Interaction entre facteurs phonologiques et sémantiques dans un épreuve de catégorisation lexicale.

Studied interactions between semantic class (persons vs inanimate objects) and type of initial phoneme (consonant vs vowel) in a lexical categorization task involving rapid identification of the grammatical gender (masculine vs feminine) of French nouns. Human Ss: 40 normal male and female Canadian adults (aged 17–32 yrs) (university students) (native French speakers) (Exp 1). 40 normal male and female Canadian adults (aged 17–47 yrs) (university students) (native French speakers) (Exp 2). In both experiments, Ss were asked to categorize animate and inanimate nouns beginning with consonants or vowels according to their grammatical gender. In 1 experimental condition, Ss used the labels "feminine" and "masculine" to express their choice of gender. In another condition, Ss used the indefinite feminine article ("une") or the indefinite masculine article ("un") to express their choice of gender. In Exp 1, animate and inanimate nouns were mixed together in the experimental list. In Exp 2, animate and inanimate nouns were presented in semantically homogeneous blocks. The speed and error rates of Ss' categorization performances were determined. (English abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Recherches sur la morphologie lexicale: Les transformations relatives au nombre.

Studied inflections relative to the number of common nouns in 2 recognition experiments based on models of morphological patterning. In Exp I the 3 processes of pluralization in French were employed in a list of 108 nouns. Ss were asked to recognize and recall singular and plural words on the basis of the phonetic-lexical endings. In Exp II the same nouns, number markers, and combinations were used with Ss being asked if they were the same, another form of the same word, or an entirely different word. Results were assessed by age and school level variables. It is concluded that short-term recall uses episodic memory function based on perception of characteristics, such as graphic or phonetic, of words presented, while number processing occurs at different processing levels. (English abstract) (20 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

On the relation between feeling of knowing and lexical decision: Persistent subthreshold activation or topic familiarity?

Exp 1 replicated I. Yaniv and D. E. Meyer's (1987) finding that lexical decision and episodic recognition performance was better for words previously yielding high-accessibility levels (a combination of feeling-of-knowing and tip-of-the-tongue ratings) in comparison with those yielding low-accessibility levels in a rare word definition task. Exp 2 yielded the same pattern even though lexical decisions preceded accessibility estimates by a full week. Exp 3 dismissed the possibility that the Exp 2 results may have been due to a long-term influence from the lexical decision task to the rare word judgment task. These results support a model in which Ss (1) retrieve topic familiarity information in making accessibility estimates in the rare word definition task and (2) use this information to modulate lexical decision performance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The time course of braille word recognition.

Skilled blind readers read French nouns with the uniqueness point in different locations, presented in unabbreviated braille, and either pronounced each item (Exp 1) or classified it as to gender (Exps 1–3). As in previous studies with spoken words, effects of uniqueness point location on recognition reaction time (RT) were taken as demonstrating on-line lexical access. For braille words, significant effects were obtained in Exp 1 in the 2 tasks. In Exp 2, blind Ss demonstrated comparable relative uniqueness point effects for gender classification of braille and of spoken words, showing that on-line lexical access is not specific to speech. Exp 3 showed that the effect of uniqueness point location is limited to the higher frequency words. Finally, mean finger scanning speed did not differ between the pre- and post-uniqueness point regions of the words. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Attentional resource demands of visual word recognition in naming and lexical decisions.

Attentional demands of lexical access were assessed with dual-task methodology. Ss performed an auditory probe task alone (single-task) or combined (dual-task) with either a lexical decision or a naming task. In Exp 1, probe performance showed a decrement from single- to dual-task conditions during recognition of words in both lexical decision and naming tasks. In addition, decrements of probe performance were larger during processing of low-frequency compared with high-frequency words in both of the word recognition tasks. Exp 2 showed that the time course of frequency-sensitive demands was similar across lexical decision and naming tasks and that attention is required early in the word recognition sequence. The results support the assumption that lexical access is both frequency sensitive and attention demanding. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Phonemic storage of concrete and abstract words with auditory presentation.

