher accuracy was observed in the congruent condition (e.g., word pairs referring to larger objects in larger font sizes) than in the incongruent condition. This is known as the size-congruency effect. In Experiments 1b and 2, participants compared the font sizes of these word pairs. The size-congruency effect was not observed. In Experiments 3a and 3b, participants compared object and font sizes of word pairs depending on a task cue. Results showed that perceptual processing affected conceptual processing, and vice versa. This suggested that the association between conceptual and perceptual processes may be bidirectional but further modulated by semantic processing. Specifically, conceptual processing might only affect perceptual processing when semantic information is activated. The current study PMID:27512529

Adaptive false memory: Imagining future scenarios increases false memories in the DRM paradigm.

PubMed

Dewhurst, Stephen A; Anderson, Rachel J; Grace, Lydia; van Esch, Lotte

2016-10-01

Previous research has shown that rating words for their relevance to a future scenario enhances memory for those words. The current study investigated the effect of future thinking on false memory using the Deese/Roediger-McDermott (DRM) procedure. In Experiment 1, participants rated words from 6 DRM lists for relevance to a past or future event (with or without planning) or in terms of pleasantness. In a surprise recall test, levels of correct recall did not vary between the rating tasks, but the future rating conditions led to significantly higher levels of false recall than the past and pleasantness conditions did. Experiment 2 found that future rating led to higher levels of false recognition than did past and pleasantness ratings but did not affect correct recognition. The effect in false recognition was, however, eliminated when DRM items were presented in random order. Participants in Experiment 3 were presented with both DRM lists and lists of unrelated words. Future rating increased levels of false recognition for DRM lures but did not affect correct recognition for DRM or unrelated lists. The findings are discussed in terms of the view that false memories can be associated with adaptive memory functions.

Aberrant semantic and affective processing in people at risk for psychosis.

PubMed

Kerns, J G; Berenbaum, H

2000-11-01

Semantic and affective processing were examined in people at risk for psychosis. The participants were 3 groups of college students: 41 people with elevated Perceptual Aberration and Magical Ideation (PerMag) scores, 18 people with elevated Social Anhedonia (SocAnh) scores, and 100 control participants. Participants completed a single-word, continuous presentation pronunciation task that included semantically related words, affectively valenced words, and semantically unrelated and affectively neutral words. PerMag participants exhibited increased semantic priming and increased sensitivity to affectively valenced primes. SocAnh participants had increased sensitivity to affectively valenced targets.

Memory, priority encoding, and overcoming high-value proactive interference in younger and older adults.

PubMed

Friedman, Michael C; Castel, Alan D

2013-01-01

It is often necessary to remember important information while directing attention away from encoding less valuable information. To examine how aging influences the ability to control and update the encoding of high-value information, younger and older adults studied six lists of words that varied in terms of the point values associated with each word. The words were paired with the same high and low point values for three study-test cycles, but on the fourth and subsequent cycles the value-word pairings were switched such that the lowest value pairs became the highest values (and vice versa). For the first three study-test cycles, younger adults outperformed older adults in terms of the number of words recalled and overall point totals, but performance was similar in terms of selectively remembering high-value words. When the values were switched, both groups displayed substantial interference from the previous pairings. Although both groups improved with additional study-test cycles, only younger adults were able to fully recover from the interference effects. A similar, and more pronounced, set of results were obtained when positive and negative point values were paired with the words. The findings are interpreted in a value-directed remembering framework, emphasizing the role of benefits and costs of strategic encoding and age-related differences in the effects of interference on memory.

Lexical Retrieval is not by Competition: Evidence from the Blocked Naming Paradigm

PubMed Central

Navarrete, Eduardo; Del Prato, Paul; Peressotti, Francesca; Mahon, Bradford Z.

2014-01-01

A central issue in research on speech production is whether or not the retrieval of words from the mental lexicon is a competitive process. An important experimental paradigm to study the dynamics of lexical retrieval is the blocked naming paradigm, in which participants name pictures of objects that are grouped by semantic category (‘homogenous’ or ‘related’ blocks) or not grouped by semantic category (‘heterogeneous’ or ‘unrelated’ blocks). Typically, pictures are repeated multiple times (or cycles) within both related and unrelated blocks. It is known that participants are slower in related than in unrelated blocks when the data are collapsed over all within-block repetitions. This semantic interference effect, as observed in the blocked naming task, is the strongest empirical evidence for the hypothesis of lexical selection by competition. Here we show, contrary to the accepted view, that the default polarity of semantic context effects in the blocked naming paradigm is facilitation, rather than interference. In a series of experiments we find that interference arises only when items repeat within a block, and only because of that repetition: What looks to be ‘semantic interference’ in the blocked naming paradigm is actually less repetition priming in related compared to unrelated blocks. These data undermine the theory of lexical selection by competition and indicate a model in which the most highly activated word is retrieved, regardless of the activation levels of nontarget words. We conclude that the theory of lexical selection by competition, and by extension the important psycholinguistic models based on that assumption, are no longer viable, and frame a new way to approach the question of how words are retrieved in spoken language production. PMID:25284954

Hemispheric Asymmetry in Event Knowledge Activation During Incremental Language Comprehension: A Visual Half-Field ERP Study

PubMed Central

Metusalem, Ross; Kutas, Marta; Urbach, Thomas P.; Elman, Jeffrey L.

2016-01-01

During incremental language comprehension, the brain activates knowledge of described events, including knowledge elements that constitute semantic anomalies in their linguistic context. The present study investigates hemispheric asymmetries in this process, with the aim of advancing our understanding of the neural basis and functional properties of event knowledge activation during incremental comprehension. In a visual half-field event-related brain potential (ERP) experiment, participants read brief discourses in which the third sentence contained a word that was either highly expected, semantically anomalous but related to the described event, or semantically anomalous but unrelated to the described event. For both visual fields of target word presentation, semantically anomalous words elicited N400 ERP components of greater amplitude than did expected words. Crucially, event-related anomalous words elicited a reduced N400 relative to event-unrelated anomalous words only with left visual field/right hemisphere presentation. This result suggests that right hemisphere processes are critical to the activation of event knowledge elements that violate the linguistic context, and in doing so informs existing theories of hemispheric asymmetries in semantic processing during language comprehension. Additionally, this finding coincides with past research suggesting a crucial role for the right hemisphere in elaborative inference generation, raises interesting questions regarding hemispheric coordination in generating event-specific linguistic expectancies, and more generally highlights the possibility of functional dissociation between event knowledge activation for the generation of elaborative inferences and for linguistic expectancies. PMID:26878980

Neural Correlates of Encoding Within- and Across-Domain Inter-Item Associations

PubMed Central

Park, Heekyeong; Rugg, Michael D.

2012-01-01

The neural correlates of the encoding of associations between pairs of words, pairs of pictures, and word-picture pairs were compared. The aims were to determine first, whether the neural correlates of associative encoding vary according to study material and second, whether encoding of across- versus within-material item pairs is associated with dissociable patterns of hippocampal and perirhinal activity, as predicted by the ‘domain dichotomy’ hypothesis of medial temporal lobe (MTL) function. While undergoing fMRI scanning, subjects (n = 24) were presented with the three classes of study pairs, judging which of the denoted objects fit into the other. Outside of the scanner, subjects then undertook an associative recognition task, discriminating between intact study pairs, rearranged pairs comprising items that had been presented on different study trials, and unstudied item pairs. The neural correlates of successful associative encoding – subsequent associative memory effects – were operationalized as the difference in activity between study pairs correctly judged intact versus pairs incorrectly judged rearranged on the subsequent memory test. Pair type-independent subsequent memory effects were evident in the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and the hippocampus. Picture-picture pairs elicited material-selective effects in regions of fusiform cortex that were also activated to a greater extent on picture trials than word trials, while word-word pairs elicited material-selective subsequent memory effects in left lateral temporal cortex. Contrary to the domain-dichotomy hypothesis, neither hippocampal nor perirhinal subsequent memory effects differed depending on whether they were elicited by within- versus across-material study pairs. It is proposed that the left IFG plays a domain-general role in associative encoding, that associative encoding can also be facilitated by enhanced processing in material-selective cortical regions, and that the hippocampus and perirhinal cortex contribute equally to the formation of inter-item associations regardless of whether the items belong to the same or to different processing domains. PMID:21254802

Free Recall of Word Lists under Total Sleep Deprivation and after Recovery Sleep

PubMed Central

de Almeida Valverde Zanini, Gislaine; Tufik, Sérgio; Andersen, Monica Levy; da Silva, Raquel Cristina Martins; Bueno, Orlando Francisco Amodeo; Rodrigues, Camila Cruz; Pompéia, Sabine

2012-01-01

Study Objectives: One task that has been used to assess memory effects of prior total sleep deprivation (TSD) is the immediate free recall of word lists; however, results have been mixed. A possible explanation for this is task impurity, since recall of words from different serial positions reflects use of distinct types of memory (last words: short-term memory; first and intermediate words: episodic memory). Here we studied the effects of 2 nights of TSD on immediate free recall of semantically unrelated word lists considering the serial position curve. Design: Random allocation to a 2-night TSD protocol followed by one night of recovery sleep or to a control group. Setting: Study conducted under continuous behavioral monitoring. Participants: 24 young, healthy male volunteers. Intervention: 2 nights of total sleep deprivation (TSD) and one night of recovery sleep. Measurements and Results: Participants were shown five 15 unrelated word-lists at baseline, after one and 2 nights of TSD, and after one night of recovery sleep. We also investigated the development of recall strategies (learning) and susceptibility to interference from previous lists. No free recall impairment occurred during TSD, irrespective of serial position. Interference was unchanged. Both groups developed recall strategies, but task learning occurred earlier in controls and was evident in the TSD group only after sleep recovery. Conclusion: Prior TSD spared episodic memory, short-term phonological memory, and interference, allowed the development of recall strategies, but may have decreased the advantage of using these strategies, which returned to normal after recovery sleep. Citation: Zanini GAV; Tufik S; Andersen ML; da Silva RCM; Bueno OFA; Rodrigues CC; Pompéia S. Free recall of word lists under total sleep deprivation and after recovery sleep. SLEEP 2012;35(2):223-230. PMID:22294812

The comprehension of ambiguous idioms in aphasic patients.

PubMed

Cacciari, Cristina; Reati, Fabiola; Colombo, Maria Rosa; Padovani, Roberto; Rizzo, Silvia; Papagno, Costanza

2006-01-01

The ability to understand ambiguous idioms was assessed in 15 aphasic patients with preserved comprehension at a single word level. A string-to-word matching task was used. Patients were requested to choose one among four alternatives: a word associated with the figurative meaning of the idiom string; a word semantically associate with the last constituent of the idiom string; and two unrelated words. The results showed that patients' performance was impaired with respect to a group of matched controls, with patients showing a frontal and/or temporal lesion being the most impaired. A significant number of semantically associate errors were produced, suggesting an impairment of inhibition mechanisms and/or of recognition/activation of the idiomatic meaning.

Phonologic Processing in Adults Who Stutter: Electrophysiological and Behavioral Evidence.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Weber-Fox, Christine; Spencer, Rebecca M.C.; Spruill, John E., III; Smith, Anne

2004-01-01

Event-related brain potentials (ERPs), judgment accuracy, and reaction times (RTs) were obtained for 11 adults who stutter and 11 normally fluent speakers as they performed a rhyme judgment task of visually presented word pairs. Half of the word pairs (i.e., prime and target) were phonologically and orthographically congruent across words. That…

The Effects of Receptive and Productive Learning of Word Pairs on Vocabulary Knowledge

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Webb, Stuart

2009-01-01

English as a foreign language students in Japan learned target words in word pairs receptively and productively. Five aspects of vocabulary knowledge--orthography, association, syntax, grammatical functions, and meaning and form--were each measured by receptive and productive tests. The study uses an innovative methodology in that each target word…

Sentiment Analysis of Web Sites Related to Vaginal Mesh Use in Pelvic Reconstructive Surgery.

PubMed

Hobson, Deslyn T G; Meriwether, Kate V; Francis, Sean L; Kinman, Casey L; Stewart, J Ryan

2018-05-02

The purpose of this study was to utilize sentiment analysis to describe online opinions toward vaginal mesh. We hypothesized that sentiment in legal Web sites would be more negative than that in medical and reference Web sites. We generated a list of relevant key words related to vaginal mesh and searched Web sites using the Google search engine. Each unique uniform resource locator (URL) was sorted into 1 of 6 categories: "medical", "legal", "news/media", "patient generated", "reference", or "unrelated". Sentiment of relevant Web sites, the primary outcome, was scored on a scale of -1 to +1, and mean sentiment was compared across all categories using 1-way analysis of variance. Tukey test evaluated differences between category pairs. Google searches of 464 unique key words resulted in 11,405 URLs. Sentiment analysis was performed on 8029 relevant URLs (3472 legal, 1625 "medical", 1774 "reference", 666 "news media", 492 "patient generated"). The mean sentiment for all relevant Web sites was +0.01 ± 0.16; analysis of variance revealed significant differences between categories (P < 0.001). Web sites categorized as "legal" and "news/media" had a slightly negative mean sentiment, whereas those categorized as "medical," "reference," and "patient generated" had slightly positive mean sentiments. Tukey test showed differences between all category pairs except the "medical" versus "reference" in comparison with the largest mean difference (-0.13) seen in the "legal" versus "reference" comparison. Web sites related to vaginal mesh have an overall mean neutral sentiment, and Web sites categorized as "medical," "reference," and "patient generated" have significantly higher sentiment scores than related Web sites in "legal" and "news/media" categories.

EEG and EMG responses to emotion-evoking stimuli processed without conscious awareness.

PubMed

Wexler, B E; Warrenburg, S; Schwartz, G E; Janer, L D

1992-12-01

Dichotic stimulus pairs were constructed with one word that was emotionally neutral and another that evoked either negative or positive feelings. Temporal and spectral overlap between the members of each pair was so great that the two words fused into a single auditory percept. Subjects were consciously aware of hearing only one word from most pairs; sometimes the emotion-evoking word was heard consciously, other times the neutral word was heard consciously. Subjects were instructed to let their thoughts wander in response to the word they heard, during which time EEG alpha activity over left and right frontal regions, and muscle activity (EMG) in the corrugator ("frowning") and zygomatic ("smiling") regions were recorded. Both EEG and EMG provided evidence of emotion-specific responses to stimuli that were processed without conscious awareness. Moreover both suggested relatively greater right hemisphere activity with unconscious rather than conscious processing.

Production does not improve memory for face-name associations.

PubMed

Hourihan, Kathleen L; Smith, Alexis R S

2016-06-01

Strategies for learning face-name associations are generally difficult and time-consuming. However, research has shown that saying a word aloud improves our memory for that word relative to words from the same set that were read silently. Such production effects have been shown for words, pictures, text material, and even word pairs. Can production improve memory for face-name associations? In Experiment 1, participants studied face-name pairs by reading half of the names aloud and half of the names silently, and were tested with cued recall. In Experiment 2, names were repeated aloud (or silently) for the full trial duration. Neither experiment showed a production effect in cued recall. Bayesian analyses showed positive support for the null effect. One possibility is that participants spontaneously implemented more elaborate encoding strategies that overrode any influence of production. However, a more likely explanation for the null production effect is that only half of each stimulus pair was produced-the name, but not the face. Consistent with this explanation, in Experiment 3 a production effect was not observed in cued recall of word-word pairs in which only the target words were read aloud or silently. Averaged across all 3 experiments, aloud targets were more likely to be recalled than silent targets (though not associated with the correct cue). The production effect in associative memory appears to require both members of a pair to be produced. Surprisingly, production shows little promise as a strategy for improving memory for the names of people we have just met. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

Taking the High Road on Subcortical Transfer

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Miller, M.B.; Kingstone, A.

2005-01-01

Kingstone and Gazzaniga (1995) presented conceptually ambiguous word pairs, such as HOT-DOG, to a split-brain patient. Each hemisphere received only one of the words. With one hand, the patient drew the word pairs literally (e.g., a dog panting in the heat) but never drew the emergent object (e.g., a frankfurter in a bun). This finding suggested…

Phonological Neighborhood Effects in Spoken Word Production: An fMRI Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Peramunage, Dasun; Blumstein, Sheila E.; Myers, Emily B.; Goldrick, Matthew; Baese-Berk, Melissa

2011-01-01

The current study examined the neural systems underlying lexically conditioned phonetic variation in spoken word production. Participants were asked to read aloud singly presented words, which either had a voiced minimal pair (MP) neighbor (e.g., cape) or lacked a minimal pair (NMP) neighbor (e.g., cake). The voiced neighbor never appeared in the…

Elaboration of Cognitive Knowledge of Biology from Childhood to Adulthood.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Fisher, Kathleen M.

Word association techniques were used to examine the growth of biological knowledge over a period of years, from fourth-grade to college students. Results were analyzed by classifying stimulus-response word pairs according to the nature of the relationship between the words in each pair. Three hypotheses were tested: (1) the proportion of enactive…

Distinguishing familiarity from fluency for the compound word pair effect in associative recognition.

PubMed

Ahmad, Fahad N; Hockley, William E

2017-09-01

We examined whether processing fluency contributes to associative recognition of unitized pre-experimental associations. In Experiments 1A and 1B, we minimized perceptual fluency by presenting each word of pairs on separate screens at both study and test, yet the compound word (CW) effect (i.e., hit and false-alarm rates greater for CW pairs with no difference in discrimination) did not reduce. In Experiments 2A and 2B, conceptual fluency was examined by comparing transparent (e.g., hand bag) and opaque (e.g., rag time) CW pairs in lexical decision and associative recognition tasks. Lexical decision was faster for transparent CWs (Experiment 2A) but in associative recognition, the CW effect did not differ by CW pair type (Experiment 2B). In Experiments 3A and 3B, we examined whether priming that increases processing fluency would influence the CW effect. In Experiment 3A, CW and non-compound word pairs were preceded with matched and mismatched primes at test in an associative recognition task. In Experiment 3B, only transparent and opaque CW pairs were presented. Results showed that presenting matched versus mismatched primes at test did not influence the CW effect. The CW effect in yes-no associative recognition is due to reliance on enhanced familiarity of unitized CW pairs.

Long-term interference at the semantic level: Evidence from blocked-cyclic picture matching.

PubMed

Wei, Tao; Schnur, Tatiana T

2016-01-01

Processing semantically related stimuli creates interference across various domains of cognition, including language and memory. In this study, we identify the locus and mechanism of interference when retrieving meanings associated with words and pictures. Subjects matched a probe stimulus (e.g., cat) to its associated target picture (e.g., yarn) from an array of unrelated pictures. Across trials, probes were either semantically related or unrelated. To test the locus of interference, we presented probes as either words or pictures. If semantic interference occurs at the stage common to both tasks, that is, access to semantic representations, then interference should occur in both probe presentation modalities. Results showed clear semantic interference effects independent of presentation modality and lexical frequency, confirming a semantic locus of interference in comprehension. To test the mechanism of interference, we repeated trials across 4 presentation cycles and manipulated the number of unrelated intervening trials (zero vs. two). We found that semantic interference was additive across cycles and survived 2 intervening trials, demonstrating interference to be long-lasting as opposed to short-lived. However, interference was smaller with zero versus 2 intervening trials, which we interpret to suggest that short-lived facilitation counteracted the long-lived interference. We propose that retrieving meanings associated with words/pictures from the same semantic category yields both interference due to long-lasting changes in connection strength between semantic representations (i.e., incremental learning) and facilitation caused by short-lived residual activation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

Effect of study context on item recollection.

PubMed

Skinner, Erin I; Fernandes, Myra A

2010-07-01

We examined how visual context information provided during encoding, and unrelated to the target word, affected later recollection for words presented alone using a remember-know paradigm. Experiments 1A and 1B showed that participants had better overall memory-specifically, recollection-for words studied with pictures of intact faces than for words studied with pictures of scrambled or inverted faces. Experiment 2 replicated these results and showed that recollection was higher for words studied with pictures of faces than when no image accompanied the study word. In Experiment 3 participants showed equivalent memory for words studied with unique faces as for those studied with a repeatedly presented face. Results suggest that recollection benefits when visual context information high in meaningful content accompanies study words and that this benefit is not related to the uniqueness of the context. We suggest that participants use elaborative processes to integrate item and meaningful contexts into ensemble information, improving subsequent item recollection.

Beneficial effects of semantic memory support on older adults' episodic memory: Differential patterns of support of item and associative information.

PubMed

Mohanty, Praggyan Pam; Naveh-Benjamin, Moshe; Ratneshwar, Srinivasan

2016-02-01

The effects of two types of semantic memory support-meaningfulness of an item and relatedness between items-in mitigating age-related deficits in item and associative, memory are examined in a marketing context. In Experiment 1, participants studied less (vs. more) meaningful brand logo graphics (pictures) paired with meaningful brand names (words) and later were assessed by item (old/new) and associative (intact/recombined) memory recognition tests. Results showed that meaningfulness of items eliminated age deficits in item memory, while equivalently boosting associative memory for older and younger adults. Experiment 2, in which related and unrelated brand logo graphics and brand name pairs served as stimuli, revealed that relatedness between items eliminated age deficits in associative memory, while improving to the same degree item memory in older and younger adults. Experiment 2 also provided evidence for a probable boundary condition that could reconcile seemingly contradictory extant results. Overall, these experiments provided evidence that although the two types of semantic memory support can improve both item and associative memory in older and younger adults, older adults' memory deficits can be eliminated when the type of support provided is compatible with the type of information required to perform well on the test. (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

The time course of morphological processing during spoken word recognition in Chinese.

PubMed

Shen, Wei; Qu, Qingqing; Ni, Aiping; Zhou, Junyi; Li, Xingshan

2017-12-01

We investigated the time course of morphological processing during spoken word recognition using the printed-word paradigm. Chinese participants were asked to listen to a spoken disyllabic compound word while simultaneously viewing a printed-word display. Each visual display consisted of three printed words: a semantic associate of the first constituent of the compound word (morphemic competitor), a semantic associate of the whole compound word (whole-word competitor), and an unrelated word (distractor). Participants were directed to detect whether the spoken target word was on the visual display. Results indicated that both the morphemic and whole-word competitors attracted more fixations than the distractor. More importantly, the morphemic competitor began to diverge from the distractor immediately at the acoustic offset of the first constituent, which was earlier than the whole-word competitor. These results suggest that lexical access to the auditory word is incremental and morphological processing (i.e., semantic access to the first constituent) that occurs at an early processing stage before access to the representation of the whole word in Chinese.

The picture superiority effect in associative recognition.

PubMed

Hockley, William E

2008-10-01

The picture superiority effect has been well documented in tests of item recognition and recall. The present study shows that the picture superiority effect extends to associative recognition. In three experiments, students studied lists consisting of random pairs of concrete words and pairs of line drawings; then they discriminated between intact (old) and rearranged (new) pairs of words and pictures at test. The discrimination advantage for pictures over words was seen in a greater hit rate for intact picture pairs, but there was no difference in the false alarm rates for the two types of stimuli. That is, there was no mirror effect. The same pattern of results was found when the test pairs consisted of the verbal labels of the pictures shown at study (Experiment 4), indicating that the hit rate advantage for picture pairs represents an encoding benefit. The results have implications for theories of the picture superiority effect and models of associative recognition.

Words we do not say-Context effects on the phonological activation of lexical alternatives in speech production.

PubMed

Jescheniak, Jörg D; Kurtz, Franziska; Schriefers, Herbert; Günther, Josefine; Klaus, Jana; Mädebach, Andreas

2017-06-01

There is compelling evidence that context strongly influences our choice of words (e.g., whether we refer to a particular animal with the basic-level name "bird" or the subordinate-level name "duck"). However, little is known about whether the context already affects the degree to which the alternative words are activated. In this study, we explored the effect of a preceding linguistic context on the phonological activation of alternative picture names. In Experiments 1 to 3, the context was established by a request produced by an imaginary interlocutor. These requests either constrained the naming response to the subordinate level on pragmatic grounds (e.g., "name the bird!") or not (e.g., "name the object!"). In Experiment 4, the context was established by the speaker's own previous naming response. Participants named the pictures with their subordinate-level names and the phonological activation of the basic-level names was assessed with distractor words phonologically related versus unrelated to that name (e.g., "birch" vs. "lamp"). In all experiments, we consistently found that distractor words phonologically related to the basic-level name interfered with the naming response more strongly than unrelated distractor words. Moreover, this effect was of comparable size for nonconstraining and constraining contexts indicating that the alternative name was phonologically activated and competed for selection, even when it was not an appropriate lexical option. Our results suggest that the speech production system is limited in its ability of flexibly adjusting and fine-tuning the lexical activation patterns of words (among which to choose from) as a function of pragmatic constraints. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

Approach bias for food cues in obese individuals.

PubMed

Kemps, Eva; Tiggemann, Marika

2015-01-01

This study aimed to investigate the existence of an approach bias for food cues in obese individuals. A community sample of 56 obese women and 56 normal weight controls completed an approach-avoidance variant of the implicit association task. The obese participants were faster to respond to trials that paired food words with approach words, and trials that paired non-food words with avoid words, than the converse pairings, thus, demonstrating an approach bias for food. This bias was evident for both high caloric and low caloric food words, and was not attributable to a state of deprivation or feelings of hunger. By contrast, the normal weight controls did not show any such bias. The results are consistent with recent neurocognitive perspectives of obesity. At a practical level, approach biases for food may present a potential target for modifying (excessive) food intake.

When will bigger be (recalled) better? The influence of category size on JOLs depends on test format.

PubMed

Hourihan, Kathleen L; Tullis, Jonathan G

2015-08-01

Although it is well known that organized lists of words (e.g., categories) are recalled better than unrelated lists, little research has examined whether participants can predict how categorical relatedness influences recall. In two experiments, participants studied lists of words that included items from big categories (12 items), small categories (4 items), and unrelated items, and provided immediate JOLs. In Experiment 1, free recall was highest for items from large categories and lowest for unrelated items. Importantly, participants were sensitive to the effects of category size on recall, with JOLs to items from big categories actually increasing over the study list. In Experiment 2, one group of participants was cued to recall all exemplars from the categories in a blocked manner, whereas the other group was cued in a random order. As expected, the random group did not show the recall benefit for big categories over small categories observed in free recall, while the blocked group did. Critically, the pattern of metacognitive judgments closely matched actual cued recall performance. Participants' JOLs were sensitive to the interaction between category size and output order, demonstrating a relatively sophisticated strategy that incorporates the interaction of multiple extrinsic cues in predicting recall.

How the measurement of memory processes can affect memory performance: the case of remember/know judgments.

PubMed

Naveh-Benjamin, Moshe; Kilb, Angela

2012-01-01

Relatively little attention has been paid thus far in memory research to the effects of measurement instruments intended to assess memory processes on the constructs being measured. The current article investigates the influence of employing the popular remember/know (R/K) measurement procedure on memory performance itself. This measurement procedure was extensively used in the past to assess the respective contributions of 2 processes to memory judgments, one based on familiarity and the other on recollection. Two experiments using unrelated word pairs showed that the use of an R/K procedure can alter memory performance. Specifically, the R/K procedure improved associative memory among older but not younger adults compared to conditions in which participants were not asked to provide R/K judgments. Such an effect was not observed in item memory performance. Potential mechanisms mediating these differential memory measurement effects are outlined, and the measurement effects' implications for memory and cognitive research are discussed.

When does prior knowledge disproportionately benefit older adults’ memory?

PubMed Central

Badham, Stephen P.; Hay, Mhairi; Foxon, Natasha; Kaur, Kiran; Maylor, Elizabeth A.

2016-01-01

ABSTRACT Material consistent with knowledge/experience is generally more memorable than material inconsistent with knowledge/experience – an effect that can be more extreme in older adults. Four experiments investigated knowledge effects on memory with young and older adults. Memory for familiar and unfamiliar proverbs (Experiment 1) and for common and uncommon scenes (Experiment 2) showed similar knowledge effects across age groups. Memory for person-consistent and person-neutral actions (Experiment 3) showed a greater benefit of prior knowledge in older adults. For cued recall of related and unrelated word pairs (Experiment 4), older adults benefited more from prior knowledge only when it provided uniquely useful additional information beyond the episodic association itself. The current data and literature suggest that prior knowledge has the age-dissociable mnemonic properties of (1) improving memory for the episodes themselves (age invariant), and (2) providing conceptual information about the tasks/stimuli extrinsically to the actual episodic memory (particularly aiding older adults). PMID:26473767

Age-Related Differences in Recognition Memory for Items and Associations: Contribution of Individual Differences in Working Memory and Metamemory

PubMed Central

Bender, Andrew R.; Raz, Naftali

2012-01-01

Ability to form new associations between unrelated items is particularly sensitive to aging, but the reasons for such differential vulnerability are unclear. In this study, we examined the role of objective and subjective factors (working memory and beliefs about memory strategies) on differential relations of age with recognition of items and associations. Healthy adults (N = 100, age 21 to 79) studied word pairs, completed item and association recognition tests, and rated the effectiveness of shallow (e.g., repetition) and deep (e.g., imagery or sentence generation) encoding strategies. Advanced age was associated with reduced working memory (WM) capacity and poorer associative recognition. In addition, reduced WM capacity, beliefs in the utility of ineffective encoding strategies, and lack of endorsement of effective ones were independently associated with impaired associative memory. Thus, maladaptive beliefs about memory in conjunction with reduced cognitive resources account in part for differences in associative memory commonly attributed to aging. PMID:22251381

ERP evidence for memory and predictive mechanisms in word-to-text integration

PubMed Central

Stafura, Joseph Z.; Rickles, Benjamin; Perfetti, Charles A.

2016-01-01

During reading, word-to-text integration processes proceed quickly and incrementally through both prospective (predictive) and retrospective (memory) processes. Across a sentence boundary, where prediction may be less functional, memorial processes may be especially important. We tested predictive and memory mechanisms with event-related potentials (ERPs) recorded on the first content word across a sentence boundary by manipulating the direction of association between this word and one from the preceding sentence. For comparison with this text comprehension (TC) task, we tested these same word pairs in a word meaning judgment (MJ) task. In both tasks we found reduced N400 amplitudes over central scalp electrodes when the two words were either forward-associated (FA) or backward-associated (BA), relative to task-specific baseline conditions. In the MJ task, FA pairs produced a greater reduction in the N400 reduction than BA pairs over right parietal areas. However, in the TC task, BA pairs produced a greater N400 reduction than FA pairs over left parietal electrodes. A temporal principal component analysis of TC and MJ data showed a component reflecting the central N400. Additional components from TC data reflected FA-BA differences during early (N200) and late (parietal N400 and LPC) phases of processing. Comprehension skill predicted association effects in the MJ task, especially FA, and the BA central N400 effects in the TC task. The results demonstrate that, beyond N400 indicators of prediction effects, ERPs reflect the role of memory processes in word-to-text integration across sentences, part of a dynamic interplay between anticipatory and memorial processes that support comprehension. PMID:27110578

[Event-related potentials in character semantic priming of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder children and normal children: a comparative study].

PubMed

Xie, Na; Wang, Su-Hong; Ren, Yan-Ling; Ma, Ling; Dong, Xuan

2009-02-17

To investigate the cognitive event related potentials in Chinese character priming effect of children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and to analyze the neural mechanism of the priming effect. Fifty-two ADHD children aged (9.5 +/- 1.7) and 45 age-matched children without ADHD were asked to perform a Chinese character semantic priming task while electroencephalogram was recorded. During the Chinese character semantic priming task the subjects were instructed to judge whether the presented target word was a related word, unrelated word, or a pseudoword and event-related potentials (ERPs) were elicited and analyzed with the brain electricity source analysis (BESA) software. (1) The behavioral results showed that the reaction time to the unrelated character stimuli in the ADHD children was (1252 +/- 256) ms, significantly longer than that in the normal control [(1131 +/- 194) ms, P < 0.05]. (2) The amplitude of the character related N2 at the Cz lead in the ADHD children was -7.7 (-12.8, -5.0) microV, significantly larger than that of the normal controls [-5.6 (-9.4, -3.2) microV, P < 0.05]. (3) The amplitude of character unrelated stimuli P3 at the Cz lead of the ADHD children was 5.4 (2.0, 9.5) microV, significantly lower than that of the normal control [9.5 (4.2, 16.9) microV, P < 0.01]. There is a positive correlation between the amplitude of N2 and the difficulty in character semantic priming. It is more difficult for the ADHD children than normal controls to accomplish the same semantic task. ADHD children need more attention resources than normal controls. The amplitudes of character related-N2 and unrelated-P3 may become markers to measure the development of recognition in the ADHD children, thus being helpful in the ADHD diagnosis.

Effects of semantic context on access to words of low imageability in deep-phonological dysphasia: a treatment case study.

PubMed

McCarthy, Laura Mary; Kalinyak-Fliszar, Michelene; Kohen, Francine; Martin, Nadine

2017-01-01

Deep dysphasia is a relatively rare subcategory of aphasia, characterised by word repetition impairment and a profound auditory-verbal short-term memory (STM) limitation. Repetition of words is better than nonwords (lexicality effect) and better for high-image than low-image words (imageability effect). Another related language impairment profile is phonological dysphasia, which includes all of the characteristics of deep dysphasia except for the occurrence of semantic errors in single word repetition. The overlap in symptoms of deep and phonological dysphasia has led to the hypothesis that they share the same root cause, impaired maintenance of activated representation of words, but that they differ in severity of that impairment, with deep dysphasia being more severe. We report a single-subject multiple baseline, multiple probe treatment study of a person who presented with a pattern of repetition that was consistent with the continuum of deep-phonological dysphasia: imageability and lexicality effects in repetition of single and multiple words and semantic errors in repetition of multiple-word utterances. The aim of this treatment study was to improve access to and repetition of low-imageability words by embedding them in modifier-noun phrases that enhanced their imageability. The treatment involved repetition of abstract noun pairs. We created modifier-abstract noun phrases that increased the semantic and syntactic cohesiveness of the words in the pair. For example, the phrases "long distance" and "social exclusion" were developed to improve repetition of the abstract pair "distance-exclusion". The goal of this manipulation was to increase the probability of accessing lexical and semantic representations of abstract words in repetition by enriching their semantic -syntactic context. We predicted that this increase in accessibility would be maintained when the words were repeated as pairs, but without the contextual phrase. Treatment outcomes indicated that increasing the semantic and syntactic cohesiveness of low-imageability and low-frequency words later improved this participant's ability to repeat those words when presented in isolation. This treatment approach to improving access to abstract word pairs for repetition was successful for our participant with phonological dysphasia. The approach exemplifies the potential value in manipulating linguistic characteristics of stimuli in ways that improve access between phonological and lexical-semantic levels of representation. Additionally, this study demonstrates how principles of a cognitive model of word processing can be used to guide treatment of word processing impairments in aphasia.

On the Time Course of Accessing Meaning in a Second Language: An Electrophysiological and Behavioral Investigation of Translation Recognition

PubMed Central

Guo, Taomei; Misra, Maya; Tam, Joyce W.; Kroll, Judith F.

2012-01-01

In 2 experiments, relatively proficient Chinese–English bilinguals decided whether Chinese words were the correct translations of English words. Critical trials were those on which incorrect translations were related in lexical form or meaning to the correct translation. In Experiment 1, behavioral interference was revealed for both distractor types, but event-related potentials (ERPs) revealed a different time course for the 2 conditions. Semantic distractors elicited effects primarily on the N400 and late positive component (LPC), with a smaller N400 and a smaller LPC over the posterior scalp but a larger LPC over the anterior scalp relative to unrelated controls. In contrast, translation form distractors elicited a larger P200 and a larger LPC than did unrelated controls. To determine whether the translation form effects were enabled by the relatively long, 750-ms stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) between words, a 2nd ERP experiment was conducted using a shorter, 300-ms, SOA. The behavioral results revealed interference for both types of distractors, but the ERPs again revealed different loci for the 2 effects. Taken together, the data suggest that proficient bilinguals activate 1st-language translations of words in the 2nd language after they have accessed the meaning of those words. The implications of this pattern for claims about the nature of cross-language activation when bilinguals read in 1 or both languages are discussed. PMID:22686844

Reduced Stroop Interference for Opponent Colors May Be Due to Input Factors: Evidence from Individual Differences and a Neural Network Simulation

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Laeng, Bruno; Torstein, Lag; Brennen, Tim

2005-01-01

Sensory or input factors can influence the strength of interference in the classic Stroop color-word task. Specifically, in a single-trial computerized version of the Stroop task, when color-word pairs were incongruent, opponent color pairs (e.g., the word BLUE in yellow) showed reduced Stroop interference compared with nonopponent color pairs…

Processing of threat-related information outside the focus of visual attention.

PubMed

Calvo, Manuel G; Castillo, M Dolores

2005-05-01

This study investigates whether threat-related words are especially likely to be perceived in unattended locations of the visual field. Threat-related, positive, and neutral words were presented at fixation as probes in a lexical decision task. The probe word was preceded by 2 simultaneous prime words (1 foveal, i.e., at fixation; 1 parafoveal, i.e., 2.2 deg. of visual angle from fixation), which were presented for 150 ms, one of which was either identical or unrelated to the probe. Results showed significant facilitation in lexical response times only for the probe threat words when primed parafoveally by an identical word presented in the right visual field. We conclude that threat-related words have privileged access to processing outside the focus of attention. This reveals a cognitive bias in the preferential, parallel processing of information that is important for adaptation.

Masked priming by misspellings: Word frequency moderates the effects of SOA and prime-target similarity.

PubMed

Burt, Jennifer S

2016-02-01

University students made lexical decisions to eight- or nine-letter words preceded by masked primes that were the target, an unrelated word, or a typical misspelling of the target. At a stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) of 47 ms, primes that were misspellings of the target produced a priming benefit for low-, medium-, and high-frequency words, even when the misspelled primes were changed to differ phonologically from their targets. At a longer SOA of 80 ms, misspelled primes facilitated lexical decisions only to medium- and low-frequency targets, and a phonological change attenuated the benefit for medium-frequency targets. The results indicate that orthographic similarity can be preserved over changes in letter position and word length, and that the priming effect of misspelled words at the shorter SOA is orthographically based. Orthographic-priming effects depend on the quality of the orthographic learning of the target word.

