For a psycholinguistic model of handwriting production: Testing the syllable-bigram controversy.

This study examined the theoretical controversy on the impact of syllables and bigrams in handwriting production. French children and adults wrote words on a digitizer so that we could collect data on the local, online processing of handwriting production. The words differed in the position of the lowest frequency bigram. In one condition, it coincided with the word's syllable boundary. In the other condition, it was located before the syllable boundary. The results yielded higher movement durations at the position where the low-frequency bigram coincided with the syllable boundary compared to where the low-frequency bigram appeared before the syllable boundary. Syllable-oriented strategies failed with the presence of a very low-frequency bigram within the initial syllable. Further analysis showed that children in grades 3 and 4 privileged syllable-oriented programming strategies. The production times of children in grade 4 were also affected by syllable frequency and, to a lesser extent, bigram frequency. The adults writing durations were modulated by bigram frequency. Therefore, both bigrams and syllables regulate handwriting production although the influence of bigrams was stronger in adults than children. In the light of these results, we propose a psycholinguistic model of handwriting production. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Adapting to processing demands in discourse production: The case of handwriting.

Explored the capacity requirements of discourse production via handwriting. In Exp I, writers transcribed paragraphs of technical prose under stress for speed or legibility, either as a single task or concurrently with a listening task. In Exp II, writers either transcribed technical prose or attempted to reproduce it from memory after varying amounts of study, again either as a single task or concurrently with a listening task. Instructions emphasized either handwriting or memory, so that half of the writers wrote under stress for speed or legibility of handwriting and half wrote under stress for speed or accuracy of content reproduction. Results suggest that formulation, motor-execution, and output-monitoring operations are sensitive to different variables and hence can be manipulated somewhat independently from one another, as would be expected if they constituted different stages of processing. However, contrary to the stronger hypothesis that they constitute autonomous modules, formulation and execution appear to draw on a common source of processing capacity. The rule for allocating this capacity is asymmetric, giving priority to formulation at the expense of execution when the system is loaded. All 3 sets of discourse production processes are susceptible to interference from the demands of concurrent task performance; discourse production appears to be combined with the concurrent listening task via attention switching. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Syllables and bigrams: Orthographic redundancy and syllabic units affect visual word recognition at different processing levels.

Over the last decade, there has been increasing evidence for syllabic processing during visual word recognition. If syllabic effects prove to be independent from orthographic redundancy, this would seriously challenge the ability of current computational models to account for the processing of polysyllabic words. Three experiments are presented to disentangle effects of the frequency of syllabic units and orthographic segments in lexical decision. In Experiment 1 the authors obtained an inhibitory syllable frequency effect that was unaffected by the presence or absence of a bigram trough at the syllable boundary. In Experiments 2 and 3 an inhibitory effect of initial syllable frequency but a facilitative effect of initial bigram frequency emerged when manipulating 1 of the 2 measures and controlling for the other in Spanish words starting with consonant-vowel syllables. The authors conclude that effects of syllable frequency and letter-cluster frequency are independent and arise at different processing levels of visual word recognition. Results are discussed within the framework of an interactive activation model of visual word recognition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Long-term repetition priming in spoken and written word production: Evidence for a contribution of phonology to handwriting.

Although it is relatively well established that access to orthographic codes in production tasks is possible via an autonomous link between meaning and spelling (e.g., Rapp, Benzing, & Caramazza, 1997), the relative contribution of phonology to orthographic access remains unclear. Two experiments demonstrated persistent repetition priming in spoken and written single-word responses, respectively. Two further experiments showed priming from spoken to written responses and vice versa, which is interpreted as reflecting a role of phonology in constraining orthographic access. A final experiment showed priming from spoken onto written responses even when participants engaged in articulatory suppression during writing. Overall, the results support the view that access to orthography codes is accomplished via both the autonomous link between meaning and spelling and an indirect route via phonology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Training networks of value units: A learning rule for PDP systems with nonmonotonic activation functions.