Conducted 2 experiments in which Ss' recognition memory for aurally presented concrete and abstract nouns was tested. In Exp I, 56 undergraduates heard study and test lists of 20 concrete and abstract nouns. The test list contained the same 20 nouns plus 20 new nouns which rhymed or did not rhyme with the study stimuli. In Exp II, 56 new undergraduates heard the same lists as in Exp I, but also heard lists in which concrete distractors rhymed with abstract study items and vice versa. Results show that false recognition depends upon the phonemic similarity of distractors to study words, and that the effect is independent of the concreteness of the words or whether the distractor matches the study word in concreteness. While the results may be inconsistent with aspects of the dual process theory of verbal coding, they may indicate that learners use phonemic attributes for recognition when imaginal attributes are insufficient. The appearance of an overall effect of concreteness on false alarms indicates that auditory presentation can produce imagery codes. (French summary) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effects of "neighborhood size" in reading and lexical decision.

Assessed the effects of neighborhood size ("N")—the number of words differing from a target word by exactly 1 letter (i.e., "neighbors")—on word identification. In Exps 1 and 2, the frequency of the highest frequency neighbor was equated, and N had opposite effects in lexical decision and reading. In Exp 1, a larger N facilitated lexical decision judgments, whereas in Experiment 2, a larger N had an inhibitory effect on reading sentences that contained the words of Exp 1. Moreover, a significant inhibitory effect in Exp 2 that was due to a larger N appeared on gaze duration on the target word, and there was no hint of facilitation on the measures of reading that tap the earliest processing of a word. In Exp 3, the number of higher frequency neighbors was equated for the high-N and low-N words, and a larger N caused target words to be skipped significantly more and produced inhibitory effects later in reading, some of which were plausibly due to misidentification of the target word when skipped. Regression analyses indicated that, in reading, increasing the number of higher frequency neighbors had a clear inhibitory effect on word identification and that increasing the number of lower frequency neighbors may have a weak facilitative effect on word identification. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effect of backward priming on word recognition in single-word and sentence contexts.

Backward priming was investigated under conditions similar to those used in lexical ambiguity research. Ss received prime-target word pairs that were associated either unidirectionally (BABY-STORK) or bidirectionally (BABY-CRY). In Exp 1, targets were presented 500 ms following the onset of visual primes, and Ss made naming or lexical decision responses to the targets. Forward priming was obtained in all conditions, while backward priming occurred only with lexical decision. In Exp 2, primes were presented auditorily, either in isolation or in a sentence. Targets followed the offset of the primes either immediately or after 200 ms. Backward priming occurred with both response tasks, but only when the prime was an isolated word. Backward priming decreased over time with the naming task, but not with lexical decision. These results suggest that the locus of the backward priming effect is different for the 2 response tasks. Results support a context-independent view of lexical access. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A mnemonic based on arranging words on visual patterns.

Conducted 3 experiments with 264 undergraduates to demonstrate that arranging word lists on distinctive visual patterns results in better recall performance than does presenting the same word lists on a pattern that is always the same. In Exp I, lists of concrete nouns placed on different visual patterns were recalled better than those lists placed on the same pattern. This was true immediately after learning and 1 wk later. In Exp II, abstract terms taken from an introductory textbook in psychology were arranged on the same or on different drawings. When placed on the different drawings, the words were better learned, and what was learned was better retained in memory for 1 wk. In Exp III, both visual-pattern mnemonic aids and story mnemonic aids were provided to Ss for different lists. The story mnemonic was found to be superior. Possible reasons why the spatial-arrangement mnemonic and story mnemonic are effective are discussed. One important factor seems to be the discriminability among the representations of the word lists in memory. By placing words on distinctive visual patterns, this discriminability can be increased and recall performance can be enhanced. (23 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Concreteness-dependent associative priming: Separate lexical organization for concrete and abstract words.

Four experiments used associated, unrelated, and neutral ({blank}–word) pairs that varied on prime and target concreteness. In Experiment 1, associated targets were named faster than neutral targets when primes and targets were homogeneous for concreteness (i.e., concrete–concrete or abstract–abstract), but not when they were heterogeneous (i.e., concrete–abstract or abstract–concrete). Experiments 2 and 3, using lexical decision, showed priming for all pairs irrespective of prime and target concreteness. In Experiment 4, the prime was presented for 16.7 ms, followed immediately by a 168-ms random letter mask. Lexical decision times showed priming similar to that in Experiment 1. If priming in Experiments 1 and 4 reflected lexical processes, whereas priming in Experiments 2 and 3 entailed postlexical processes, then lexical processes may be functionally distinct for concrete versus abstract words. These findings are more consistent with dual-coding than common-coding explanations of concreteness. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Against the lexical representation of idioms.

