Interhemispheric stroop-like interference in number comparison: Evidence for strong interhemispheric integration of semantic number information.

Three experiments investigated interhemispheric interactions in number comparison using the interhemispheric Stroop-like paradigm (E. Ratinckx, M. Brysbaert, & B. Reynvoet, 2001). In all experiments, a target was presented in 1 visual field simultaneously with a distractor in the other visual field. In Experiment 1, both target and distractor were of the same modality (Arabic digits), whereas in Experiment 2, target and distractor were of different modalities (Arabic digits and word numerals). In Experiment 3, the interhemispheric Stroop-like task of Experiment 1 was combined with intrahemispheric conditions to evaluate the strength of the interhemispheric interactions. Overall, the results point to strong interhemispheric integration during semantic access and response preparation with very weak lateralization of the semantic number system. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Conceptual-motor compatibility and homonegativity: Approaching and avoiding words associated with homosexuality.

Two studies explored conceptual-motor compatibility effects underlying attitudes toward gay men and lesbian women. In Study 1, we tested if attitudes toward gay men and lesbian women would influence whether or not participants chose to engage in, and how quickly they engaged in, approach or avoidance motor movements. Participants responded to homosexual and heterosexual words on a computer screen by choosing to push (avoidance movement) or pull (approach movement) a computer mouse. Findings indicated that participants who were high in prejudice chose to make more prejudice-compatible motor responses than did participants who were low in prejudice. In Study 2, participants were randomly assigned to a prejudice-compatible or prejudice-incompatible motor movements condition. Results indicated that highly prejudiced participants were faster to complete prejudice-compatible motor movements than were low prejudice participants. Implications for implicit attitudes and measuring prejudice toward gay men and lesbian women are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

On the Development of the Mental Number Line: More, Less, or Never Holistic With Increasing Age?

Magnitude is assumed to be represented along a holistic mental number line in adults. However, the authors recently observed a unit-decade compatibility effect for 2-digit numbers that is inconsistent with this "holisticness" assumption (H.-C. Nuerk, U. Weger, & K. Willmes, 2001). This study used the compatibility effect to examine whether the mental number line representation of magnitude changes toward greater or less holisticness in children from Grades 2-5. The results indicate that decades and units of 2-digit numbers are processed separately rather than holistically from Grade 2 on. However, this separate processing seems to develop from a more sequential (left-to-right) to a more parallel processing mode. Moreover, children may use different strategies depending on task demands. The results are interpreted in the framework of Siegler's overlapping waves model. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Beyond fast mapping: Young children's extensions of novel words and novel facts.

L. Markson and P. Bloom (1997) concluded that there was evidence against a dedicated system for word learning on the basis of their finding that children remembered a novel word and a novel fact equally well. However, a word-learning system involves more than recognition memory; it must also provide a means to guide the extension of words to additional exemplars, and words and facts may differ with regard to extendibility. Two studies are reported in which 2–4-year-old children learned novel words and novel facts for unfamiliar objects and then were asked to extend the words and facts to additional exemplars of the training objects. In both studies, children extended the novel word to significantly more category members than they extended the novel fact. The results show that by 2 years of age, children honor the necessary extendibility of novel count nouns but are uncertain about the extendibility of arbitrary facts. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Equal homophonic priming with words and pseudohomophones.

The hypothesis that the earliest representations in visual processing of print are activated word-specific units leads to the expectation that homophonic priming (HP) should be greater for word pairs than pseudohomophone pairs. Ten experiments with naming disconfirmed this hypothesis. At interstimulus intervals of 0, 129, 516, and 930 ms, HP for pseudohomophones (e.g., HOEZ-hoze vs. HOGZ-hoze) equaled HP for words (e.g., KNOWS-nose vs. KNEES-nose). The complementary finding of negative HP with pseudohomophones relative to positive HP with words was found in an additional investigation of lexical decision. The results confirm a critical early stage in visual word recognition, in which words are represented in purely phonological form, and implicate equal speeds in dual-route models for nonlexical and lexical processing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Conscious and preconscious influences on recall: Another example of the restricting effects of awareness.