Much of the research in "New Connectionism" has studied "multiple-layer" perceptrons. Such a perceptron is a network of simple processing units, and can detect whether or not some property is true of a presented pattern. A multiple-layer perceptron has a layer of input units to which patterns are presented, as well as a layer of output units to represent an elicited response. Between these two layers are one or more layers of "hidden" processing units, which typically act as feature detectors. An important difficulty faced when dealing with such a network is the problem of credit assignment: how can the difference between the desired and observed activation in the output layer be used to change properties of "hidden" network components? The credit assignment problem needs to be solved if the network is to be trained to detect some property of interest. The generalized delta rule offers one solution to the credit assignment problem. While the generalized delta rule has provided a viable solution to the credit assignment problem, it has led to other difficulties. Processing units with monotonic activation functions cannot themselves make very sophisticated distinctions. Our approach to limiting the proliferation of hidden units has led to an important extension of the generalized delta rule. We have developed a technique to train networks with much more powerful processors. This research provides several advances to the Connectionist programme. First, we have shown how to train networks containing a new (and more powerful) kind of processing unit. Second, the use of such units reduces the number of hidden units required to make pattern discriminations. Third, our new learning rule can be used to train networks with two different kinds of processing units, which is a small but important step to the biological plausibility of connectionist networks. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A spatial frequency account of the detriment that local processing of Navon letters has on face recognition.

Five minutes of processing the local features of a Navon letter causes a detriment in subsequent face-recognition performance (Macrae & Lewis, 2002). We hypothesize a perceptual after effect explanation of this effect in which face recognition is less accurate after adapting to high-spatial frequencies at high contrasts. Five experiments were conducted in which face-recognition performance was compared after processing high-contrast Navon stimuli. The standard recognition deficit was observed for processing the local features of Navon stimuli, but not if the stimuli were blurred (Experiment 1) or if they were of lower contrast (Experiment 2). A face-recognition deficit was observed after processing small, high-contrast letters equivalent to local processing of Navon letters (Experiment 3). Experiments 4 and 5 demonstrated that recognition of bandpass-filtered faces interacted with the type of Navon processing, in which the recognition of low-pass filtered faces was better following local rather than global processing. These results suggest that the Navon effect on subsequent face recognition is a perceptual phenomenon. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The orthographic neighbourhood frequency effect in French: A letter-case manipulation study.

The neighbourhood frequency effect was investigated by a letter-case manipulation of French words presented in the go/no-go lexical decision task. Accented words were presented both in lower-case letters with written accents and upper-case letters with no written accents, two usual typographies in French. This procedure addressed the stimulus-matching problem by using intraword comparisons as some words have different orthographic neighbourhoods in the two cases. Neighbourhood frequency was varied across case change for half of the words while it was held constant for the other half. The results showed an interaction between letter-case and neighbourhood constancy, so the inhibitory neighbourhood frequency effect could not be attributed to interstimulus comparisons or to typographical change. Implications are discussed in current models of visual word recognition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

All letters are not equal: Subgraphemic texture in orthographic working memory.

A central issue in the study of reading and spelling has been to understand how the consistency or frequency of letter-sound relationships affects written language processing. We present, for the first time, evidence that the sound–spelling frequency of subgraphemic elements of words (letters within digraphs) contributes to the accuracy with which these letters are produced in spelling. We report findings from 2 studies that demonstrate that letters within digraphs display differential susceptibility to error under conditions of disruption to orthographic working memory (O-WM). In the 1st, O-WM was disrupted as a result of neurological damage; in the 2nd, O-WM disruption was produced in neurologically intact, skilled spellers under dual task conditions with a shadowing task carried out during spelling. In both studies, segments with low versus high levels of sound–letter convergence, a measure of the frequency of sublexical mappings, were more vulnerable to disruption even when factors such as letter position, consonant–vowel context, and phoneme-to-grapheme mapping probability of the digraphs were controlled. These results contribute to our understanding of the internal texture of orthographic representations, providing evidence that individual letters differ in their activation strength and, as a result, in their susceptibility to error. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Two new social science research units in industrial settings.

Recently 2 units concerned with fundamental social science research in psychology and sociology have been established in industry, one at the Bell Telephone Laboratories and the other at General Electric Company. Personnel, activities, and plans are considered for each organization. From Psyc Abstracts 36:02:2LA87H. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Tracking conceptual and semantic processing in the comprehension and production of text and discourse.