Language Effects in Trilinguals: An ERP Study

PubMed Central

Aparicio, Xavier; Midgley, Katherine J.; Holcomb, Phillip J.; Pu, He; Lavaur, Jean-Marc; Grainger, Jonathan

2012-01-01

Event-related potentials were recorded during the visual presentation of words in the three languages of French-English-Spanish trilinguals. Participants monitored a mixed list of unrelated non-cognate words in the three languages while performing a semantic categorization task. Words in L1 generated earlier N400 peak amplitudes than both L2 and L3 words, which peaked together. On the other hand, L2 and L3 words did differ significantly in terms of N400 amplitude, with L3 words generating greater mean amplitudes compared with L2 words. We interpret the effects of peak N400 latency as reflecting the special status of the L1 relative to later acquired languages, rather than proficiency in that language per se. On the other hand, the mean amplitude difference between L2 and L3 is thought to reflect different levels of fluency in these two languages. PMID:23133428

Morphological processing with deficient phonological short-term memory.

PubMed

Kavé, Gitit; Ze'ev, Hagit Bar; Lev, Anita

2007-07-01

This paper investigates the processing of Hebrew derivational morphology in an individual (S.E.) with deficient phonological short-term memory. In comparison to 10 age- and education-matched men, S.E. was impaired on digit span tasks and demonstrated no recency effect in word list recall. S.E. had low word retention span, but he exhibited phonological similarity and word length effects. His ability to make lexical decisions was intact. In a paired-associate test S.E. successfully learned semantically and morphologically related pairs but not phonologically related pairs, and his learning of nonwords was facilitated by the presence of Hebrew consonant roots. Semantic and morphological similarity enhanced immediate word recall. Results show that S.E. is capable of conducting morphological decomposition of Hebrew-derived words despite his phonological deficit, suggesting that transient maintenance of morphological constituents is independent of temporary storage and rehearsal of phonological codes, and that each is processed separately within short-term memory.

Aging effects in sequential modulations of poorer-strategy effects during execution of memory strategies.

PubMed

Hinault, Thomas; Lemaire, Patrick; Touron, Dayna

2017-02-01

In this study, we asked young adults and older adults to encode pairs of words. For each item, they were told which strategy to use, interactive imagery or rote repetition. Data revealed poorer-strategy effects in both young adults and older adults: Participants obtained better performance when executing better strategies (i.e., interactive-imagery strategy to encode pairs of concrete words; rote-repetition strategy on pairs of abstract words) than with poorer strategies (i.e., interactive-imagery strategy on pairs of abstract words; rote-repetition strategy on pairs of concrete words). Crucially, we showed that sequential modulations of poorer-strategy effects (i.e., poorer-strategy effects being larger when previous items were encoded with better relative to poorer strategies), previously demonstrated in arithmetic, generalise to memory strategies. We also found reduced sequential modulations of poorer-strategy effects in older adults relative to young adults. Finally, sequential modulations of poorer-strategy effects correlated with measures of cognitive control processes, suggesting that these processes underlie efficient trial-to-trial modulations during strategy execution. Differences in correlations with cognitive control processes were also found between older adults and young adults. These findings have important implications regarding mechanisms underlying memory strategy execution and age differences in memory performance.

Prenatal Smoking Might Not Cause Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: Evidence from a Novel Design

PubMed Central

Thapar, Anita; Rice, Frances; Hay, Dale; Boivin, Jacky; Langley, Kate; van den Bree, Marianne; Rutter, Michael; Harold, Gordon

2009-01-01

Background It is widely considered that exposure to maternal cigarette smoking in pregnancy has risk effects on offspring attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). This view is supported by consistent observations of association. It is, however, impossible to be certain of adequate control for confounding factors with observational designs. We use a novel “natural experiment” design that separates prenatal environmental from alternative inherited effects. Methods The design is based on offspring conceived with Assisted Reproductive Technologies recruited from 20 fertility clinics in the United Kingdom and United States who were: 1) genetically unrelated, and 2) related to the woman who underwent the pregnancy. If maternal smoking in pregnancy has true risk effects, association will be observed with ADHD regardless of whether mother and offspring are related or unrelated. Data were obtained from 815 families of children ages 4 years–11 years with parent questionnaires and antenatal records. Birth weight was used as a comparison outcome. The key outcome considered was child ADHD symptoms. Results Association between smoking in pregnancy and lower birth weight was found in unrelated and related mother-offspring pairs, consistent with a true risk effect. However, for ADHD symptoms, the magnitude of association was significantly higher in the related pairs (β = .102, p < .02) than in the unrelated pairs (β= −.052, p > .10), suggesting inherited effects. Conclusions Our findings highlight the need to test causal hypotheses with genetically sensitive designs. Inherited confounds are not necessarily removed by statistical controls. The previously observed association between maternal smoking in pregnancy and ADHD might represent an inherited effect. PMID:19596120

Hippocampal activations in mesial temporal lobe epilepsy due to hippocampal sclerosis- an observational study on intramural encoding-delayed recall paradigms using task-based memory fMRI.

PubMed

Rajesh, P G; Thomas, Bejoy; Pammi, V S Chandrasekhar; Kesavadas, C; Alexander, Aley; Radhakrishnan, Ashalatha; Thomas, S V; Menon, R N

2018-05-26

To validate concurrent utility of within-scanner encoding and delayed recognition-memory paradigms to ascertain hippocampal activations during task-based memory fMRI. Memory paradigms were designed for faces, word-pairs and abstract designs. A deep-encoding task was designed comprising of a total of 9 cycles run within a 1.5T MRI scanner. A recall session was performed after 1 h within the scanner using an event-related design. Group analysis was done with 'correct-incorrect' responses applied as parametric modulators in Statistical Parametric Mapping version 8 using boot-strap method to enable estimation of laterality indices (LI) using custom anatomical masks involving the medio-basal temporal structures. Twenty seven subjects with drug-resistant mesial temporal lobe epilepsy due to hippocampal sclerosis (MTLE-HS) [17 patients of left-MTLE and 10 patients of right-MTLE] and 21 right handed age-matched healthy controls (HC) were recruited. For the encoding paradigm blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) responses in HC demonstrated right laterality for faces, left laterality for word pairs, and bilaterality for design encoding over the regions of interest. Both right and left MTLE-HS groups revealed left lateralisation for word-pair encoding, bilateral activation for face encoding, with design encoding in right MTLE-HS demonstrating a left shift. As opposed to lateralization shown in controls, group analysis of cued-recall BOLD signals acquired within scanner in left MTLE-HS demonstrated right lateralization for word-pairs with bilaterality for faces and designs. The right MTLE-HS group demonstrated bilateral activations for faces, word-pairs and designs. Recall-based fMRI paradigms indicate hippocampal plasticity in MTLE-HS, maximal for word-pair associate recall tasks. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Priming for new associations in animacy decision: evidence for context dependency.

PubMed

Pecher, Diane; Raaijmakers, Jeroen

2004-10-01

In four experiments we investigated the context-dependent nature of semantic memory by looking at priming effects in animacy decision for newly formed associations. The first experiment investigated whether the priming effect depended on the nature of the prior relation between the word pairs. The results showed no such effect, replicating earlier findings. Experiments 2, 3, and 4 investigated the role of context overlap between study and test. In Experiment 2 priming for new associations was found only for word pairs that had been presented in the animacy decision task during study. Experiment 3 showed that in order to obtain priming effects for new associations these associations have to be studied in a study task that is aimed at unitized processing of the word pair at a semantic level. Experiment 4 showed that processing the pairs as separate words at an orthographic level cancelled the priming effect. The results are explained by assuming that priming results from the overlap of features that are activated during both study and test.

Interference from related actions in spoken word production: Behavioural and fMRI evidence.

PubMed

de Zubicaray, Greig; Fraser, Douglas; Ramajoo, Kori; McMahon, Katie

2017-02-01

Few investigations of lexical access in spoken word production have investigated the cognitive and neural mechanisms involved in action naming. These are likely to be more complex than the mechanisms involved in object naming, due to the ways in which conceptual features of action words are represented. The present study employed a blocked cyclic naming paradigm to examine whether related action contexts elicit a semantic interference effect akin to that observed with categorically related objects. Participants named pictures of intransitive actions to avoid a confound with object processing. In Experiment 1, body-part related actions (e.g., running, walking, skating, hopping) were named significantly slower compared to unrelated actions (e.g., laughing, running, waving, hiding). Experiment 2 employed perfusion functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to investigate the neural mechanisms involved in this semantic interference effect. Compared to unrelated actions, naming related actions elicited significant perfusion signal increases in frontotemporal cortex, including bilateral inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and hippocampus, and decreases in bilateral posterior temporal, occipital and parietal cortices, including intraparietal sulcus (IPS). The findings demonstrate a role for temporoparietal cortex in conceptual-lexical processing of intransitive action knowledge during spoken word production, and support the proposed involvement of interference resolution and incremental learning mechanisms in the blocked cyclic naming paradigm. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Estimation of Effect Size from a Series of Experiments Involving Paired Comparisons.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gibbons, Robert D.; And Others

1993-01-01

A distribution theory is derived for a G. V. Glass-type (1976) estimator of effect size from studies involving paired comparisons. The possibility of combining effect sizes from studies involving a mixture of related and unrelated samples is also explored. Resulting estimates are illustrated using data from previous psychiatric research. (SLD)

Word Learning and Individual Differences in Word Learning Reflected in Event-Related Potentials

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Perfetti, Charles A.; Wlotko, Edward W.; Hart, Lesley A.

2005-01-01

Adults learned the meanings of rare words (e.g., gloaming) and then made meaning judgments on pairs of words. The 1st word was a trained rare word, an untrained rare word, or an untrained familiar word. Event-related potentials distinguished trained rare words from both untrained rare and familiar words, first at 140 ms and again at 400-600 ms…

PREST-plus identifies pedigree errors and cryptic relatedness in the GAW18 sample using genome-wide SNP data.

PubMed

Sun, Lei; Dimitromanolakis, Apostolos

2014-01-01

Pedigree errors and cryptic relatedness often appear in families or population samples collected for genetic studies. If not identified, these issues can lead to either increased false negatives or false positives in both linkage and association analyses. To identify pedigree errors and cryptic relatedness among individuals from the 20 San Antonio Family Studies (SAFS) families and cryptic relatedness among the 157 putatively unrelated individuals, we apply PREST-plus to the genome-wide single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) data and analyze estimated identity-by-descent (IBD) distributions for all pairs of genotyped individuals. Based on the given pedigrees alone, PREST-plus identifies the following putative pairs: 1091 full-sib, 162 half-sib, 360 grandparent-grandchild, 2269 avuncular, 2717 first cousin, 402 half-avuncular, 559 half-first cousin, 2 half-sib+first cousin, 957 parent-offspring and 440,546 unrelated. Using the genotype data, PREST-plus detects 7 mis-specified relative pairs, with their IBD estimates clearly deviating from the null expectations, and it identifies 4 cryptic related pairs involving 7 individuals from 6 families.

Improving associative memory in older adults with unitization.

PubMed

Ahmad, Fahad N; Fernandes, Myra; Hockley, William E

2015-01-01

We examined if unitization inherent preexperimentally could reduce the associative deficit in older adults. In Experiment 1, younger and older adults studied compound word (CW; e.g., store keeper) and noncompound word (NCW; e.g., needle birth) pairs. We found a reduction in the age-related associative deficit such that older but not younger adults showed a discrimination advantage for CW relative to NCW pairs on a yes-no associative recognition test. These results suggest that CW compared to NCW word pairs provide schematic support that older adults can use to improve their memory. In Experiment 2, reducing study time in younger adults decreased associative recognition performance, but did not produce a discrimination advantage for CW pairs. In Experiment 3, both older and younger adults showed a discrimination advantage for CW pairs on a two-alternative forced-choice recognition test, which encourages greater use of familiarity. These results suggest that test format influenced young adults' use of familiarity during associative recognition of unitized pairs, and that older adults rely more on familiarity than recollection for associative recognition. Unitization of preexperimental associations, as in CW pairs, can alleviate age-related associative deficits.

Factors modulating the effect of divided attention during retrieval of words.

PubMed

Fernandes, Myra A; Moscovitch, Morris

2002-07-01

In this study, we examined variables modulating interference effects on episodic memory under divided attention conditions during retrieval for a list of unrelated words. In Experiment 1, we found that distracting tasks that required animacy or syllable decisions to visually presented words, without a memory load, produced large interference on free recall performance. In Experiment 2, a distracting task requiring phonemic decisions about nonsense words produced a far larger interference effect than one that required semantic decisions about pictures. In Experiment 3, we replicated the effect of the nonsense-word distracting task on memory and showed that an equally resource-demanding picture-based task produced significant interference with memory retrieval, although the effect was smaller in magnitude. Taken together, the results suggest that free recall is disrupted by competition for phonological or word-form representations during retrieval and, to a lesser extent, by competition for semantic representations.

Sleep spindles during a nap correlate with post sleep memory performance for highly rewarded word-pairs.

PubMed

Studte, Sara; Bridger, Emma; Mecklinger, Axel

2017-04-01

The consolidation of new associations is thought to depend in part on physiological processes engaged during non-REM (NREM) sleep, such as slow oscillations and sleep spindles. Moreover, NREM sleep is thought to selectively benefit associations that are adaptive for the future. In line with this, the current study investigated whether different reward cues at encoding are associated with changes in sleep physiology and memory retention. Participants' associative memory was tested after learning a list of arbitrarily paired words both before and after taking a 90-min nap. During learning, word-pairs were preceded by a cue indicating either a high or a low reward for correct memory performance at test. The motivation manipulation successfully impacted retention such that memory declined to a greater extent from pre- to post sleep for low rewarded than for high rewarded word-pairs. In line with previous studies, positive correlations between spindle density during NREM sleep and general memory performance pre- and post-sleep were found. In addition to this, however, a selective positive relationship between memory performance for highly rewarded word-pairs at posttest and spindle density during NREM sleep was also observed. These results support the view that motivationally salient memories are preferentially consolidated and that sleep spindles may be an important underlying mechanism for selective consolidation. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Brand name confusion: Subjective and objective measures of orthographic similarity.

PubMed

Burt, Jennifer S; McFarlane, Kimberley A; Kelly, Sarah J; Humphreys, Michael S; Weatherall, Kimberlee; Burrell, Robert G

2017-09-01

Determining brand name similarity is vital in areas of trademark registration and brand confusion. Students rated the orthographic (spelling) similarity of word pairs (Experiments 1, 2, and 4) and brand name pairs (Experiment 5). Similarity ratings were consistently higher when words shared beginnings rather than endings, whereas shared pronunciation of the stressed vowel had small and less consistent effects on ratings. In Experiment 3 a behavioral task confirmed the similarity of shared beginnings in lexical processing. Specifically, in a task requiring participants to decide whether 2 words presented in the clear (a probe and a later target) were the same or different, a masked prime word preceding the target shortened response latencies if it shared its initial 3 letters with the target. The ratings of students for word and brand name pairs were strongly predicted by metrics of orthographic similarity from the visual word identification literature based on the number of shared letters and their relative positions. The results indicate a potential use for orthographic metrics in brand name registration and trademark law. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

Taboo words: the effect of emotion on memory for peripheral information.

PubMed

Guillet, Rebecca; Arndt, Jason

2009-09-01

In three experiments, we examined memory for peripheral information that occurred in the same context as emotion-inducing information. In the first two experiments, participants studied either a sentence (Experiment 1) or a pair of words (Experiments 2A-2C) containing a neutral peripheral word, as well as a neutral, negative-valence, or taboo word, to induce an emotional response. At retrieval, the participants were asked to recall the neutral peripheral word from a sentence fragment or emotion-inducing word cue. In Experiment 3, we presented word pairs at encoding and tested memory with associative recognition. In all three experiments, memory for peripheral words was enhanced when it was encoded in the presence of emotionally arousing taboo words but not when it was encoded in the presence of words that were only negative in valence. These data are consistent with priority-binding theory (MacKay et al., 2004) and inconsistent with the attention-narrowing hypothesis (Easterbrook, 1959), as well as with object-based binding theory (Mather, 2007).

Object activation in semantic memory from visual multimodal feature input.

PubMed

Kraut, Michael A; Kremen, Sarah; Moo, Lauren R; Segal, Jessica B; Calhoun, Vincent; Hart, John

2002-01-01

The human brain's representation of objects has been proposed to exist as a network of coactivated neural regions present in multiple cognitive systems. However, it is not known if there is a region specific to the process of activating an integrated object representation in semantic memory from multimodal feature stimuli (e.g., picture-word). A previous study using word-word feature pairs as stimulus input showed that the left thalamus is integrally involved in object activation (Kraut, Kremen, Segal, et al., this issue). In the present study, participants were presented picture-word pairs that are features of objects, with the task being to decide if together they "activated" an object not explicitly presented (e.g., picture of a candle and the word "icing" activate the internal representation of a "cake"). For picture-word pairs that combine to elicit an object, signal change was detected in the ventral temporo-occipital regions, pre-SMA, left primary somatomotor cortex, both caudate nuclei, and the dorsal thalami bilaterally. These findings suggest that the left thalamus is engaged for either picture or word stimuli, but the right thalamus appears to be involved when picture stimuli are also presented with words in semantic object activation tasks. The somatomotor signal changes are likely secondary to activation of the semantic object representations from multimodal visual stimuli.

Age differences in recall and predicting recall of action events and words.

PubMed

McDonald-Miszczak, L; Hubley, A M; Hultsch, D F

1996-03-01

Age differences in recall and prediction of recall were examined with different memory tasks. We asked 36 younger (19-28 yrs) and 36 older (60-81 yrs) women to provide both global and item-by-item predictions of their recall, and then to recall either (a) Subject Performance Tasks (SPTs), (b) verb-noun word-pairs memorized in list-like fashion (Word-Pairs), or (c) nonsense verb-noun word-pairs (Nonsense-Pairs) over three experimental trials. Based on previous research, we hypothesized that these tasks would vary in relative difficulty and flexibility of encoding. The results indicated that (a) age differences in global predictions (task specific self-efficacy) and recall performance across trials were minimized with SPT as compared with verbal materials, (b) global predictions were higher and more accurate for SPT as compared to verbal materials, and (c) item-by-item predictions were most accurate for materials encoded with the most flexibility (Nonsense Pairs). The results suggest that SPTs may provide some level of environmental support to reduce age differences in performance and task-specific self-efficacy, but that memory monitoring may depend on specific characteristics of the stimuli (i.e., flexibility of encoding) rather than their verbal or nonverbal nature.

Rapid eye movement and non-rapid eye movement sleep contributions in memory consolidation and resistance to retroactive interference for verbal material.

PubMed

Deliens, Gaétane; Leproult, Rachel; Neu, Daniel; Peigneux, Philippe

2013-12-01

To test the hypothesis that rapid eye movement (REM) sleep contributes to the consolidation of new memories, whereas non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep contributes to the prevention of retroactive interference. Randomized, crossover study. Two sessions of either a morning nap or wakefulness. Twenty-five healthy young adults. Declarative learning of word pairs followed by a nap or a wake interval, then learning of interfering word pairs and delayed recall of list A. After a restricted night (24:00-06:00), participants learned a list of word pairs (list A). They were then required to either take a nap or stay awake during 45 min, after which they learned a second list of word pairs (list B) and then had to recall list A. Fifty percent of word pairs in list B shared the first word with list A, resulting in interference. Ten subjects exhibited REM sleep whereas 13 subjects exhibited NREM stage 3 (N3) sleep. An interference effect was observed in the nap but not in the wake condition. In post-learning naps, N3 sleep was associated with a reduced interference effect, which was not the case for REM sleep. Moreover, participants exhibiting N3 sleep in the post-learning nap condition also showed a reduced interference effect in the wake condition, suggesting a higher protection ability against interference. Our results partly support the hypothesis that non-rapid eye movement sleep contributes in protecting novel memories against interference. However, rapid eye movement sleep-related consolidation is not evidenced.

Sustained meaning activation for polysemous but not homonymous words: evidence from EEG.

PubMed

MacGregor, Lucy J; Bouwsema, Jennifer; Klepousniotou, Ekaterini

2015-02-01

Theoretical linguistic accounts of lexical ambiguity distinguish between homonymy, where words that share a lexical form have unrelated meanings, and polysemy, where the meanings are related. The present study explored the psychological reality of this theoretical assumption by asking whether there is evidence that homonyms and polysemes are represented and processed differently in the brain. We investigated the time-course of meaning activation of different types of ambiguous words using EEG. Homonyms and polysemes were each further subdivided into two: unbalanced homonyms (e.g., "coach") and balanced homonyms (e.g., "match"); metaphorical polysemes (e.g., "mouth") and metonymic polysemes (e.g., "rabbit"). These four types of ambiguous words were presented as primes in a visual single-word priming delayed lexical decision task employing a long ISI (750 ms). Targets were related to one of the meanings of the primes, or were unrelated. ERPs formed relative to the target onset indicated that the theoretical distinction between homonymy and polysemy was reflected in the N400 brain response. For targets following homonymous primes (both unbalanced and balanced), no effects survived at this long ISI indicating that both meanings of the prime had already decayed. On the other hand, for polysemous primes (both metaphorical and metonymic), activation was observed for both dominant and subordinate senses. The observed processing differences between homonymy and polysemy provide evidence in support of differential neuro-cognitive representations for the two types of ambiguity. We argue that the polysemous senses act collaboratively to strengthen the representation, facilitating maintenance, while the competitive nature of homonymous meanings leads to decay. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Infants Encode Phonetic Detail during Cross-Situational Word Learning

PubMed Central

Escudero, Paola; Mulak, Karen E.; Vlach, Haley A.

2016-01-01

Infants often hear new words in the context of more than one candidate referent. In cross-situational word learning (XSWL), word-object mappings are determined by tracking co-occurrences of words and candidate referents across multiple learning events. Research demonstrates that infants can learn words in XSWL paradigms, suggesting that it is a viable model of real-world word learning. However, these studies have all presented infants with words that have no or minimal phonological overlap (e.g., BLICKET and GAX). Words often contain some degree of phonological overlap, and it is unknown whether infants can simultaneously encode fine phonological detail while learning words via XSWL. We tested 12-, 15-, 17-, and 20-month-olds’ XSWL of eight words that, when paired, formed non-minimal pairs (MPs; e.g., BON–DEET) or MPs (e.g., BON–TON, DEET–DIT). The results demonstrated that infants are able to learn word-object mappings and encode them with sufficient phonetic detail as to identify words in both non-minimal and MP contexts. Thus, this work suggests that infants are able to simultaneously discriminate phonetic differences between words and map words to referents in an implicit learning paradigm such as XSWL. PMID:27708605

Propose but verify: Fast mapping meets cross-situational word learning

PubMed Central

Trueswell, John C.; Medina, Tamara Nicol; Hafri, Alon; Gleitman, Lila R.

2012-01-01

We report three eyetracking experiments that examine the learning procedure used by adults as they pair novel words and visually presented referents over a sequence of referentially ambiguous trials. Successful learning under such conditions has been argued to be the product of a learning procedure in which participants provisionally pair each novel word with several possible referents and use a statistical-associative learning mechanism to gradually converge on a single mapping across learning instances. We argue here that successful learning in this setting is instead the product of a one-trial procedure in which a single hypothesized word-referent pairing is retained across learning instances, abandoned only if the subsequent instance fails to confirm the pairing – more a ‘fast mapping’ procedure than a gradual statistical one. We provide experimental evidence for this Propose-but-Verify learning procedure via three experiments in which adult participants attempted to learn the meanings of nonce words cross-situationally under varying degrees of referential uncertainty. The findings, using both explicit (referent selection) and implicit (eye movement) measures, show that even in these artificial learning contexts, which are far simpler than those encountered by a language learner in a natural environment, participants do not retain multiple meaning hypotheses across learning instances. As we discuss, these findings challenge ‘gradualist’ accounts of word learning and are consistent with the known rapid course of vocabulary learning in a first language. PMID:23142693

The role of Broca's area in speech perception: evidence from aphasia revisited.

PubMed

Hickok, Gregory; Costanzo, Maddalena; Capasso, Rita; Miceli, Gabriele

2011-12-01

Motor theories of speech perception have been re-vitalized as a consequence of the discovery of mirror neurons. Some authors have even promoted a strong version of the motor theory, arguing that the motor speech system is critical for perception. Part of the evidence that is cited in favor of this claim is the observation from the early 1980s that individuals with Broca's aphasia, and therefore inferred damage to Broca's area, can have deficits in speech sound discrimination. Here we re-examine this issue in 24 patients with radiologically confirmed lesions to Broca's area and various degrees of associated non-fluent speech production. Patients performed two same-different discrimination tasks involving pairs of CV syllables, one in which both CVs were presented auditorily, and the other in which one syllable was auditorily presented and the other visually presented as an orthographic form; word comprehension was also assessed using word-to-picture matching tasks in both auditory and visual forms. Discrimination performance on the all-auditory task was four standard deviations above chance, as measured using d', and was unrelated to the degree of non-fluency in the patients' speech production. Performance on the auditory-visual task, however, was worse than, and not correlated with, the all-auditory task. The auditory-visual task was related to the degree of speech non-fluency. Word comprehension was at ceiling for the auditory version (97% accuracy) and near ceiling for the orthographic version (90% accuracy). We conclude that the motor speech system is not necessary for speech perception as measured both by discrimination and comprehension paradigms, but may play a role in orthographic decoding or in auditory-visual matching of phonological forms. 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The role of word choice and criterion on intentional memory.

PubMed

Toyota, Hiroshi

2015-02-01

The relationship between the criterion for choosing and the self-choice effects (greater recall in a self-choice compared to a forced-choice condition) on intentional memory was examined. Thirty-three female nursing school volunteers were administered 24 word pairs in a 2 × 2 design to assess the influence of motivation upon free recall. When word pairs were presented to participants, they were asked to choose a word to-be-remembered, either in a self-choice condition or a forced-choice condition. Words chosen by the participants were recalled more often than those chosen by the experimenter (forced choice). Thus, the self-choice effect was greater for words chosen with a self-reference criterion compared to a metamemory criterion, supporting the integration hypothesis as the origin of the self-choice effect.

Effects of Picture Size and Placement on Memory for Written Words.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Blischak, Doreen M.; McDaniel, Mark A.

1995-01-01

Normally developing kindergarten children (n=45) were shown written words under 4 conditions representing various size and position relationships between line drawings and orthography. Results showed superior performance for word-only and enhanced-word conditions, over those conditions pairing small or large drawings with written words. Results…

Cross-Situational Learning of Minimal Word Pairs

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Escudero, Paola; Mulak, Karen E.; Vlach, Haley A.

2016-01-01

"Cross-situational statistical learning" of words involves tracking co-occurrences of auditory words and objects across time to infer word-referent mappings. Previous research has demonstrated that learners can infer referents across sets of very phonologically distinct words (e.g., WUG, DAX), but it remains unknown whether learners can…

Consolidation of novel word learning in native English-speaking adults.

PubMed

Kurdziel, Laura B F; Spencer, Rebecca M C

2016-01-01

Sleep has been shown to improve the retention of newly learned words. However, most methodologies have used artificial or foreign language stimuli, with learning limited to word/novel word or word/image pairs. Such stimuli differ from many word-learning scenarios in which definition strings are learned with novel words. Thus, we examined sleep's benefit on learning new words within a native language by using very low-frequency words. Participants learned 45 low-frequency English words and, at subsequent recall, attempted to recall the words when given the corresponding definitions. Participants either learned in the morning with recall in the evening (wake group), or learned in the evening with recall the following morning (sleep group). Performance change across the delay was significantly better in the sleep than the wake group. Additionally, the Levenshtein distance, a measure of correctness of the typed word compared with the target word, became significantly worse following wake, whereas sleep protected correctness of recall. Polysomnographic data from a subsample of participants suggested that rapid eye movement (REM) sleep may be particularly important for this benefit. These results lend further support for sleep's function on semantic learning even for word/definition pairs within a native language.

Lexical selection in the semantically blocked cyclic naming task: the role of cognitive control and learning

PubMed Central

Crowther, Jason E.; Martin, Randi C.

2014-01-01

Studies of semantic interference in language production have provided evidence for a role of cognitive control mechanisms in regulating the activation of semantic competitors during naming. The present study investigated the relationship between individual differences in cognitive control abilities, for both younger and older adults, and the degree of semantic interference in a blocked cyclic naming task. We predicted that individuals with lower working memory capacity (as measured by word span), lesser ability to inhibit distracting responses (as measured by Stroop interference), and a lesser ability to resolve proactive interference (as measured by a recent negatives task) would show a greater increase in semantic interference in naming, with effects being larger for older adults. Instead, measures of cognitive control were found to relate to specific indices of semantic interference in the naming task, rather than overall degree of semantic interference, and few interactions with age were found, with younger and older adults performing similarly. The increase in naming latencies across naming trials within a cycle was negatively correlated with word span for both related and unrelated conditions, suggesting a strategy of narrowing response alternatives based upon memory for the set of item names. Evidence for a role of inhibition in response selection was obtained, as Stroop interference correlated positively with the change in naming latencies across cycles for the related, but not unrelated, condition. In contrast, recent negatives interference correlated negatively with the change in naming latencies across unrelated cycles, suggesting that individual differences in this tap the degree of strengthening of links in a lexical network based upon prior exposure. Results are discussed in terms of current models of lexical selection and consequences for word retrieval in more naturalistic production. PMID:24478675

Delineating the contribution of long-term associations to immediate recall.

PubMed

Saint-Aubin, Jean; Guérard, Katherine; Chamberland, Cindy; Malenfant, Amélie

2014-01-01

In the present study we examined the contribution of semantic associative links to short-term recall performance by using the separation effect first introduced in free recall studies (Glanzer, 1969). Pairs of associated words were inserted in the to-be-remembered lists. In two experiments associated words were better recalled than non-associated words, and were better recalled when they were adjacent in the list than when they were separated by one non-associated item. In addition results showed that forward associative links among pair members were as beneficial to immediate serial recall as backward associative links. Finally the benefit of associative links among pair members was observed with both forward and backward recall.

Foveal vs. parafoveal attention-grabbing power of threat-related information.

PubMed

Calvo, Manuel G; Castillo, M Dolores

2005-01-01

We investigated whether threat words presented in attended (foveal) and in unattended (parafoveal) locations of the visual field are attention grabbing. Neutral (nonemotional) words were presented at fixation as probes in a lexical decision task. Each probe word was preceded by 2 simultaneous prime words (1 foveal, 1 parafoveal), either threatening or neutral, for 150 ms. The stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) between the primes and the probe was either 300 or 1,000 ms. Results revealed slowed lexical decision times on the probe when primed by an unrelated foveal threat word at the short (300-ms) delay. In contrast, parafoveal threat words did not affect processing of the neutral probe at either delay. Nevertheless, both neutral and threat parafoveal words facilitated lexical decisions for identical probe words at 300-ms SOA. This suggests that threat words appearing outside the focus of attention do not draw or engage cognitive resources to such an extent as to produce interference in the processing of concurrent or subsequent neutral stimuli. An explanation of the lack of parafoveal interference is that semantic content is not extracted in the parafovea.

Extensions of the picture superiority effect in associative recognition.

PubMed

Hockley, William E; Bancroft, Tyler

2011-12-01

Previous research has shown that the picture superiority effect (PSE) is seen in tests of associative recognition for random pairs of line drawings compared to pairs of concrete words (Hockley, 2008). In the present study we demonstrated that the PSE for associative recognition is still observed when subjects have correctly identified the individual items of each pair as old (Experiment 1), and that this effect is not due to rehearsal borrowing (Experiment 2). The PSE for associative recognition also is shown to be present but attenuated for mixed picture-word pairs (Experiment 3), and similar in magnitude for pairs of simple black and white line drawings and coloured photographs of detailed objects (Experiment 4). The results are consistent with the view that the semantic meaning of nameable pictures is activated faster than that of words thereby affording subjects more time to generate and elaborate meaningful associations between items depicted in picture form. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved.

Brain potentials show rapid activation of implicit attitudes towards young and old people.

PubMed

van der Lugt, Arie H; Banfield, Jane F; Osinsky, Roman; Münte, Thomas F

2012-01-06

While previous behavioural research suggests that attitudes, for example towards elderly people, may be activated automatically, this type of research does not provide information about the detailed time-course of such processing in the brain. We investigated the impact of age related attitude information in a Go/NoGo association task that paired photographs of elderly or young faces with positive or negative words. Event related brain potentials showed an N200 (NoGo) component, which appeared earlier in runs which required similar responses for congruent stimulus pairings (e.g. respond to pictures of elderly faces or negative words) than for incongruent pairings (e.g. respond to elderly faces or positive words). As information processing leading to a certain attitude must precede differential brain activity according to the congruence of the paired words and faces, we show that this type of information is activated almost immediately following the structural encoding of the face, between 170 and 230 ms after onset of the face. Copyright © 2011. Published by Elsevier B.V.

Chunk Limits and Length Limits in Immediate Recall: A Reconciliation

PubMed Central

Chen, Zhijian; Cowan, Nelson

2008-01-01

Whereas some research on immediate recall of verbal lists has suggested that it is limited by the number of chunks that can be recalled (e.g., Tulving & Patkau, 1962; Cowan, Chen, & Rouder, 2004), other research has suggested that it is limited by the length of the material to be recalled (e.g., Baddeley, Thomson, & Buchanan, 1975). We investigated this question by teaching new paired associations between words to create two-word chunks. The results suggest that both chunk capacity limits and length limits come into play. For the free recall of 12-word lists, 6 pre-learned pairs could be recalled about as well as 6 pre-exposed singletons, suggesting a chunk limit. However, for the serially-ordered recall of 8-word lists, 4 pre-learned pairs could be recalled about as well as 8 pre-exposed singletons, suggesting a length limit. Other conditions yielded intermediate results suggesting that sometimes both limits may operate together. PMID:16393043

Word Imageability Enhances Association-memory by Increasing Hippocampal Engagement.

PubMed

Caplan, Jeremy B; Madan, Christopher R

2016-10-01

The hippocampus is thought to support association-memory, particularly when tested with cued recall. One of the most well-known and studied factors that influences accuracy of verbal association-memory is imageability; participants remember pairs of high-imageability words better than pairs of low-imageability words. High-imageability words are also remembered better in tests of item-memory. However, we previously found that item-memory effects could not explain the enhancement in cued recall, suggesting that imageability enhances association-memory strength. Here we report an fMRI study designed to ask, what is the role of the hippocampus in the memory advantage for associations due to imageability? We tested two alternative hypotheses: (1) Recruitment Hypothesis: High-imageability pairs are remembered better because they recruit the underlying hippocampal association-memory function more effectively. Alternatively, (2) Bypassing Hypothesis: Imageability functions by making the association-forming process easier, enhancing memory in a way that bypasses the hippocampus, as has been found, for example, with explicit unitization imagery strategies. Results found, first, hippocampal BOLD signal was greater during study and recall of high- than low-imageability word pairs. Second, the difference in activity between recalled and forgotten pairs showed a main effect, but no significant interaction with imageability, challenging the bypassing hypothesis, but consistent with the predictions derived from the recruitment hypothesis. Our findings suggest that certain stimulus properties, like imageability, may leverage, rather than avoid, the associative function of the hippocampus to support superior association-memory.

Role of triggers and dysphoria in mind-wandering about past, present and future: A laboratory study.

PubMed

Plimpton, Benjamin; Patel, Priya; Kvavilashvili, Lia

2015-05-01

To bridge the related but separate areas of research on mind-wandering and Involuntary Autobiographical Memory (IAM), the frequency and temporal focus of task unrelated thoughts about past, present, and future was compared in 19 dysphoric and 21 non-dysphoric participants, using a modified laboratory method for studying IAMs. Participants were stopped 11 times during a 15-min vigilance task and recorded their thoughts at that moment. In both groups, most thoughts were spontaneous, task-unrelated, and triggered by irrelevant cue-words on the screen with negative words being more likely to trigger past memories and positive cues - thoughts about future. Both groups reported more past memories than current or future thoughts, but differences emerged in the type of future thought experienced: non-dysphoric participants reported more planning thoughts, and dysphoric participants more abstract hypothetical thoughts. The results suggest that some findings from IAM research regarding cues and the impact of dysphoria may be generalizable to mind-wandering. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Word pair classification during imagined speech using direct brain recordings

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Martin, Stephanie; Brunner, Peter; Iturrate, Iñaki; Millán, José Del R.; Schalk, Gerwin; Knight, Robert T.; Pasley, Brian N.

2016-05-01

People that cannot communicate due to neurological disorders would benefit from an internal speech decoder. Here, we showed the ability to classify individual words during imagined speech from electrocorticographic signals. In a word imagery task, we used high gamma (70-150 Hz) time features with a support vector machine model to classify individual words from a pair of words. To account for temporal irregularities during speech production, we introduced a non-linear time alignment into the SVM kernel. Classification accuracy reached 88% in a two-class classification framework (50% chance level), and average classification accuracy across fifteen word-pairs was significant across five subjects (mean = 58% p < 0.05). We also compared classification accuracy between imagined speech, overt speech and listening. As predicted, higher classification accuracy was obtained in the listening and overt speech conditions (mean = 89% and 86%, respectively; p < 0.0001), where speech stimuli were directly presented. The results provide evidence for a neural representation for imagined words in the temporal lobe, frontal lobe and sensorimotor cortex, consistent with previous findings in speech perception and production. These data represent a proof of concept study for basic decoding of speech imagery, and delineate a number of key challenges to usage of speech imagery neural representations for clinical applications.

Word pair classification during imagined speech using direct brain recordings

PubMed Central

Martin, Stephanie; Brunner, Peter; Iturrate, Iñaki; Millán, José del R.; Schalk, Gerwin; Knight, Robert T.; Pasley, Brian N.