2 groups of 34 and 36 Ss were asked to recall a list of 27 words—10 associates to the word cheese, 10 unrelated words matched for frequency, 6 buffer words, and the stimulus word "Cheese," embedded in the center of the list. The pattern of recall was studied (a) before "Cheese" was recalled, (b) after "Cheese" was recalled, and (c) when "Cheese" was forgotten. As predicted, a significantly greater number of associates than control words were recalled before "Cheese" was recalled; after "Cheese" was recalled and when "Cheese" was forgotten, an equal number of associates and control words were recalled. Findings were substantially the same in the 2 groups of Ss. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Formation of new associations to words selected on the basis of reaction-time-GSR combinations.

Word association reaction time and GSR are used to separate five letter words of known familiarity into four groups; words associated with either avoidance habits or disruptive emotional states, unfamiliar words, moderately familiar words connected with nondisruptive emotional states, and familiar and non emotional words. The hypothesis that the ease of forming new associations to these words should inversely reflect the amount of emotionality attached to the words is supported; however, no differences between the four categories of words appeared, probably due to contamination between the categories. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Remediating number combination and word problem deficits among students with mathematics difficulties: A randomized control trial.

The purposes of this study were to assess the efficacy of remedial tutoring for 3rd graders with mathematics difficulty, to investigate whether tutoring is differentially efficacious depending on students’ math difficulty status (mathematics difficulty alone vs. mathematics plus reading difficulty), to explore transfer from number combination (NC) remediation, and to examine the transportability of the tutoring protocols. At 2 sites, 133 students were stratified on mathematics difficulty status and site and then randomly assigned to 3 conditions: control (no tutoring), tutoring on automatic retrieval of NCs (i.e., Math Flash), or tutoring on word problems with attention to the foundational skills of NCs, procedural calculations, and algebra (i.e., Pirate Math). Tutoring occurred for 16 weeks, 3 sessions per week and 20–30 min per session. Math Flash enhanced fluency with NCs with transfer to procedural computation but without transfer to algebra or word problems. Pirate Math enhanced word problem skill as well as fluency with NCs, procedural computation, and algebra. Tutoring was not differentially efficacious as a function of students’ mathematics difficulty status. The tutoring protocols proved transportable across sites. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Ideomotor compatibility in the psychological refractory period effect: 29 years of oversimplification.

Four experiments examined whether the psychological refractory period (PRP) effect can be eliminated with ideomotor compatible (IM) but not stimulus-response compatible (SR) tasks, as reported by A. G. Greenwald and H. G. Shulman (1973). Their tasks were used: a left or right movement to a left- or right-pointing arrow (IM) or to the word left or right (SR) for Task 1; saying "A" or "B" (IM) or "1" or "2" (SR) to an auditory A or B for Task 2. The stimulus onset asynchronies were 0, 100, 200, 300, 500, and 1,000 ms in Experiment 1, and only 0, 100, 200, and 1,000 ms in Experiments 2-4. The arrow was in the center of the screen in Experiments 1-3 and to the left or right in Experiment 4. As in Greenwald and Shulman's Experiment 2, the instructions stated that most often the 2 stimuli would be presented simultaneously. A PRP effect was obtained in all conditions, most likely because response-selection decisions are required even for IM tasks. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The activation of embedded words in spoken word identification is robust but constrained: Evidence from the picture-word interference paradigm.

Three picture-word interference (PWI) experiments assessed the extent to which embedded subset words are activated during the identification of spoken superset words (e.g., bone in trombone). Participants named aloud pictures (e.g., brain) while spoken distractors were presented. In the critical condition, superset distractors contained a semantically related embedded word (e.g., charm, which contains arm). In Experiment 1, supersets and subsets differed by one phoneme (charm/arm) and interference effects were obtained when subsets were embedded at the beginning or end of the superset. In Experiment 2, the subsets and supersets differed by three or more phonemes. Interference was obtained for final embedded words aligned with a syllable boundary of the superset (acrobat/bat) but not otherwise (pioneer/ear). In Experiment 3, the size of these PWI effects was compared to the effects obtained with the subset words presented in isolation. The implication of these findings for theories of speech perception and production are discussed. We also consider the possible advantages of the PWI task over cross-modal priming and “visual-world” procedures when studying these issues. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Why children learn color and size words so differently: Evidence from adults' learning of artificial terms.