Current research on text and discourse processing has focussed on the nature of conceptual and semantic representation and processing, and the relationship between conceptual knowledge and the structure and processing of text or discourse. It is now generally recognized that discourse comprehension involves the construction of a conceptual "situation model" by a listener or reader, that is, a conceptual representation that is appropriate to the content and context of a text or discourse. Current psychological models of discourse production view discourse processing as a process of translating conceptual knowledge structures into "rhetorical" discourse structures that are appropriate to a communicative situation and setting. One important component of such translation is the construction of a conceptual situation model to be communicated to a listener or reader. A second is the construction of a propositional text base to specify precisely the semantic content to be expressed through segments of text or discourse. A third is to define a discourse organization that appropriately guides the reader in constructing a conceptual situation model from the text. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Readability of employee's letters in relation to occupational level.

The Reading Ease level (Flesch) and occupational level of the writer of 400 employee letters comprising a 10 percent sample of letters received in the General Motors "My Job Contest" were compared. "A hierarchy of mean RE scores was found to exist ranging from a mean of 54 (Fairly Difficult) for the "skilled" salary groups to a mean of 73 (Fairly Easy) for the "unskilled" hourly employees… . The results were interpreted as confirming previous readability studies of industrial communications and as providing a guide for the preparation of industrial communications." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Preparing for novel versus familiar events: Shifts in global and local processing.

Six experiments examined whether novelty versus familiarity influences global versus local processing styles. Novelty and familiarity were manipulated by either framing a task as new versus familiar or by asking participants to reflect upon novel versus familiar events prior to the task (i.e., procedural priming). In Experiments 1–3, global perception was enhanced after novelty priming or framing, whereas familiarity priming facilitated local perception relative to a control group. In Experiment 4, participants used more inclusive categories under novelty priming and narrower categories under familiarity priming. In Experiments 5–6, participants construed actions and products more abstractly when these were framed as novel as compared to familiar. These results support the construal level theory (N. Liberman & Y. Trope, 2008; Y. Trope & N. Liberman, 2003) contention that having less direct experience is associated with using higher construal levels. Implications of the findings for research on mood, processing styles, stereotypes, and consumer research are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Central bottleneck influences on the processing stages of word production.

Does producing a word slow performance of a concurrent, unrelated task? In 2 experiments, 108 participants named pictures and discriminated tones. In Experiment 1, pictures were named after cloze sentences; the durations of the word-production stages of lemma and phonological word-form selection were manipulated with high- and low-constraint cloze sentences and high- and low-frequency-name pictures, respectively. In Experiment 2, pictures were presented with simultaneous distractor words; the durations of lemma and phoneme selection were manipulated with conceptually and phonologically related distractors. All manipulations, except the phoneme-selection manipulation, delayed tone-discrimination responses as much as picture-naming responses. These results suggest that early word-production stages-lemma and phonological word-form selection-are subject to a central processing bottleneck, whereas the later stage-phoneme selection-is not. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Memory-based processing as a mechanism of automaticity in text comprehension.

A widespread theoretical assumption is that many processes involved in text comprehension are automatic, with automaticity typically defined in terms of properties (e.g., speed, effort). In contrast, the authors advocate for conceptualization of automaticity in terms of underlying cognitive mechanisms and evaluate one prominent account, the memory-based processing account, which states that one mechanism underlying automatization involves a shift from algorithm-based interpretation of stimuli to retrieval of prior interpretations of those stimuli. During practice, participants repeatedly read short stories containing novel conceptual combinations that were disambiguated with either their dominant or subordinate meaning. During transfer, the combinations were embedded in new sentences that either preserved or changed the disambiguated meaning. The primary dependent variable was reading time in the disambiguating region of target sentences. Supporting the memory-based processing account, speed-ups with practice were larger for repeated versus unrepeated items of the same type, reading times for subordinate versus dominant meanings of the combinations converged on later trials, and practiced meanings were retrieved when items appeared in a transfer context. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Second-order facial information processing in schizophrenia.

This study investigated the processing of second-order relational face information in schizophrenia. Twenty-eight schizophrenic patients and 28 controls were asked to say whether the space between the eyes was the same in 2 side-by-side faces. The 2 faces were derived from the same original face, but the spacing between the eyes was either the same or differed by various distances. The results showed that schizophrenic patients needed a space that was twice as great as controls to see a difference. The authors conclude that schizophrenic patients have a deficit in processing second-order relational face information. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Random number generation as an index of controlled processing.