2016-01-01

People that cannot communicate due to neurological disorders would benefit from an internal speech decoder. Here, we showed the ability to classify individual words during imagined speech from electrocorticographic signals. In a word imagery task, we used high gamma (70–150 Hz) time features with a support vector machine model to classify individual words from a pair of words. To account for temporal irregularities during speech production, we introduced a non-linear time alignment into the SVM kernel. Classification accuracy reached 88% in a two-class classification framework (50% chance level), and average classification accuracy across fifteen word-pairs was significant across five subjects (mean = 58%; p < 0.05). We also compared classification accuracy between imagined speech, overt speech and listening. As predicted, higher classification accuracy was obtained in the listening and overt speech conditions (mean = 89% and 86%, respectively; p < 0.0001), where speech stimuli were directly presented. The results provide evidence for a neural representation for imagined words in the temporal lobe, frontal lobe and sensorimotor cortex, consistent with previous findings in speech perception and production. These data represent a proof of concept study for basic decoding of speech imagery, and delineate a number of key challenges to usage of speech imagery neural representations for clinical applications. PMID:27165452

Intracranial EEG correlates of implicit relational inference within the hippocampus.

PubMed

Reber, T P; Do Lam, A T A; Axmacher, N; Elger, C E; Helmstaedter, C; Henke, K; Fell, J

2016-01-01

Drawing inferences from past experiences enables adaptive behavior in future situations. Inference has been shown to depend on hippocampal processes. Usually, inference is considered a deliberate and effortful mental act which happens during retrieval, and requires the focus of our awareness. Recent fMRI studies hint at the possibility that some forms of hippocampus-dependent inference can also occur during encoding and possibly also outside of awareness. Here, we sought to further explore the feasibility of hippocampal implicit inference, and specifically address the temporal evolution of implicit inference using intracranial EEG. Presurgical epilepsy patients with hippocampal depth electrodes viewed a sequence of word pairs, and judged the semantic fit between two words in each pair. Some of the word pairs entailed a common word (e.g., "winter-red," "red-cat") such that an indirect relation was established in following word pairs (e.g., "winter-cat"). The behavioral results suggested that drawing inference implicitly from past experience is feasible because indirect relations seemed to foster "fit" judgments while the absence of indirect relations fostered "do not fit" judgments, even though the participants were unaware of the indirect relations. A event-related potential (ERP) difference emerging 400 ms post-stimulus was evident in the hippocampus during encoding, suggesting that indirect relations were already established automatically during encoding of the overlapping word pairs. Further ERP differences emerged later post-stimulus (1,500 ms), were modulated by the participants' responses and were evident during encoding and test. Furthermore, response-locked ERP effects were evident at test. These ERP effects could hence be a correlate of the interaction of implicit memory with decision-making. Together, the data map out a time-course in which the hippocampus automatically integrates memories from discrete but related episodes to implicitly influence future decision making. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Eyes wide open: Pupil size as a proxy for inhibition in the masked-priming paradigm.

PubMed

Geller, Jason; Still, Mary L; Morris, Alison L

2016-05-01

A core assumption underlying competitive-network models of word recognition is that in order for a word to be recognized, the representations of competing orthographically similar words must be inhibited. This inhibitory mechanism is revealed in the masked-priming lexical-decision task (LDT) when responses to orthographically similar word prime-target pairs are slower than orthographically different word prime-target pairs (i.e., inhibitory priming). In English, however, behavioral evidence for inhibitory priming has been mixed. In the present study, we utilized a physiological correlate of cognitive effort never before used in the masked-priming LDT, pupil size, to replicate and extend behavioral demonstrations of inhibitory effects (i.e., Nakayama, Sears, & Lupker, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 34, 1236-1260, 2008, Exp. 1). Previous research had suggested that pupil size is a reliable indicator of cognitive load, making it a promising index of lexical inhibition. Our pupillometric data replicated and extended previous behavioral findings, in that inhibition was obtained for orthographically similar word prime-target pairs. However, our response time data provided only a partial replication of Nakayama et al. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 34, 1236-1260, 2008. These results provide converging lines of evidence that inhibition operates in word recognition and that pupillometry is a useful addition to word recognition researchers' toolbox.

Lincos: An interplanetary language. [mathematical method for cosmic radio contact with extraterrestrial life

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Freudenthal, H.

1974-01-01

A language for cosmic contacts is envisioned that utilizes radio signals of different wavelengths as sounds to form words. These words are in most cases abbreviations of Latin words understood from their English and French cognates. The logistic syntax uses pauses for punctuation in a binary system; pairs of algebraic formulas are transmitted where in a such pair the second element is always derived from the first; between them is transmitted a word that is understood as -follows- by the listener. The concepts of difference in position, of motion, of space, and of mass can be mathematically described by this language.

Disentangling Genuine Semantic Stroop Effects in Reading from Contingency Effects: On the Need for Two Neutral Baselines

PubMed Central

Lorentz, Eric; McKibben, Tessa; Ekstrand, Chelsea; Gould, Layla; Anton, Kathryn; Borowsky, Ron

2016-01-01

The automaticity of reading is often explored through the Stroop effect, whereby color-naming is affected by color words. Color associates (e.g., “sky”) also produce a Stroop effect, suggesting that automatic reading occurs through to the level of semantics, even when reading sub-lexically (e.g., the pseudohomophone “skigh”). However, several previous experiments have confounded congruency with contingency learning, whereby faster responding occurs for more frequent stimuli. Contingency effects reflect a higher frequency-pairing of the word with a font color in the congruent condition than in the incongruent condition due to the limited set of congruent pairings. To determine the extent to which the Stroop effect can be attributed to contingency learning of font colors paired with lexical (word-level) and sub-lexical (phonetically decoded) letter strings, as well as assess facilitation and interference relative to contingency effects, we developed two neutral baselines: each one matched on pair-frequency for congruent and incongruent color words. In Experiments 1 and 3, color words (e.g., “blue”) and their pseudohomophones (e.g., “bloo”) produced significant facilitation and interference relative to neutral baselines, regardless of whether the onset (i.e., first phoneme) was matched to the color words. Color associates (e.g., “ocean”) and their pseudohomophones (e.g., “oshin”), however, showed no significant facilitation or interference relative to onset matched neutral baselines (Experiment 2). When onsets were unmatched, color associate words produced consistent facilitation on RT (e.g., “ocean” vs. “dozen”), but pseudohomophones (e.g., “oshin” vs. “duhzen”) failed to produce facilitation or interference. Our findings suggest that the Stroop effects for color and associated stimuli are sensitive to the type of neutral baseline used, as well as stimulus type (word vs. pseudohomophone). In general, contingency learning plays a large role when repeating congruent items more than incongruent items, but appropriate pair-frequency matched neutral baselines allow for the assessment of genuine facilitation and interference. Using such baselines, we found reading processes proceed to a semantic level for familiar words, but not pseudohomophones (i.e., phonetic decoding). Such assessment is critical for separating the effects of genuine congruency from contingency during automatic word reading in the Stroop task, and when used with color associates, isolates the semantic contribution. PMID:27014177

Disentangling Genuine Semantic Stroop Effects in Reading from Contingency Effects: On the Need for Two Neutral Baselines.

PubMed

Lorentz, Eric; McKibben, Tessa; Ekstrand, Chelsea; Gould, Layla; Anton, Kathryn; Borowsky, Ron

2016-01-01

The automaticity of reading is often explored through the Stroop effect, whereby color-naming is affected by color words. Color associates (e.g., "sky") also produce a Stroop effect, suggesting that automatic reading occurs through to the level of semantics, even when reading sub-lexically (e.g., the pseudohomophone "skigh"). However, several previous experiments have confounded congruency with contingency learning, whereby faster responding occurs for more frequent stimuli. Contingency effects reflect a higher frequency-pairing of the word with a font color in the congruent condition than in the incongruent condition due to the limited set of congruent pairings. To determine the extent to which the Stroop effect can be attributed to contingency learning of font colors paired with lexical (word-level) and sub-lexical (phonetically decoded) letter strings, as well as assess facilitation and interference relative to contingency effects, we developed two neutral baselines: each one matched on pair-frequency for congruent and incongruent color words. In Experiments 1 and 3, color words (e.g., "blue") and their pseudohomophones (e.g., "bloo") produced significant facilitation and interference relative to neutral baselines, regardless of whether the onset (i.e., first phoneme) was matched to the color words. Color associates (e.g., "ocean") and their pseudohomophones (e.g., "oshin"), however, showed no significant facilitation or interference relative to onset matched neutral baselines (Experiment 2). When onsets were unmatched, color associate words produced consistent facilitation on RT (e.g., "ocean" vs. "dozen"), but pseudohomophones (e.g., "oshin" vs. "duhzen") failed to produce facilitation or interference. Our findings suggest that the Stroop effects for color and associated stimuli are sensitive to the type of neutral baseline used, as well as stimulus type (word vs. pseudohomophone). In general, contingency learning plays a large role when repeating congruent items more than incongruent items, but appropriate pair-frequency matched neutral baselines allow for the assessment of genuine facilitation and interference. Using such baselines, we found reading processes proceed to a semantic level for familiar words, but not pseudohomophones (i.e., phonetic decoding). Such assessment is critical for separating the effects of genuine congruency from contingency during automatic word reading in the Stroop task, and when used with color associates, isolates the semantic contribution.

Improvement of encoding and retrieval in normal and pathological aging with word-picture paradigm.

PubMed

Iodice, Rosario; Meilán, Juan José G; Carro, Juan

2015-01-01

During the aging process, there is a progressive deficit in the encoding of new information and its retrieval. Different strategies are used in order to maintain, optimize or diminish these deficits in people with and without dementia. One of the classic techniques is paired-associate learning (PAL), which is based on improving the encoding of memories, but it has yet to be used to its full potential in people with dementia. In this study, our aim is to corroborate the importance of PAL tasks as instrumental tools for creating contextual cues, during both the encoding and retrieval phases of memory. Additionally, we aim to identify the most effective form of presenting the related items. Pairs of stimuli were shown to healthy elderly people and to patients with moderate and mild Alzheimer's disease. The encoding conditions were as follows: word/word, picture/picture, picture/word, and word/picture. Associative cued recall of the second item in the pair shows that retrieval is higher for the word/picture condition in the two groups of patients with dementia when compared to the other conditions, while word/word is the least effective in all cases. These results confirm that PAL is an effective tool for creating contextual cues during both the encoding and retrieval phases in people with dementia when the items are presented using the word/picture condition. In this way, the encoding and retrieval deficit can be reduced in these people.

Effect of parental family history of Alzheimer's disease on serial position profiles.

PubMed

La Rue, Asenath; Hermann, Bruce; Jones, Jana E; Johnson, Sterling; Asthana, Sanjay; Sager, Mark A

2008-07-01

An exaggerated recency effect (ie, disproportionate recall of last-presented items) has been consistently observed in the word list learning of patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD). Our study sought to determine whether there were similar alterations in serial position learning among asymptomatic persons at risk for AD as a result of parental family history. Subjects included 623 asymptomatic middle-aged children of patients with AD (median, 53 years) and 157 control participants whose parents survived to at least age 70 without AD or other memory disorders. All participants were administered the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test, which requires learning and recall of 15 unrelated nouns. There was no significant difference in total words recalled between the AD children and control groups. However, compared with controls, AD children exhibited a significantly greater tendency to recall words from the end (recency) versus beginning (primacy) of the list. Serial position effects were unrelated to apolipoprotein allele epsilon 4 or depressive symptoms. Asymptomatic persons at risk for AD by virtue of family history do not show a difference in total words recalled compared with controls, but they exhibit a distinctly different serial position curve, suggesting greater reliance on immediate as opposed to episodic memory. This is the same serial position pattern observed in mild AD, seen here in reduced severity. Longitudinal follow-up is planned to determine whether changes in serial position patterns are a meaningful marker for preclinical detection of AD.

Developing a patient-centered outcome measure for complementary and alternative medicine therapies II: Refining content validity through cognitive interviews

PubMed Central

2011-01-01

Background Available measures of patient-reported outcomes for complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) inadequately capture the range of patient-reported treatment effects. The Self-Assessment of Change questionnaire was developed to measure multi-dimensional shifts in well-being for CAM users. With content derived from patient narratives, items were subsequently focused through interviews on a new cohort of participants. Here we present the development of the final version in which the content and format is refined through cognitive interviews. Methods We conducted cognitive interviews across five iterations of questionnaire refinement with a culturally diverse sample of 28 CAM users. In each iteration, participant critiques were used to revise the questionnaire, which was then re-tested in subsequent rounds of cognitive interviews. Following all five iterations, transcripts of cognitive interviews were systematically coded and analyzed to examine participants' understanding of the format and content of the final questionnaire. Based on this data, we established summary descriptions and selected exemplar quotations for each word pair on the final questionnaire. Results The final version of the Self-Assessment of Change questionnaire (SAC) includes 16 word pairs, nine of which remained unchanged from the original draft. Participants consistently said that these stable word pairs represented opposite ends of the same domain of experience and the meanings of these terms were stable across the participant pool. Five pairs underwent revision and two word pairs were added. Four word pairs were eliminated for redundancy or because participants did not agree on the meaning of the terms. Cognitive interviews indicate that participants understood the format of the questionnaire and considered each word pair to represent opposite poles of a shared domain of experience. Conclusions We have placed lay language and direct experience at the center of questionnaire revision and refinement. In so doing, we provide an innovative model for the development of truly patient-centered outcome measures. Although this instrument was designed and tested in a CAM-specific population, it may be useful in assessing multi-dimensional shifts in well-being across a broader patient population. PMID:22206409

Communicating with sentences: A multi-word naming game model

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lou, Yang; Chen, Guanrong; Hu, Jianwei

2018-01-01

Naming game simulates the process of naming an object by a single word, in which a population of communicating agents can reach global consensus asymptotically through iteratively pair-wise conversations. We propose an extension of the single-word model to a multi-word naming game (MWNG), simulating the case of describing a complex object by a sentence (multiple words). Words are defined in categories, and then organized as sentences by combining them from different categories. We refer to a formatted combination of several words as a pattern. In such an MWNG, through a pair-wise conversation, it requires the hearer to achieve consensus with the speaker with respect to both every single word in the sentence as well as the sentence pattern, so as to guarantee the correct meaning of the saying; otherwise, they fail reaching consensus in the interaction. We validate the model in three typical topologies as the underlying communication network, and employ both conventional and man-designed patterns in performing the MWNG.

Hemispheric processing of differently valenced and self-relevant attachment words in middle-aged married and separated individuals.

PubMed

Fussell, Nicola J; Rowe, Angela C; Mohr, Christine

2012-01-01

The reliance in experimental psychology on testing undergraduate populations with relatively little life experience, and/or ambiguously valenced stimuli with varying degrees of self-relevance, may have contributed to inconsistent findings in the literature on the valence hypothesis. To control for these potential limitations, the current study assessed lateralised lexical decisions for positive and negative attachment words in 40 middle-aged male and female participants. Self-relevance was manipulated in two ways: by testing currently married compared with previously married individuals and by assessing self-relevance ratings individually for each word. Results replicated a left hemisphere advantage for lexical decisions and a processing advantage of emotional over neutral words but did not support the valence hypothesis. Positive attachment words yielded a processing advantage over neutral words in the right hemisphere, while emotional words (irrespective of valence) yielded a processing advantage over neutral words in the left hemisphere. Both self-relevance manipulations were unrelated to lateralised performance. The role of participant sex and age in emotion processing are discussed as potential modulators of the present findings.

Recalled Aspects of Original Encoding Strategies Influence Episodic Feeling of Knowing

PubMed Central

Hertzog, Christopher; Fulton, Erika K.; Sinclair, Starlette M.; Dunlosky, John

2013-01-01

We tested the hypothesis that feeling of knowing (FOK) after a failed recall attempt is influenced by recalling aspects of the original encoding strategy. Individuals were instructed to use interactive imagery to encode unrelated word pairs. We manipulated item concreteness (abstract versus concrete) and item repetition at study (1 versus 3). Participants orally described the mediator produced immediately after studying each item, if any. After a delay they were given cued recall, made FOK ratings, and attempted to recall their original mediator. Concreteness and item repetition enhanced strategy recall, which had a large effect on FOKs. Controlling on strategy recall reduced the predictive validity of FOKs for recognition memory, indicating that access to original aspects of encoding influenced FOK accuracy. Confidence judgments (CJs) for correctly recognized items covaried with FOKs, but FOKs did not fully track strategy recall associations with CJs, suggesting emergent effects of strategy cues elicited by recognition tests not accessed at the time of the FOK judgment. In summary, cue-generated access to aspects of the original encoding strategy strongly influenced episodic FOK, although other influences are also implicated. PMID:23835601

Double impact: what sibling data can tell us about the long-term negative effects of parental divorce.

PubMed

Wolfinger, Nicholas H; Kowaleski-Jones, Lori; Smith, Ken R

2003-01-01

Most prior research on the adverse consequences of parental divorce has analyzed only one child per family. As a result, it is not known whether the same divorce affects siblings differently. We address this issue by analyzing paired sibling data from the 1994 General Social Survey (GSS) and 1994 Survey of American Families (SAF). Both seemingly unrelated regressions and random effects models are used to study the effect of family background on offspring's educational attainment and marital stability. Parental divorce adversely affects the educational attainment and the probability of divorce of both children within a sibship; in other words, siblings tend to experience the same divorce the same way. However, family structure of origin only accounts for a trivial portion of the shared variance in offspring's educational attainment and marital stability, so parental divorce is only one of many factors determining how offspring fare. These findings were unchanged when controlling for a number of differences both between and within sibships. Also, the negative effects of parental divorce largely do not vary according to respondent characteristics.

Recalled aspects of original encoding strategies influence episodic feelings of knowing.

PubMed

Hertzog, Christopher; Fulton, Erika K; Sinclair, Starlette M; Dunlosky, John

2014-01-01

We tested the hypothesis that the feeling of knowing (FOK) after a failed recall attempt is influenced by recalling aspects of the original encoding strategy. Individuals were instructed to use interactive imagery to encode unrelated word pairs. We manipulated item concreteness (abstract vs. concrete) and item repetitions at study (one vs. three). Participants orally described the mediator produced immediately after studying each item, if any. After a delay, they were given cued recall, made FOK ratings, and attempted to recall their original mediator. Concreteness and item repetition enhanced strategy recall, which had a large effect on FOKs. Controlling on strategy recall reduced the predictive validity of FOKs for recognition memory, indicating that access to the original aspects of encoding influenced FOK accuracy. Confidence judgments (CJs) for correctly recognized items covaried with FOKs, but FOKs did not fully track the strategy recall associations with CJs, suggesting emergent effects of strategy cues that were elicited by recognition tests but not accessed at the time of the FOK judgment. In summary, cue-generated access to aspects of the original encoding strategy strongly influenced episodic FOKs, although other influences were also implicated.

The Differential Roles of Paired Associate Learning in Chinese and English Word Reading Abilities in Bilingual Children

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chow, Bonnie Wing-Yin

2014-01-01

Paired associated learning (PAL) is a critical skill for making arbitrary associations among print, pronunciation and meaning in reading development. Extended from past research of PAL, this study investigated whether PAL operated flexibly to linguistic demands of languages, by examining word reading abilities in Chinese-English bilingual…

Interrelations in Children's Learning of Verbal and Pictorial Paired Associates.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hale, Gordon A.

This study was designed to investigate the functional similarity of the mental processes children use to learn verbal tasks and pictorial tasks. Children in grades 3 and 6 (n=144) and in grade 9 (n=112) were given four short paired-associate tasks entitled Pictures, Concrete Words, Abstract Words, and Japanese Characters. The tasks consisted of…

Prescriptive Teaching from the DTLA.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Banas, Norma; Wills, I. H.

1979-01-01

The article (Part 2 of a series) discusses the Auditory Attention Span for Unrelated Words and the Visual Attention Span for Objects subtests of the Detroit Tests of Learning Aptitude. Skills measured and related factors influencing performance are among aspects considered. Suggestions for remediating deficits and capitalizing on strengths are…

Language use statistics and prototypical grapheme colours predict synaesthetes' and non-synaesthetes' word-colour associations.

PubMed

Goodhew, Stephanie C; Kidd, Evan

2017-02-01

Synaesthesia is the neuropsychological phenomenon in which individuals experience unusual sensory associations, such as experiencing particular colours in response to particular words. While it was once thought the particular pairings between stimuli were arbitrary and idiosyncratic to particular synaesthetes, there is now growing evidence for a systematic psycholinguistic basis to the associations. Here we sought to assess the explanatory value of quantifiable lexical association measures (via latent semantic analysis; LSA) in the pairings observed between words and colours in synaesthesia. To test this, we had synaesthetes report the particular colours they experienced in response to given concept words, and found that language association between the concept and colour words provided highly reliable predictors of the reported pairings. These results provide convergent evidence for a psycholinguistic basis to synaesthesia, but in a novel way, showing that exposure to particular patterns of associations in language can predict the formation of particular synaesthetic lexical-colour associations. Consistent with previous research, the prototypical synaesthetic colour for the first letter of the word also played a role in shaping the colour for the whole word, and this effect also interacted with language association, such that the effect of the colour for the first letter was stronger as the association between the concept word and the colour word in language increased. Moreover, when a group of non-synaesthetes were asked what colours they associated with the concept words, they produced very similar reports to the synaesthetes that were predicted by both language association and prototypical synaesthetic colour for the first letter of the word. This points to a shared linguistic experience generating the associations for both groups. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The semantics of prosody: acoustic and perceptual evidence of prosodic correlates to word meaning.

PubMed

Nygaard, Lynne C; Herold, Debora S; Namy, Laura L

2009-01-01

This investigation examined whether speakers produce reliable prosodic correlates to meaning across semantic domains and whether listeners use these cues to derive word meaning from novel words. Speakers were asked to produce phrases in infant-directed speech in which novel words were used to convey one of two meanings from a set of antonym pairs (e.g., big/small). Acoustic analyses revealed that some acoustic features were correlated with overall valence of the meaning. However, each word meaning also displayed a unique acoustic signature, and semantically related meanings elicited similar acoustic profiles. In two perceptual tests, listeners either attempted to identify the novel words with a matching meaning dimension (picture pair) or with mismatched meaning dimensions. Listeners inferred the meaning of the novel words significantly more often when prosody matched the word meaning choices than when prosody mismatched. These findings suggest that speech contains reliable prosodic markers to word meaning and that listeners use these prosodic cues to differentiate meanings. That prosody is semantic suggests a reconceptualization of traditional distinctions between linguistic and nonlinguistic properties of spoken language. Copyright © 2009 Cognitive Science Society, Inc.

Early sound symbolism for vowel sounds.

PubMed

Spector, Ferrinne; Maurer, Daphne

2013-01-01

Children and adults consistently match some words (e.g., kiki) to jagged shapes and other words (e.g., bouba) to rounded shapes, providing evidence for non-arbitrary sound-shape mapping. In this study, we investigated the influence of vowels on sound-shape matching in toddlers, using four contrasting pairs of nonsense words differing in vowel sound (/i/ as in feet vs. /o/ as in boat) and four rounded-jagged shape pairs. Crucially, we used reduplicated syllables (e.g., kiki vs. koko) rather than confounding vowel sound with consonant context and syllable variability (e.g., kiki vs. bouba). Toddlers consistently matched words with /o/ to rounded shapes and words with /i/ to jagged shapes (p < 0.01). The results suggest that there may be naturally biased correspondences between vowel sound and shape.

Early sound symbolism for vowel sounds

PubMed Central

Spector, Ferrinne; Maurer, Daphne

2013-01-01

Children and adults consistently match some words (e.g., kiki) to jagged shapes and other words (e.g., bouba) to rounded shapes, providing evidence for non-arbitrary sound–shape mapping. In this study, we investigated the influence of vowels on sound–shape matching in toddlers, using four contrasting pairs of nonsense words differing in vowel sound (/i/ as in feet vs. /o/ as in boat) and four rounded–jagged shape pairs. Crucially, we used reduplicated syllables (e.g., kiki vs. koko) rather than confounding vowel sound with consonant context and syllable variability (e.g., kiki vs. bouba). Toddlers consistently matched words with /o/ to rounded shapes and words with /i/ to jagged shapes (p < 0.01). The results suggest that there may be naturally biased correspondences between vowel sound and shape. PMID:24349684

From Statistics to Meaning: Infants’ Acquisition of Lexical Categories

PubMed Central

Lany, Jill; Saffran, Jenny R.

2013-01-01

Infants are highly sensitive to statistical patterns in their auditory language input that mark word categories (e.g., noun and verb). However, it is unknown whether experience with these cues facilitates the acquisition of semantic properties of word categories. In a study testing this hypothesis, infants first listened to an artificial language in which word categories were reliably distinguished by statistical cues (experimental group) or in which these properties did not cue category membership (control group). Both groups were then trained on identical pairings between the words and pictures from two categories (animals and vehicles). Only infants in the experimental group learned the trained associations between specific words and pictures. Moreover, these infants generalized the pattern to include novel pairings. These results suggest that experience with statistical cues marking lexical categories sets the stage for learning the meanings of individual words and for generalizing meanings to new category members. PMID:20424058

Encoding Modality Can Affect Memory Accuracy via Retrieval Orientation

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pierce, Benton H.; Gallo, David A.

2011-01-01

Research indicates that false memory is lower following visual than auditory study, potentially because visual information is more distinctive. In the present study we tested the extent to which retrieval orientation can cause a modality effect on memory accuracy. Participants studied unrelated words in different modalities, followed by criterial…

Masked Inhibitory Priming in English: Evidence for Lexical Inhibition

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Davis, Colin J.; Lupker, Stephen J.

2006-01-01

Predictions derived from the interactive activation (IA) model were tested in 3 experiments using the masked priming technique in the lexical decision task. Experiment 1 showed a strong effect of prime lexicality: Classifications of target words were facilitated by orthographically related nonword primes (relative to unrelated nonword primes) but…

Related General-Vocabulary Knowledge Transfers to Learning Technical Terms

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Balch, William R.

2015-01-01

In a classroom experiment during the first week of an introductory psychology course, randomly assigned students received a pretest and then a brief training on the definitions of general-vocabulary words either related (e.g., "facilitation") or unrelated (e.g., "rendition") to 16 technical terms (e.g., "social…

Electrophysiological Correlates of Word Retrieval in Traumatic Brain Injury

PubMed Central

DeLaRosa, Bambi L.; Didehbani, Nyaz; Hart, John; Kraut, Michael A

2017-01-01

Abstract Persons who have had a traumatic brain injury (TBI) often have word retrieval deficits; however, the underlying neural mechanisms of such deficits are yet to be clarified. Previous studies in normal subjects have shown that during a word retrieval task, there is a 750 msec event-related potential (ERP) divergence detected at the left fronto-temporal region when subjects evaluate word pairs that facilitate retrieval compared with responses elicited by word pairs that do not facilitate retrieval. In this study, we investigated the neurophysiological correlates of word retrieval networks in 19 retired professional athletes with TBI and 19 healthy control (HC) subjects. We recorded electroencephalography (EEG) in the participants during a semantic object retrieval task. In this task, participants indicated whether presented word pairs did (retrieval) or did not (non-retrieval) facilitate the retrieval of an object name. There were no significant differences in accuracy or reaction time between the two groups. The EEG showed a significant group by condition interaction over the left fronto-temporal region. The HC group mean amplitudes were significantly different between conditions, but the TBI group data did not show this difference, suggesting neurophysiological effects of injury. These findings provide evidence that ERP amplitudes may be used as a marker of disrupted semantic retrieval circuits in persons with TBI even when those persons perform normally. PMID:27596052

Chinese translation norms for 1,429 English words.

PubMed

Wen, Yun; van Heuven, Walter J B

2017-06-01

We present Chinese translation norms for 1,429 English words. Chinese-English bilinguals (N = 28) were asked to provide the first Chinese translation that came to mind for 1,429 English words. The results revealed that 71 % of the English words received more than one correct translation indicating the large amount of translation ambiguity when translating from English to Chinese. The relationship between translation ambiguity and word frequency, concreteness and language proficiency was investigated. Although the significant correlations were not strong, results revealed that English word frequency was positively correlated with the number of alternative translations, whereas English word concreteness was negatively correlated with the number of translations. Importantly, regression analyses showed that the number of Chinese translations was predicted by word frequency and concreteness. Furthermore, an interaction between these predictors revealed that the number of translations was more affected by word frequency for more concrete words than for less concrete words. In addition, mixed-effects modelling showed that word frequency, concreteness and English language proficiency were all significant predictors of whether or not a dominant translation was provided. Finally, correlations between the word frequencies of English words and their Chinese dominant translations were higher for translation-unambiguous pairs than for translation-ambiguous pairs. The translation norms are made available in a database together with lexical information about the words, which will be a useful resource for researchers investigating Chinese-English bilingual language processing.

Eye-tracking the time-course of novel word learning and lexical competition in adults and children.

PubMed

Weighall, A R; Henderson, L M; Barr, D J; Cairney, S A; Gaskell, M G

2017-04-01

Lexical competition is a hallmark of proficient, automatic word recognition. Previous research suggests that there is a delay before a new spoken word becomes engaged in this process, with sleep playing an important role. However, data from one method - the visual world paradigm - consistently show competition without a delay. We trained 42 adults and 40 children (aged 7-8) on novel word-object pairings, and employed this paradigm to measure the time-course of lexical competition. Fixations to novel objects upon hearing existing words (e.g., looks to the novel object biscal upon hearing "click on the biscuit") were compared to fixations on untrained objects. Novel word-object pairings learned immediately before testing and those learned the previous day exhibited significant competition effects, with stronger competition for the previous day pairings for children but not adults. Crucially, this competition effect was significantly smaller for novel than existing competitors (e.g., looks to candy upon hearing "click on the candle"), suggesting that novel items may not compete for recognition like fully-fledged lexical items, even after 24h. Explicit memory (cued recall) was superior for words learned the day before testing, particularly for children; this effect (but not the lexical competition effects) correlated with sleep-spindle density. Together, the results suggest that different aspects of new word learning follow different time courses: visual world competition effects can emerge swiftly, but are qualitatively different from those observed with established words, and are less reliant upon sleep. Furthermore, the findings fit with the view that word learning earlier in development is boosted by sleep to a greater degree. Copyright © 2016. Published by Elsevier Inc.

The Developing Role of Prosody in Novel Word Interpretation

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Herold, Debora S.; Nygaard, Lynne C.; Chicos, Kelly A.; Namy, Laura L.

2011-01-01

This study examined whether children use prosodic correlates to word meaning when interpreting novel words. For example, do children infer that a word spoken in a deep, slow, loud voice refers to something larger than a word spoken in a high, fast, quiet voice? Participants were 4- and 5-year-olds who viewed picture pairs that varied along a…

Can Writing a New Word Detract from Learning It? More Negative Effects of Forced Output during Vocabulary Learning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Barcroft, Joe

2006-01-01

This study examined effects of word writing on second language vocabulary learning. In two experiments, English-speaking learners of Spanish attempted to learn 24 Spanish nouns while viewing word-picture pairs. The participants copied 12 target words and wrote nothing for the other 12 target words being studied. Productive vocabulary learning on…

Does Discourse Congruence Influence Spoken Language Comprehension before Lexical Association? Evidence from Event-Related Potentials

PubMed Central

Boudewyn, Megan A.; Gordon, Peter C.; Long, Debra; Polse, Lara; Swaab, Tamara Y.

2011-01-01

The goal of this study was to examine how lexical association and discourse congruence affect the time course of processing incoming words in spoken discourse. In an ERP norming study, we presented prime-target pairs in the absence of a sentence context to obtain a baseline measure of lexical priming. We observed a typical N400 effect when participants heard critical associated and unassociated target words in word pairs. In a subsequent experiment, we presented the same word pairs in spoken discourse contexts. Target words were always consistent with the local sentence context, but were congruent or not with the global discourse (e.g., “Luckily Ben had picked up some salt and pepper/basil”, preceded by a context in which Ben was preparing marinara sauce (congruent) or dealing with an icy walkway (incongruent). ERP effects of global discourse congruence preceded those of local lexical association, suggesting an early influence of the global discourse representation on lexical processing, even in locally congruent contexts. Furthermore, effects of lexical association occurred earlier in the congruent than incongruent condition. These results differ from those that have been obtained in studies of reading, suggesting that the effects may be unique to spoken word recognition. PMID:23002319

English Listeners Use Suprasegmental Cues to Lexical Stress Early During Spoken-Word Recognition

PubMed Central

Poellmann, Katja; Kong, Ying-Yee

2017-01-01

Purpose We used an eye-tracking technique to investigate whether English listeners use suprasegmental information about lexical stress to speed up the recognition of spoken words in English. Method In a visual world paradigm, 24 young English listeners followed spoken instructions to choose 1 of 4 printed referents on a computer screen (e.g., “Click on the word admiral”). Displays contained a critical pair of words (e.g., ˈadmiral–ˌadmiˈration) that were segmentally identical for their first 2 syllables but differed suprasegmentally in their 1st syllable: One word began with primary lexical stress, and the other began with secondary lexical stress. All words had phrase-level prominence. Listeners' relative proportion of eye fixations on these words indicated their ability to differentiate them over time. Results Before critical word pairs became segmentally distinguishable in their 3rd syllables, participants fixated target words more than their stress competitors, but only if targets had initial primary lexical stress. The degree to which stress competitors were fixated was independent of their stress pattern. Conclusions Suprasegmental information about lexical stress modulates the time course of spoken-word recognition. Specifically, suprasegmental information on the primary-stressed syllable of words with phrase-level prominence helps in distinguishing the word from phonological competitors with secondary lexical stress. PMID:28056135

Time course of syllabic and sub-syllabic processing in Mandarin word production: Evidence from the picture-word interference paradigm.

PubMed

Wang, Jie; Wong, Andus Wing-Kuen; Chen, Hsuan-Chih

2017-06-05

The time course of phonological encoding in Mandarin monosyllabic word production was investigated by using the picture-word interference paradigm. Participants were asked to name pictures in Mandarin while visual distractor words were presented before, at, or after picture onset (i.e., stimulus-onset asynchrony/SOA = -100, 0, or +100 ms, respectively). Compared with the unrelated control, the distractors sharing atonal syllables with the picture names significantly facilitated the naming responses at -100- and 0-ms SOAs. In addition, the facilitation effect of sharing word-initial segments only appeared at 0-ms SOA, and null effects were found for sharing word-final segments. These results indicate that both syllables and subsyllabic units play important roles in Mandarin spoken word production and more critically that syllabic processing precedes subsyllabic processing. The current results lend strong support to the proximate units principle (O'Seaghdha, Chen, & Chen, 2010), which holds that the phonological structure of spoken word production is language-specific and that atonal syllables are the proximate phonological units in Mandarin Chinese. On the other hand, the significance of word-initial segments over word-final segments suggests that serial processing of segmental information seems to be universal across Germanic languages and Chinese, which remains to be verified in future studies.

Semantic information mediates visual attention during spoken word recognition in Chinese: Evidence from the printed-word version of the visual-world paradigm.

PubMed

Shen, Wei; Qu, Qingqing; Li, Xingshan

2016-07-01

In the present study, we investigated whether the activation of semantic information during spoken word recognition can mediate visual attention's deployment to printed Chinese words. We used a visual-world paradigm with printed words, in which participants listened to a spoken target word embedded in a neutral spoken sentence while looking at a visual display of printed words. We examined whether a semantic competitor effect could be observed in the printed-word version of the visual-world paradigm. In Experiment 1, the relationship between the spoken target words and the printed words was manipulated so that they were semantically related (a semantic competitor), phonologically related (a phonological competitor), or unrelated (distractors). We found that the probability of fixations on semantic competitors was significantly higher than that of fixations on the distractors. In Experiment 2, the orthographic similarity between the spoken target words and their semantic competitors was manipulated to further examine whether the semantic competitor effect was modulated by orthographic similarity. We found significant semantic competitor effects regardless of orthographic similarity. Our study not only reveals that semantic information can affect visual attention, it also provides important new insights into the methodology employed to investigate the semantic processing of spoken words during spoken word recognition using the printed-word version of the visual-world paradigm.

A Character Level Based and Word Level Based Approach for Chinese-Vietnamese Machine Translation.

PubMed

Tran, Phuoc; Dinh, Dien; Nguyen, Hien T

2016-01-01

Chinese and Vietnamese have the same isolated language; that is, the words are not delimited by spaces. In machine translation, word segmentation is often done first when translating from Chinese or Vietnamese into different languages (typically English) and vice versa. However, it is a matter for consideration that words may or may not be segmented when translating between two languages in which spaces are not used between words, such as Chinese and Vietnamese. Since Chinese-Vietnamese is a low-resource language pair, the sparse data problem is evident in the translation system of this language pair. Therefore, while translating, whether it should be segmented or not becomes more important. In this paper, we propose a new method for translating Chinese to Vietnamese based on a combination of the advantages of character level and word level translation. In addition, a hybrid approach that combines statistics and rules is used to translate on the word level. And at the character level, a statistical translation is used. The experimental results showed that our method improved the performance of machine translation over that of character or word level translation.

Similarity of High-Resolution Tandem Mass Spectrometry Spectra of Structurally Related Micropollutants and Transformation Products

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Schollée, Jennifer E.; Schymanski, Emma L.; Stravs, Michael A.; Gulde, Rebekka; Thomaidis, Nikolaos S.; Hollender, Juliane

2017-12-01

High-resolution tandem mass spectrometry (HRMS2) with electrospray ionization is frequently applied to study polar organic molecules such as micropollutants. Fragmentation provides structural information to confirm structures of known compounds or propose structures of unknown compounds. Similarity of HRMS2 spectra between structurally related compounds has been suggested to facilitate identification of unknown compounds. To test this hypothesis, the similarity of reference standard HRMS2 spectra was calculated for 243 pairs of micropollutants and their structurally related transformation products (TPs); for comparison, spectral similarity was also calculated for 219 pairs of unrelated compounds. Spectra were measured on Orbitrap and QTOF mass spectrometers and similarity was calculated with the dot product. The influence of different factors on spectral similarity [e.g., normalized collision energy (NCE), merging fragments from all NCEs, and shifting fragments by the mass difference of the pair] was considered. Spectral similarity increased at higher NCEs and highest similarity scores for related pairs were obtained with merged spectra including measured fragments and shifted fragments. Removal of the monoisotopic peak was critical to reduce false positives. Using a spectral similarity score threshold of 0.52, 40% of related pairs and 0% of unrelated pairs were above this value. Structural similarity was estimated with the Tanimoto coefficient and pairs with higher structural similarity generally had higher spectral similarity. Pairs where one or both compounds contained heteroatoms such as sulfur often resulted in dissimilar spectra. This work demonstrates that HRMS2 spectral similarity may indicate structural similarity and that spectral similarity can be used in the future to screen complex samples for related compounds such as micropollutants and TPs, assisting in the prioritization of non-target compounds. [Figure not available: see fulltext.