Investigated whether essentially similar processes are involved in the comprehension of idioms and literal phrases, and whether additional knowledge necessary for the conventional interpretation of idioms is used after lexical access. In 3 experiments, 134 undergraduates were required to make speeded acceptability judgments about idiomatic, literal, and nonsense phrases. In Exp 1, Ss responded faster to idioms and everyday phrases than their respective controls and made faster responses to idioms with high, rather than low, metaphoric transparency. In Exp 2, Ss were equally fast classifying idioms beginning with high and low frequency words, and their response latencies were affected more by changes in the length of control phrases than of idioms. In Exp 3, the interpolation of nonsense words into phrases to force word-by-word processing did not abolish the processing time advantage for idioms over control phrases. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Orienting attention within visual fields: How efficient is interhemispheric transfer?

Five experiments, with 54 undergraduates, examined the effect of attentional orienting on lexical decisions within visual half-fields. In Exp I, following assessment of baseline performance, Ss were instructed to improve performance to the right or left of the fixation point. In Exp II, trials were run in blocks with all items to 1 side of the fixation point. In Exp III, completely valid position indicators as to the location of the next item to be shown were presented prior to the stimulus item. In Exp IV, to examine practice effects, no instructions or cuing were given to Ss. In Exp V, Ss were urged to improve performance, but with no instructions as to location. Findings show that consistent visual field differences in lexical decision performance were present even when Ss were informed of the spatial location of the next stimulus item and that lexical decision information initially input to 1 cerebral hemisphere was primarily processed in that hemisphere. Interhemispheric transfer of this type of language information seems to be done primarily as the end product of a cognitive process. (29 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Implicit learning of color-word associations using a Stroop paradigm.

Asked whether implicit learning occurs for novel nonverbal associations by presenting Ss with color names printed in incongruent colors; Ss were asked to name the color in which the word was printed. In Exp 1, each of 7 color words were associated with the same incongruent color across 6 blocks of trials, and then the color–word associations were abruptly changed. Both control Ss and patients with amnesia reduced their color-naming times across the 1st 6 trial blocks, and naming times increased when the color–word associations were changed. In Exp 2, similar results were obtained when neutral words were associated with colors. In Exp 3, it was found that naming times were not disrupted when an irrelevant dimension (typecase) was changed. Finally, in Exp 4, it was found that the effect persisted across a 5-min delay. These studies provide evidence that implicit learning occurs for nonverbal associations and is independent of the brain structures damaged in amnesia. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Associative learning of abstract and concrete nouns and their subject-drawn pictorial representations.

Conducted 2 experiments to examine undergraduates' associative learning and pictorial representations of 48 concrete and 48 abstract noun pairs. In Exp. I, 24 Ss drew their own pictures of each noun. In Exp. II, another 24 Ss chose S-drawings that best represented their subjective meaning of the word referents. These Ss also received pretraining in labelling the S-drawings. Results from both experiments show that recall of noun pairs was superior to recall of S-drawn picture pairs. These findings conflict with the literature on picture and word paired-associate learning. In addition, concreteness of items facilitated recall. In Exp. I, concrete S-drawings were significantly better retrieval cues than abstract S-drawings. Results are discussed in terms of Pavio's theory of verbal and imagery processes of memory. (French summary) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Development of children's understanding of the metalinguistic term word..

Designed 3 experiments to assess 24 preschool (mean age 64.63 mo), 24 1st-grade (mean age 76.25 mo), and 24 2nd grade (mean age 88.61 mo) children's understanding of the term word. A modified aural discrimination task was used in which Ss were required to discriminate word from nonword stimuli along only 1 dimension at a time. Exp I tested Ss' discrimination of words and sounds. Exp II examined word–phrase differentiation. Both of these experiments followed previous research in examining children's comprehension of the term word in relation to nouns. Exp III examined Ss' understanding of word with stimuli from a variety of form classes. Results indicate that Ss' word concepts have been underestimated in past research suggesting that young children lack an adequate word concept: although preschool Ss did not understand the term properly, by 1st grade word was understood. These experiments also show that Ss benefited from brief training in which they were taught to attach the metalinguistic label word to their developing concept of the word as a unit of spoken language. (38 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of context on the immediate interpretation of unambiguous nouns.