Random number generation (RNG) is a functionally complex process that is highly controlled and therefore dependent on Baddeley's central executive. This study addresses this issue by investigating whether key predictions from this framework are compatible with empirical data. In Experiment 1, the effect of increasing task demands by increasing the rate of the paced generation was comprehensively examined. As expected, faster rates affected performance negatively because central resources were increasingly depleted. Next, the effects of participants' exposure were manipulated in Experiment 2 by providing increasing amounts of practice on the task. There was no improvement over 10 practice trials, suggesting that the high level of strategic control required by the task was constant and not amenable to any automatization gain with repeated exposure. Together, the results demonstrate that RNG performance is a highly controlled and demanding process sensitive to additional demands on central resources (Experiment 1) and is unaffected by repeated performance or practice (Experiment 2). These features render the easily administered RNG task an ideal and robust index of executive function that is highly suitable for repeated clinical use. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Transposed-letter effects in reading: Evidence from eye movements and parafoveal preview.

Three eye movement experiments were conducted to examine the role of letter identity and letter position during reading. Before fixating on a target word within each sentence, readers were provided with a parafoveal preview that differed in the amount of useful letter identity and letter position information it provided. In Experiments 1 and 2, previews fell into 1 of 5 conditions: (a) identical to the target word, (b) a transposition of 2 internal letters, (c) a substitution of 2 internal letters, (d) a transposition of the 2 final letters, or (e) a substitution of the 2 final letters. In Experiment 3, the authors used a further set of conditions to explore the importance of external letter positions. The findings extend previous work and demonstrate that transposed-letter effects exist in silent reading. These experiments also indicate that letter identity information can be extracted from the parafovea outside of absolute letter position from the first 5 letters of the word to the right of fixation. Finally, the results support the notion that exterior letters play important roles in visual word recognition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

高炉雷达料面测量信号处理系统改进

研制用于高温恶劣生产环境下新型冶金专用雷达.采用改进的调频连续波测量原理,提高了固体雷达料面测量的实时性.提出一种新的智能时变阈值信号处理方法,解决了因高炉内料面反射系数变化影响雷达测距精确性问题.实验室模拟仿真固粉态料面测量表明,该冶金雷达测量料面的跟踪延时在0.2 s以内,最大跟踪测量平均误差控制在0.05%.现场测试结果表明,测量平均误差0.95%,能够实时稳定地跟踪料面变化,满足高炉监控需求.     

The processing of free and bound gender-marked morphemes in speech production: Evidence from Dutch.

In many languages, the production of noun phrases requires the selection of gender-marked elements like determiners or inflectional suffixes. There is a recent debate as to whether the selection of freestanding gender-marked elements, such as determiners, follows the same processing mechanisms as the selection of bound gender-marked morphemes, such as adjective suffixes. Most of the evidence on which this debate is based relates to the gender-congruency effect in picture-word interference experiments. In the present article, the authors address this issue with a pure picture-naming task, extending previous work in German (H. Schriefers, J. D. Jescheniak, & A. Hantsch, 2005). The results of the present study on noun phrase production in Dutch show that both types of gender-marked morphemes are selected via the same basic processing mechanisms. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Temporal information processing and pitch discrimination as predictors of general intelligence.

In the present study, the relationship between performance on temporal and pitch discrimination and psychometric intelligence was investigated in a sample of 164 participants by means of an experimental dissociation paradigm. Performance on both temporal and pitch discrimination was substantially related to psychometric intelligence (r = .43 and r =.39). Regression analysis and structural equation modeling suggested that both psychophysical domains can be considered as valid predictors of psychometric intelligence. Both predictor variables contributed substantial portions of both shared and unique variance to the prediction of individual differences in psychometric intelligence. Thus, the present study yielded further evidence for a functional relationship between psychometric intelligence and temporal as well as pitch discrimination acuity. Eventually, findings are consistent with the notion that temporal discrimination - in addition to general aspects of sensory discrimination shared with pitch discrimination - reflects specific intelligence-related aspects of neural information processing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)