Relation Education Index Norms for 500 Picture Pairs and 10 Relations: High School Sample. Technical Report No. 6.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Haynes, James L.; And Others

Mode of presentation (word vs. picture) is said to be a factor in social class differences in performance on analogy tests. To investigate this contention, data were needed on equivalent word and picture analogy test performance. This report presents data on relation education index (REI) norms for 500 picture pairs collected in the process of…

Teaching Compound Words to a Spelling-Disabled Child via Smart Notebook Technology: ? Case Study Approach

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tsesmeli, Styliani N.; Tsirozi, Theologia

2015-01-01

The case-study aims to examine the effectiveness of training of morphological structure on the spelling of compounds by a spelling-disabled primary school student. The experimental design of the intervention was based on the word-pair paradigm and included a pre-test, a training program and a post-test (n = 50 pairs). The Training Program aimed to…

Domain-specific and domain-general constraints on word and sequence learning.

PubMed

Archibald, Lisa M D; Joanisse, Marc F

2013-02-01

The relative influences of language-related and memory-related constraints on the learning of novel words and sequences were examined by comparing individual differences in performance of children with and without specific deficits in either language or working memory. Children recalled lists of words in a Hebbian learning protocol in which occasional lists repeated, yielding improved recall over the course of the task on the repeated lists. The task involved presentation of pictures of common nouns followed immediately by equivalent presentations of the spoken names. The same participants also completed a paired-associate learning task involving word-picture and nonword-picture pairs. Hebbian learning was observed for all groups. Domain-general working memory constrained immediate recall, whereas language abilities impacted recall in the auditory modality only. In addition, working memory constrained paired-associate learning generally, whereas language abilities disproportionately impacted novel word learning. Overall, all of the learning tasks were highly correlated with domain-general working memory. The learning of nonwords was additionally related to general intelligence, phonological short-term memory, language abilities, and implicit learning. The results suggest that distinct associations between language- and memory-related mechanisms support learning of familiar and unfamiliar phonological forms and sequences.

Rapid Eye Movement and Non-Rapid Eye Movement Sleep Contributions in Memory Consolidation and Resistance to Retroactive Interference for Verbal Material

PubMed Central

Deliens, Gaétane; Leproult, Rachel; Neu, Daniel; Peigneux, Philippe

2013-01-01

Study Objectives: To test the hypothesis that rapid eye movement (REM) sleep contributes to the consolidation of new memories, whereas non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep contributes to the prevention of retroactive interference. Design: Randomized, crossover study. Setting: Two sessions of either a morning nap or wakefulness. Participants: Twenty-five healthy young adults. Interventions: Declarative learning of word pairs followed by a nap or a wake interval, then learning of interfering word pairs and delayed recall of list A. Measurements and Results: After a restricted night (24:00-06:00), participants learned a list of word pairs (list A). They were then required to either take a nap or stay awake during 45 min, after which they learned a second list of word pairs (list B) and then had to recall list A. Fifty percent of word pairs in list B shared the first word with list A, resulting in interference. Ten subjects exhibited REM sleep whereas 13 subjects exhibited NREM stage 3 (N3) sleep. An interference effect was observed in the nap but not in the wake condition. In post-learning naps, N3 sleep was associated with a reduced interference effect, which was not the case for REM sleep. Moreover, participants exhibiting N3 sleep in the post-learning nap condition also showed a reduced interference effect in the wake condition, suggesting a higher protection ability against interference. Conclusion: Our results partly support the hypothesis that non-rapid eye movement sleep contributes in protecting novel memories against interference. However, rapid eye movement sleep-related consolidation is not evidenced. Citation: Deliens G; Leproult R; Neu D; Peigneux P. Rapid eye movement and non-rapid eye movement sleep contributions in memory consolidation and resistance to retroactive interference for verbal material. SLEEP 2013;36(12):1875-1883. PMID:24293762

Development of Medical Technology for Contingency Response to Marrow Toxic Agents

DTIC Science & Technology

2014-10-30

mismatches may differ in their impact on transplant outcome, therefore, it is important to identify and quantify the influence of specific HLA ...evaluate HLA disparity and impact on HSC transplantation by adding selected pairs to the Donor/Recipient Pair project utilizing sample selection...to assay the impact of DNA-based HLA matching on unrelated donor transplant outcome, develop strategies for optimal HLA matching, evaluate the

Proteomic analysis of hair shafts from monozygotic twins: Expression profiles and genetically variant peptides.

PubMed

Wu, Pei-Wen; Mason, Katelyn E; Durbin-Johnson, Blythe P; Salemi, Michelle; Phinney, Brett S; Rocke, David M; Parker, Glendon J; Rice, Robert H

2017-07-01

Forensic association of hair shaft evidence with individuals is currently assessed by comparing mitochondrial DNA haplotypes of reference and casework samples, primarily for exclusionary purposes. Present work tests and validates more recent proteomic approaches to extract quantitative transcriptional and genetic information from hair samples of monozygotic twin pairs, which would be predicted to partition away from unrelated individuals if the datasets contain identifying information. Protein expression profiles and polymorphic, genetically variant hair peptides were generated from ten pairs of monozygotic twins. Profiling using the protein tryptic digests revealed that samples from identical twins had typically an order of magnitude fewer protein expression differences than unrelated individuals. The data did not indicate that the degree of difference within twin pairs increased with age. In parallel, data from the digests were used to detect genetically variant peptides that result from common nonsynonymous single nucleotide polymorphisms in genes expressed in the hair follicle. Compilation of the variants permitted sorting of the samples by hierarchical clustering, permitting accurate matching of twin pairs. The results demonstrate that genetic differences are detectable by proteomic methods and provide a framework for developing quantitative statistical estimates of personal identification that increase the value of hair shaft evidence. © 2017 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

Immediate effects of anticipatory coarticulation in spoken-word recognition

PubMed Central

Salverda, Anne Pier; Kleinschmidt, Dave; Tanenhaus, Michael K.

2014-01-01

Two visual-world experiments examined listeners’ use of pre word-onset anticipatory coarticulation in spoken-word recognition. Experiment 1 established the shortest lag with which information in the speech signal influences eye-movement control, using stimuli such as “The … ladder is the target”. With a neutral token of the definite article preceding the target word, saccades to the referent were not more likely than saccades to an unrelated distractor until 200–240 ms after the onset of the target word. In Experiment 2, utterances contained definite articles which contained natural anticipatory coarticulation pertaining to the onset of the target word (“ The ladder … is the target”). A simple Gaussian classifier was able to predict the initial sound of the upcoming target word from formant information from the first few pitch periods of the article’s vowel. With these stimuli, effects of speech on eye-movement control began about 70 ms earlier than in Experiment 1, suggesting rapid use of anticipatory coarticulation. The results are interpreted as support for “data explanation” approaches to spoken-word recognition. Methodological implications for visual-world studies are also discussed. PMID:24511179

The Costs and Benefits of Testing and Guessing on Recognition Memory

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Huff, Mark J.; Balota, David A.; Hutchison, Keith A.

2016-01-01

We examined whether 2 types of interpolated tasks (i.e., retrieval-practice via free recall or guessing a missing critical item) improved final recognition for related and unrelated word lists relative to restudying or completing a filler task. Both retrieval-practice and guessing tasks improved correct recognition relative to restudy and filler…

Readability and Its Effects on Reading Rate, Subjective Judgments of Comprehensibility and Comprehension.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Coke, Esther U.

Prose passages read aloud or silently were rated for pronounceability and comprehensibility. The relationships of text-derived readability indices to reading rate, comprehensibility ratings and comprehension test scores were explored. Reading rate in syllables per minute was unrelated to readability. The high correlation between rate in words per…

Suffer the little children some autonomy.

PubMed

Wachenje, V

1988-12-01

There exist layers of disparity between perspectives and perceptions of handicap or disability. Handicap is frequently seen by the able-bodied (and minded), as a condition unrelated to themselves. Learned articles appear in specialist journals, but lost in the relentless tidal wave of words, is the very real personality of that handicapped individual ... not waving, but drowning.

Effects of Long-Term Representations on Free Recall of Unrelated Words

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Katkov, Mikhail; Romani, Sandro; Tsodyks, Misha

2015-01-01

Human memory stores vast amounts of information. Yet recalling this information is often challenging when specific cues are lacking. Here we consider an associative model of retrieval where each recalled item triggers the recall of the next item based on the similarity between their long-term neuronal representations. The model predicts that…

Conceptual Coherence Affects Phonological Activation of Context Objects during Object Naming

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Oppermann, Frank; Jescheniak, Jorg D.; Schriefers, Herbert

2008-01-01

In 4 picture-word interference experiments, speakers named a target object that was presented with a context object. Using auditory distractors that were phonologically related or unrelated either to the target object or the context object, the authors assessed whether phonological processing was confined to the target object or not. Phonological…

Nine- to Twelve-Year Olds' Metalinguistic Awareness of Homonymy

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Corthals, Paul

2010-01-01

Background: The metalinguistic ability to cope with homonyms, that is, words having multiple unrelated meanings, emerges rather late in the course child language development. It is associated with specific neural activity and related to academic achievement and second language learning. This study is about homonyms that are at the same time…

Aging and the Category-Recall Relationship.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Worden, Patricia E.; Meggison, David L.

A sorting-recall procedure was used to investigate how long-term memory in elderly subjects is affected by categorical organization. Sixty-four young adults (average age 20 years) and retirees (average age 67) sorted 48 unrelated words into two, four, six, or eight categories prior to recall. High- and low-frequency lists were tested, a…

The Use of Prosodic Cues in Learning New Words in an Unfamiliar Language

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kim, Sahyang; Broersma, Mirjam; Cho, Taehong

2012-01-01

The artificial language learning paradigm was used to investigate to what extent the use of prosodic features is universally applicable or specifically language driven in learning an unfamiliar language, and how nonnative prosodic patterns can be learned. Listeners of unrelated languages--Dutch (n = 100) and Korean (n = 100)--participated. The…

The effect of presentation level on memory performance.

PubMed

Heinrich, Antje; Schneider, Bruce A

2011-01-01

A loss of speech intelligibility at high presentation levels is called rollover. It is a phenomenon that increases in prevalence as people age. Whether the adverse effect of high presentation levels extends to processes subsequent to speech intelligibility, such as memory, is unknown. The present study examined this question on the basis of the previous finding that older but not younger adults showed memory impairment when acoustically distorted words were presented at 50 dB SL compared with an undistorted baseline presented at 65 dB SPL. One question investigated in the present study was whether a presentation level of 50 dB SL put older listeners at the cusp of rollover and whether this subsequently impaired memory. Moreover, we wanted to know whether and at what level it was possible to induce a similar impairment in younger listeners. We used a paired-associate memory paradigm in which five word pairs per list were presented at a rate of 4 secs per word pair. After each list, the first word of one of the pairs was presented again and the listener was asked to recall the second word. Over the course of the experiment, all list positions were tested an equal number of times. The word pairs, which were acoustically distorted using a jittering algorithm, were presented at 40 dB SL to all younger and older participants and just below an uncomfortably loud level for younger listeners only. Intelligibility of the distorted words was equated across age groups for each presentation level. The effect of presentation level on memory performance was investigated and compared with data of a previous study that used the same design but presented the distorted and undistorted words at 50 dB SL to both age groups. A total of 58 younger and 24 older adults were tested in two experiments. The results showed that for older adults, memory performance for distorted words was decreased in all list positions at a presentation level of 50 dB SL compared with 40 dB SL and an undistorted 65 dB SPL baseline. This effect did not occur for younger listeners. However, when younger adults were tested at a very high presentation level, they showed the same memory decrease compared with the baseline as older adults showed for 50 dB SL. A high presentation level of distorted words can adversely affect memory even after intelligibility is equated for. Moreover, older listeners are affected at lower presentation levels. Hence, the choice of sound level, particularly for older listeners, is important and may affect their level of cognitive performance beyond its effects on intelligibility. Higher presentation levels may not always lead to better performance when the task involves recall of words previously heard.

Odors as cues for the recall of words unrelated to odor.

PubMed

Morgan, C L

1996-12-01

The effectiveness of an ambient odor as a retrieval cue for words unrelated to odor was investigated. After incidental learning of 40 adjectives, 40 participants were tested for recall during three unannounced recall phases (15 min., 48 hr., and 5 days). Participants in two control conditions learned with no odor present and either had no odor present during any recall phase or only during recall after 5 days. Participants in two conditions learned with an odor present and either had the odor present during recall only after 5 days or during recall both after 15 min. and after 5 days. Analyses indicated that, while participants in the control conditions recalled significantly less during each succeeding recall phase, recall by participants in the two experimental conditions did not decrease significantly. Recall by participants in the two experimental conditions was significantly higher during recall after 5 days (when the odor was reintroduced) than either control group. The addition of a salient cue during learning and retrieval facilitated recall more than the presence of constant environmental cues.

Perceptual asymmetry during free viewing of words and faces: The effect of context on recognition.

PubMed

Vakil, Eli; Liberman, Hadas

2016-11-01

There is ample evidence supporting the dissociation between the role of the left and right cerebral hemispheres in processing words and faces, respectively. Nevertheless, research has not yet studied the effect of perceptual asymmetry in memory context effect tasks using words and faces. Thus, the present study researches the advantages of presenting information in the right versus left hemispace and the effect of context on recognition when using faces compared to words presented in the right versus left hemispace. Participants (n=60) were assigned either to the group presented with pairs of words, or with pairs of faces. One stimulus in each pair was designated as the target (i.e., to be remembered) and the other served as context (i.e., to be ignored). Half of the targets were presented in the right hemispace, and half were presented in the left hemispace. As predicted, words were better recognized when presented in the right hemispace, while faces were better remembered when presented in the left hemispace. The most interesting finding is the influence of context on lateralized processing of words and pictures. That is, only when words or faces were presented in the left hemispace did contextual information affect target memory (though it yielded a different pattern of effect). Hence, the findings of the present study may be interpreted either as reflecting attentional bias to the left hemispace or structural differences between the hemispheres. Thus, cognitive processes and the content of the stimuli determine which hemisphere will be involved in processing contextual information. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Creating a medical dictionary using word alignment: the influence of sources and resources.

PubMed

Nyström, Mikael; Merkel, Magnus; Petersson, Håkan; Ahlfeldt, Hans

2007-11-23

Automatic word alignment of parallel texts with the same content in different languages is among other things used to generate dictionaries for new translations. The quality of the generated word alignment depends on the quality of the input resources. In this paper we report on automatic word alignment of the English and Swedish versions of the medical terminology systems ICD-10, ICF, NCSP, KSH97-P and parts of MeSH and how the terminology systems and type of resources influence the quality. We automatically word aligned the terminology systems using static resources, like dictionaries, statistical resources, like statistically derived dictionaries, and training resources, which were generated from manual word alignment. We varied which part of the terminology systems that we used to generate the resources, which parts that we word aligned and which types of resources we used in the alignment process to explore the influence the different terminology systems and resources have on the recall and precision. After the analysis, we used the best configuration of the automatic word alignment for generation of candidate term pairs. We then manually verified the candidate term pairs and included the correct pairs in an English-Swedish dictionary. The results indicate that more resources and resource types give better results but the size of the parts used to generate the resources only partly affects the quality. The most generally useful resources were generated from ICD-10 and resources generated from MeSH were not as general as other resources. Systematic inter-language differences in the structure of the terminology system rubrics make the rubrics harder to align. Manually created training resources give nearly as good results as a union of static resources, statistical resources and training resources and noticeably better results than a union of static resources and statistical resources. The verified English-Swedish dictionary contains 24,000 term pairs in base forms. More resources give better results in the automatic word alignment, but some resources only give small improvements. The most important type of resource is training and the most general resources were generated from ICD-10.

Age-Related Brain Activation Changes during Rule Repetition in Word-Matching.

PubMed

Methqal, Ikram; Pinsard, Basile; Amiri, Mahnoush; Wilson, Maximiliano A; Monchi, Oury; Provost, Jean-Sebastien; Joanette, Yves

2017-01-01

Objective: The purpose of this study was to explore the age-related brain activation changes during a word-matching semantic-category-based task, which required either repeating or changing a semantic rule to be applied. In order to do so, a word-semantic rule-based task was adapted from the Wisconsin Sorting Card Test, involving the repeated feedback-driven selection of given pairs of words based on semantic category-based criteria. Method: Forty healthy adults (20 younger and 20 older) performed a word-matching task while undergoing a fMRI scan in which they were required to pair a target word with another word from a group of three words. The required pairing is based on three word-pair semantic rules which correspond to different levels of semantic control demands: functional relatedness, moderately typical-relatedness (which were considered as low control demands), and atypical-relatedness (high control demands). The sorting period consisted of a continuous execution of the same sorting rule and an inferred trial-by-trial feedback was given. Results: Behavioral performance revealed increases in response times and decreases of correct responses according to the level of semantic control demands (functional vs. typical vs. atypical) for both age groups (younger and older) reflecting graded differences in the repetition of the application of a given semantic rule. Neuroimaging findings of significant brain activation showed two main results: (1) Greater task-related activation changes for the repetition of the application of atypical rules relative to typical and functional rules, and (2) Changes (older > younger) in the inferior prefrontal regions for functional rules and more extensive and bilateral activations for typical and atypical rules. Regarding the inter-semantic rules comparison, only task-related activation differences were observed for functional > typical (e.g., inferior parietal and temporal regions bilaterally) and atypical > typical (e.g., prefrontal, inferior parietal, posterior temporal, and subcortical regions). Conclusion: These results suggest that healthy cognitive aging relies on the adaptive changes of inferior prefrontal resources involved in the repetitive execution of semantic rules, thus reflecting graded differences in support of task demands.

Creating a medical dictionary using word alignment: The influence of sources and resources

PubMed Central

Nyström, Mikael; Merkel, Magnus; Petersson, Håkan; Åhlfeldt, Hans

2007-01-01

Background Automatic word alignment of parallel texts with the same content in different languages is among other things used to generate dictionaries for new translations. The quality of the generated word alignment depends on the quality of the input resources. In this paper we report on automatic word alignment of the English and Swedish versions of the medical terminology systems ICD-10, ICF, NCSP, KSH97-P and parts of MeSH and how the terminology systems and type of resources influence the quality. Methods We automatically word aligned the terminology systems using static resources, like dictionaries, statistical resources, like statistically derived dictionaries, and training resources, which were generated from manual word alignment. We varied which part of the terminology systems that we used to generate the resources, which parts that we word aligned and which types of resources we used in the alignment process to explore the influence the different terminology systems and resources have on the recall and precision. After the analysis, we used the best configuration of the automatic word alignment for generation of candidate term pairs. We then manually verified the candidate term pairs and included the correct pairs in an English-Swedish dictionary. Results The results indicate that more resources and resource types give better results but the size of the parts used to generate the resources only partly affects the quality. The most generally useful resources were generated from ICD-10 and resources generated from MeSH were not as general as other resources. Systematic inter-language differences in the structure of the terminology system rubrics make the rubrics harder to align. Manually created training resources give nearly as good results as a union of static resources, statistical resources and training resources and noticeably better results than a union of static resources and statistical resources. The verified English-Swedish dictionary contains 24,000 term pairs in base forms. Conclusion More resources give better results in the automatic word alignment, but some resources only give small improvements. The most important type of resource is training and the most general resources were generated from ICD-10. PMID:18036221

Effects of Opportunities for Word Retrieval during Second Language Vocabulary Learning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Barcroft, Joe

2007-01-01

Research suggests that memory for an item improves when one is allowed to retrieve the item (Slamecka & Graf, 1978). This study explored benefits of providing opportunities for target-word retrieval during second language vocabulary learning. English speakers studied new Spanish words while viewing 24 word-picture pairs. They first viewed all 24…

Effects of Rhyme and Spelling Patterns on Auditory Word ERPs Depend on Selective Attention to Phonology

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yoncheva, Yuliya N.; Maurer, Urs; Zevin, Jason D.; McCandliss, Bruce D.

2013-01-01

ERP responses to spoken words are sensitive to both rhyming effects and effects of associated spelling patterns. Are such effects automatically elicited by spoken words or dependent on selectively attending to phonology? To address this question, ERP responses to spoken word pairs were investigated under two equally demanding listening tasks that…

Language Nonselective Lexical Access in Bilingual Toddlers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Von Holzen, Katie; Mani, Nivedita

2012-01-01

We examined how words from bilingual toddlers' second language (L2) primed recognition of related target words in their first language (L1). On critical trials, prime-target word pairs were either (a) phonologically related, with L2 primes overlapped phonologically with L1 target words [e.g., "slide" (L2 prime)-"Kleid" (L1 target, "dress")], or…

Effects of Visual and Auditory Perceptual Aptitudes and Letter Discrimination Pretraining on Word Recognition.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Janssen, David Rainsford

This study investigated alternate methods of letter discrimination pretraining and word recognition training in young children. Seventy kindergarten children were trained to recognize eight printed words in a vocabulary list by a mixed-list paired-associate method. Four of the stimulus words had visual response choices (pictures) and four had…

The eyes reveal uncertainty about object distinctions in semantic variant primary progressive aphasia.

PubMed

Faria, Andreia V; Race, David; Kim, Kevin; Hillis, Argye E

2018-06-01

At least three distinct variants of primary progressive aphasia (PPA) have been described, but they are difficult to distinguish early in the course, when individuals experience primarily anomia. People with svPPA are often the hardest to care for, because they have impaired comprehension of words and objects and often have negative changes in comportment. We sought to identify an early marker of semantic variant primary progressive aphasia (svPPA) and to enhance the understanding of the semantic deficit in svPPA. We hypothesized that the pattern of eye tracking in a word picture matching task can differentiate svPPA from other variants and can predict which participants with unclassifiable PPA will progress to svPPA. We tested 19 individuals with PPA on a word picture matching task with eye tracking. We found that individuals with svPPA were less accurate than other variants when the foils were semantic coordinates (horse-cow) or schematically related (horse-saddle), but not when they were thematically related (saw-horse) or unrelated. Moreover, even in the condition in which they were highly accurate (unrelated foils) they looked much more often to the foils and for longer, than other variants or controls. Unclassifiable PPA participants who eventually developed svPPA showed the same pattern. This abnormal pattern was associated with atrophy in bilateral temporal poles. Copyright © 2018. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Comparing Medline citations using modified N-grams

PubMed Central

Nawab, Rao Muhammad Adeel; Stevenson, Mark; Clough, Paul

2014-01-01

Objective We aim to identify duplicate pairs of Medline citations, particularly when the documents are not identical but contain similar information. Materials and methods Duplicate pairs of citations are identified by comparing word n-grams in pairs of documents. N-grams are modified using two approaches which take account of the fact that the document may have been altered. These are: (1) deletion, an item in the n-gram is removed; and (2) substitution, an item in the n-gram is substituted with a similar term obtained from the Unified Medical Language System  Metathesaurus. N-grams are also weighted using a score derived from a language model. Evaluation is carried out using a set of 520 Medline citation pairs, including a set of 260 manually verified duplicate pairs obtained from the Deja Vu database. Results The approach accurately detects duplicate Medline document pairs with an F1 measure score of 0.99. Allowing for word deletions and substitution improves performance. The best results are obtained by combining scores for n-grams of length 1–5 words. Discussion Results show that the detection of duplicate Medline citations can be improved by modifying n-grams and that high performance can also be obtained using only unigrams (F1=0.959), particularly when allowing for substitutions of alternative phrases. PMID:23715801

Comparing Medline citations using modified N-grams.

PubMed

Nawab, Rao Muhammad Adeel; Stevenson, Mark; Clough, Paul

2014-01-01

We aim to identify duplicate pairs of Medline citations, particularly when the documents are not identical but contain similar information. Duplicate pairs of citations are identified by comparing word n-grams in pairs of documents. N-grams are modified using two approaches which take account of the fact that the document may have been altered. These are: (1) deletion, an item in the n-gram is removed; and (2) substitution, an item in the n-gram is substituted with a similar term obtained from the Unified Medical Language System Metathesaurus. N-grams are also weighted using a score derived from a language model. Evaluation is carried out using a set of 520 Medline citation pairs, including a set of 260 manually verified duplicate pairs obtained from the Deja Vu database. The approach accurately detects duplicate Medline document pairs with an F1 measure score of 0.99. Allowing for word deletions and substitution improves performance. The best results are obtained by combining scores for n-grams of length 1-5 words. Results show that the detection of duplicate Medline citations can be improved by modifying n-grams and that high performance can also be obtained using only unigrams (F1=0.959), particularly when allowing for substitutions of alternative phrases.

Recall and response time norms for English-Swahili word pairs and facts about Kenya.

PubMed

Bangert, Ashley S; Heydarian, Nazanin M

2017-02-01

In the vast literature exploring learning, many studies have used paired-associate stimuli, despite the fact that real-world learning involves many different types of information. One of the most popular materials used in studies of learning has been a set of Swahili-English word pairs for which Nelson and Dunlosky (Memory 2; 325-335, 1994) published recall norms two decades ago. These norms involved use of the Swahili words as cues to facilitate recall of the English translation. It is unclear whether cueing in the opposite direction (from English to Swahili) would lead to symmetric recall performance. Bilingual research has suggested that translation in these two different directions involves asymmetric links that may differentially impact recall performance, depending on which language is used as the cue (Kroll & Stewart, Journal of Memory and Language 33; 149-174,1994). Moreover, the norms for these and many other learning stimuli have typically been gathered from college students. In the present study, we report recall accuracy and response time norms for Swahili words when they are cued by their English translations. We also report norms for a companion set of fact stimuli that may be used along with the Swahili-English word pairs to assess learning on a broader scale across different stimulus materials. Data were collected using Amazon's Mechanical Turk to establish a sample that was diverse in both age and ethnicity. These different, but related, stimulus sets will be applicable to studies of learning, metacognition, and memory in diverse samples.

Sentinels of Breach: Lexical Choice as a Measure of Urgency in Social Media.

PubMed

Hampton, Andrew J; Shalin, Valerie L

2017-06-01

Objective This paper identifies general properties of language style in social media to help identify areas of need in disasters. Background In the search for metrics of need in social media data, much of the existing literature ignores processes of language usage. Psychological concepts, such as narrative breach, Gricean maxims, and lexical marking in cognition, may assist the recovery of disaster-relevant metrics from altered patterns of word prevalence. Method We analyzed several hundred thousand location-specific microblogs from Twitter for Hurricane Sandy, Oklahoma tornadoes, and the Boston Marathon bombing along with a fantasy football control corpus, examining the relative frequency of words in 36 antonym pairs. We compared the ratio of words within these pairs to the corresponding ratios recovered from an online word norm database. Results Partial rank correlation values between observed antonym ratios demonstrate consistent patterns across disasters. For Hurricane Sandy data, 25 antonym pairs have moderate to large effect sizes for discrepancies between observed and normative ratios. Across disasters, 7 pairs are stable and meet effect size criteria. Sentiment analysis, supplementary word frequency counts with respect to disaster proximity, and examples support a "breach" account for the observed results. Conclusion Lexical choice between antonyms, only somewhat related to sentiment, suggests that social media capture wide-ranging breaches of normal functioning. Application Antonym selection contributes to screening tools based on language style for identifying relevant content and quantifying disruption using social media without the a priori specification of content keywords.

Donor-Recipient Matching for KIR Genotypes Reduces Chronic GVHD and Missing Inhibitory KIR Ligands Protect against Relapse after Myeloablative, HLA Matched Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation

PubMed Central

Faridi, Rehan Mujeeb; Kemp, Taylor J.; Dharmani-Khan, Poonam; Lewis, Victor; Rajalingam, Raja; Berka, Noureddine; Storek, Jan; Masood Khan, Faisal

2016-01-01

Background Allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT) can be curative for many hematologic diseases. However, complications such as graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) and relapse of primary malignancy remain significant and are the leading causes of morbidity and mortality. Effects of killer Ig-like receptors (KIR)-influenced NK cells on HCT outcomes have been extensively pursued over the last decade. However, the relevance of the reported algorithms on HLA matched myeloablative HCT with rabbit antithymocyte globulin (ATG) is used for GVHD prophylaxis remains elusive. Here we examined the role of KIR and KIR-ligands of donor-recipient pairs in modifying the outcomes of ATG conditioned HLA matched sibling and unrelated donor HCT Methods and Findings The study cohort consisted of 281 HLA matched sibling and unrelated donor-recipient pairs of first allogeneic marrow or blood stem cell transplantation allocated into ‘discovery’ (135 pairs) and ‘validation’ (146 pairs) cohorts. High resolution HLA typing was obtained from the medical charts and KIR gene repertoires were obtained by a Luminex® based SSO method. All surviving patients were followed-up for a minimum of two years. KIR and HLA class I distributions of HCT pairs were stratified as per applicable definitions and were tested for their association with cause specific outcomes [acute GVHD grade II-IV (aGVHD), chronic GVHD needing systemic therapy (cGVHD) and relapse] using a multivariate competing risks regression model as well as with survival outcomes [relapse-free survival (RFS), cGVHD & relapse free survival (cGRFS) and overall survival (OS)] by multivariate Cox proportional hazards regression model. A significant association between KIR genotype mismatching (KIR-B/x donor into KIR-AA recipient or vice versa) and cGVHD was found in both discovery (p = 0.001; SHR = 2.78; 95%CI: 1.50–5.17) and validation cohorts (p = 0.005; SHR = 2.61; 95%CI: 1.33–5.11). High incidence of cGVHD associated with KIR genotype mismatching was applicable to both sibling and unrelated donors and was specific to recipients who had one or two C1 bearing HLA-C epitopes (HLA-C1/x, p = 0.001; SHR = 2.40; 95%CI: 1.42–4.06). When compared with KIR genotype mismatched transplants, HLA-C1/x patients receiving grafts from KIR genotype matched donors had a significantly improved cGRFS (p = 0.013; HR = 1.62; 95%CI: 1.11–2.39). Although there was no effect of KIR genotype matching on survival outcomes, a significantly reduced incidence of relapse (p = 0.001; SHR = 0.22; 95%CI: 0.10–0.54) and improved relapse-free survival (p = 0.038; HR = 0.40; 95%CI: 0.17–0.95) was observed with one or more missing ligands for donor inhibitory KIR among the recipients of unrelated donor transplants. Conclusions The present study for the first time presents the beneficial effects of KIR genotype matching in reducing cGVHD in myeloablative transplant setting using HLA matched (sibling and unrelated) donors. The findings offer a clinically applicable donor selection strategy that can help control cGVHD without affecting the risk of relapse and/or identify patients at a high risk of developing cGVHD as potential candidates for preemptive therapy. The findings also affirm the beneficial effect of one or more missing inhibitory KIR ligands in the recipient in reducing relapse and improving a relapse free survival in unrelated donor transplants. PMID:27341514

Donor-Recipient Matching for KIR Genotypes Reduces Chronic GVHD and Missing Inhibitory KIR Ligands Protect against Relapse after Myeloablative, HLA Matched Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation.

PubMed

Faridi, Rehan Mujeeb; Kemp, Taylor J; Dharmani-Khan, Poonam; Lewis, Victor; Tripathi, Gaurav; Rajalingam, Raja; Daly, Andrew; Berka, Noureddine; Storek, Jan; Masood Khan, Faisal

2016-01-01

Allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT) can be curative for many hematologic diseases. However, complications such as graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) and relapse of primary malignancy remain significant and are the leading causes of morbidity and mortality. Effects of killer Ig-like receptors (KIR)-influenced NK cells on HCT outcomes have been extensively pursued over the last decade. However, the relevance of the reported algorithms on HLA matched myeloablative HCT with rabbit antithymocyte globulin (ATG) is used for GVHD prophylaxis remains elusive. Here we examined the role of KIR and KIR-ligands of donor-recipient pairs in modifying the outcomes of ATG conditioned HLA matched sibling and unrelated donor HCT. The study cohort consisted of 281 HLA matched sibling and unrelated donor-recipient pairs of first allogeneic marrow or blood stem cell transplantation allocated into 'discovery' (135 pairs) and 'validation' (146 pairs) cohorts. High resolution HLA typing was obtained from the medical charts and KIR gene repertoires were obtained by a Luminex® based SSO method. All surviving patients were followed-up for a minimum of two years. KIR and HLA class I distributions of HCT pairs were stratified as per applicable definitions and were tested for their association with cause specific outcomes [acute GVHD grade II-IV (aGVHD), chronic GVHD needing systemic therapy (cGVHD) and relapse] using a multivariate competing risks regression model as well as with survival outcomes [relapse-free survival (RFS), cGVHD & relapse free survival (cGRFS) and overall survival (OS)] by multivariate Cox proportional hazards regression model. A significant association between KIR genotype mismatching (KIR-B/x donor into KIR-AA recipient or vice versa) and cGVHD was found in both discovery (p = 0.001; SHR = 2.78; 95%CI: 1.50-5.17) and validation cohorts (p = 0.005; SHR = 2.61; 95%CI: 1.33-5.11). High incidence of cGVHD associated with KIR genotype mismatching was applicable to both sibling and unrelated donors and was specific to recipients who had one or two C1 bearing HLA-C epitopes (HLA-C1/x, p = 0.001; SHR = 2.40; 95%CI: 1.42-4.06). When compared with KIR genotype mismatched transplants, HLA-C1/x patients receiving grafts from KIR genotype matched donors had a significantly improved cGRFS (p = 0.013; HR = 1.62; 95%CI: 1.11-2.39). Although there was no effect of KIR genotype matching on survival outcomes, a significantly reduced incidence of relapse (p = 0.001; SHR = 0.22; 95%CI: 0.10-0.54) and improved relapse-free survival (p = 0.038; HR = 0.40; 95%CI: 0.17-0.95) was observed with one or more missing ligands for donor inhibitory KIR among the recipients of unrelated donor transplants. The present study for the first time presents the beneficial effects of KIR genotype matching in reducing cGVHD in myeloablative transplant setting using HLA matched (sibling and unrelated) donors. The findings offer a clinically applicable donor selection strategy that can help control cGVHD without affecting the risk of relapse and/or identify patients at a high risk of developing cGVHD as potential candidates for preemptive therapy. The findings also affirm the beneficial effect of one or more missing inhibitory KIR ligands in the recipient in reducing relapse and improving a relapse free survival in unrelated donor transplants.

Does letter rotation slow down orthographic processing in word recognition?

PubMed

Perea, Manuel; Marcet, Ana; Fernández-López, María

2018-02-01

Leading neural models of visual word recognition assume that letter rotation slows down the conversion of the visual input to a stable orthographic representation (e.g., local detectors combination model; Dehaene, Cohen, Sigman, & Vinckier, 2005, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 9, 335-341). If this premise is true, briefly presented rotated primes should be less effective at activating word representations than those primes with upright letters. To test this question, we conducted a masked priming lexical decision experiment with vertically presented words either rotated 90° or in marquee format (i.e., vertically but with upright letters). We examined the impact of the format on both letter identity (masked identity priming: identity vs. unrelated) and letter position (masked transposed-letter priming: transposed-letter prime vs. replacement-letter prime). Results revealed sizeable masked identity and transposed-letter priming effects that were similar in magnitude for rotated and marquee words. Therefore, the reading cost from letter rotation does not arise in the initial access to orthographic/lexical representations.

Multiple effects of sentential constraint on word processing

PubMed Central

Federmeier, Kara D.; Wlotko, Edward W.; De Ochoa-Dewald, Esmeralda; Kutas, Marta

2009-01-01

Behavioral and electrophysiological studies have uncovered different patterns of constraint effects on the processing of words in sentences. Whereas response time measures have indicated a reduced scope of facilitation from strongly constraining contexts, event-related brain potential (ERP) measures have instead revealed enhanced facilitation for semantically related endings in such sentences. Given this disparity, and the concomitant possibility of functionally separable stages of context effects, the current study jointly examined expectancy (cloze probability) and constraint effects on the ERP response to words. Expected and unexpected (but plausible) words completed strongly and weakly constraining sentences; unexpected items were matched for contextual fit across the two levels of constraint and were semantically unrelated to the most expected endings. N400 amplitudes were graded by expectancy but unaffected by constraint and seemed to index the benefit of contextual information. However, a later effect, in the form of increased frontal positivity from 500 to 900 ms post-stimulus-onset, indicated a possible cost associated with the processing of unexpected words in strongly constraining contexts. PMID:16901469

I 5683 you: dialing phone numbers on cell phones activates key-concordant concepts.

PubMed

Topolinski, Sascha

2011-03-01

When people perform actions, effects associated with the actions are activated mentally, even if those effects are not apparent. This study tested whether sequences of simulations of virtual action effects can be integrated into a meaning of their own. Cell phones were used to test this hypothesis because pressing a key on a phone is habitually associated with both digits (dialing numbers) and letters (typing text messages). In Experiment 1, dialing digit sequences induced the meaning of words that share the same key sequence (e.g., 5683, LOVE). This occurred even though the letters were not labeled on the keypad, and participants were not aware of the digit-letter correspondences. In Experiment 2, subjects preferred dialing numbers implying positive words (e.g., 37326, DREAM) over dialing numbers implying negative words (e.g., 75463, SLIME). In Experiment 3, subjects preferred companies with phone numbers implying a company-related word (e.g., LOVE for a dating agency, CORPSE for a mortician) compared with companies with phone numbers implying a company-unrelated word.

Why is the sunny side always up? Explaining the spatial mapping of concepts by language use.

PubMed

Goodhew, Stephanie C; McGaw, Bethany; Kidd, Evan

2014-10-01

Humans appear to rely on spatial mappings to represent and describe concepts. The conceptual cuing effect describes the tendency for participants to orient attention to a spatial location following the presentation of an unrelated cue word (e.g., orienting attention upward after reading the word sky). To date, such effects have predominately been explained within the embodied cognition framework, according to which people's attention is oriented on the basis of prior experience (e.g., sky → up via perceptual simulation). However, this does not provide a compelling explanation for how abstract words have the same ability to orient attention. Why, for example, does dream also orient attention upward? We report on an experiment that investigated the role of language use (specifically, collocation between concept words and spatial words for up and down dimensions) and found that it predicted the cuing effect. The results suggest that language usage patterns may be instrumental in explaining conceptual cuing.