An adult simulation study examined why children's learning of color and size terms follow different developmental patterns, one in which word comprehension precedes success in nonlinguistic matching tasks versus one in which matching precedes word comprehension. In 4 experiments, adults learned artificial labels for values on novel dimensions. Training mimicked that characteristic for children learning either color words or size words. The results suggest that the learning trajectories arise from the different frames in which different dimensions are trained: Using a comparison (size-like) training regimen helps learners pick out the relevant dimension, and using a categorization (color-like) training regimen helps the learner correctly comprehend and produce dimension terms. The results indicate that the training regimen, not the meanings of the terms or the specific dimensions, determines the pattern of learning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A reason to rhyme: Phonological and semantic influences on lexical access.

During on-line language production, speakers rapidly select a sequence of words to express their desired meaning. The current study examines whether this lexical selection is also dependent on the existing activation of surface properties of the words. Such surface properties clearly matter in various forms of wordplay, including poetry and musical lyrics. The experiments in this article explore whether language processing more generally is sensitive to these properties. Two experiments examined the interaction between phonological and semantic features for written and verbal productions. In Experiment 1, participants were given printed sentences with a missing word, and were asked to generate reasonable completions. The completions reflected both the semantic and the surface features of the preceding context. In Experiment 2, listeners heard sentence contexts, and were asked to rapidly produce a word to complete the utterance. These spontaneous completions again incorporated surface features activated by the context. The results suggest that lexical access in naturalistic language processing is influenced by an interaction between the surface and semantic features of language. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The negative compatibility effect: Unconscious inhibition influences reaction time and response selection.

In the negative compatibility effect (NCE) a masked prime arrow, pointing left or right, is followed by an unmasked (visible) target arrow. The task is to press the left or right switch corresponding to the visible arrow. Surprisingly, reaction time is longer (slowed) when the prime and target indicate the same, rather than different, responses. By contrast, the effect of an unmasked prime is positive- opposite to the NCE. This indicates that the NCE is not attributable to incomplete masking; to the extent that the prime is visible, the NCE would be reduced by this positive influence. Thus, the NCE appears to result from unconscious processing of the prime and, in that sense, may be a form of subliminal perception. Additional findings show that the NCE is due to inhibition of a response code, that it is automatic in that it occurs even if the information in the prime and target could be ignored, and that it also influences response selection. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Anxiety and the variability of word associates.

15 Ss who scored high on the Taylor MA scale and 15 Ss who scored low on the MA scale were given a word associate task. The highly anxious Ss tended to have sets of word associates lower in intersubject variability than the nonanxious Ss for stimulus words that elicited sets of word associates that are low in variability. Highly anxious Ss tended to give sets of word associates higher in intersubject variability than nonanxious Ss for stimulus words that elicited sets of word associates that are high in intersubject variability. A 2nd experiment reports data indicating a relationship between inter- and intrasubject variability of word associates. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Comparison of opportunities to respond within a drill model when rehearsing sight words with a child with mental retardation.

Sight-word instruction can improve functioning with various daily, recreational, and work-related tasks among children with moderate to severe disabilities. Previous research has demonstrated the effectiveness of drill methods to teach sight words if the model contains at least 50% known items, which would also increase the number of opportunities to respond (OTR) to the target item. The current study taught five sight words each day to a child diagnosed as moderately mentally retarded using high OTR and moderate OTR conditions and a drill ratio of 10% unknown to 90% known. Results suggested that the high OTR condition led to better retention than the moderate OTR despite containing an equal ratio of unknown to known items between them. Implications for practicing school psychologists and future research are included. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

It's a sign of the kind: Gestures and words guide infants' inductive inferences.