Effects of prior sentential context on the interpretation of unambiguous nouns were investigated in 2 cross-modal priming experiments. Exp 1 showed that a prior priming context affects word interpretation during lexical access by facilitating the recovery of contextually relevant aspects of meaning and inhibiting the recovery of irrelevant aspects. Exp 2 showed that lexical decision on a visual word related to an aspect of meaning of an unambiguous noun is facilitated only by a sentential context containing the noun and priming that aspect. Such facilitation occurs neither when the unambiguous noun is replaced by a substitute noun in the same sentential context, nor when the unambiguous noun occurs in a sentence priming an aspect of its meaning unrelated to the visual word. Furthermore, neither of these 2 conditions produced effects on lexical decision reliably different either from each other or from a sentential context completely unrelated to the visual word. Findings argue against the context-independent model of lexical access and support the hypothesis that lexical access may be affected by prior sentential context. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Abstract word deficits in aphasia: Evidence from semantic priming.

J.G. and D.E. are nonfluent aphasic patients who appear to have selective problems with abstract words on a variety of standard tests. Such a pattern would normally be interpreted as indicating a central semantic deficit for abstract words. The authors show that this is not the case by means of a semantic priming task that tests for implicit knowledge of the meanings of abstract and concrete words. Spoken word pairs that were either abstract or concrete synonyms (e.g., street-road or luck-chance) were presented; both Ss showed priming for the abstract and concrete pairs. The researchers followed up by asking the Ss to produce definitions to spoken abstract and concrete words; these definitions were also normal. The priming and definition data suggest that the semantic representations of abstract words in these Ss were relatively unimpaired. The researchers found that the Ss have problems only with spoken abstract words in just those tasks where normal controls also have difficulty. In contrast, they clearly have deficits in reading abstract words aloud, which may be due to problems with output phonology. Implications of these data for claims concerning hemispheric differences in the representation of abstract and concrete words are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Conditional reasoning, representation, and level of abstraction.

This study examined the idea that (1) reasoning involves construction of mental representations (models) of premises and that (2) there is a developmental progression in the ability of Ss to reason with models containing concrete and abstract elements. Exp 1 found that for 13- and 16-yr-old Ss, reasoning with abstract content was more difficult than with concrete content. Younger Ss appeared to rely more on concrete representations that used real-world knowledge than on more general abstract representations. Exp 2 explored order effects in the presentation of concrete and abstract problems. Abstract followed by concrete problems led to reduced concrete-problem performance for high school students but did not affect performance for university students. These results support the hypotheses and suggest that development of formal reasoning abilities goes through 2 levels. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The time course of repetition effects for words and unfamiliar faces.

The repetition effect on reaction time to words and unfamiliar faces was examined at lags of 0, 4, and 15 items between 1st and 2nd presentations. For words, Ss made either a lexical decision or a decision based on the stimulus's structural attributes. In the lexical decision task, a significant repetition effect was found at all 3 lags for words, whereas for nonwords the effect was significant only at Lag 0. In the structural decision task, the repeated decision was facilitated for both words and nonwords only at Lag 0, despite a word superiority effect at all lags. Target faces were presented either 0, 1, or 5 times before testing. Ss made either structural discriminations (face/nonface) or recognition judgments. In the structural discrimination task, the effect of repetition was significant only at Lag 0 (regardless of the number of pretest presentations). In the recognition task, the repetition effect was longer lasting, and its magnitude increased with the number of presentations which, presumably, determined the strength of the episodic memory trace. These results are taken as showing that repetition effects, like other measures of memory, are influenced by the type of stimulus, its preexperimental history, the level to which it is processed, and the lag between the initial presentation and the test. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Episodic encoding of voice attributes and recognition memory for spoken words.

Recognition memory for spoken words was investigated with a continuous recognition memory task. Independent variables were number of intervening words (lag) between initial and subsequent presentations of a word, total number of talkers in the stimulus set, and whether words were repeated in the same voice or a different voice. In Exp 1, recognition judgments were based on word identity alone. Same-voice repetitions were recognized more quickly and accurately than different-voice repetitions at all values of lag and at all levels of talker variability. In Exp 2, recognition judgments were based on both word identity and voice identity. Ss recognized repeated voices quite accurately. Gender of the talker affected voice recognition but not item recognition. These results suggest that detailed information about a talker's voice is retained in long-term memory representations of spoken words. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)