A patient with phonologic alexia can learn to read "much" from "mud pies"

PubMed Central

Lott, Susan Nitzberg; Sample, Diane M.; Oliver, Robyn T.; Lacey, Elizabeth H.; Friedman, Rhonda B.

2008-01-01

People with phonologic alexia often have difficulty reading functors and verbs, in addition to pseudowords. Friedman et al (2002) reported a successful treatment for phonologic alexia that paired problematic functors and verbs with easily read relays that were homophonous nouns (e.g. "be" paired with "bee"). The current study evaluates the efficacy of pairing problematic grammatical words with relays that share initial phonemes, but vary in the relationship of their final phonemes. Results showed that reading of target grammatical words improved to criterion level (90% accuracy over two consecutive probes) in all experimental conditions with shared phonology, but remained far below criterion level in control conditions. There was a significant correlation between degree of phonologic relatedness and error rate. Maintenance of the treatment effect was poor as assessed by traditional measurement, however a dramatic savings during relearning was demonstrated during a subsequent treatment phase. The finding that reading can be re-organized by pairing target words not only with homophones, but with other phonologically related relays, suggests that this approach could be applied to a wide corpus of words and, therefore, potentially be of great use clinically. We suggest, within a connectionist account, that the treatment effect results from relays priming the initial phonologic units of the targets. PMID:18513760

Does Gender-Fair Language Pay Off? The Social Perception of Professions from a Cross-Linguistic Perspective.

PubMed

Horvath, Lisa K; Merkel, Elisa F; Maass, Anne; Sczesny, Sabine

2015-01-01

In many languages, masculine forms (e.g., German Lehrer, "teachers, masc.") have traditionally been used to refer to both women and men, although feminine forms are available, too. Feminine-masculine word pairs (e.g., German Lehrerinnen und Lehrer, "teachers, fem. and teachers, masc.") are recommended as gender-fair alternatives. A large body of empirical research documents that the use of gender-fair forms instead of masculine forms has a substantial impact on mental representations. Masculine forms activate more male representations even when used in a generic sense, whereas word pairs (e.g., German Lehrerinnen und Lehrer, "teachers, fem. and teachers, masc.") lead to a higher cognitive inclusion of women (i.e., visibility of women). Some recent studies, however, have also shown that in a professional context word pairs may be associated with lesser status. The present research is the first to investigate both effects within a single paradigm. A cross-linguistic (Italian and German) study with 391 participants shows that word pairs help to avoid a male bias in the gender-typing of professions and increase women's visibility; at the same time, they decrease the estimated salaries of typically feminine professions (but do not affect perceived social status or competence). This potential payoff has implications for language policies aiming at gender-fairness.

Perceptual Repetition Blindness Effects

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Hochhaus, Larry; Johnston, James C.; Null, Cynthia H. (Technical Monitor)

1994-01-01

The phenomenon of repetition blindness (RB) may reveal a new limitation on human perceptual processing. Recently, however, researchers have attributed RB to post-perceptual processes such as memory retrieval and/or reporting biases. The standard rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) paradigm used in most RB studies is, indeed, open to such objections. Here we investigate RB using a "single-frame" paradigm introduced by Johnston and Hale (1984) in which memory demands are minimal. Subjects made only a single judgement about whether one masked target word was the same or different than a post-target probe. Confidence ratings permitted use of signal detection methods to assess sensitivity and bias effects. In the critical condition for RB a precue of the post-target word was provided prior to the target stimulus (identity precue), so that the required judgement amounted to whether the target did or did not repeat the precue word. In control treatments, the precue was either an unrelated word or a dummy.

Image-Word Pairing-Congruity Effect on Affective Responses

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sanabria Z., Jorge C.; Cho, Youngil; Sambai, Ami; Yamanaka, Toshimasa

The present study explores the effects of familiarity on affective responses (pleasure and arousal) to Japanese ad elements, based on the schema incongruity theory. Print ads showing natural scenes (landscapes) were used to create the stimuli (images and words). An empirical study was conducted to measure subjects' affective responses to image-word combinations that varied in terms of incongruity. The level of incongruity was based on familiarity levels, and was statistically determined by a variable called ‘pairing-congruity status’. The tested hypothesis proposed that even highly familiar image-word combinations, when combined incongruously, would elicit strong affective responses. Subjects assessed the stimuli using bipolar scales. The study was effective in tracing interactions between familiarity, pleasure and arousal, although the incongruous image-word combinations did not elicit the predicted strong effects on pleasure and arousal. The results suggest a need for further research incorporating kansei (i.e., creativity) into the process of stimuli selection.

Perceptual and acoustic analysis of lexical stress in Greek speakers with dysarthria.

PubMed

Papakyritsis, Ioannis; Müller, Nicole

2014-01-01

The study reported in this paper investigated the abilities of Greek speakers with dysarthria to signal lexical stress at the single word level. Three speakers with dysarthria and two unimpaired control participants were recorded completing a repetition task of a list of words consisting of minimal pairs of Greek disyllabic words contrasted by lexical stress location only. Fourteen listeners were asked to determine the attempted stress location for each word pair. Acoustic analyses of duration and intensity ratios, both within and across words, were undertaken to identify possible acoustic correlates of the listeners' judgments concerning stress location. Acoustic and perceptual data indicate that while each participant with dysarthria in this study had some difficulty in signaling stress unambiguously, the pattern of difficulty was different for each speaker. Further, it was found that the relationship between the listeners' judgments of stress location and the acoustic data was not conclusive.

Holistic word processing in dyslexia

PubMed Central

Conway, Aisling; Misra, Karuna

2017-01-01

People with dyslexia have difficulty learning to read and many lack fluent word recognition as adults. In a novel task that borrows elements of the ‘word superiority’ and ‘word inversion’ paradigms, we investigate whether holistic word recognition is impaired in dyslexia. In Experiment 1 students with dyslexia and controls judged the similarity of pairs of 6- and 7-letter words or pairs of words whose letters had been partially jumbled. The stimuli were presented in both upright and inverted form with orthographic regularity and orientation randomized from trial to trial. While both groups showed sensitivity to orthographic regularity, both word inversion and letter jumbling were more detrimental to skilled than dyslexic readers supporting the idea that the latter may read in a more analytic fashion. Experiment 2 employed the same task but using shorter, 4- and 5-letter words and a design where orthographic regularity and stimuli orientation was held constant within experimental blocks to encourage the use of either holistic or analytic processing. While there was no difference in reaction time between the dyslexic and control groups for inverted stimuli, the students with dyslexia were significantly slower than controls for upright stimuli. These findings suggest that holistic word recognition, which is largely based on the detection of orthographic regularity, is impaired in dyslexia. PMID:29121046

The efficacy of self-paced study in multitrial learning.

PubMed

de Jonge, Mario; Tabbers, Huib K; Pecher, Diane; Jang, Yoonhee; Zeelenberg, René

2015-05-01

In 2 experiments we investigated the efficacy of self-paced study in multitrial learning. In Experiment 1, native speakers of English studied lists of Dutch-English word pairs under 1 of 4 imposed fixed presentation rate conditions (24 × 1 s, 12 × 2 s, 6 × 4 s, or 3 × 8 s) and a self-paced study condition. Total study time per list was equated for all conditions. We found that self-paced study resulted in better recall performance than did most of the fixed presentation rates, with the exception of the 12 × 2 s condition, which did not differ from the self-paced condition. Additional correlational analyses suggested that the allocation of more study time to difficult pairs than to easy pairs might be a beneficial strategy for self-paced learning. Experiment 2 was designed to test this hypothesis. In 1 condition, participants studied word pairs in a self-paced fashion without any restrictions. In the other condition, participants studied word pairs in a self-paced fashion but total study time per item was equated. The results showed that allowing self-paced learners to freely allocate study time over items resulted in better recall performance. (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).

Hemispheric differences in the recruitment of semantic processing mechanisms

PubMed Central

Kandhadai, Padmapriya; Federmeier, Kara D.

2010-01-01

This study examined how the two cerebral hemispheres recruit semantic processing mechanisms by combining event-related potential measures and visual half-field methods in a word priming paradigm in which semantic strength and predictability were manipulated using lexically associated word pairs. Activation patterns on the Late Positive Complex (LPC), linked to controlled aspects of processing, showed that previously documented left hemisphere (LH) processing benefits for word pairs with a weak forward but strong backward association stem from the ability to appreciate meaning relations in an order-independent fashion and/or strategically reorder them. Whereas there is a LH benefit for such strategic processing during comprehension in passive tasks, the present study further showed that the RH is also able to make use of these mechanisms when explicit semantic judgments are required. In both hemispheres, N400 responses, linked to initial semantic activation, were largely graded by association strength, with more amplitude reduction for forward associates and strong, symmetrically associated pairs compared to backward associates and matched weak, symmetrically associated pairs. However, responses to moderately associated pairs were more facilitated after initial presentation to the LH than to the RH. This pattern converges with sentence processing findings that point to LH advantages for using context information to predict features of likely upcoming words. Together, the results suggest that an important basis for hemispheric asymmetries in language comprehension arises from when and how each uses top-down semantic mechanisms to shape initial semantic activation over time. PMID:20638397

Short-term memory for serial order supports vocabulary development: new evidence from a novel word learning paradigm.

PubMed

Majerus, Steve; Boukebza, Claire

2013-12-01

Although recent studies suggest a strong association between short-term memory (STM) for serial order and lexical development, the precise mechanisms linking the two domains remain to be determined. This study explored the nature of these mechanisms via a microanalysis of performance on serial order STM and novel word learning tasks. In the experiment, 6- and 7-year-old children were administered tasks maximizing STM for either item or serial order information as well as paired-associate learning tasks involving the learning of novel words, visual symbols, or familiar word pair associations. Learning abilities for novel words were specifically predicted by serial order STM abilities. A measure estimating the precision of serial order coding predicted the rate of correct repetitions and the rate of phoneme migration errors during the novel word learning process. In line with recent theoretical accounts, these results suggest that serial order STM supports vocabulary development via ordered and detailed reactivation of the novel phonological sequences that characterize new words. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The representation of abstract words: why emotion matters.

PubMed

Kousta, Stavroula-Thaleia; Vigliocco, Gabriella; Vinson, David P; Andrews, Mark; Del Campo, Elena

2011-02-01

Although much is known about the representation and processing of concrete concepts, knowledge of what abstract semantics might be is severely limited. In this article we first address the adequacy of the 2 dominant accounts (dual coding theory and the context availability model) put forward in order to explain representation and processing differences between concrete and abstract words. We find that neither proposal can account for experimental findings and that this is, at least partly, because abstract words are considered to be unrelated to experiential information in both of these accounts. We then address a particular type of experiential information, emotional content, and demonstrate that it plays a crucial role in the processing and representation of abstract concepts: Statistically, abstract words are more emotionally valenced than are concrete words, and this accounts for a residual latency advantage for abstract words, when variables such as imageability (a construct derived from dual coding theory) and rated context availability are held constant. We conclude with a discussion of our novel hypothesis for embodied abstract semantics. (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved.

Motormouth: mere exposure depends on stimulus-specific motor simulations.

PubMed

Topolinski, Sascha; Strack, Fritz

2009-03-01

The authors apply an embodied account to mere exposure, arguing that through the repeated exposure of a particular stimulus, motor responses specifically associated to that stimulus are repeatedly simulated, thus trained, and become increasingly fluent. This increased fluency drives preferences for repeated stimuli. This hypothesis was tested by blocking stimulus-specific motor simulations during repeated exposure. In Experiment 1, chewing gum while evaluating stimuli destroyed mere exposure effects (MEEs) for words but not for visual characters. However, concurrently kneading a ball left both MEEs unaffected. In Experiment 2, concurrently whispering an unrelated word destroyed MEEs for words but not for characters, even when implemented either exclusively during the initial presentation or during the test phase and when the first presentation involved an evaluation or a mere study of the stimuli. In Experiment 3, a double dissociation between 2 classes of stimuli was demonstrated, namely, words (oral) and tunes (vocal). A concurrent oral task (tongue movements) destroyed MEEs for words but not for tone sequences. A concurrent vocal task (humming "mm-hm") destroyed MEEs for tone sequences but not for words. (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved

An ERP study on whether semantic integration exists in processing ecologically unrelated audio-visual information.

PubMed

Liu, Baolin; Meng, Xianyao; Wang, Zhongning; Wu, Guangning

2011-11-14

In the present study, we used event-related potentials (ERPs) to examine whether semantic integration occurs for ecologically unrelated audio-visual information. Videos with synchronous audio-visual information were used as stimuli, where the auditory stimuli were sine wave sounds with different sound levels, and the visual stimuli were simple geometric figures with different areas. In the experiment, participants were shown an initial display containing a single shape (drawn from a set of 6 shapes) with a fixed size (14cm(2)) simultaneously with a 3500Hz tone of a fixed intensity (80dB). Following a short delay, another shape/tone pair was presented and the relationship between the size of the shape and the intensity of the tone varied across trials: in the V+A- condition, a large shape was paired with a soft tone; in the V+A+ condition, a large shape was paired with a loud tone, and so forth. The ERPs results revealed that N400 effect was elicited under the VA- condition (V+A- and V-A+) as compared to the VA+ condition (V+A+ and V-A-). It was shown that semantic integration would occur when simultaneous, ecologically unrelated auditory and visual stimuli enter the human brain. We considered that this semantic integration was based on semantic constraint of audio-visual information, which might come from the long-term learned association stored in the human brain and short-term experience of incoming information. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Bodily Reactions to Emotional Words Referring to Own versus Other People's Emotions.

PubMed

Weis, Patrick P; Herbert, Cornelia

2017-01-01

According to embodiment theories, language and emotion affect each other. In line with this, several previous studies investigated changes in bodily responses including facial expressions, heart rate or skin conductance during affective evaluation of emotional words and sentences. This study investigates the embodiment of emotional word processing from a social perspective by experimentally manipulating the emotional valence of a word and its personal reference. Stimuli consisted of pronoun-noun pairs, i.e., positive, negative, and neutral nouns paired with possessive pronouns of the first or the third person ("my," "his") or the non-referential negation term ("no") as controls. Participants had to quickly evaluate the word pairs by key presses as either positive, negative, or neutral, depending on the subjective feelings they elicit. Hereafter, they elaborated the intensity of the feeling on a non-verbal scale from 1 (very unpleasant) to 9 (very pleasant). Facial expressions ( M. Zygomaticus , M. Corrugator ), heart rate, and, for exploratory purposes, skin conductance were recorded continuously during the spontaneous and elaborate evaluation tasks. Positive pronoun-noun phrases were responded to the quickest and judged more often as positive when they were self-related, i.e., related to the reader's self (e.g., "my happiness," "my joy") than when related to the self of a virtual other (e.g., "his happiness," "his joy"), suggesting a self-positivity bias in the emotional evaluation of word stimuli. Physiologically, evaluation of emotional, unlike neutral pronoun-noun pairs initially elicited an increase in mean heart rate irrespective of stimulus reference. Changes in facial muscle activity, M. Zygomaticus in particular, were most pronounced during spontaneous evaluation of positive other-related pronoun-noun phrases in line with theoretical assumptions that facial expressions are socially embedded even in situation where no real communication partner is present. Taken together, the present results confirm and extend the embodiment hypothesis of language by showing that bodily signals can be differently pronounced during emotional evaluation of self- and other-related emotional words.

English semantic word-pair norms and a searchable Web portal for experimental stimulus creation.

PubMed

Buchanan, Erin M; Holmes, Jessica L; Teasley, Marilee L; Hutchison, Keith A

2013-09-01

As researchers explore the complexity of memory and language hierarchies, the need to expand normed stimulus databases is growing. Therefore, we present 1,808 words, paired with their features and concept-concept information, that were collected using previously established norming methods (McRae, Cree, Seidenberg, & McNorgan Behavior Research Methods 37:547-559, 2005). This database supplements existing stimuli and complements the Semantic Priming Project (Hutchison, Balota, Cortese, Neely, Niemeyer, Bengson, & Cohen-Shikora 2010). The data set includes many types of words (including nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc.), expanding on previous collections of nouns and verbs (Vinson & Vigliocco Journal of Neurolinguistics 15:317-351, 2008). We describe the relation between our and other semantic norms, as well as giving a short review of word-pair norms. The stimuli are provided in conjunction with a searchable Web portal that allows researchers to create a set of experimental stimuli without prior programming knowledge. When researchers use this new database in tandem with previous norming efforts, precise stimuli sets can be created for future research endeavors.

The Neural Response to Maternal Stimuli: An ERP Study

PubMed Central

Wu, Lili; Gu, Ruolei; Cai, Huajian; Luo, Yu L. L.; Zhang, Jianxin

2014-01-01

Mothers are important to all humans. Research has established that maternal information affects individuals' cognition, emotion, and behavior. We measured event-related potentials (ERPs) to examine attentional and evaluative processing of maternal stimuli while participants completed a Go/No-go Association Task that paired mother or others words with good or bad evaluative words. Behavioral data showed that participants responded faster to mother words paired with good than the mother words paired with bad but showed no difference in response to these others across conditions, reflecting a positive evaluation of mother. ERPs showed larger P200 and N200 in response to mother than in response to others, suggesting that mother attracted more attention than others. In the subsequent time window, mother in the mother + bad condition elicited a later and larger late positive potential (LPP) than it did in the mother + good condition, but this was not true for others, also suggesting a positive evaluation of mother. These results suggest that people differentiate mother from others during initial attentional stage, and evaluative mother positively during later stage. PMID:25375157

Perception of Canadian-French Word-Final Vowels in Lexical and Morphosyntactic Minimal Pairs by Canadian English Learners of French

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Law, Franzo II

2011-01-01

This study investigated the perception of Canadian French word-final vowels by English-dominant and French-dominant bilinguals living in Montreal. In a modified identification task, listeners selected the response that rhymed with the target word, embedded in a carrier sentence. Minimal sets of real and nonsense target words were used, contrasting…

Semantic word impressions expressed by hue.

PubMed

Shinomori, Keizo; Komatsu, Honami

2018-04-01

We investigated the possibility of whether impressions of semantic words showing complex concepts could be stably expressed by hues. Using a paired comparison method, we asked ten subjects to select from a pair of hues the one that more suitably matched a word impression. We employed nine Japanese semantic words and used twelve hues from vivid tones in the practical color coordinate system. As examples of the results, for the word "vigorous" the most frequently selected color was yellow and the least selected was blue to purple; for "tranquil" the most selected was yellow to green and the least selected was red. Principal component analysis of the selection data indicated that the cumulative contribution rate of the first two components was 94.6%, and in the two-dimensional space of the components, all hues were distributed as a hue-circle shape. In addition, comparison with additional data of color impressions measured by a semantic differential method suggested that most semantic word impressions can be stably expressed by hue, but the impression of some words, such as "magnificent" cannot. These results suggest that semantic word impression can be expressed reasonably well by color, and that hues are treated as impressions from the hue circle, not from color categories.

A Character Level Based and Word Level Based Approach for Chinese-Vietnamese Machine Translation

PubMed Central

2016-01-01

Chinese and Vietnamese have the same isolated language; that is, the words are not delimited by spaces. In machine translation, word segmentation is often done first when translating from Chinese or Vietnamese into different languages (typically English) and vice versa. However, it is a matter for consideration that words may or may not be segmented when translating between two languages in which spaces are not used between words, such as Chinese and Vietnamese. Since Chinese-Vietnamese is a low-resource language pair, the sparse data problem is evident in the translation system of this language pair. Therefore, while translating, whether it should be segmented or not becomes more important. In this paper, we propose a new method for translating Chinese to Vietnamese based on a combination of the advantages of character level and word level translation. In addition, a hybrid approach that combines statistics and rules is used to translate on the word level. And at the character level, a statistical translation is used. The experimental results showed that our method improved the performance of machine translation over that of character or word level translation. PMID:27446207

Bilingual and Monolingual Idiom Processing Is Cut from the Same Cloth: The Role of the L1 in Literal and Figurative Meaning Activation

PubMed Central

Beck, Sara D.; Weber, Andrea

2016-01-01

The present study examines non-native (L2) and native (L1) listeners' access to figurative idiomatic meaning and literal constituent meaning in two cross-modal priming experiments. Proficient German learners of English (L2) and native speakers of American English (L1) responded to English target words preceded by English idioms embedded in non-biasing prime sentences in a lexical decision task. English idioms differed in levels of translatability: Lexical level idioms had word-for-word translation equivalents in German, while post-lexical level idioms had matching idiomatic concepts in German but could not be translated word for word. Target words either related to the figurative meaning of the idiom or related to the literal meaning of the final constituent word of the idiom (e.g., to pull someone's leg, literal target: walk, figurative target: joke). Both L1 and L2 listeners showed facilitatory priming for literally- and figuratively-related target words compared to unrelated control target words, with only marginal differences between the listener groups. No effect of translatability was found; that is, the existence of word-for-word translation equivalents in German neither facilitated nor hindered meaning activation for German L2 listeners. The results are interpreted in the context of L1 and L2 models of idiom processing as well as further relevant translation studies. PMID:27667979

Bilingual and Monolingual Idiom Processing Is Cut from the Same Cloth: The Role of the L1 in Literal and Figurative Meaning Activation.

PubMed

Beck, Sara D; Weber, Andrea

2016-01-01

The present study examines non-native (L2) and native (L1) listeners' access to figurative idiomatic meaning and literal constituent meaning in two cross-modal priming experiments. Proficient German learners of English (L2) and native speakers of American English (L1) responded to English target words preceded by English idioms embedded in non-biasing prime sentences in a lexical decision task. English idioms differed in levels of translatability: Lexical level idioms had word-for-word translation equivalents in German, while post-lexical level idioms had matching idiomatic concepts in German but could not be translated word for word. Target words either related to the figurative meaning of the idiom or related to the literal meaning of the final constituent word of the idiom (e.g., to pull someone's leg, literal target: walk, figurative target: joke). Both L1 and L2 listeners showed facilitatory priming for literally- and figuratively-related target words compared to unrelated control target words, with only marginal differences between the listener groups. No effect of translatability was found; that is, the existence of word-for-word translation equivalents in German neither facilitated nor hindered meaning activation for German L2 listeners. The results are interpreted in the context of L1 and L2 models of idiom processing as well as further relevant translation studies.

Kinship and Social Behavior of Lowland Tapirs (Tapirus terrestris) in a Central Amazon Landscape

PubMed Central

Pinho, Gabriela M.; Gonçalves da Silva, Anders; Hrbek, Tomas; Venticinque, Eduardo M.; Farias, Izeni P.

2014-01-01

We tested the hypothesis that tapirs tolerate individuals from adjacent and overlapping home ranges if they are related. We obtained genetic data from fecal samples collected in the Balbina reservoir landscape, central Amazon. Samples were genotyped at 14 microsatellite loci, of which five produced high quality informative genotypes. Based on an analysis of 32 individuals, we inferred a single panmictic population with high levels of heterozygosity. Kinship analysis identified 10 pairs of full siblings or parent-offspring, 10 pairs of half siblings and 25 unrelated pairs. In 10 cases, the related individuals were situated on opposite margins of the reservoir, suggesting that tapirs are capable of crossing the main river, even after damming. The polygamous model was the most likely mating system for Tapirus terrestris. Moran's I index of allele sharing between pairs of individuals geographically close (<3 km) was similar to that observed between individual pairs at larger distances (>3 km). Confirming this result, the related individuals were not geographically closer than unrelated ones (W = 188.5; p = 0.339). Thus, we found no evidence of a preference for being close to relatives and observed a tendency for dispersal. The small importance of relatedness in determining spatial distribution of individuals is unusual in mammals, but not unheard of. Finally, non-invasive sampling allowed efficient access to the genetic data, despite the warm and humid climate of the Amazon, which accelerates DNA degradation. PMID:24671057

Context-Sensitive Spelling Correction of Consumer-Generated Content on Health Care

PubMed Central

Chen, Rudan; Zhao, Xianyang; Xu, Wei; Cheng, Wenqing; Lin, Simon

2015-01-01

Background Consumer-generated content, such as postings on social media websites, can serve as an ideal source of information for studying health care from a consumer’s perspective. However, consumer-generated content on health care topics often contains spelling errors, which, if not corrected, will be obstacles for downstream computer-based text analysis. Objective In this study, we proposed a framework with a spelling correction system designed for consumer-generated content and a novel ontology-based evaluation system which was used to efficiently assess the correction quality. Additionally, we emphasized the importance of context sensitivity in the correction process, and demonstrated why correction methods designed for electronic medical records (EMRs) failed to perform well with consumer-generated content. Methods First, we developed our spelling correction system based on Google Spell Checker. The system processed postings acquired from MedHelp, a biomedical bulletin board system (BBS), and saved misspelled words (eg, sertaline) and corresponding corrected words (eg, sertraline) into two separate sets. Second, to reduce the number of words needing manual examination in the evaluation process, we respectively matched the words in the two sets with terms in two biomedical ontologies: RxNorm and Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine -- Clinical Terms (SNOMED CT). The ratio of words which could be matched and appropriately corrected was used to evaluate the correction system’s overall performance. Third, we categorized the misspelled words according to the types of spelling errors. Finally, we calculated the ratio of abbreviations in the postings, which remarkably differed between EMRs and consumer-generated content and could largely influence the overall performance of spelling checkers. Results An uncorrected word and the corresponding corrected word was called a spelling pair, and the two words in the spelling pair were its members. In our study, there were 271 spelling pairs detected, among which 58 (21.4%) pairs had one or two members matched in the selected ontologies. The ratio of appropriate correction in the 271 overall spelling errors was 85.2% (231/271). The ratio of that in the 58 spelling pairs was 86% (50/58), close to the overall ratio. We also found that linguistic errors took up 31.4% (85/271) of all errors detected, and only 0.98% (210/21,358) of words in the postings were abbreviations, which was much lower than the ratio in the EMRs (33.6%). Conclusions We conclude that our system can accurately correct spelling errors in consumer-generated content. Context sensitivity is indispensable in the correction process. Additionally, it can be confirmed that consumer-generated content differs from EMRs in that consumers seldom use abbreviations. Also, the evaluation method, taking advantage of biomedical ontology, can effectively estimate the accuracy of the correction system and reduce manual examination time. PMID:26232246

Context-Sensitive Spelling Correction of Consumer-Generated Content on Health Care.

PubMed

Zhou, Xiaofang; Zheng, An; Yin, Jiaheng; Chen, Rudan; Zhao, Xianyang; Xu, Wei; Cheng, Wenqing; Xia, Tian; Lin, Simon

2015-07-31

Consumer-generated content, such as postings on social media websites, can serve as an ideal source of information for studying health care from a consumer's perspective. However, consumer-generated content on health care topics often contains spelling errors, which, if not corrected, will be obstacles for downstream computer-based text analysis. In this study, we proposed a framework with a spelling correction system designed for consumer-generated content and a novel ontology-based evaluation system which was used to efficiently assess the correction quality. Additionally, we emphasized the importance of context sensitivity in the correction process, and demonstrated why correction methods designed for electronic medical records (EMRs) failed to perform well with consumer-generated content. First, we developed our spelling correction system based on Google Spell Checker. The system processed postings acquired from MedHelp, a biomedical bulletin board system (BBS), and saved misspelled words (eg, sertaline) and corresponding corrected words (eg, sertraline) into two separate sets. Second, to reduce the number of words needing manual examination in the evaluation process, we respectively matched the words in the two sets with terms in two biomedical ontologies: RxNorm and Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine -- Clinical Terms (SNOMED CT). The ratio of words which could be matched and appropriately corrected was used to evaluate the correction system's overall performance. Third, we categorized the misspelled words according to the types of spelling errors. Finally, we calculated the ratio of abbreviations in the postings, which remarkably differed between EMRs and consumer-generated content and could largely influence the overall performance of spelling checkers. An uncorrected word and the corresponding corrected word was called a spelling pair, and the two words in the spelling pair were its members. In our study, there were 271 spelling pairs detected, among which 58 (21.4%) pairs had one or two members matched in the selected ontologies. The ratio of appropriate correction in the 271 overall spelling errors was 85.2% (231/271). The ratio of that in the 58 spelling pairs was 86% (50/58), close to the overall ratio. We also found that linguistic errors took up 31.4% (85/271) of all errors detected, and only 0.98% (210/21,358) of words in the postings were abbreviations, which was much lower than the ratio in the EMRs (33.6%). We conclude that our system can accurately correct spelling errors in consumer-generated content. Context sensitivity is indispensable in the correction process. Additionally, it can be confirmed that consumer-generated content differs from EMRs in that consumers seldom use abbreviations. Also, the evaluation method, taking advantage of biomedical ontology, can effectively estimate the accuracy of the correction system and reduce manual examination time.

Interference from previous distraction disrupts older adults' memory.

PubMed

Biss, Renée K; Campbell, Karen L; Hasher, Lynn

2013-07-01

Previously relevant information can disrupt the ability of older adults to remember new information. Here, the researchers examined whether prior irrelevant information, or distraction, can also interfere with older adults' memory for new information. Younger and older adults first completed a 1-back task on pictures that were superimposed with distracting words. After a delay, participants learned picture-word paired associates and memory was tested using picture-cued recall. In 1 condition (high interference), some pairs included pictures from the 1-back task now paired with new words. In a low-interference condition, the transfer list used all new items. Older adults had substantially lower cued-recall performance in the high- compared with the low-interference condition. In contrast, younger adults' performance did not vary across conditions. These findings suggest that even never-relevant information from the past can disrupt older adults' memory for new associations.

Minimal Pair Distinctions and Intelligibility in Preschool Children with and without Speech Sound Disorders

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hodge, Megan M.; Gotzke, Carrie L.

2011-01-01

Listeners' identification of young children's productions of minimally contrastive words and predictive relationships between accurately identified words and intelligibility scores obtained from a 100-word spontaneous speech sample were determined for 36 children with typically developing speech (TDS) and 36 children with speech sound disorders…

Cued Shadowing.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bates, Elizabeth; Liu, Hua

1996-01-01

Discusses "cued shadowing," during which subjects listen to pairs of words or sentences and repeat a target word signalled by a cue. Rapid semantic and grammatical priming effects have been observed with this technique, both with word and sentence contexts and at different positions within sentence contexts, in normal children and adults, and in…

Heritability of Risk for Sudden Cardiac Arrest in ESRD

PubMed Central

Newton-Cheh, Christopher; Gusella, James F.; Maddux, Franklin W.

2015-01-01

Patients on dialysis are 20 times more likely to have a cardiac arrest compared with the general population. We considered whether inherited factors associate with cardiac arrest among patients on dialysis. From a sample of 647,457 patients on chronic dialysis, we identified 5117 pairs of patients who came from the same family. These patients were each matched to a control subject from the same population. McNemar’s tests were used to compare the risk of cardiac arrest between the familial related and unrelated pairs. Genetically related family members who did not cohabitate had an odds ratio of 1.88 (95% confidence interval [95% CI], 1.25 to 2.84) for cardiac arrest compared with their phenotypically matched unrelated controls. Genetically related family members who lived together in the same environment had an odds ratio of 1.66 (95% CI, 1.20 to 2.28). Spouses, who are genetically unrelated but live together in the same environment, had an odds ratio of 0.95 (95% CI, 0.60 to 1.59) for cardiac arrest. The risk of cardiac arrest in patients on dialysis may be attributable to inherited factors. Additional studies are needed to identify such candidate genes that modify cardiovascular risk in ESRD. PMID:25882830

The relation between body semantics and spatial body representations.

PubMed

van Elk, Michiel; Blanke, Olaf

2011-11-01

The present study addressed the relation between body semantics (i.e. semantic knowledge about the human body) and spatial body representations, by presenting participants with word pairs, one below the other, referring to body parts. The spatial position of the word pairs could be congruent (e.g. EYE / MOUTH) or incongruent (MOUTH / EYE) with respect to the spatial position of the words' referents. In addition, the spatial distance between the words' referents was varied, resulting in word pairs referring to body parts that are close (e.g. EYE / MOUTH) or far in space (e.g. EYE / FOOT). A spatial congruency effect was observed when subjects made an iconicity judgment (Experiments 2 and 3) but not when making a semantic relatedness judgment (Experiment 1). In addition, when making a semantic relatedness judgment (Experiment 1) reaction times increased with increased distance between the body parts but when making an iconicity judgment (Experiments 2 and 3) reaction times decreased with increased distance. These findings suggest that the processing of body-semantics results in the activation of a detailed visuo-spatial body representation that is modulated by the specific task requirements. We discuss these new data with respect to theories of embodied cognition and body semantics. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Neural systems underlying the influence of sound shape properties of the lexicon on spoken word production: do fMRI findings predict effects of lesions in aphasia?

PubMed

Bullock-Rest, Natasha; Cerny, Alissa; Sweeney, Carol; Palumbo, Carole; Kurowski, Kathleen; Blumstein, Sheila E

2013-08-01

Previous behavioral work has shown that the phonetic realization of words in spoken word production is influenced by sound shape properties of the lexicon. A recent fMRI study (Peramunage, Blumstein, Myers, Goldrick, & Baese-Berk, 2011) showed that this influence of lexical structure on phonetic implementation recruited a network of areas that included the supramarginal gyrus (SMG) extending into the posterior superior temporal gyrus (pSTG) and the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG). The current study examined whether lesions in these areas result in a concomitant functional deficit. Ten individuals with aphasia and 8 normal controls read words aloud in which half had a voiced stop consonant minimal pair (e.g. tame; dame), and the other half did not (e.g. tooth; (*)dooth). Voice onset time (VOT) analysis of the initial voiceless stop consonant revealed that aphasic participants with lesions including the IFG and/or the SMG behaved as did normals, showing VOT lengthening effects for minimal pair words compared to non-minimal pair words. The failure to show a functional deficit in the production of VOT as a function of the lexical properties of a word with damage in the IFG or SMG suggests that fMRI findings do not always predict effects of lesions on behavioral deficits in aphasia. Nonetheless, the pattern of production errors made by the aphasic participants did reflect properties of the lexicon, supporting the view that the SMG and IFG are part of a lexical network involved in spoken word production. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Forward Association, Backward Association, and the False-Memory Illusion

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Brainerd, C. J.; Wright, Ron

2005-01-01

In the Deese-Roediger-McDermott false-memory illusion, forward associative strength (FAS) is unrelated to the strength of the illusion; this is puzzling, because high-FAS lists ought to share more semantic features with critical unpresented words than should low-FAS lists. The authors show that this null result is probably a truncated range…

Vocabulary Recycling in Children's Authentic Reading Materials: A Corpus-Based Investigation of Narrow Reading

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gardner, Dee

2008-01-01

Fourteen collections of children's reading materials were used to investigate the claim that collections of authentic texts with a common theme, or written by one author, afford readers with more repeated exposures to new words than unrelated materials. The collections, distinguished by relative thematic tightness, authorship (1 vs. 4 authors),…

Intentional Forgetting Reduces Color-Naming Interference: Evidence from Item-Method Directed Forgetting

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lee, Yuh-shiow; Lee, Huang-mou; Fawcett, Jonathan M.

2013-01-01

In an item-method-directed forgetting task, Chinese words were presented individually, each followed by an instruction to remember or forget. Colored probe items were presented following each memory instruction requiring a speeded color-naming response. Half of the probe items were novel and unrelated to the preceding study item, whereas the…

Listeners' comprehension of uptalk in spontaneous speech.

PubMed

Tomlinson, John M; Fox Tree, Jean E

2011-04-01

Listeners' comprehension of phrase final rising pitch on declarative utterances, or uptalk, was examined to test the hypothesis that prolongations might differentiate conflicting functions of rising pitch. In Experiment 1 we found that listeners rated prolongations as indicating more speaker uncertainty, but that rising pitch was unrelated to ratings. In Experiment 2 we found that prolongations interacted with rising pitch when listeners monitored for words in the subsequent utterance. Words preceded by prolonged uptalk were monitored faster than words preceded by non-prolonged uptalk. In Experiment 3 we found that the interaction between rising pitch and prolongations depended on listeners' beliefs about speakers' mental states. Results support the theory that temporal and situational context are important in determining intonational meaning. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Masked syllable priming effects in word and picture naming in Chinese.

PubMed

You, Wenping; Zhang, Qingfang; Verdonschot, Rinus G

2012-01-01

Four experiments investigated the role of the syllable in Chinese spoken word production. Chen, Chen and Ferrand (2003) reported a syllable priming effect when primes and targets shared the first syllable using a masked priming paradigm in Chinese. Our Experiment 1 was a direct replication of Chen et al.'s (2003) Experiment 3 employing CV (e.g., ,/ba2.ying2/, strike camp) and CVG (e.g., ,/bai2.shou3/, white haired) syllable types. Experiment 2 tested the syllable priming effect using different syllable types: e.g., CV (,/qi4.qiu2/, balloon) and CVN (,/qing1.ting2/, dragonfly). Experiment 3 investigated this issue further using line drawings of common objects as targets that were preceded either by a CV (e.g., ,/qi3/, attempt), or a CVN (e.g., ,/qing2/, affection) prime. Experiment 4 further examined the priming effect by a comparison between CV or CVN priming and an unrelated priming condition using CV-NX (e.g., ,/mi2.ni3/, mini) and CVN-CX (e.g., ,/min2.ju1/, dwellings) as target words. These four experiments consistently found that CV targets were named faster when preceded by CV primes than when they were preceded by CVG, CVN or unrelated primes, whereas CVG or CVN targets showed the reverse pattern. These results indicate that the priming effect critically depends on the match between the structure of the prime and that of the first syllable of the target. The effect obtained in this study was consistent across different stimuli and different tasks (word and picture naming), and provides more conclusive and consistent data regarding the role of the syllable in Chinese speech production.

Maintenance rehearsal: the key to the role attention plays in storage and forgetting.