The role of words and gestures in guiding infants' inductive inferences about nonobvious properties was examined. One hundred seventy-two 14-month-olds and 22-month-olds were presented with novel target objects followed by test objects that varied in similarity to the target. Objects were introduced with a novel word or a novel gesture or with no label. When target and test objects were highly similar in shape, both 14- and 22-month-olds inferred that these objects shared a nonobvious property, regardless of whether the objects were labeled with a word or a gesture or with no label. When objects were labeled with the same word, both 14- and 22-month-olds generalized the nonobvious properties to objects that shared minimal perceptual similarity. Finally, when objects were labeled with the same gesture, 14-month-olds, but not 22-month-olds, generalized the nonobvious properties to objects that shared minimal perceptual similarity. These results indicate that 14-month-olds possess a more generalized symbolic system as they will rely on both words and gestures to guide their inferences. By 22-months of age, infants treat words as a privileged referential form when making inductive inferences. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Automatic vigilance for negative words in lexical decision and naming: Comment on Larsen, Mercer, and Balota (2006).

An automatic vigilance hypothesis states that humans preferentially attend to negative stimuli, and this attention to negative valence disrupts the processing of other stimulus properties. Thus, negative words typically elicit slower color naming, word naming, and lexical decisions than neutral or positive words. Larsen, Mercer, and Balota (see record 2006-04603-006) analyzed the stimuli from 32 published studies, and they found that word valence was confounded with several lexical factors known to affect word recognition. Indeed, with these lexical factors covaried out, Larsen et al. found no evidence of automatic vigilance. The authors report a more sensitive analysis of 1011 words. Results revealed a small but reliable valence effect, such that negative words (e.g., "shark") elicit slower lexical decisions and naming than positive words (e.g., "beach"). Moreover, the relation between valence and recognition was categorical rather than linear; the extremity of a word's valence did not affect its recognition. This valence effect was not attributable to word length, frequency, orthographic neighborhood size, contextual diversity, first phoneme, or arousal. Thus, the present analysis provides the most powerful demonstration of automatic vigilance to date. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Complex mental arithmetic: The contribution of the number sense.

Young adults were asked to solve two-digit addition problems and to say aloud the result of each calculation step to allow the identification of computation strategies. We manipulated the position of the largest addend (e.g., 25 + 48 vs. 48 + 25) to assess whether strategies are modulated by magnitude characteristics. With some strategies, participants demonstrated a clear preference to take the largest addend as the starting point for the calculation. Hence, rather than applying strategies in an inflexible manner, participants evaluated and compared the operands before proceeding to calculation. Further, mathematically skilled participants tended to use those magnitude-based strategies more often than less skilled ones. The findings demonstrate that magnitude information plays a role in complex arithmetic by guiding the process of strategy selection, and possibly more so for mathematically skilled participants. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Eye movements and lexical ambiguity resolution: Investigating the subordinate-bias effect.

Recent debates on lexical ambiguity resolution have centered on the subordinate-bias effect, in which reading time is longer on a biased ambiguous word in a subordinate-biasing context than on a control word. The nature of the control word--namely, whether it matched the frequency of the ambiguous word's overall word form or its contextually instantiated word meaning (a higher or lower frequency word, respectively)--was examined. In addition, contexts that were singularly supportive of the ambiguous word's subordinate meaning were used. Eye movements were recorded as participants read contextually biasing passages that contained an ambiguous word target or a word-form or word-meaning control. A comparison of fixation times on the 2 control words revealed a significant effect of word frequency. Fixation times on the ambiguous word generally fell between those on the 2 controls and were significantly different than both. Results are discussed in relation to the reordered access model, in which both meaning frequency and prior context affect access procedures. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Two versions of the negative compatibility effect: Comment on Lleras and Enns (2004).

A. Lleras and J. T. Enns (see record 2004-21166-001) demonstrated a negative influence of a masked arrow that is attributable to the perceptual interaction between the arrow and the mask when these have properties in common (in this case diagonal lines). Although the present analysis is in agreement that this type of perceptual interaction can occur, it also demonstrates that this is not the only way a masked arrow can produce a negative influence. The most critical finding is that a negative influence occurred even when the arrow and mask did not share the common properties that would be needed for this type of perceptual interaction. This illustrates the version of the negative compatibility effect that was studied by S. T. Klapp and L. B. Hinkley (2002) and others. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)