PubMed

McFarlane, Kimberley A; Humphreys, Michael S

2012-07-01

Research with the maintenance-rehearsal paradigm, in which word pairs are rehearsed as distractor material during a series of digit recall trials, has previously indicated that low frequency and new word pairs capture attention to a greater degree than high frequency and old word pairs. This impacts delayed recognition of the pairs and interferes with immediate digit recall. The effect on immediate digit recall may provide the missing converging evidence for the role of attention in memory. In the current study, 3 experiments were conducted to further investigate the role of attention capture and novelty in storage and forgetting. In addition to the previously established effects, the novelty of switching rehearsal between 2 pairs was found to impair both digit recall and memory for the first pair. The attentional effects we obtained were dependent upon participant expectation, and forgetting appears to be due to interference with consolidation rather than decay or traditional associative interference. Finally, the attentional effects we observed in associative recognition were primarily reflected in a lowering of the false alarm rate with increases in the strength of the parent pairs. Although dual-process models can accommodate this finding on the assumption that recollection is invoked at test alongside familiarity, we showed that the level of recall in this paradigm is so small that recollection can be ruled out. Accordingly, our results are challenging for the existing models of associative recognition to accommodate. 2012 APA, all rights reserved

Using affective knowledge to generate and validate a set of emotion-related, action words.

PubMed

Portch, Emma; Havelka, Jelena; Brown, Charity; Giner-Sorolla, Roger

2015-01-01

Emotion concepts are built through situated experience. Abstract word meaning is grounded in this affective knowledge, giving words the potential to evoke emotional feelings and reactions (e.g., Vigliocco et al., 2009). In the present work we explore whether words differ in the extent to which they evoke 'specific' emotional knowledge. Using a categorical approach, in which an affective 'context' is created, it is possible to assess whether words proportionally activate knowledge relevant to different emotional states (e.g., 'sadness', 'anger', Stevenson, Mikels & James, 2007a). We argue that this method may be particularly effective when assessing the emotional meaning of action words (e.g., Schacht & Sommer, 2009). In study 1 we use a constrained feature generation task to derive a set of action words that participants associated with six, basic emotional states (see full list in Appendix S1). Generation frequencies were taken to indicate the likelihood that the word would evoke emotional knowledge relevant to the state to which it had been paired. In study 2 a rating task was used to assess the strength of association between the six most frequently generated, or 'typical', action words and corresponding emotion labels. Participants were presented with a series of sentences, in which action words (typical and atypical) and labels were paired e.g., "If you are feeling 'sad' how likely would you be to act in the following way?" … 'cry.' Findings suggest that typical associations were robust. Participants always gave higher ratings to typical vs. atypical action word and label pairings, even when (a) rating direction was manipulated (the label or verb appeared first in the sentence), and (b) the typical behaviours were to be performed by the rater themselves, or others. Our findings suggest that emotion-related action words vary in the extent to which they evoke knowledge relevant for different emotional states. When measuring affective grounding, it may then be appropriate to use categorical ratings in conjunction with unimodal measures, which assess the 'magnitude' to which words evoke feelings (e.g., Newcombe et al., 2012). Towards this aim we provide a set of emotion-related action words, accompanied by generation frequency and rating data, which show how strongly each word evokes knowledge relevant to basic emotional states.

Using affective knowledge to generate and validate a set of emotion-related, action words

PubMed Central

Havelka, Jelena; Brown, Charity; Giner-Sorolla, Roger

2015-01-01

Emotion concepts are built through situated experience. Abstract word meaning is grounded in this affective knowledge, giving words the potential to evoke emotional feelings and reactions (e.g., Vigliocco et al., 2009). In the present work we explore whether words differ in the extent to which they evoke ‘specific’ emotional knowledge. Using a categorical approach, in which an affective ‘context’ is created, it is possible to assess whether words proportionally activate knowledge relevant to different emotional states (e.g., ‘sadness’, ‘anger’, Stevenson, Mikels & James, 2007a). We argue that this method may be particularly effective when assessing the emotional meaning of action words (e.g., Schacht & Sommer, 2009). In study 1 we use a constrained feature generation task to derive a set of action words that participants associated with six, basic emotional states (see full list in Appendix S1). Generation frequencies were taken to indicate the likelihood that the word would evoke emotional knowledge relevant to the state to which it had been paired. In study 2 a rating task was used to assess the strength of association between the six most frequently generated, or ‘typical’, action words and corresponding emotion labels. Participants were presented with a series of sentences, in which action words (typical and atypical) and labels were paired e.g., “If you are feeling ‘sad’ how likely would you be to act in the following way?” … ‘cry.’ Findings suggest that typical associations were robust. Participants always gave higher ratings to typical vs. atypical action word and label pairings, even when (a) rating direction was manipulated (the label or verb appeared first in the sentence), and (b) the typical behaviours were to be performed by the rater themselves, or others. Our findings suggest that emotion-related action words vary in the extent to which they evoke knowledge relevant for different emotional states. When measuring affective grounding, it may then be appropriate to use categorical ratings in conjunction with unimodal measures, which assess the ‘magnitude’ to which words evoke feelings (e.g., Newcombe et al., 2012). Towards this aim we provide a set of emotion-related action words, accompanied by generation frequency and rating data, which show how strongly each word evokes knowledge relevant to basic emotional states. PMID:26246965

Improving empirical evidence on differentiating closely related men with RM Y-STRs: A comprehensive pedigree study from Pakistan.

PubMed

Adnan, Atif; Ralf, Arwin; Rakha, Allah; Kousouri, Nefeli; Kayser, Manfred

2016-11-01

Y-chromosomal short tandem repeat (Y-STR) markers are commonly used in forensic genetics. Male-specific haplotypes provided by commercial Y-STR kits allow discriminating between many - but not all - unrelated men, while they mostly fail to separate related ones. Aiming to improve male relative and paternal lineage differentiation, a set of 13 rapidly-mutating (RM) Y-STRs was previously identified and introduced to forensic Y-chromosome analysis. Recently, their value was highlighted by separating 99% of over 12,200 unrelated men from 111 global populations, as well as 29% of over 2500 male relative pairs, the vast majority were father-sons. Here, we provide improved empirical evidence on differentiating closely related men with RM Y-STRs, most notably beyond father-sons, where previous data were limited. After careful quality control including genetic relationship testing, we used 572 Pakistani men belonging to 99 2-4 generation pedigrees covering 1568 pairs of men related by 1-6 meioses. Of those, 45% were differentiated by one or more of the 13 RM Y-STR markers. In contrast, only 14.7% of a subset of 1484 pairs from 94 pedigrees were separated by the commercial AmpFlSTR Y-filer kit. Combining previously published and new data, an overall differentiation rate of 35.3% was revealed for the RM Y-STR set based on 4096 pairs of men related by 1-20 meioses, compared to 9.6% with Y-filer based on 3645 pairs. Using father-son pair data from the present and previous studies, we provide updated RM Y-STR mutation rates. Locus-specific mutation rates ranged from 2.0×10 -3 (7.0×10 -4 -4.3×10 -3 ) to 6.9×10 -2 (6.1×10 -2 -7.9×10 -2 ) based on 2741-3143 meioses, with an average rate across all 13 RM Y-STR markers of 1.8×10 -2 (1.7×10 -2 -1.9×10 -2 ) based on 800 mutations from 44,922 meioses. The high haplotype diversity (h=0.9996) we observed among the unrelated men (N=105) underlines the value of this RM Y-STR set to differentiate paternal lineages even from endogamous populations such as from Pakistan. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

An Investigation of the Measurement Properties of the Spot-the-Word Test In a Community Sample

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mackinnon, Andrew; Christensen, Helen

2007-01-01

Intellectual ability is assessed with the Spot-the-Word (STW) test (A. Baddeley, H. Emslie, & I. Nimmo Smith, 1993) by asking respondents to identify a word in a word-nonword item pair. Results in moderate-sized samples suggest this ability is resistant to decline due to dementia. The authors used a 3-parameter item response theory model to…

Development of Lexical-Semantic Language System: N400 Priming Effect for Spoken Words in 18- and 24-Month Old Children

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rama, Pia; Sirri, Louah; Serres, Josette

2013-01-01

Our aim was to investigate whether developing language system, as measured by a priming task for spoken words, is organized by semantic categories. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded during a priming task for spoken words in 18- and 24-month-old monolingual French learning children. Spoken word pairs were either semantically related…

The Origins of Word Learning: Brain Responses of 3-Month-Olds Indicate Their Rapid Association of Objects and Words

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Friedrich, Manuela; Friederici, Angela D.

2017-01-01

The present study explored the origins of word learning in early infancy. Using event-related potentials (ERP) we monitored the brain activity of 3-month-old infants when they were repeatedly exposed to several initially novel words paired consistently with each the same initially novel objects or inconsistently with different objects. Our results…

Benefits of testing for nontested information: retrieval-induced facilitation of episodically bound material.

PubMed

Rowland, Christopher A; DeLosh, Edward L

2014-12-01

Testing is a powerful means to boost the retention of information. The extent to which the benefits of testing generalize to nontested information, however, is not clear. In three experiments, we found that completing cued-recall tests for a subset of studied materials enhanced retention for the specific information tested, as well as for associated, nontested information during later free-recall testing. In Experiment 1, this generalized benefit was revealed for lists of category-exemplar pairs. Experiment 2 extended the effect to unrelated words, suggesting that retrieval can enhance later free recall of nontested information that is bound solely through episodic context. In Experiment 3, we manipulated the format of the final test and found facilitation in free-recall, but not in cued-recall, testing. The results suggest that testing may facilitate later free recall in part by enhancing access to information that is present during a prior temporal or list context. More generally, these findings suggest that retrieval-induced facilitation extends to a broader range of conditions than has previously been suggested, and they further motivate the adoption of testing as a practical and effective learning tool.

Ageing and feature binding in visual working memory: The role of presentation time.

PubMed

Rhodes, Stephen; Parra, Mario A; Logie, Robert H

2016-01-01

A large body of research has clearly demonstrated that healthy ageing is accompanied by an associative memory deficit. Older adults exhibit disproportionately poor performance on memory tasks requiring the retention of associations between items (e.g., pairs of unrelated words). In contrast to this robust deficit, older adults' ability to form and temporarily hold bound representations of an object's surface features, such as colour and shape, appears to be relatively well preserved. However, the findings of one set of experiments suggest that older adults may struggle to form temporary bound representations in visual working memory when given more time to study objects. However, these findings were based on between-participant comparisons across experimental paradigms. The present study directly assesses the role of presentation time in the ability of younger and older adults to bind shape and colour in visual working memory using a within-participant design. We report new evidence that giving older adults longer to study memory objects does not differentially affect their immediate memory for feature combinations relative to individual features. This is in line with a growing body of research suggesting that there is no age-related impairment in immediate memory for colour-shape binding.

Lexical and semantic representations in the acquisition of L2 cognate and non-cognate words: evidence from two learning methods in children.

PubMed

Comesaña, Montserrat; Soares, Ana Paula; Sánchez-Casas, Rosa; Lima, Cátia

2012-08-01

How bilinguals represent words in two languages and which mechanisms are responsible for second language acquisition are important questions in the bilingual and vocabulary acquisition literature. This study aims to analyse the effect of two learning methods (picture- vs. word-based method) and two types of words (cognates and non-cognates) in early stages of children's L2 acquisition. Forty-eight native speakers of European Portuguese, all sixth graders (mean age = 10.87 years; SD= 0.85), participated in the study. None of them had prior knowledge of Basque (the L2 in this study). After a learning phase in which L2 words were learned either by a picture- or a word-based method, children were tested in a backward-word translation recognition task at two times (immediately vs. one week later). Results showed that the participants made more errors when rejecting semantically related than semantically unrelated words as correct translations (semantic interference effect). The magnitude of this effect was higher in the delayed test condition regardless of the learning method. Moreover, the overall performance of participants from the word-based method was better than the performance of participants from the picture-word method. Results were discussed concerning the most significant bilingual lexical processing models. ©2011 The British Psychological Society.

Does Gender-Fair Language Pay Off? The Social Perception of Professions from a Cross-Linguistic Perspective

PubMed Central

Horvath, Lisa K.; Merkel, Elisa F.; Maass, Anne; Sczesny, Sabine

2016-01-01

In many languages, masculine forms (e.g., German Lehrer, “teachers, masc.”) have traditionally been used to refer to both women and men, although feminine forms are available, too. Feminine-masculine word pairs (e.g., German Lehrerinnen und Lehrer, “teachers, fem. and teachers, masc.”) are recommended as gender-fair alternatives. A large body of empirical research documents that the use of gender-fair forms instead of masculine forms has a substantial impact on mental representations. Masculine forms activate more male representations even when used in a generic sense, whereas word pairs (e.g., German Lehrerinnen und Lehrer, “teachers, fem. and teachers, masc.”) lead to a higher cognitive inclusion of women (i.e., visibility of women). Some recent studies, however, have also shown that in a professional context word pairs may be associated with lesser status. The present research is the first to investigate both effects within a single paradigm. A cross-linguistic (Italian and German) study with 391 participants shows that word pairs help to avoid a male bias in the gender-typing of professions and increase women's visibility; at the same time, they decrease the estimated salaries of typically feminine professions (but do not affect perceived social status or competence). This potential payoff has implications for language policies aiming at gender-fairness. PMID:26834662

Sex differences in the use of delayed semantic context when listening to disrupted speech.

PubMed

Liederman, Jacqueline; Fisher, Janet McGraw; Coty, Alexis; Matthews, Geetha; Frye, Richard E; Lincoln, Alexis; Alexander, Rebecca

2013-02-01

Female as opposed to male listeners were better able to use a delayed informative cue at the end of a long sentence to report an earlier word which was disrupted by noise. Informative (semantically related) or uninformative (semantically unrelated) word cues were presented 2, 6, or 10 words after a target word whose initial phoneme had been replaced with noise. A total of 84 young adults (45 males) listened to each sentence and then repeated it after its offset. The semantic benefit effect (SBE) was the difference in the accuracy of report of the disrupted target word during informative vs. uninformative sentences. Women had significantly higher SBEs than men even though there were no significant sex differences in terms of number of non-target words reported, the effect of distance between the disrupted target word and the informative cue, or kinds of errors generated. We suggest that the superior ability of women to use delayed semantic information to decode an earlier ambiguous speech signal may be linked to women's tendency to engage the hemispheres more bilaterally than men during word processing. Since the maintenance of semantic context under ambiguous conditions demands more right than left hemispheric resources, this may give women an advantage.

Taboo, emotionally valenced, and emotionally neutral word norms.

PubMed

Janschewitz, Kristin

2008-11-01

Although taboo words are used to study emotional memory and attention, no easily accessible normative data are available that compare taboo, emotionally valenced, and emotionally neutral words on the same scales. Frequency, inappropriateness, valence, arousal, and imageability ratings for taboo, emotionally valenced, and emotionally neutral words were made by 78 native-English-speaking college students from a large metropolitan university. The valenced set comprised both positive and negative words, and the emotionally neutral set comprised category-related and category-unrelated words. To account for influences of demand characteristics and personality factors on the ratings, frequency and inappropriateness measures were decomposed into raters' personal reactions to the words versus raters' perceptions of societal reactions to the words (personal use vs. familiarity and offensiveness vs. tabooness, respectively). Although all word sets were rated higher in familiarity and tabooness than in personal use and offensiveness, these differences were most pronounced for the taboo set. In terms of valence, the taboo set was most similar to the negative set, although it yielded higher arousal ratings than did either valenced set. Imageability for the taboo set was comparable to that of both valenced sets. The ratings of each word are presented for all participants as well as for single-sex groups. The inadequacies of the application of normative data to research that uses emotional words and the conceptualization of taboo words as a coherent category are discussed. Materials associated with this article may be accessed at the Psychonomic Society's Archive of Norms, Stimuli, and Data, www.psychonomic.org/archive.

Learning new meanings for known words: Biphasic effects of prior knowledge.

PubMed

Fang, Xiaoping; Perfetti, Charles; Stafura, Joseph

2017-01-01

In acquiring word meanings, learners are often confronted by a single word form that is mapped to two or more meanings. For example, long after how to roller-"skate", one may learn that "skate" is also a kind of fish. Such learning of new meanings for familiar words involves two potentially contrasting processes, relative to new form-new meaning learning: 1) Form-based familiarity may facilitate learning a new meaning, and 2) meaning-based interference may inhibit learning a new meaning. We examined these two processes by having native English speakers learn new, unrelated meanings for familiar (high frequency) and less familiar (low frequency) English words, as well as for unfamiliar (novel or pseudo-) words. Tracking learning with cued-recall tasks at several points during learning revealed a biphasic pattern: higher learning rates and greater learning efficiency for familiar words relative to novel words early in learning and a reversal of this pattern later in learning. Following learning, interference from original meanings for familiar words was detected in a semantic relatedness judgment task. Additionally, lexical access to familiar words with new meanings became faster compared to their exposure controls, but no such effect occurred for less familiar words. Overall, the results suggest a biphasic pattern of facilitating and interfering processes: Familiar word forms facilitate learning earlier, while interference from original meanings becomes more influential later. This biphasic pattern reflects the co-activation of new and old meanings during learning, a process that may play a role in lexicalization of new meanings.

Memory enhancement by a semantically unrelated emotional arousal source induced after learning.

PubMed

Nielson, Kristy A; Yee, Douglas; Erickson, Kirk I

2005-07-01

It has been well established that moderate physiological or emotional arousal modulates memory. However, there is some controversy about whether the source of arousal must be semantically related to the information to be remembered. To test this idea, 35 healthy young adult participants learned a list of common nouns and afterward viewed a semantically unrelated, neutral or emotionally arousing videotape. The tape was shown after learning to prevent arousal effects on encoding or attention, instead influencing memory consolidation. Heart rate increase was significantly greater in the arousal group, and negative affect was significantly less reported in the non-arousal group after the video. The arousal group remembered significantly more words than the non-arousal group at both 30 min and 24 h delays, despite comparable group memory performance prior to the arousal manipulation. These results demonstrate that emotional arousal, even from an unrelated source, is capable of modulating memory consolidation. Potential reasons for contradictory findings in some previous studies, such as the timing of "delayed" memory tests, are discussed.

Semantic Variability and Word Comprehension. Educational Reports Umea, No. 17.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Backman, Jarl

Swedes in four different age groups (9, 12, 15 and 18 years) judged written words which varied in three dimensions: syntactic category, objective frequency, and polysemy (multiple meaning). The subjects judged ease of comprehension of 24 words in a factorial arrangement. The method used was Thurstone's paired comparisons. A predicted complex…

Electrophysiological Correlates of Stimulus Equivalence Processes

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Haimson, Barry; Wilkinson, Krista M.; Rosenquist, Celia; Ouimet, Carolyn; McIlvane, William J.

2009-01-01

Research reported here concerns neural processes relating to stimulus equivalence class formation. In Experiment 1, two types of word pairs were presented successively to normally capable adults. In one type, the words had related usage in English (e.g., uncle, aunt). In the other, the two words were not typically related in their usage (e.g.,…

The role of controlled attention on recall in major depression

PubMed Central

Ellis, Alissa J.; Wells, Tony T.; Vanderlind, W. Michael; Beevers, Christopher G.

2013-01-01

Information processing biases are hallmark features of major depressive disorder (MDD). Depressed individuals display biased memory and attention for negative material. Given that memory is highly dependent on attention for initial encoding, understanding the interplay of these processes may provide important insight into mechanisms that produce memory biases in depression. In particular, attentional control—the ability to selectively attend to task-relevant information by both inhibiting the processing of irrelevant information and disengaging attention from irrelevant material—may be one area of impairment in MDD. In the current study, clinically depressed (MDD: n = 15) and never depressed (non- MDD: n = 22) participants’ line of visual gaze was assessed while participants viewed positive and negative word pairs. For each word pair, participants were instructed to attend to one word (target) and ignore one word (distracter). Free recall of study stimuli was then assessed. Depressed individuals displayed greater recall of negatively valenced target words following the task. Although there were no group differences in attentional control in the context of negative words, attention to negative targets mediated the relationship between depression status and recall of negative words. Results suggest a stronger link between attention and memory for negative material in MDD. PMID:24006889

The role of controlled attention on recall in major depression.

PubMed

Ellis, Alissa J; Wells, Tony T; Vanderlind, W Michael; Beevers, Christopher G

2014-04-01

Information processing biases are hallmark features of major depressive disorder (MDD). Depressed individuals display biased memory and attention for negative material. Given that memory is highly dependent on attention for initial encoding, understanding the interplay of these processes may provide important insight into mechanisms that produce memory biases in depression. In particular, attentional control-the ability to selectively attend to task-relevant information by both inhibiting the processing of irrelevant information and disengaging attention from irrelevant material-may be one area of impairment in MDD. In the current study, clinically depressed (MDD: n = 15) and never depressed (non-MDD: n = 22) participants' line of visual gaze was assessed while participants viewed positive and negative word pairs. For each word pair, participants were instructed to attend to one word (target) and ignore one word (distracter). Free recall of study stimuli was then assessed. Depressed individuals displayed greater recall of negatively valenced target words following the task. Although there were no group differences in attentional control in the context of negative words, attention to negative targets mediated the relationship between depression status and recall of negative words. Results suggest a stronger link between attention and memory for negative material in MDD.

Lexical enhancement during prime-target integration: ERP evidence from matched-case identity priming.

PubMed

Vergara-Martínez, Marta; Gómez, Pablo; Jiménez, María; Perea, Manuel

2015-06-01

A number of experiments have revealed that matched-case identity PRIME-TARGET pairs are responded to faster than mismatched-case identity prime-TARGET pairs for pseudowords (e.g., JUDPE-JUDPE < judpe-JUDPE), but not for words (JUDGE-JUDGE = judge-JUDGE). These findings suggest that prime-target integration processes are enhanced when the stimuli tap onto lexical representations, overriding physical differences between the stimuli (e.g., case). To track the time course of this phenomenon, we conducted an event-related potential (ERP) masked-priming lexical decision experiment that manipulated matched versus mismatched case identity in words and pseudowords. The behavioral results replicated previous research. The ERP waves revealed that matched-case identity-priming effects were found at a very early time epoch (N/P150 effects) for words and pseudowords. Importantly, around 200 ms after target onset (N250), these differences disappeared for words but not for pseudowords. These findings suggest that different-case word forms (lower- and uppercase) tap into the same abstract representation, leading to prime-target integration very early in processing. In contrast, different-case pseudoword forms are processed as two different representations. This word-pseudoword dissociation has important implications for neural accounts of visual-word recognition.

Hyper-Binding across Time: Age Differences in the Effect of Temporal Proximity on Paired-Associate Learning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Campbell, Karen L.; Trelle, Alexandra; Hasher, Lynn

2014-01-01

Older adults show hyper- (or excessive) binding effects for simultaneously and sequentially presented distraction. Here, we addressed the potential role of hyper-binding in paired-associate learning. Older and younger adults learned a list of word pairs and then received an associative recognition task in which rearranged pairs were formed from…

Computer game as a tool for training the identification of phonemic length.

PubMed

Pennala, Riitta; Richardson, Ulla; Ylinen, Sari; Lyytinen, Heikki; Martin, Maisa

2014-12-01

Computer-assisted training of Finnish phonemic length was conducted with 7-year-old Russian-speaking second-language learners of Finnish. Phonemic length plays a different role in these two languages. The training included game activities with two- and three-syllable word and pseudo-word minimal pairs with prototypical vowel durations. The lowest accuracy scores were recorded for two-syllable words. Accuracy scores were higher for the minimal pairs with larger rather than smaller differences in duration. Accuracy scores were lower for long duration than for short duration. The ability to identify quantity degree was generalized to stimuli used in the identification test in two of the children. Ideas for improving the game are introduced.

Does visual letter similarity modulate masked form priming in young readers of Arabic?

PubMed

Perea, Manuel; Abu Mallouh, Reem; Mohammed, Ahmed; Khalifa, Batoul; Carreiras, Manuel

2018-05-01

We carried out a masked priming lexical decision experiment to study whether visual letter similarity plays a role during the initial phases of word processing in young readers of Arabic (fifth graders). Arabic is ideally suited to test these effects because most Arabic letters share their basic shape with at least one other letter and differ only in the number/position of diacritical points (e.g., ض - ص ;ظ - ط ;غ - ع ;ث - ت - ن ب ;ذ - د ;خ - ح - ج ;ق - ف ;ش - س ;ز - ر). We created two one-letter-different priming conditions for each target word, in which a letter from the consonantal root was substituted by another letter that did or did not keep the same shape (e.g., خدمة - حدمة vs. خدمة - فدمة). Another goal of the current experiment was to test the presence of masked orthographic priming effects, which are thought to be unreliable in Semitic languages. To that end, we included an unrelated priming condition. We found a sizable masked orthographic priming effect relative to the unrelated condition regardless of visual letter similarity, thereby revealing that young readers are able to quickly process the diacritical points of Arabic letters. Furthermore, the presence of masked orthographic priming effects in Arabic suggests that the word identification stream in Indo-European and Semitic languages is more similar than previously thought. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Perceptual Simulations and Linguistic Representations Have Differential Effects on Speeded Relatedness Judgments and Recognition Memory

PubMed Central

Tse, Chi-Shing; Kurby, Christopher A.; Du, Feng

2010-01-01

We examined the effect of spatial iconicity (a perceptual simulation of canonical locations of objects) and word-order frequency on language processing and episodic memory of orientation. Participants made speeded relatedness judgments to pairs of words presented in locations typical to their real world arrangements (e.g., ceiling on top and floor on bottom). They then engaged in a surprise orientation recognition task for the word pairs. We replicated Louwerse’s finding (2008) that word-order frequency has a stronger effect on semantic relatedness judgments than spatial iconicity. This is consistent with recent suggestions that linguistic representations have a stronger impact on immediate decisions about verbal materials than perceptual simulations. In contrast, spatial iconicity enhanced episodic memory of orientation to a greater extent than word-order frequency did. This new finding indicates that perceptual simulations have an important role in episodic memory. Results are discussed with respect to theories of perceptual representation and linguistic processing. PMID:19742388

Is incest common in gray wolf packs?

USGS Publications Warehouse

Smith, Deborah E; Meier, Thomas J.; Geffen, Eli; Mech, L. David; Burch, John W.; Adams, Layne G.; Wayne, Robert K.

1997-01-01

Wolf packs generally consist of a breeding pair and their maturing offspring that help provision and protect pack young. Because the reproductive tenure in wolves is often short, reproductively mature offspring might replace their parents, resulting in sibling or parent-offspring matings. To determine the extent of incestuous pairings, we measured relatedness based on variability in 20 microsatellite loci of mated pairs, parent-offspring pairs, and siblings in two populations of gray wolves. Our 16 sampled mated pairs had values of relatedness not overlapping those of known parent-offspring or sibling dyads, which is consistent with their being unrelated or distantly related. These results suggest that full siblings or a parent and its offspring rarely mate and that incest avoidance is an important constraint on gray wolf behavioral ecology.

APPLIED MECHANICS REVIEWS, WADEX WORD AND AUTHOR INDEX, VOLUME XVI, 1963,

DTIC Science & Technology

Author inDEX ) an IBM 1401 prepared mechanical index, extension of KWIC. WADEX usable for browsing and searching. This second WADEX is based on 8,000 titles of APPLIED MECHANICS REVIEWS (AMR), Vol. 16, 1963, an international critical review magazine. In WADEX, titles printed fully with author names, and as many lines used as necessary (60 characters per line). WADEX entry: word in title (except forbidden word) or author’s name. Alphabetically sequenced entries printed out of context. Words are single words or hypenated word pairs or ’Tagged Words’ (TW).

Hippocampal damage equally impairs memory for single items and memory for conjunctions.

PubMed

Stark, Craig E L; Squire, Larry R

2003-01-01

In a prior study of continuous recognition performance, data were reported in support of the hypothesis that the hippocampus is not needed to remember the individual components of a stimulus but is important for remembering associations between its components (Kroll et al. 1996. J Mem Lang 35:176-196). Patients with left hippocampal damage were able to endorse recently encountered words and to reject novel words, as well as disyllabic words in which one of the syllables had been previously encountered. However, they failed to reject words in which both syllables had been encountered independently in different words. We present data from five experiments designed to examine this finding in more detail. In each experiment, five patients with bilateral hippocampal damage and eight controls were tested using the same protocol as Kroll et al. (1996). On each trial, a two-component stimulus was presented. Stimuli could be entirely novel, novel with one previously encountered (repeated) component, novel but with both components repeated, or a true repetition. The first experiment was a direct replication using the same disyllabic words as Kroll et al. (1996). The second experiment used pseudo-words, constructed of two monosyllabic words (e.g., jambark). The third experiment used the same pairs of monosyllabic words, but presented separately on the screen to encourage participants to treat each component independently. The fourth experiment used pairs of objects, and the fifth experiment used face-house pairs. In all five experiments, patients with hippocampal damage exhibited impaired recognition memory. The impairment extended across all trial types with no evidence that hippocampal damage selectively (or disproportionately) impaired the associative or conjunctive component of memory. We discuss our findings in the light of the work by Kroll et al. (1996) and other recent neuropsychological, electrophysiological, and neuroimaging studies of hippocampal function and single-item and associative memory.

Combining automatic table classification and relationship extraction in extracting anticancer drug-side effect pairs from full-text articles.

PubMed

Xu, Rong; Wang, QuanQiu

2015-02-01

Anticancer drug-associated side effect knowledge often exists in multiple heterogeneous and complementary data sources. A comprehensive anticancer drug-side effect (drug-SE) relationship knowledge base is important for computation-based drug target discovery, drug toxicity predication and drug repositioning. In this study, we present a two-step approach by combining table classification and relationship extraction to extract drug-SE pairs from a large number of high-profile oncological full-text articles. The data consists of 31,255 tables downloaded from the Journal of Oncology (JCO). We first trained a statistical classifier to classify tables into SE-related and -unrelated categories. We then extracted drug-SE pairs from SE-related tables. We compared drug side effect knowledge extracted from JCO tables to that derived from FDA drug labels. Finally, we systematically analyzed relationships between anti-cancer drug-associated side effects and drug-associated gene targets, metabolism genes, and disease indications. The statistical table classifier is effective in classifying tables into SE-related and -unrelated (precision: 0.711; recall: 0.941; F1: 0.810). We extracted a total of 26,918 drug-SE pairs from SE-related tables with a precision of 0.605, a recall of 0.460, and a F1 of 0.520. Drug-SE pairs extracted from JCO tables is largely complementary to those derived from FDA drug labels; as many as 84.7% of the pairs extracted from JCO tables have not been included a side effect database constructed from FDA drug labels. Side effects associated with anticancer drugs positively correlate with drug target genes, drug metabolism genes, and disease indications. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Vigilance, Expectancy, and Noise: Attention in Second Language Lexical Learning and Memory

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Nelson, Robert, Jr.

2011-01-01

Talamas et al. (1999), Ferre et al. (2006) and Sunderman and Kroll (2006) exposed participants to first-language/second-language (L1/L2) pairs of words and asked them to decide whether the second word was the correct translation of the first. In the critical condition, the L2 word was either the translation of the L1 word ("man" [right arrow]…

The First Slow Step: Differential Effects of Object and Word-Form Familiarization on Retention of Fast-Mapped Words

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kucker, Sarah C.; Samuelson, Larissa K.

2012-01-01

Recent research demonstrated that although 24-month-old infants do well on the initial pairing of a novel word and novel object in fast-mapping tasks, they are unable to retain the mapping after a 5 min delay. The current study examines the role of familiarity with the objects and words on infants' ability to bridge between the initial fast…

Investigating Environmental Links Between Parent Depression and Child Depressive/Anxiety Symptoms Using an Assisted Conception Design

PubMed Central

Lewis, Gemma; Rice, Frances; Harold, Gordon T.; Collishaw, Stephan; Thapar, Anita

2011-01-01

Objective Links between maternal and offspring depression symptoms could arise from inherited factors, direct environmental exposure, or shared adversity. A novel genetically sensitive design was used to test the extent of environmental links between maternal depression symptoms and child depression/anxiety symptoms, accounting for inherited effects, shared adversity, and child age and gender. Method Eight hundred fifty-two families with a child born by assisted conception provided questionnaire data. Mothers and fathers were genetically related or unrelated to the child depending on conception method. Parental depression symptoms were assessed using the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale. Child depression/anxiety symptoms were assessed using the Short Mood and Feelings questionnaire and six items tapping generalized anxiety disorder symptoms. Associations between maternal and child symptoms were examined separately for genetically unrelated and related mother–child pairs, adjusting for three measurements of shared adversity: negative life events, family income, and socioeconomic status. Analyses were then run separately for boys and girls and for children and adolescents, and the role of paternal depression symptoms was also examined. Results Significant associations between parent and child symptoms were found for genetically unrelated mother–child (r = 0.32, p < .001) and father–child (r = 0.17, p < .05) pairs and genetically related mother–child (r = 0.31, p < .001) and father–child (r = 0.23, p < .001) pairs and were not explained by the shared adversity measurements. Environmental links were present for children and adolescents and were stronger for girls. Conclusions The transmission of depression symptoms is due in part to environmental processes independent of inherited effects and is not accounted for by shared adversity measurements. Girls may be more sensitive to the negative effects of maternal depression symptoms than boys through environmental processes. PMID:21515194

First Things First: Similar List Length and Output Order Effects for Verbal and Nonverbal Stimuli

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cortis, Cathleen; Dent, Kevin; Kennett, Steffan; Ward, Geoff

2015-01-01

When participants are presented with a short list of unrelated words and they are instructed that they may recall in any order, they nevertheless show a very strong tendency to recall in forward serial order. Thus, if asked to recall "in any orde"r: "hat, mouse, tea, stairs," participants often respond "hat, mouse, tea,…

Mood-congruent memory in depression - the influence of personal relevance and emotional context.

PubMed

Wittekind, Charlotte E; Terfehr, Kirsten; Otte, Christian; Jelinek, Lena; Hinkelmann, Kim; Moritz, Steffen

2014-03-30

The investigation of veridical mood-congruent memory (MCM) in major depressive disorder (MDD) has been subject of many studies, whereas mood-congruent false memory has received comparatively little attention. The present study examined the influence of valence, personal relevance and the valence of the context of the learning material on true and false MCM in 20 inpatients with MDD and 20 healthy controls. Sixty positive, negative, neutral or personally relevant nouns were either combined with a positive, negative or neutral adjective. Word pairs were presented to participants in a learning trial. In a recognition task, participants had to identify the previously studied word pairs. A MCM effect could not be found for hits. However, in exploratory analyses, word pairs containing personally relevant nouns were more rated towards old by the patient relative to the control group. Furthermore, depressed patients tended to rate items more towards old than controls when the words were presented in a negative new context. Results are in line with previous findings in depression research emphasizing the role of mood-congruent false memories for mood disorders. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Within-session spacing improves delayed recall in children.

PubMed

Zigterman, Jessica R; Simone, Patricia M; Bell, Matthew C

2015-01-01

Multiple retrievals of a memory over a spaced manner improve long-term memory performance in infants, children, younger and older adults; however, few studies have examined spacing effects with young school-age children. To expand the understanding of the spacing benefit in children, the current study presented weakly associated English word-pairs to children aged 7-11 and cued their recall two times immediately (massed), after a delay of 5 or 10 items (spaced) or not at all (control). After this encoding session with or without two retrievals, participants were tested two times for memory of all word-pairs: immediately and 30 minutes after the encoding session. Multiple retrievals significantly improved memory on the tests. However, words repeated in a spaced design were remembered at higher rates than those that were massed, while gap size between repetitions (5 or 10) did not differentially impact performance. The data show that a within-session spacing strategy can benefit children's ability to remember word-pairs after 30 minutes. Thus, asking students to recall what they have learned within a lesson is a technique that can be used in a classroom to improve long-term recall.

Association of KIBRA and memory.

PubMed

Bates, Timothy C; Price, Jackie F; Harris, Sarah E; Marioni, Riccardo E; Fowkes, F Gerry R; Stewart, Marlene C; Murray, Gordon D; Whalley, Lawrence J; Starr, John M; Deary, Ian J

2009-07-24

We report on the association of KIBRA with memory in two samples of older individuals assessed on either memory for semantically unrelated word stimuli (Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test, n=2091), or a measure of semantically related material (the WAIS Logical Memory Test of prose-passage recall, n=542). SNP rs17070145 was associated with delayed recall of semantically unrelated items, but not with immediate recall for these stimuli, nor with either immediate or delayed recall for semantically related material. The pattern of results suggests a role for the T-->C substitution in intron 9 of KIBRA in a component of episodic memory involved in long-term storage but independent of processes shared with immediate recall such as rehearsal involved in acquisition and rehearsal or processes.

Friends and family: A software program for identification of unrelated individuals from molecular marker data.

PubMed

de Jager, Deon; Swarts, Petrus; Harper, Cindy; Bloomer, Paulette

2017-11-01

The identification of related and unrelated individuals from molecular marker data is often difficult, particularly when no pedigree information is available and the data set is large. High levels of relatedness or inbreeding can influence genotype frequencies and thus genetic marker evaluation, as well as the accurate inference of hidden genetic structure. Identification of related and unrelated individuals is also important in breeding programmes, to inform decisions about breeding pairs and translocations. We present Friends and Family, a Windows executable program with a graphical user interface that identifies unrelated individuals from a pairwise relatedness matrix or table generated in programs such as coancestry and genalex. Friends and Family outputs a list of samples that are all unrelated to each other, based on a user-defined relatedness cut-off value. This unrelated data set can be used in downstream analyses, such as marker evaluation or inference of genetic structure. The results can be compared to that of the full data set to determine the effect related individuals have on the analyses. We demonstrate one of the applications of the program: how the removal of related individuals altered the Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium test outcome for microsatellite markers in an empirical data set. Friends and Family can be obtained from https://github.com/DeondeJager/Friends-and-Family. © 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Parafoveal preview benefit in sentence reading: Independent effects of plausibility and orthographic relatedness.

PubMed

Veldre, Aaron; Andrews, Sally

2017-04-01

Recent evidence from studies using the gaze-contingent boundary paradigm has suggested that parafoveal preview benefit is contingent on the fit between a preview word and the sentence context. We investigated whether this plausibility preview benefit is modulated by preview-target orthographic relatedness. Participants' eye movements were recorded as they read sentences in which the parafoveal preview of a target word was manipulated. The nonidentical previews were plausible or implausible continuations of the sentence and were either orthographic neighbors of the target or unrelated to the target. All first-pass reading measures showed strong plausibility preview benefits. There was also a benefit from preview-target orthographic relatedness across the reading measures. These two preview effects did not interact for any fixation measure. We also found no evidence that the relatedness effect was caused by misperception of an orthographically similar preview as the target word. These data highlight the existence of two independent mechanisms underlying preview effects: a benefit from the contextual fit of the preview word in the sentence, and a benefit from the sublexical overlap between the preview and target words.

Unintentional Activation of Translation Equivalents in Bilinguals Leads to Attention Capture in a Cross-Modal Visual Task

PubMed Central

Singh, Niharika; Mishra, Ramesh Kumar

2015-01-01

Using a variant of the visual world eye tracking paradigm, we examined if language non- selective activation of translation equivalents leads to attention capture and distraction in a visual task in bilinguals. High and low proficient Hindi-English speaking bilinguals were instructed to programme a saccade towards a line drawing which changed colour among other distractor objects. A spoken word, irrelevant to the main task, was presented before the colour change. On critical trials, one of the line drawings was a phonologically related word of the translation equivalent of the spoken word. Results showed that saccade latency was significantly higher towards the target in the presence of this cross-linguistic translation competitor compared to when the display contained completely unrelated objects. Participants were also slower when the display contained the referent of the spoken word among the distractors. However, the bilingual groups did not differ with regard to the interference effect observed. These findings suggest that spoken words activates translation equivalent which bias attention leading to interference in goal directed action in the visual domain. PMID:25775184

Neural correlates of strategic processes underlying episodic memory in women with major depression: A 15O-PET study.

PubMed

Ottowitz, William E; Deckersbach, Thilo; Savage, Cary R; Lindquist, Martin A; Dougherty, Darin D

2010-01-01

To evaluate the functional integrity of brain regions underlying strategic mnemonic processing in patients with major depressive disorder, the authors administered a modified version of the California Verbal Learning Test to depressed patients during presentation of lists of unrelated words and, conversely, during presentation of lists of related words with and without orientation regarding the relatedness of the words (eight healthy females, IQ=122, and eight depressed females, IQ=107). Brain function evaluated across all three conditions showed that patients with major depressive disorder revealed activation of the right anterior cingulate cortex, left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, both hippocampi, and the left orbitofrontal cortex. Further analysis showed that patients with major depressive disorder had greater activation of the right anterior cingulate cortex during semantic organization and the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex during strategy initiation.

What is the evidence for retrieval problems in the elderly?

PubMed

White, N; Cunningham, W R

1982-01-01

To determine whether older adults experience particular problems with retrieval, groups of young and elderly adults were given free recall and recognition tests of supraspan lists of unrelated words. Analysis of number of words correctly recalled and recognized yielded a significant age by retention test interaction: greater age differences were observed for recall than for recognition. In a second analysis of words recalled and recognized, corrected for guessing, the interaction disappeared. It was concluded that previous interpretations that age by retention test interactions are indicative of retrieval problems of the elderly may have been confounded by methodological problems. Furthermore, it was suggested that researchers in aging and memory need to be explicit in identifying their underlying models of error processes when analyzing recognition scores: different error models may lead to different results and interpretations.

Word meaning and the control of eye fixation: semantic competitor effects and the visual world paradigm.

PubMed

Huettig, Falk; Altmann, Gerry T M

2005-05-01

When participants are presented simultaneously with spoken language and a visual display depicting objects to which that language refers, participants spontaneously fixate the visual referents of the words being heard [Cooper, R. M. (1974). The control of eye fixation by the meaning of spoken language: A new methodology for the real-time investigation of speech perception, memory, and language processing. Cognitive Psychology, 6(1), 84-107; ]. We demonstrate here that such spontaneous fixation can be driven by partial semantic overlap between a word and a visual object. Participants heard the word 'piano' when (a) a piano was depicted amongst unrelated distractors; (b) a trumpet was depicted amongst those same distractors; and (c), both the piano and trumpet were depicted. The probability of fixating the piano and the trumpet in the first two conditions rose as the word 'piano' unfolded. In the final condition, only fixations to the piano rose, although the trumpet was fixated more than the distractors. We conclude that eye movements are driven by the degree of match, along various dimensions that go beyond simple visual form, between a word and the mental representations of objects in the concurrent visual field.

Contextual consistency facilitates long-term memory of perceptual detail in barely seen images.

PubMed

Gronau, Nurit; Shachar, Meytal

2015-08-01

It is long known that contextual information affects memory for an object's identity (e.g., its basic level category), yet it is unclear whether schematic knowledge additionally enhances memory for the precise visual appearance of an item. Here we investigated memory for visual detail of merely glimpsed objects. Participants viewed pairs of contextually related and unrelated stimuli, presented for an extremely brief duration (24 ms, masked). They then performed a forced-choice memory-recognition test for the precise perceptual appearance of 1 of 2 objects within each pair (i.e., the "memory-target" item). In 3 experiments, we show that memory-target stimuli originally appearing within contextually related pairs are remembered better than targets appearing within unrelated pairs. These effects are obtained whether the target is presented at test with its counterpart pair object (i.e., when reiterating the original context at encoding) or whether the target is presented alone, implying that the contextual consistency effects are mediated predominantly by processes occurring during stimulus encoding, rather than during stimulus retrieval. Furthermore, visual detail encoding is improved whether object relations involve implied action or not, suggesting that, contrary to some prior suggestions, action is not a necessary component for object-to-object associative "grouping" processes. Our findings suggest that during a brief glimpse, but not under long viewing conditions, contextual associations may play a critical role in reducing stimulus competition for attention selection and in facilitating rapid encoding of sensory details. Theoretical implications with respect to classic frame theories are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).

Brief learning induces a memory bias for arousing-negative words: an fMRI study in high and low trait anxious persons.

PubMed

Eden, Annuschka S; Dehmelt, Vera; Bischoff, Matthias; Zwitserlood, Pienie; Kugel, Harald; Keuper, Kati; Zwanzger, Peter; Dobel, Christian

2015-01-01

Persons suffering from anxiety disorders display facilitated processing of arousing and negative stimuli, such as negative words. This memory bias is reflected in better recall and increased amygdala activity in response to such stimuli. However, individual learning histories were not considered in most studies, a concern that we meet here. Thirty-four female persons (half with high-, half with low trait anxiety) participated in a criterion-based associative word-learning paradigm, in which neutral pseudowords were paired with aversive or neutral pictures, which should lead to a valence change for the negatively paired pseudowords. After learning, pseudowords were tested with fMRI to investigate differential brain activation of the amygdala evoked by the newly acquired valence. Explicit and implicit memory was assessed directly after training and in three follow-ups at 4-day intervals. The behavioral results demonstrate that associative word-learning leads to an explicit (but no implicit) memory bias for negatively linked pseudowords, relative to neutral ones, which confirms earlier studies. Bilateral amygdala activation underlines the behavioral effect: Higher trait anxiety is correlated with stronger amygdala activation for negatively linked pseudowords than for neutrally linked ones. Most interestingly, this effect is also present for negatively paired pseudowords that participants could not remember well. Moreover, neutrally paired pseudowords evoked higher amygdala reactivity than completely novel ones in highly anxious persons, which can be taken as evidence for generalization. These findings demonstrate that few word-learning trials generate a memory bias for emotional stimuli, indexed both behaviorally and neurophysiologically. Importantly, the typical memory bias for emotional stimuli and the generalization to neutral ones is larger in high anxious persons.

Testing asymmetries in noncognate translation priming: Evidence from RTs and ERPs

PubMed Central

SCHOONBAERT, SOFIE; HOLCOMB, PHILLIP J.; GRAINGER, JONATHAN; HARTSUIKER, ROBERT J.

2012-01-01

In this study, English–French bilinguals performed a lexical decision task while reaction times (RTs) and event related potentials (ERPs) were measured to L2 targets, preceded by noncognate L1 translation primes versus L1 unrelated primes (Experiment 1a) and vice versa (Experiment 1b). The prime–target stimulus onset asynchrony was 120 ms. Significant masked translation priming was observed, indicated by faster reaction times and a decreased N400 for translation pairs as opposed to unrelated pairs, both from L1 to L2 (Experiment 1a) and from L2 to L1 (Experiment 1b), with the latter effect being weaker (RTs) and less longer lasting (ERPs). A translation priming effect was also found in the N250 ERP component, and this effect was stronger and earlier in the L2 to L1 priming direction than the reverse. The results are discussed with respect to possible mechanisms at the basis of asymmetric translation priming effects in bilinguals. PMID:20557483

Recall of English Function Words and Inflections by Skilled and Average Deaf Readers.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kelly, Leonard P.

1993-01-01

The performance of 17 youth on a verbatim recall task indicated that skilled deaf readers are more able than average deaf readers to sustain a record of English function words and inflections. The relative speed of skilled readers when making lexical decisions about phonologically similar word pairs indicated greater access to phonological…

Word Associations and the Recognition of Flashed Words. Final Report.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Samuels, S. Jay

Two separate studies were designed to investigate the effect of reading the first word of a pair on the speed of recognizing the second. One study drew its subjects from the college level; the other from the fourth grade. A Scientific Prototype Three-Channel Tachistoscope was used, and an erasing image was flashed immediately following the…

Multi-Media Instruction To Teach Grocery Word Associations and Store Location: A Study of Generalization.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mechling, Linda C.; Gast, David L.

2003-01-01

Multimedia instruction was used to teach three secondary students with mild to moderate intellectual disabilities to locate grocery items by reading words on aisle signs. Results indicate that the multimedia program was effective in teaching generalized reading of the associated word pairs and location of the grocery items in the store. (Contains…

Infants' Acceptance of Phonotactically Illegal Word Forms as Object Labels

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Vukatana, Ena; Curtin, Suzanne; Graham, Susan A.

2016-01-01

We investigated 16- and 20-month-olds' flexibility in mapping phonotactically illegal words to objects. Using an associative word-learning task, infants were presented with a training phase that either highlighted or did not highlight the referential status of a novel label. Infants were then habituated to two novel objects, each paired with a…

Use of an ESP Cover Story Facilitates Reinforcement without Awareness

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bizo, Lewis A.; Sweeney, Nicola

2005-01-01

Participants were exposed to 3 conditions in a between-groups design. Participants were told the experiment was about extrasensory perception and were asked to select the word from a pair of words that they thought the experimenter was thinking about. In 1 condition selections of the word with a double letter were reinforced with positive verbal…

The Negative Repetition Effect

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mulligan, Neil W.; Peterson, Daniel J.

2013-01-01

A fundamental property of human memory is that repetition enhances memory. Peterson and Mulligan (2012) recently documented a surprising "negative repetition effect," in which participants who studied a list of cue-target pairs twice recalled fewer targets than a group who studied the pairs only once. Words within a pair rhymed, and…

Strategy combination during execution of memory strategies in young and older adults.

PubMed

Hinault, Thomas; Lemaire, Patrick; Touron, Dayna

2017-05-01

The present study investigated whether people can combine two memory strategies to encode pairs of words more efficiently than with a single strategy, and age-related differences in such strategy combination. Young and older adults were asked to encode pairs of words (e.g., satellite-tunnel). For each item, participants were told to use either the interactive-imagery strategy (e.g., mentally visualising the two words and making them interact), the sentence-generation strategy (i.e., generate a sentence linking the two words), or with strategy combination (i.e., generating a sentence while mentally visualising it). Participants obtained better recall performance on items encoded with strategy combination than on items encoded with interactive-imagery or sentence-generation strategies. Moreover, we found age-related decline in such strategy combination. These findings have important implications to further our understanding of execution of memory strategies, and suggest that strategy combination occurs in a variety of cognitive domains.

Memory for emotional words: The role of semantic relatedness, encoding task and affective valence.

PubMed

Ferré, Pilar; Fraga, Isabel; Comesaña, Montserrat; Sánchez-Casas, Rosa

2015-01-01

Emotional stimuli have been repeatedly demonstrated to be better remembered than neutral ones. The aim of the present study was to test whether this advantage in memory is mainly produced by the affective content of the stimuli or it can be rather accounted for by factors such as semantic relatedness or type of encoding task. The valence of the stimuli (positive, negative and neutral words that could be either semantically related or unrelated) as well as the type of encoding task (focused on either familiarity or emotionality) was manipulated. The results revealed an advantage in memory for emotional words (either positive or negative) regardless of semantic relatedness. Importantly, this advantage was modulated by the encoding task, as it was reliable only in the task which focused on emotionality. These findings suggest that congruity with the dimension attended at encoding might contribute to the superiority in memory for emotional words, thus offering us a more complex picture of the underlying mechanisms behind the advantage for emotional information in memory.

Forgotten but not gone: savings for pictures and words in long-term memory.

PubMed

MacLeod, C M

1988-04-01

Five experiments examined the relearning of words, simple line-drawing pictures, and complex photographic pictures after retention intervals of 1 to 10 weeks. For those items that were neither recalled nor recognized, the identical item was relearned better than an unrelated control item, as measured by a recall test following relearning. This relearning advantage in recall held for all three classes of material and extended to the cross-modality case (i.e., picture-word and word-picture) and the same-referent case (i.e., two pictures of the same object). However, recognition tests of relearning failed to detect this same relearning advantage for apparently forgotten items. Taken together, these findings conflict with the existing account of savings. Most fundamental, the classic argument that relearning serves a trace-strengthening function is undetermined by the observed recall-recognition contrast. An alternative explanation of savings is suggested wherein relearning assists retrieval of information, thereby affecting recall in particular.

Emotional connotations of words related to authority and community.

PubMed

Schauenburg, Gesche; Ambrasat, Jens; Schröder, Tobias; von Scheve, Christian; Conrad, Markus

2015-09-01

We present a database of 858 German words from the semantic fields of authority and community, which represent core dimensions of human sociality. The words were selected on the basis of co-occurrence profiles of representative keywords for these semantic fields. All words were rated along five dimensions, each measured by a bipolar semantic-differential scale: Besides the classic dimensions of affective meaning (valence, arousal, and potency), we collected ratings of authority and community with newly developed scales. The results from cluster, correlational, and multiple regression analyses on the rating data suggest a robust negativity bias for authority valuation among German raters recruited via university mailing lists, whereas community ratings appear to be rather unrelated to the well-established affective dimensions. Furthermore, our data involve a strong overall negative correlation-rather than the classical U-shaped distribution-between valence and arousal for socially relevant concepts. Our database provides a valuable resource for research questions at the intersection of cognitive neuroscience and social psychology. It can be downloaded as supplemental materials with this article.

What You See Isn’t Always What You Get: Auditory Word Signals Trump Consciously Perceived Words in Lexical Access

PubMed Central

Ostrand, Rachel; Blumstein, Sheila E.; Ferreira, Victor S.; Morgan, James L.

2016-01-01

Human speech perception often includes both an auditory and visual component. A conflict in these signals can result in the McGurk illusion, in which the listener perceives a fusion of the two streams, implying that information from both has been integrated. We report two experiments investigating whether auditory-visual integration of speech occurs before or after lexical access, and whether the visual signal influences lexical access at all. Subjects were presented with McGurk or Congruent primes and performed a lexical decision task on related or unrelated targets. Although subjects perceived the McGurk illusion, McGurk and Congruent primes with matching real-word auditory signals equivalently primed targets that were semantically related to the auditory signal, but not targets related to the McGurk percept. We conclude that the time course of auditory-visual integration is dependent on the lexicality of the auditory and visual input signals, and that listeners can lexically access one word and yet consciously perceive another. PMID:27011021

Different patterns of modality dominance across development.

PubMed

Barnhart, Wesley R; Rivera, Samuel; Robinson, Christopher W

2018-01-01

The present study sought to better understand how children, young adults, and older adults attend and respond to multisensory information. In Experiment 1, young adults were presented with two spoken words, two pictures, or two word-picture pairings and they had to determine if the two stimuli/pairings were exactly the same or different. Pairing the words and pictures together slowed down visual but not auditory response times and delayed the latency of first fixations, both of which are consistent with a proposed mechanism underlying auditory dominance. Experiment 2 examined the development of modality dominance in children, young adults, and older adults. Cross-modal presentation attenuated visual accuracy and slowed down visual response times in children, whereas older adults showed the opposite pattern, with cross-modal presentation attenuating auditory accuracy and slowing down auditory response times. Cross-modal presentation also delayed first fixations in children and young adults. Mechanisms underlying modality dominance and multisensory processing are discussed. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The Genetic and Environmental Foundation of the Simple View of Reading in Chinese

PubMed Central

Ho, Connie Suk-Han; Chow, Bonnie Wing-Yin; Wong, Simpson Wai-Lap; Waye, Mary M. Y.; Bishop, Dorothy V. M.

2012-01-01

The Simple View of Reading (SVR) in Chinese was examined in a genetically sensitive design. A total of 270 pairs of Chinese twins (190 pairs of monozygotic twins and 80 pairs of same-sex dizygotic twins) were tested on Chinese vocabulary and word reading at the mean age 7.8 years and reading comprehension of sentences and passages one year later. Results of behavior-genetic analyses showed that both vocabulary and word reading had significant independent genetic influences on reading comprehension, and the two factors together accounted for most but not all of the genetic influences on reading comprehension. In addition, sentence comprehension had a stronger genetic correlation with word reading while passage comprehension showed a trend of stronger genetic overlap with vocabulary. These findings suggest that the genetic foundation of the SVR in Chinese is largely supported in that language comprehension and decoding are two core skills for reading comprehension in nonalphabetic as well as alphabetic written languages. PMID:23112862

Probability and surprisal in auditory comprehension of morphologically complex words.

PubMed

Balling, Laura Winther; Baayen, R Harald

2012-10-01

Two auditory lexical decision experiments document for morphologically complex words two points at which the probability of a target word given the evidence shifts dramatically. The first point is reached when morphologically unrelated competitors are no longer compatible with the evidence. Adapting terminology from Marslen-Wilson (1984), we refer to this as the word's initial uniqueness point (UP1). The second point is the complex uniqueness point (CUP) introduced by Balling and Baayen (2008), at which morphologically related competitors become incompatible with the input. Later initial as well as complex uniqueness points predict longer response latencies. We argue that the effects of these uniqueness points arise due to the large surprisal (Levy, 2008) carried by the phonemes at these uniqueness points, and provide independent evidence that how cumulative surprisal builds up in the course of the word co-determines response latencies. The presence of effects of surprisal, both at the initial uniqueness point of complex words, and cumulatively throughout the word, challenges the Shortlist B model of Norris and McQueen (2008), and suggests that a Bayesian approach to auditory comprehension requires complementation from information theory in order to do justice to the cognitive cost of updating probability distributions over lexical candidates. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Toward Male Individualization with Rapidly Mutating Y-Chromosomal Short Tandem Repeats

PubMed Central

Ballantyne, Kaye N; Ralf, Arwin; Aboukhalid, Rachid; Achakzai, Niaz M; Anjos, Maria J; Ayub, Qasim; Balažic, Jože; Ballantyne, Jack; Ballard, David J; Berger, Burkhard; Bobillo, Cecilia; Bouabdellah, Mehdi; Burri, Helen; Capal, Tomas; Caratti, Stefano; Cárdenas, Jorge; Cartault, François; Carvalho, Elizeu F; Carvalho, Monica; Cheng, Baowen; Coble, Michael D; Comas, David; Corach, Daniel; D'Amato, Maria E; Davison, Sean; de Knijff, Peter; De Ungria, Maria Corazon A; Decorte, Ronny; Dobosz, Tadeusz; Dupuy, Berit M; Elmrghni, Samir; Gliwiński, Mateusz; Gomes, Sara C; Grol, Laurens; Haas, Cordula; Hanson, Erin; Henke, Jürgen; Henke, Lotte; Herrera-Rodríguez, Fabiola; Hill, Carolyn R; Holmlund, Gunilla; Honda, Katsuya; Immel, Uta-Dorothee; Inokuchi, Shota; Jobling, Mark A; Kaddura, Mahmoud; Kim, Jong S; Kim, Soon H; Kim, Wook; King, Turi E; Klausriegler, Eva; Kling, Daniel; Kovačević, Lejla; Kovatsi, Leda; Krajewski, Paweł; Kravchenko, Sergey; Larmuseau, Maarten H D; Lee, Eun Young; Lessig, Ruediger; Livshits, Ludmila A; Marjanović, Damir; Minarik, Marek; Mizuno, Natsuko; Moreira, Helena; Morling, Niels; Mukherjee, Meeta; Munier, Patrick; Nagaraju, Javaregowda; Neuhuber, Franz; Nie, Shengjie; Nilasitsataporn, Premlaphat; Nishi, Takeki; Oh, Hye H; Olofsson, Jill; Onofri, Valerio; Palo, Jukka U; Pamjav, Horolma; Parson, Walther; Petlach, Michal; Phillips, Christopher; Ploski, Rafal; Prasad, Samayamantri P R; Primorac, Dragan; Purnomo, Gludhug A; Purps, Josephine; Rangel-Villalobos, Hector; Rębała, Krzysztof; Rerkamnuaychoke, Budsaba; Gonzalez, Danel Rey; Robino, Carlo; Roewer, Lutz; Rosa, Alexandra; Sajantila, Antti; Sala, Andrea; Salvador, Jazelyn M; Sanz, Paula; Schmitt, Cornelia; Sharma, Anil K; Silva, Dayse A; Shin, Kyoung-Jin; Sijen, Titia; Sirker, Miriam; Siváková, Daniela; Škaro, Vedrana; Solano-Matamoros, Carlos; Souto, Luis; Stenzl, Vlastimil; Sudoyo, Herawati; Syndercombe-Court, Denise; Tagliabracci, Adriano; Taylor, Duncan; Tillmar, Andreas; Tsybovsky, Iosif S; Tyler-Smith, Chris; van der Gaag, Kristiaan J; Vanek, Daniel; Völgyi, Antónia; Ward, Denise; Willemse, Patricia; Yap, Eric PH; Yong, Rita YY; Pajnič, Irena Zupanič; Kayser, Manfred

2014-01-01

Relevant for various areas of human genetics, Y-chromosomal short tandem repeats (Y-STRs) are commonly used for testing close paternal relationships among individuals and populations, and for male lineage identification. However, even the widely used 17-loci Yfiler set cannot resolve individuals and populations completely. Here, 52 centers generated quality-controlled data of 13 rapidly mutating (RM) Y-STRs in 14,644 related and unrelated males from 111 worldwide populations. Strikingly, >99% of the 12,272 unrelated males were completely individualized. Haplotype diversity was extremely high (global: 0.9999985, regional: 0.99836–0.9999988). Haplotype sharing between populations was almost absent except for six (0.05%) of the 12,156 haplotypes. Haplotype sharing within populations was generally rare (0.8% nonunique haplotypes), significantly lower in urban (0.9%) than rural (2.1%) and highest in endogamous groups (14.3%). Analysis of molecular variance revealed 99.98% of variation within populations, 0.018% among populations within groups, and 0.002% among groups. Of the 2,372 newly and 156 previously typed male relative pairs, 29% were differentiated including 27% of the 2,378 father–son pairs. Relative to Yfiler, haplotype diversity was increased in 86% of the populations tested and overall male relative differentiation was raised by 23.5%. Our study demonstrates the value of RM Y-STRs in identifying and separating unrelated and related males and provides a reference database. PMID:24917567

Attention training to pleasant stimuli in anxiety.

PubMed

Sass, Sarah M; Evans, Travis C; Xiong, Kue; Mirghassemi, Felicia; Tran, Huy

2017-01-01

Attentional bias for threatening stimuli in anxiety is a common finding in the literature. The present study addressed whether attention training toward pleasant stimuli can reduce anxiety symptoms and induce a processing bias in favor of pleasant information in nonpatients who were selected to score similarly to individuals with generalized anxiety or panic disorder on a measure of worry or physiological arousal, respectively. Participants were randomly assigned to attention training to pleasant (ATP) stimuli or to a placebo control (PC) condition. All participants completed baseline and post-test dot-probe measures of attentional bias while event-related brain potentials were recorded. As expected, worry symptoms decreased in the ATP and not PC condition. ATP was also associated with early evidence (P100 amplitude) of greater attentional prioritization of probes replacing neutral stimuli within threat-neutral word pairs from pre-to-post intervention and later RT evidence of facilitated processing of probes replacing pleasant stimuli within pleasant-threat word pairs at post compared to PC. PC was associated with later evidence (P300 latency) of less efficient evaluation of probes following pleasant stimuli within pleasant-threat word pairs from pre-to-post and later RT evidence of facilitated processing of probes following threat stimuli within pleasant-threat word pairs at post compared to ATP. Results highlight early and later mechanisms of attention processing changes and underscore the potential of pleasant stimuli in optimizing attention-training interventions for anxiety. Published by Elsevier B.V.

The case for testing memory with both stories and word lists prior to dbs surgery for Parkinson's Disease.

PubMed

Zahodne, Laura B; Bowers, Dawn; Price, Catherine C; Bauer, Russell M; Nisenzon, Anne; Foote, Kelly D; Okun, Michael S

2011-04-01

Patients seeking deep brain stimulation (DBS) surgery for Parkinson's disease (PD) typically undergo neuropsychological assessment to determine candidacy for surgery, with poor memory performance interpreted as a contraindication. Patients with PD may exhibit worse memory for word lists than for stories due to the lack of inherent organization in a list of unrelated words. Unfortunately, word list and story tasks are typically developed from different normative datasets, and the existence of a memory performance discrepancy in PD has been challenged. We compared recall of stories and word lists in 35 non-demented PD candidates for DBS. We administered commonly used neuropsychological measures of word list and story memory (Hopkins Verbal Learning Test, Logical Memory), along with a second word list task that was co-normed with the story task. Age-corrected scores were higher for the story task than for both word list tasks. Compared to story recall, word list recall correlated more consistently with motor severity and composite measures of processing speed, working memory, and executive functioning. These results support the classic view of fronto-subcortical contributions to memory in PD and suggest that executive deficits may influence word list recall more than story recall. We recommend a multi-componential memory battery in the neuropsychological assessment of DBS candidates to characterize both mesial temporal and frontal-executive memory processes. One should not rely solely on a word list task because patients exhibiting poor memory for word lists may perform better with stories and therefore deserve an interdisciplinary discussion for DBS surgery.

Learning new meanings for known words: Biphasic effects of prior knowledge

PubMed Central

Fang, Xiaoping; Perfetti, Charles; Stafura, Joseph

2017-01-01

In acquiring word meanings, learners are often confronted by a single word form that is mapped to two or more meanings. For example, long after how to roller-“skate”, one may learn that “skate” is also a kind of fish. Such learning of new meanings for familiar words involves two potentially contrasting processes, relative to new form-new meaning learning: 1) Form-based familiarity may facilitate learning a new meaning, and 2) meaning-based interference may inhibit learning a new meaning. We examined these two processes by having native English speakers learn new, unrelated meanings for familiar (high frequency) and less familiar (low frequency) English words, as well as for unfamiliar (novel or pseudo-) words. Tracking learning with cued-recall tasks at several points during learning revealed a biphasic pattern: higher learning rates and greater learning efficiency for familiar words relative to novel words early in learning and a reversal of this pattern later in learning. Following learning, interference from original meanings for familiar words was detected in a semantic relatedness judgment task. Additionally, lexical access to familiar words with new meanings became faster compared to their exposure controls, but no such effect occurred for less familiar words. Overall, the results suggest a biphasic pattern of facilitating and interfering processes: Familiar word forms facilitate learning earlier, while interference from original meanings becomes more influential later. This biphasic pattern reflects the co-activation of new and old meanings during learning, a process that may play a role in lexicalization of new meanings. PMID:29399593

Word Learning in Deaf Children with Cochlear Implants: Effects of Early Auditory Experience

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Houston, Derek M.; Stewart, Jessica; Moberly, Aaron; Hollich, George; Miyamoto, Richard T.

2012-01-01

Word-learning skills were tested in normal-hearing 12- to 40-month-olds and in deaf 22- to 40-month-olds 12 to 18 months after cochlear implantation. Using the Intermodal Preferential Looking Paradigm (IPLP), children were tested for their ability to learn two novel-word/novel-object pairings. Normal-hearing children demonstrated learning on this…

Genetic Influences on Early Word Recognition Abilities and Disabilities: A Study of 7-Year-Old Twins

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Harlaar, Nicole; Spinath, Frank M.; Dale, Philip S.; Plomin, Robert

2005-01-01

Background: A fundamental issue for child psychology concerns the origins of individual differences in early reading development. Method: A measure of word recognition, the Test of Word Reading Efficiency (TOWRE), was administered by telephone to a representative population sample of 3,909 same-sex and opposite-sex pairs of 7-year-old twins.…

The Influence of Emotional Arousal on Affective Priming in Monolingual and Bilingual Speakers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Altarriba, Jeanette; Canary, Tina M.

2004-01-01

The activation of arousal components for emotion-laden words in English (e.g. kiss, death) was examined in two groups of participants: English monolinguals and Spanish-English bilinguals. In Experiment 1, emotion-laden words were rated on valence and perceived arousal. These norms were used to construct prime-target word pairs that were used in…

Twelve-Month-Olds Privilege Words over Other Linguistic Sounds in an Associative Learning Task

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

MacKenzie, Heather; Graham, Susan A.; Curtin, Suzanne

2011-01-01

We examined whether 12-month-old infants privilege words over other linguistic stimuli in an associative learning task. Sixty-four infants were presented with sets of either word-object, communicative sound-object, or consonantal sound-object pairings until they habituated. They were then tested on a "switch" in the sound to determine whether they…

Deceptive Words: A Study in the Contrastive Lexicon of Polish and English.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Welna, Jerzy

In the lexicons of Polish and English are words whose formal (i.e., phonetic or graphemic) structure is similar but is at the same time accompanied by only partial semantic correspondence or by the absence of any semantic similarity. Such pairs of words were labelled as "deceptive cognates" by Lado. The present paper tries to systematize…

Encoding instructions and stimulus presentation in local environmental context-dependent memory studies.

PubMed

Markopoulos, G; Rutherford, A; Cairns, C; Green, J

2010-08-01

Murnane and Phelps (1993) recommend word pair presentations in local environmental context (EC) studies to prevent associations being formed between successively presented items and their ECs and a consequent reduction in the EC effect. Two experiments were conducted to assess the veracity of this assumption. In Experiment 1, participants memorised single words or word pairs, or categorised them as natural or man made. Their free recall protocols were examined to assess any associations established between successively presented items. Fewest associations were observed when the item-specific encoding task (i.e., natural or man made categorisation of word referents) was applied to single words. These findings were examined further in Experiment 2, where the influence of encoding instructions and stimulus presentation on local EC dependent recognition memory was examined. Consistent with recognition dual-process signal detection model predictions and findings (e.g., Macken, 2002; Parks & Yonelinas, 2008), recollection sensitivity, but not familiarity sensitivity, was found to be local EC dependent. However, local EC dependent recognition was observed only after item-specific encoding instructions, irrespective of stimulus presentation. These findings and the existing literature suggest that the use of single word presentations and item-specific encoding enhances local EC dependent recognition.

Different Verbal Learning Strategies in Autism Spectrum Disorder: Evidence from the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bowler, Dermot M.; Limoges, Elyse; Mottron, Laurent

2009-01-01

The Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test, which requires the free recall of the same list of 15 unrelated words over 5 trials, was administered to 21 high-functioning adolescents and adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and 21 matched typical individuals. The groups showed similar overall levels of free recall, rates of learning over trials and…

Semantic Drift in Espresso-style Bootstrapping: Graph-theoretic Analysis and Evaluation in Word Sense Disambiguation

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Komachi, Mamoru; Kudo, Taku; Shimbo, Masashi; Matsumoto, Yuji

Bootstrapping has a tendency, called semantic drift, to select instances unrelated to the seed instances as the iteration proceeds. We demonstrate the semantic drift of Espresso-style bootstrapping has the same root as the topic drift of Kleinberg's HITS, using a simplified graph-based reformulation of bootstrapping. We confirm that two graph-based algorithms, the von Neumann kernels and the regularized Laplacian, can reduce the effect of semantic drift in the task of word sense disambiguation (WSD) on Senseval-3 English Lexical Sample Task. Proposed algorithms achieve superior performance to Espresso and previous graph-based WSD methods, even though the proposed algorithms have less parameters and are easy to calibrate.

Birth of the cool: a two-centuries decline in emotional expression in Anglophone fiction.

PubMed

Morin, Olivier; Acerbi, Alberto

2017-12-01

The presence of emotional words and content in stories has been shown to enhance a story's memorability, and its cultural success. Yet, recent cultural trends run in the opposite direction. Using the Google Books corpus, coupled with two metadata-rich corpora of Anglophone fiction books, we show a decrease in emotionality in English-speaking literature starting plausibly in the nineteenth century. We show that this decrease cannot be explained by changes unrelated to emotionality (such as demographic dynamics concerning age or gender balance, changes in vocabulary richness, or changes in the prevalence of literary genres), and that, in our three corpora, the decrease is driven almost entirely by a decline in the proportion of positive emotion-related words, while the frequency of negative emotion-related words shows little if any decline. Consistently with previous studies, we also find a link between ageing and negative emotionality at the individual level.

Do individuals with autism process words in context? Evidence from language-mediated eye-movements.

PubMed

Brock, Jon; Norbury, Courtenay; Einav, Shiri; Nation, Kate

2008-09-01

It is widely argued that people with autism have difficulty processing ambiguous linguistic information in context. To investigate this claim, we recorded the eye-movements of 24 adolescents with autism spectrum disorder and 24 language-matched peers as they monitored spoken sentences for words corresponding to objects on a computer display. Following a target word, participants looked more at a competitor object sharing the same onset than at phonologically unrelated objects. This effect was, however, mediated by the sentence context such that participants looked less at the phonological competitor if it was semantically incongruous with the preceding verb. Contrary to predictions, the two groups evidenced similar effects of context on eye-movements. Instead, across both groups, the effect of sentence context was reduced in individuals with relatively poor language skills. Implications for the weak central coherence account of autism are discussed.

Neural correlates of cross-domain affective priming.

PubMed

Zhang, Qin; Li, Xiaohua; Gold, Brian T; Jiang, Yang

2010-05-06

The affective priming effect has mostly been studied using reaction time (RT) measures; however, the neural bases of affective priming are not well established. To understand the neural correlates of cross-domain emotional stimuli presented rapidly, we obtained event-related potential (ERP) measures during an affective priming task using short SOA (stimulus onset asynchrony) conditions. Two sets of 480 picture-word pairs were presented at SOAs of either 150ms or 250ms between prime and target stimuli. Participants decided whether the valence of each target word was pleasant or unpleasant. Behavioral results from both SOA conditions were consistent with previous reports of affective priming, with longer RTs for incongruent than congruent pairs at SOAs of 150ms (771 vs. 738ms) and 250ms (765 vs. 720ms). ERP results revealed that the N400 effect (associated with incongruent pairs in affective processing) occurred at anterior scalp regions at an SOA of 150ms, and this effect was only observed for negative target words across the scalp at an SOA of 250ms. In contrast, late positive potentials (LPPs) (associated with attentional resource allocation) occurred across the scalp at an SOA of 250ms. LPPs were only observed for positive target words at posterior parts of the brain at an SOA of 150ms. Our finding of ERP signatures at very short SOAs provides the first neural evidence that affective pictures can exert an automatic influence on the evaluation of affective target words. Copyright 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The Importance of Being Interpreted: Grounded Words and Children’s Relational Reasoning

PubMed Central

Son, Ji Y.; Smith, Linda B.; Goldstone, Robert L.; Leslie, Michelle

2012-01-01

Although young children typically have trouble reasoning relationally, they are aided by the presence of “relational” words (e.g., Gentner and Rattermann, 1991). They also reason well about commonly experienced event structures (e.g., Fivush, 1984). To explore what makes a word “relational” and therefore helpful in relational reasoning, we hypothesized that these words activate well-understood event structures. Furthermore, the activated schema must be open enough (without too much specificity) that it can be applied analogically to novel problems. Four experiments examine this hypothesis by exploring: how training with a label influence the schematic interpretation of a scene, what kinds of scenes are conducive to schematic interpretation, and whether children must figure out the interpretation themselves to benefit from the act of interpreting a scene as an event. Experiment 1 shows the superiority of schema-evoking words over words that do not connect to schematized experiences. Experiments 2 and 3 further reveal that these words must be applied to perceptual instances that require cognitive effort to connect to a label rather than unrelated or concretely related instances in order to draw attention to relational structure. Experiment 4 provides evidence that even when children do not work out an interpretation for themselves, just the act of interpreting an ambiguous scene is potent for relational generalization. The present results suggest that relational words (and in particular their meanings) are created from the act of interpreting a perceptual situation in the context of a word. PMID:22408628

Emotionally enhanced memory for negatively arousing words: storage or retrieval advantage?

PubMed

Nadarevic, Lena

2017-12-01

People typically remember emotionally negative words better than neutral words. Two experiments are reported that investigate whether emotionally enhanced memory (EEM) for negatively arousing words is based on a storage or retrieval advantage. Participants studied non-word-word pairs that either involved negatively arousing or neutral target words. Memory for these target words was tested by means of a recognition test and a cued-recall test. Data were analysed with a multinomial model that allows the disentanglement of storage and retrieval processes in the present recognition-then-cued-recall paradigm. In both experiments the multinomial analyses revealed no storage differences between negatively arousing and neutral words but a clear retrieval advantage for negatively arousing words in the cued-recall test. These findings suggest that EEM for negatively arousing words is driven by associative processes.

When Actions Speak Too Much Louder than Words: Hand Gestures Disrupt Word Learning when Phonetic Demands Are High

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kelly, Spencer D.; Lee, Angela L.

2012-01-01

It is now widely accepted that hand gestures help people understand and learn language. Here, we provide an exception to this general rule--when phonetic demands are high, gesture actually hurts. Native English-speaking adults were instructed on the meaning of novel Japanese word pairs that were for non-native speakers phonetically hard (/ite/ vs.…

Transfers of stimulus function during roulette wagering.

PubMed

Dixon, Mark R; Enoch, Mary Rachel; Belisle, Jordan

2017-10-01

Twenty-five recreational gamblers were initially asked to place bets on either red or black positions on a roulette board in a simulated casino setting. Each participant was then exposed to a stimulus pairing observing procedure which attempted to develop equivalence classes between one color (black or red) and traditionally positive words (e.g., love, happy, sex) and another color (black or red) and traditionally negative words (e.g., death, cancer, taxes), in the absence of consequence manipulations. Twenty-one of the twenty-five participants demonstrated greater response allocation to the color position on the roulette board that participated in a relational network with the positive words. Variations in sequencing of experimental conditions had no impact on poststimulus-pairing wagers, but did impact tests for equivalence accuracy. © 2017 Society for the Experimental Analysis of Behavior.

Self-Prioritization Beyond Perception.

PubMed

Schäfer, Sarah; Wentura, Dirk; Frings, Christian

2015-01-01

Recently, Sui, He, and Humphreys (2012) introduced a new paradigm to measure perceptual self-prioritization processes. It seems that arbitrarily tagging shapes to self-relevant words (I, my, me, and so on) leads to speeded verification times when matching self-relevant word shape pairings (e.g., me - triangle) as compared to non-self-relevant word shape pairings (e.g., stranger - circle). In order to analyze the level at which self-prioritization takes place we analyzed whether the self-prioritization effect is due to a tagging of the self-relevant label and the particular associated shape or due to a tagging of the self with an abstract concept. In two experiments participants showed standard self-prioritization effects with varying stimulus features or different exemplars of a particular stimulus-category suggesting that self-prioritization also works at a conceptual level.

Easy Words: Reference Resolution in a Malevolent Referent World.

PubMed

Gleitman, Lila R; Trueswell, John C

2018-06-15

This article describes early stages in the acquisition of a first vocabulary by infants and young children. It distinguishes two major stages, the first of which operates by a stand-alone word-to-world pairing procedure and the second of which, using the evidence so acquired, builds a domain-specific syntax-sensitive structure-to-world pairing procedure. As we show, the first stage of learning is slow, restricted in character, and to some extent errorful, whereas the second procedure is determinative, rapid, and essentially errorless. Our central claim here is that the early, referentially based learning procedure succeeds at all because it is reined in by attention-focusing properties of word-to-world timing and related indicants of referential intent. Copyright © 2018 Cognitive Science Society, Inc.

Memory for Object Locations: Priority Effect and Sex Differences in Associative Spatial Learning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cinan, Sevtap; Atalay, Deniz; Sisman, Simge; Basbug, Gokce; Dervent-Ozbek, Sevinc; Teoman, Dalga D.; Karagoz, Ayca; Karadeniz, A. Yezdan; Beykurt, Sinem; Suleyman, Hediye; Memis, H. Ozge; Yurtsever, Ozgur D.

2007-01-01

This paper reports two experiments conducted to examine priority effects and sex differences in object location memory. A new task of paired position-learning was designed, based on the A-B A-C paradigm, which was used in paired word learning. There were three different paired position-learning conditions: (1) positions of several different…

Whole exome sequencing to estimate alloreactivity potential between donors and recipients in stem cell transplantation

PubMed Central

Sampson, Juliana K.; Sheth, Nihar U.; Koparde, Vishal N.; Scalora, Allison F.; Serrano, Myrna G.; Lee, Vladimir; Roberts, Catherine H.; Jameson-Lee, Max; Ferreira-Gonzalez, Andrea; Manjili, Masoud H.; Buck, Gregory A.; Neale, Michael C.; Toor, Amir A.

2016-01-01

Summary Whole exome sequencing (WES) was performed on stem cell transplant donor-recipient (D-R) pairs to determine the extent of potential antigenic variation at a molecular level. In a small cohort of D-R pairs, a high frequency of sequence variation was observed between the donor and recipient exomes independent of human leucocyte antigen (HLA) matching. Nonsynonymous, nonconservative single nucleotide polymorphisms were approximately twice as frequent in HLA-matched unrelated, compared with related D-R pairs. When mapped to individual chromosomes, these polymorphic nucleotides were uniformly distributed across the entire exome. In conclusion, WES reveals extensive nucleotide sequence variation in the exomes of HLA-matched donors and recipients. PMID:24749631

Generating descriptive visual words and visual phrases for large-scale image applications.

PubMed

Zhang, Shiliang; Tian, Qi; Hua, Gang; Huang, Qingming; Gao, Wen

2011-09-01

Bag-of-visual Words (BoWs) representation has been applied for various problems in the fields of multimedia and computer vision. The basic idea is to represent images as visual documents composed of repeatable and distinctive visual elements, which are comparable to the text words. Notwithstanding its great success and wide adoption, visual vocabulary created from single-image local descriptors is often shown to be not as effective as desired. In this paper, descriptive visual words (DVWs) and descriptive visual phrases (DVPs) are proposed as the visual correspondences to text words and phrases, where visual phrases refer to the frequently co-occurring visual word pairs. Since images are the carriers of visual objects and scenes, a descriptive visual element set can be composed by the visual words and their combinations which are effective in representing certain visual objects or scenes. Based on this idea, a general framework is proposed for generating DVWs and DVPs for image applications. In a large-scale image database containing 1506 object and scene categories, the visual words and visual word pairs descriptive to certain objects or scenes are identified and collected as the DVWs and DVPs. Experiments show that the DVWs and DVPs are informative and descriptive and, thus, are more comparable with the text words than the classic visual words. We apply the identified DVWs and DVPs in several applications including large-scale near-duplicated image retrieval, image search re-ranking, and object recognition. The combination of DVW and DVP performs better than the state of the art in large-scale near-duplicated image retrieval in terms of accuracy, efficiency and memory consumption. The proposed image search re-ranking algorithm: DWPRank outperforms the state-of-the-art algorithm by 12.4% in mean average precision and about 11 times faster in efficiency.

No specific role for the manual motor system in processing the meanings of words related to the hand

PubMed Central

Postle, Natasha; Ashton, Roderick; McFarland, Ken; de Zubicaray, Greig I.

2013-01-01

The present study explored whether semantic and motor systems are functionally interwoven via the use of a dual-task paradigm. According to embodied language accounts that propose an automatic and necessary involvement of the motor system in conceptual processing, concurrent processing of hand-related information should interfere more with hand movements than processing of unrelated body-part (i.e., foot, mouth) information. Across three experiments, 100 right-handed participants performed left- or right-hand tapping movements while repeatedly reading action words related to different body-parts, or different body-part names, in both aloud and silent conditions. Concurrent reading of single words related to specific body-parts, or the same words embedded in sentences differing in syntactic and phonological complexity (to manipulate context-relevant processing), and reading while viewing videos of the actions and body-parts described by the target words (to elicit visuomotor associations) all interfered with right-hand but not left-hand tapping rate. However, this motor interference was not affected differentially by hand-related stimuli. Thus, the results provide no support for proposals that body-part specific resources in cortical motor systems are shared between overt manual movements and meaning-related processing of words related to the hand. PMID:23378833

What Phonological Facilitation Tells about Semantic Interference: A Dual-Task Study

PubMed Central

Ayora, Pauline; Peressotti, Francesca; Alario, F.-Xavier; Mulatti, Claudio; Pluchino, Patrick; Job, Remo; Dell'Acqua, Roberto

2011-01-01

Despite increasing interest in the topic, the extent to which linguistic processing demands attentional resources remains poorly understood. We report an empirical re-examination of claims about lexical processing made on the basis of the picture–word interference task when merged in a dual-task psychological refractory period (PRP) paradigm. Two experiments were conducted in which participants were presented with a tone followed, at varying stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs), by a picture–word stimulus. In Experiment 1, the phonological relatedness between pictures and words was manipulated. Begin- and end-related words decreased picture naming latencies relative to unrelated words. This effect was additive with SOA effects. In Experiment 2, both the semantic and the phonological relatedness between pictures and words were manipulated. Replicating Experiment 1, effects arising from the phonological manipulation were additive with SOA effects on picture naming latencies. In contrast, effects arising from the semantic manipulation were under additive with SOA effects on picture naming latencies, that is, semantic interference decreased as SOA was decreased. Such contrastive pattern suggests that semantic and phonological effects on picture naming latencies are characterized by distinguishable sources, the former prior to the PRP bottleneck and the latter at the PRP bottleneck or after. The present findings are discussed in relation to current models of language production. PMID:21716584

Stress and emotional valence effects on children's versus adolescents' true and false memory.

PubMed

Quas, Jodi A; Rush, Elizabeth B; Yim, Ilona S; Edelstein, Robin S; Otgaar, Henry; Smeets, Tom

2016-01-01

Despite considerable interest in understanding how stress influences memory accuracy and errors, particularly in children, methodological limitations have made it difficult to examine the effects of stress independent of the effects of the emotional valence of to-be-remembered information in developmental populations. In this study, we manipulated stress levels in 7-8- and 12-14-year-olds and then exposed them to negative, neutral, and positive word lists. Shortly afterward, we tested their recognition memory for the words and false memory for non-presented but related words. Adolescents in the high-stress condition were more accurate than those in the low-stress condition, while children's accuracy did not differ across stress conditions. Also, among adolescents, accuracy and errors were higher for the negative than positive words, while in children, word valence was unrelated to accuracy. Finally, increases in children's and adolescents' cortisol responses, especially in the high-stress condition, were related to greater accuracy but not false memories and only for positive emotional words. Findings suggest that stress at encoding, as well as the emotional content of to-be-remembered information, may influence memory in different ways across development, highlighting the need for greater complexity in existing models of true and false memory formation.

Keeping it together: Semantic coherence stabilizes phonological sequences in short-term memory.

PubMed

Savill, Nicola; Ellis, Rachel; Brooke, Emma; Koa, Tiffany; Ferguson, Suzie; Rojas-Rodriguez, Elena; Arnold, Dominic; Smallwood, Jonathan; Jefferies, Elizabeth

2018-04-01

Our ability to hold a sequence of speech sounds in mind, in the correct configuration, supports many aspects of communication, but the contribution of conceptual information to this basic phonological capacity remains controversial. Previous research has shown modest and inconsistent benefits of meaning on phonological stability in short-term memory, but these studies were based on sets of unrelated words. Using a novel design, we examined the immediate recall of sentence-like sequences with coherent meaning, alongside both standard word lists and mixed lists containing words and nonwords. We found, and replicated, substantial effects of coherent meaning on phoneme-level accuracy: The phonemes of both words and nonwords within conceptually coherent sequences were more likely to be produced together and in the correct order. Since nonwords do not exist as items in long-term memory, the semantic enhancement of phoneme-level recall for both item types cannot be explained by a lexically based item reconstruction process employed at the point of retrieval ("redintegration"). Instead, our data show, for naturalistic input, that when meaning emerges from the combination of words, the phonological traces that support language are reinforced by a semantic-binding process that has been largely overlooked by past short-term memory research.

Dissociation between implicit and explicit manifestations of awareness in early stage dementia: evidence from the emotional Stroop effect for dementia-related words.

PubMed

Martyr, Anthony; Clare, Linda; Nelis, Sharon M; Roberts, Judith L; Robinson, Julia U; Roth, Ilona; Markova, Ivana S; Woods, Robert T; Whitaker, Christopher J; Morris, Robin G

2011-01-01

To determine whether people with dementia (PwD), and carers of PwD, show a processing bias to dementia-related words in an emotional Stroop task, and if so, whether the presence of such a bias is related to level of explicit awareness of the condition. Seventy-nine people with early stage Alzheimer's disease (AD), vascular or mixed dementia, and their carers, completed an emotional Stroop task. Time taken to colour-name dementia-related and neutral words was compared within and between groups. Additionally, as a comparison, ratings of the awareness of the condition shown by PwD were made on the basis of a detailed interview with each PwD and his/her carer. PwD and carers showed the same level of increase in response times to salient compared to neutral words. In the PwD this effect was unrelated to the degree of awareness that they demonstrated regarding the condition. The emotional Stroop effect in response to dementia-related words in PwD indicates that preserved implicit awareness of the condition can be elicited even where there is reduced explicit awareness. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Trans-saccadic parafoveal preview benefits in fluent reading: a study with fixation-related brain potentials.

PubMed

Dimigen, Olaf; Kliegl, Reinhold; Sommer, Werner

2012-08-01

During natural reading, a parafoveal preview of the upcoming word facilitates its subsequent recognition (e.g., shorter fixation durations compared to masked preview) but nothing is known about the neural correlates of this so-called preview benefit. Furthermore, while the evidence is strong that readers preprocess orthographic features of upcoming words, it is controversial whether word meaning can also be accessed parafoveally. We investigated the timing, scope, and electrophysiological correlates of parafoveal information use in reading by simultaneously recording eye movements and fixation-related brain potentials (FRPs) while participants read word lists fluently from left to right. For one word-the target-(e.g., "blade") parafoveal information was manipulated by showing an identical ("blade"), semantically related ("knife"), or unrelated ("sugar") word as preview. In boundary trials, the preview was shown parafoveally but changed to the correct target word during the incoming saccade. Replicating classic findings, target words were fixated shorter after identical previews. In the EEG, this benefit was reflected in an occipitotemporal preview positivity between 200 and 280 ms. In contrast, there was no facilitation from related previews. In parafoveal-on-foveal trials, preview and target were embedded at neighboring list positions without a display change. Consecutive fixation of two related words produced N400 priming effects, but only shortly (160 ms) after the second word was directly fixated. Results demonstrate that neural responses to words are substantially altered by parafoveal preprocessing under normal reading conditions. We found no evidence that word meaning contributes to these effects. Saccade-contingent display manipulations can be combined with EEG recordings to study extrafoveal perception in vision. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Orthographic Processing in Visual Word Identification.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Humphreys, Glyn W.; And Others

1990-01-01

A series of 6 experiments involving 210 subjects from a college subject pool examined orthographic priming effects between briefly presented pairs of letter strings. A theory of othographic priming is presented, and the implications of the findings for understanding word recognition and reading are discussed. (SLD)

Enhanced coherence within the theta band between pairs of brains engaging in experienced versus naïve Reiki procedures.

PubMed

Ventura, Anabela Carraca; Persinger, Michael A

2014-08-01

The study objective was to discern whether the coherence between brain activities of the "patient" and practitioner differ between Reiki experts and novices. If the physical process associated with Reiki involves "convergence" between the practitioner and subject, then this congruence should be evident in time-dependent shared power within specific and meaningful frequency electroencephalographic bands. Simultaneous quantitative electroencephalogram measures (19 channels) were recorded from 9 pairs of subjects when 1 of the pairs was an experienced Reiki practitioner or had just been shown the procedure. Pairs recorded their experiences and images. The "practitioner" and "patient" pairs were measured within a quiet, comfortable acoustic chamber. Real-time correlations and coherence between pairs of brains for power (μV(2)·Hz(-1)) within the various frequency bands over the 10-min sessions were recorded and analyzed for each pair. Descriptors of experiences were analyzed for word meanings. Only the coherence within the theta range increased over time between the brains of the Reiki pairs relative to the Sham pairs, particularly over the left hemisphere. The pleasantness-unpleasantness rating for the words employed to describe experiences written after the experiment were more congruent for the Reiki pairs compared to the reference pairs. The increased synchronization of the cerebral activity of the participant and the practitioner during proximal therapies involving touch such as Reiki may be an important component of any subsequent beneficial effects.

Ways of making-sense: Local gamma synchronization reveals differences between semantic processing induced by music and language.

PubMed

Barraza, Paulo; Chavez, Mario; Rodríguez, Eugenio

2016-01-01

Similar to linguistic stimuli, music can also prime the meaning of a subsequent word. However, it is so far unknown what is the brain dynamics underlying the semantic priming effect induced by music, and its relation to language. To elucidate these issues, we compare the brain oscillatory response to visual words that have been semantically primed either by a musical excerpt or by an auditory sentence. We found that semantic violation between music-word pairs triggers a classical ERP N400, and induces a sustained increase of long-distance theta phase synchrony, along with a transient increase of local gamma activity. Similar results were observed after linguistic semantic violation except for gamma activity, which increased after semantic congruence between sentence-word pairs. Our findings indicate that local gamma activity is a neural marker that signals different ways of semantic processing between music and language, revealing the dynamic and self-organized nature of the semantic processing. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

A challenging dissociation in masked identity priming with the lexical decision task.

PubMed

Perea, Manuel; Jiménez, María; Gómez, Pablo

2014-05-01

The masked priming technique has been used extensively to explore the early stages of visual-word recognition. One key phenomenon in masked priming lexical decision is that identity priming is robust for words, whereas it is small/unreliable for nonwords. This dissociation has usually been explained on the basis that masked priming effects are lexical in nature, and hence there should not be an identity prime facilitation for nonwords. We present two experiments whose results are at odds with the assumption made by models that postulate that identity priming is purely lexical, and also challenge the assumption that word and nonword responses are based on the same information. Our experiments revealed that for nonwords, but not for words, matched-case identity PRIME-TARGET pairs were responded to faster than mismatched-case identity prime-TARGET pairs, and this phenomenon was not modulated by the lowercase/uppercase feature similarity of the stimuli. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Children's patterns of reasoning about reading and addition concepts.

PubMed

Farrington-Flint, Lee; Canobi, Katherine H; Wood, Clare; Faulkner, Dorothy

2010-06-01

Children's reasoning was examined within two educational contexts (word reading and addition) so as to understand the factors that contribute to relational reasoning in the two domains. Sixty-seven 5- to 7-year-olds were given a series of related words to read or single-digit addition items to solve (interspersed with unrelated items). The frequency, accuracy, and response times of children's self-reports on the conceptually related items provided a measure of relational reasoning, while performance on the unrelated addition and reading items provided a measure of procedural skill. The results indicated that the children's ability to use conceptual relations to solve both reading and addition problems enhanced speed and accuracy levels, increased with age, and was related to procedural skill. However, regression analyses revealed that domain-specific competencies can best explain the use of conceptual relations in both reading and addition. Moreover, a cluster analysis revealed that children differ according to the academic domain in which they first apply conceptual relations and these differences are related to individual variation in their procedural skills within these particular domains. These results highlight the developmental significance of relational reasoning in the context of reading and addition and underscore the importance of concept-procedure links in explaining children's literacy and arithmetical development.

Language-Mediated Visual Orienting Behavior in Low and High Literates

PubMed Central

Huettig, Falk; Singh, Niharika; Mishra, Ramesh Kumar

2011-01-01

The influence of formal literacy on spoken language-mediated visual orienting was investigated by using a simple look and listen task which resembles every day behavior. In Experiment 1, high and low literates listened to spoken sentences containing a target word (e.g., “magar,” crocodile) while at the same time looking at a visual display of four objects (a phonological competitor of the target word, e.g., “matar,” peas; a semantic competitor, e.g., “kachuwa,” turtle, and two unrelated distractors). In Experiment 2 the semantic competitor was replaced with another unrelated distractor. Both groups of participants shifted their eye gaze to the semantic competitors (Experiment 1). In both experiments high literates shifted their eye gaze toward phonological competitors as soon as phonological information became available and moved their eyes away as soon as the acoustic information mismatched. Low literates in contrast only used phonological information when semantic matches between spoken word and visual referent were not present (Experiment 2) but in contrast to high literates these phonologically mediated shifts in eye gaze were not closely time-locked to the speech input. These data provide further evidence that in high literates language-mediated shifts in overt attention are co-determined by the type of information in the visual environment, the timing of cascaded processing in the word- and object-recognition systems, and the temporal unfolding of the spoken language. Our findings indicate that low literates exhibit a similar cognitive behavior but instead of participating in a tug-of-war among multiple types of cognitive representations, word–object mapping is achieved primarily at the semantic level. If forced, for instance by a situation in which semantic matches are not present (Experiment 2), low literates may on occasion have to rely on phonological information but do so in a much less proficient manner than their highly literate counterparts. PMID:22059083

Retrieval monitoring is influenced by information value: the interplay between importance and confidence on false memory.

PubMed

McDonough, Ian M; Bui, Dung C; Friedman, Michael C; Castel, Alan D

2015-10-01

The perceived value of information can influence one's motivation to successfully remember that information. This study investigated how information value can affect memory search and evaluation processes (i.e., retrieval monitoring). In Experiment 1, participants studied unrelated words associated with low, medium, or high values. Subsequent memory tests required participants to selectively monitor retrieval for different values. False memory effects were smaller when searching memory for high-value than low-value words, suggesting that people more effectively monitored more important information. In Experiment 2, participants studied semantically-related words, and the need for retrieval monitoring was reduced at test by using inclusion instructions (i.e., endorsement of any word related to the studied words) compared with standard instructions. Inclusion instructions led to increases in false recognition for low-value, but not for high-value words, suggesting that under standard-instruction conditions retrieval monitoring was less likely to occur for important information. Experiment 3 showed that words retrieved with lower confidence were associated with more effective retrieval monitoring, suggesting that the quality of the retrieved memory influenced the degree and effectiveness of monitoring processes. Ironically, unless encouraged to do so, people were less likely to carefully monitor important information, even though people want to remember important memories most accurately. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Tracking the emergence of the consonant bias in visual-word recognition: evidence with developing readers.

PubMed

Soares, Ana Paula; Perea, Manuel; Comesaña, Montserrat

2014-01-01

Recent research with skilled adult readers has consistently revealed an advantage of consonants over vowels in visual-word recognition (i.e., the so-called "consonant bias"). Nevertheless, little is known about how early in development the consonant bias emerges. This work aims to address this issue by studying the relative contribution of consonants and vowels at the early stages of visual-word recognition in developing readers (2(nd) and 4(th) Grade children) and skilled adult readers (college students) using a masked priming lexical decision task. Target words starting either with a consonant or a vowel were preceded by a briefly presented masked prime (50 ms) that could be the same as the target (e.g., pirata-PIRATA [pirate-PIRATE]), a consonant-preserving prime (e.g., pureto-PIRATA), a vowel-preserving prime (e.g., gicala-PIRATA), or an unrelated prime (e.g., bocelo -PIRATA). Results revealed significant priming effects for the identity and consonant-preserving conditions in adult readers and 4(th) Grade children, whereas 2(nd) graders only showed priming for the identity condition. In adult readers, the advantage of consonants was observed both for words starting with a consonant or a vowel, while in 4(th) graders this advantage was restricted to words with an initial consonant. Thus, the present findings suggest that a Consonant/Vowel skeleton should be included in future (developmental) models of visual-word recognition and reading.

Children and adolescents' performance on a medium-length/nonsemantic word-list test.

PubMed

Flores-Lázaro, Julio César; Salgado Soruco, María Alejandra; Stepanov, Igor I

2017-01-01

Word-list learning tasks are among the most important and frequently used tests for declarative memory evaluation. For example, the California Verbal Learning Test-Children's Version (CVLT-C) and Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test provide important information about different cognitive-neuropsychological processes. However, the impact of test length (i.e., number of words) and semantic organization (i.e., type of words) on children's and adolescents' memory performance remains to be clarified, especially during this developmental stage. To explore whether a medium-length non-semantically organized test can produce the typical curvilinear performance that semantically organized tests produce, reflecting executive control, we studied and compared the cognitive performance of normal children and adolescents by utilizing mathematical modeling. The model is based on the first-order system transfer function and has been successfully applied to learning curves for the CVLT-C (15 words, semantically organized paradigm). Results indicate that learning nine semantically unrelated words produces typical curvilinear (executive function) performance in children and younger adolescents and that performance could be effectively analyzed with the mathematical model. This indicates that the exponential increase (curvilinear performance) of correctly learned words does not solely depend on semantic and/or length features. This type of test controls semantic and length effects and may represent complementary tools for executive function evaluation in clinical populations in which semantic and/or length processing are affected.

An Event Related Potentials Study of Semantic Coherence Effect during Episodic Encoding in Schizophrenia Patients

PubMed Central

Blanchet, Alain; Lockman, Hazlin

2018-01-01

The objective of this electrophysiological study was to investigate the processing of semantic coherence during encoding in relation to episodic memory processes promoted at test, in schizophrenia patients, by using the N400 paradigm. Eighteen schizophrenia patients and 15 healthy participants undertook a recognition memory task. The stimuli consisted of pairs of words either semantically related or unrelated to a given category name (context). During encoding, both groups exhibited an N400 external semantic coherence effect. Healthy controls also showed an N400 internal semantic coherence effect, but this effect was not present in patients. At test, related stimuli were accompanied by an FN400 old/new effect in both groups and by a parietal old/new effect in the control group alone. In the patient group, external semantic coherence effect was associated with FN400, while, in the control group, it was correlated to the parietal old/new effect. Our results indicate that schizophrenia patients can process the contextual information at encoding to enhance familiarity process for related stimuli at test. Therefore, cognitive rehabilitation therapies targeting the implementation of semantic encoding strategies can mobilize familiarity which in turn can overcome the recollection deficit, promoting successful episodic memory performance in schizophrenia patients. PMID:29535872

Inhibition and interference in the think/no-think task.

PubMed

Racsmány, Mihály; Conway, Martin A; Keresztes, Attila; Krajcsi, Attila

2012-02-01

Five experiments using the think/no-think (TNT) procedure investigated the effect of the no-think and substitute instructions on cued recall. In Experiment 1, when unrelated A-B paired associates were studied and cued for recall with A items, recall rates were reliably enhanced in the think condition and reliably impaired below baseline in the no-think condition. In Experiments 2 and 5, final recall was cued with B items, leading to reliably higher recall rates, as compared with baseline, in both the think and no-think conditions. This pattern indicates backward priming of no-think items. In Experiments 3 and 4, the no-think instruction was replaced with a thought substitution instruction, and participants were asked to think of another word instead of the studied one when they saw the no-think cued items. As in Experiments 1 and 2, the same amount of forgetting of B items was observed when A items were the cues, but in contrast to Experiment 2, there was no increase in the recall performance of A items when B items were the cues. These results suggest that not thinking of studied items or, alternatively, thinking of a substitute item to avoid a target item may involve different processes: the former featuring inhibition and the latter interference.

High-resolution HLA haplotype frequencies of stem cell donors in Germany with foreign parentage: how can they be used to improve unrelated donor searches?

PubMed

Pingel, Julia; Solloch, Ute V; Hofmann, Jan A; Lange, Vinzenz; Ehninger, Gerhard; Schmidt, Alexander H

2013-03-01

In hematopoietic stem cell transplantation, human leukocyte antigens (HLA), usually HLA loci A, B, C, DRB1 and DQB1, are required to check histocompatibility between a potential donor and the recipient suffering from a malignant or non-malignant blood disease. As databases of potential unrelated donors are very heterogeneous with respect to typing resolution and number of typed loci, donor registries make use of haplotype frequency-based algorithms to provide matching probabilities for each potentially matching recipient/donor pair. However, it is well known that HLA allele and haplotype frequencies differ significantly between populations. We estimated high-resolution HLA-A, -B, -C, -DRB1 haplotype and allele frequencies of donors within DKMS German Bone Marrow Donor Center with parentage from 17 different countries: Turkey, Poland, Italy, Russian Federation, Croatia, Greece, Austria, Kazakhstan, France, The Netherlands, Republic of China, Romania, Portugal, USA, Spain, United Kingdom and Bosnia and Herzegovina. 5-locus haplotypes including HLA-DQB1 are presented for Turkey, Poland, Italy and Russian Federation. We calculated linkage disequilibria for each sample. Genetic distances between included countries could be shown to reflect geography. We further demonstrate how genetic differences between populations are reflected in matching probabilities of recipient/donor pairs and how they influence the search for unrelated donors as well as strategic donor center typings. Copyright © 2012 American Society for Histocompatibility and Immunogenetics. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The Role of Auditory and Visual Speech in Word Learning at 18 Months and in Adulthood

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Havy, Mélanie; Foroud, Afra; Fais, Laurel; Werker, Janet F.

2017-01-01

Visual information influences speech perception in both infants and adults. It is still unknown whether lexical representations are multisensory. To address this question, we exposed 18-month-old infants (n = 32) and adults (n = 32) to new word-object pairings: Participants either heard the acoustic form of the words or saw the talking face in…

The interaction of short-term and long-term memory in phonetic category formation

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Harnsberger, James D.

2002-05-01

This study examined the role that short-term memory capacity plays in the relationship between novel stimuli (e.g., non-native speech sounds, native nonsense words) and phonetic categories in long-term memory. Thirty native speakers of American English were administered five tests: categorial AXB discrimination using nasal consonants from Malayalam; categorial identification, also using Malayalam nasals, which measured the influence of phonetic categories in long-term memory; digit span; nonword span, a short-term memory measure mediated by phonetic categories in long-term memory; and paired-associate word learning (word-word and word-nonword pairs). The results showed that almost all measures were significantly correlated with one another. The strongest predictor for the discrimination and word-nonword learning results was nonword (r=+0.62) and digit span (r=+0.51), respectively. When the identification test results were partialed out, only nonword span significantly correlated with discrimination. The results show a strong influence of short-term memory capacity on the encoding of phonetic detail within phonetic categories and suggest that long-term memory representations regulate the capacity of short-term memory to preserve information for subsequent encoding. The results of this study will also be discussed with regards to resolving the tension between episodic and abstract models of phonetic category structure.

Conceptual Similarity Promotes Generalization of Higher Order Fear Learning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dunsmoor, Joseph E.; White, Allison J.; LaBar, Kevin S.

2011-01-01

We tested the hypothesis that conceptual similarity promotes generalization of conditioned fear. Using a sensory preconditioning procedure, three groups of subjects learned an association between two cues that were conceptually similar, unrelated, or mismatched. Next, one of the cues was paired with a shock. The other cue was then reintroduced to…

Pragmatically Framed Cross-Situational Noun Learning Using Computational Reinforcement Models

PubMed Central

Najnin, Shamima; Banerjee, Bonny

2018-01-01

Cross-situational learning and social pragmatic theories are prominent mechanisms for learning word meanings (i.e., word-object pairs). In this paper, the role of reinforcement is investigated for early word-learning by an artificial agent. When exposed to a group of speakers, the agent comes to understand an initial set of vocabulary items belonging to the language used by the group. Both cross-situational learning and social pragmatic theory are taken into account. As social cues, joint attention and prosodic cues in caregiver's speech are considered. During agent-caregiver interaction, the agent selects a word from the caregiver's utterance and learns the relations between that word and the objects in its visual environment. The “novel words to novel objects” language-specific constraint is assumed for computing rewards. The models are learned by maximizing the expected reward using reinforcement learning algorithms [i.e., table-based algorithms: Q-learning, SARSA, SARSA-λ, and neural network-based algorithms: Q-learning for neural network (Q-NN), neural-fitted Q-network (NFQ), and deep Q-network (DQN)]. Neural network-based reinforcement learning models are chosen over table-based models for better generalization and quicker convergence. Simulations are carried out using mother-infant interaction CHILDES dataset for learning word-object pairings. Reinforcement is modeled in two cross-situational learning cases: (1) with joint attention (Attentional models), and (2) with joint attention and prosodic cues (Attentional-prosodic models). Attentional-prosodic models manifest superior performance to Attentional ones for the task of word-learning. The Attentional-prosodic DQN outperforms existing word-learning models for the same task. PMID:29441027

Neural integration of iconic and unrelated coverbal gestures: a functional MRI study.

PubMed

Green, Antonia; Straube, Benjamin; Weis, Susanne; Jansen, Andreas; Willmes, Klaus; Konrad, Kerstin; Kircher, Tilo

2009-10-01

Gestures are an important part of interpersonal communication, for example by illustrating physical properties of speech contents (e.g., "the ball is round"). The meaning of these so-called iconic gestures is strongly intertwined with speech. We investigated the neural correlates of the semantic integration for verbal and gestural information. Participants watched short videos of five speech and gesture conditions performed by an actor, including variation of language (familiar German vs. unfamiliar Russian), variation of gesture (iconic vs. unrelated), as well as isolated familiar language, while brain activation was measured using functional magnetic resonance imaging. For familiar speech with either of both gesture types contrasted to Russian speech-gesture pairs, activation increases were observed at the left temporo-occipital junction. Apart from this shared location, speech with iconic gestures exclusively engaged left occipital areas, whereas speech with unrelated gestures activated bilateral parietal and posterior temporal regions. Our results demonstrate that the processing of speech with speech-related versus speech-unrelated gestures occurs in two distinct but partly overlapping networks. The distinct processing streams (visual versus linguistic/spatial) are interpreted in terms of "auxiliary systems" allowing the integration of speech and gesture in the left temporo-occipital region.

Characterization of Gastric Microbiota in Twins.

PubMed

Dong, Quanjiang; Xin, Yongning; Wang, Lili; Meng, Xinying; Yu, Xinjuan; Lu, Linlin; Xuan, Shiying

2017-02-01

Contribution of host genetic backgrounds in the development of gastric microbiota has not been clearly defined. This study was aimed to characterize the biodiversity, structure and composition of gastric microbiota among twins. A total of four pairs of twins and eight unrelated individuals were enrolled in the study. Antral biopsies were obtained during endoscopy. The bacterial 16S rRNA gene was amplified and pyrosequenced. Sequences were analyzed for the composition, structure, and α and β diversities of gastric microbiota. Proteobacteria, Firmicutes, Bacteroidetes, Actinobacteria, and Fusobacteria were the most predominant phyla of gastric microbiota. Each individual, twins as well as unrelated individuals, harbored a microbiota of distinct composition. There was no evidence of additional similarity in the richness and evenness of gastric microbiota among co-twins as compared to unrelated individuals. Calculations of θ YC and PCoA demonstrated that the structure similarity of gastric microbial community between co-twins did not increase compared to unrelated individuals. In contrast, the structure of microbiota was altered enormously by Helicobacter pylori infection. These results suggest that host genetic backgrounds had little effect in shaping the gastric microbiota. This property of gastric microbiota could facilitate the studies discerning the role of microbiota from genetic grounds in the pathogenesis.

Unrelated secondary reproductives in the neotropical termite Silvestritermes euamignathus (Isoptera: Termitidae)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Haifig, Ives; Vargo, Edward L.; Labadie, Paul; Costa-Leonardo, Ana Maria

2016-02-01

A termite colony is usually founded by a pair of alates, the primary reproductives, which produce all the nestmates. In some species, secondary reproductives appear to either replace the primaries or supplement colony reproduction. In termites, secondary reproductives are generally ergatoids derived from workers or nymphoids derived from nymphs. Silvestritermes euamignathus is a termite species that forms multiple nymphoid reproductives, and to date it was hypothesized that these secondary reproductives were the progeny of the primary founding reproductives. We developed markers for 12 microsatellite loci and used COI mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) to genotype 59 nymphoid neotenics found in a colony of S. euamignathus to test this hypothesis. Our results showed that nymphoids of S. euamignathus are not all siblings. The microsatellite analysis suggests that the secondary reproductives derived from a minimum of four different pairs of reproductives belonging to at least two different matrilines. This is the first record of non-sibling secondary reproductives occupying the same nest in a higher termite. These unrelated reproductives might be the result of either pleometrotic colony foundation or colony fusion.

Differential processing of thematic and categorical conceptual relations in spoken word production.

PubMed

de Zubicaray, Greig I; Hansen, Samuel; McMahon, Katie L

2013-02-01

Studies of semantic context effects in spoken word production have typically distinguished between categorical (or taxonomic) and associative relations. However, associates tend to confound semantic features or morphological representations, such as whole-part relations and compounds (e.g., BOAT-anchor, BEE-hive). Using a picture-word interference paradigm and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we manipulated categorical (COW-rat) and thematic (COW-pasture) TARGET-distractor relations in a balanced design, finding interference and facilitation effects on naming latencies, respectively, as well as differential patterns of brain activation compared with an unrelated distractor condition. While both types of distractor relation activated the middle portion of the left middle temporal gyrus (MTG) consistent with retrieval of conceptual or lexical representations, categorical relations involved additional activation of posterior left MTG, consistent with retrieval of a lexical cohort. Thematic relations involved additional activation of the left angular gyrus. These results converge with recent lesion evidence implicating the left inferior parietal lobe in processing thematic relations and may indicate a potential role for this region during spoken word production. 2013 APA, all rights reserved

The Potential of Automatic Word Comparison for Historical Linguistics.

PubMed

List, Johann-Mattis; Greenhill, Simon J; Gray, Russell D

2017-01-01

The amount of data from languages spoken all over the world is rapidly increasing. Traditional manual methods in historical linguistics need to face the challenges brought by this influx of data. Automatic approaches to word comparison could provide invaluable help to pre-analyze data which can be later enhanced by experts. In this way, computational approaches can take care of the repetitive and schematic tasks leaving experts to concentrate on answering interesting questions. Here we test the potential of automatic methods to detect etymologically related words (cognates) in cross-linguistic data. Using a newly compiled database of expert cognate judgments across five different language families, we compare how well different automatic approaches distinguish related from unrelated words. Our results show that automatic methods can identify cognates with a very high degree of accuracy, reaching 89% for the best-performing method Infomap. We identify the specific strengths and weaknesses of these different methods and point to major challenges for future approaches. Current automatic approaches for cognate detection-although not perfect-could become an important component of future research in historical linguistics.

The Potential of Automatic Word Comparison for Historical Linguistics

PubMed Central

Greenhill, Simon J.; Gray, Russell D.

2017-01-01

The amount of data from languages spoken all over the world is rapidly increasing. Traditional manual methods in historical linguistics need to face the challenges brought by this influx of data. Automatic approaches to word comparison could provide invaluable help to pre-analyze data which can be later enhanced by experts. In this way, computational approaches can take care of the repetitive and schematic tasks leaving experts to concentrate on answering interesting questions. Here we test the potential of automatic methods to detect etymologically related words (cognates) in cross-linguistic data. Using a newly compiled database of expert cognate judgments across five different language families, we compare how well different automatic approaches distinguish related from unrelated words. Our results show that automatic methods can identify cognates with a very high degree of accuracy, reaching 89% for the best-performing method Infomap. We identify the specific strengths and weaknesses of these different methods and point to major challenges for future approaches. Current automatic approaches for cognate detection—although not perfect—could become an important component of future research in historical linguistics. PMID:28129337