The gap between rod and frame influences the rod-and-frame effect with small and large inducing displays

The role of the spatial separation between the ends of a rod and a frame’s inner edge (gap) in modulating the rod-and-frame effect (RFE) has been studied here with frames subtending either large or small retinal angles. With a large frame, rod settings were always in the direction of frame tilt (direct effects) and varied inversely with gap size. With a small frame, rod settings were in the direction of frame tilt for tilts between 7.5° and 15°; with larger frame tilts, rod settings in the direction opposite that of the frame were observed (indirect effects). Increasing gap size produced a tendency toward negativity (away from frame tilt). Consequently, direct effects were larger for small gaps, while the opposite was true for indirect effects. Overall, these results point to the importance of gap size in modulating the RFE, for both large and small displays.     

GRAMMATICAL GENDER IS ON THE TIP OF ITALIAN TONGUES

Abstract— To correctly produce words, speakers must have access to three broad classes of information lexical semantics, syntax, and sound structure. The relevant information must be organized in ways that permit rapid and accurate retrieval of specific lexical targets. Current models of language production do this by a two-stage process. The first stage incorporates lexical meanings and syntax, and the second, sound structure. We used studies of the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon (i e, the condition in which a speaker cannot produce a well-known word) to evaluate this organization and in so doing, we provide the first clear experimental evidence for a lexical stage that includes syntax and is distinct from both sound structure and the conceptual correlates of syntactic features     

Local and global visual mechanisms underlying individual differences in the rod-and-frame illusion

The role of local and global visual mechanisms in individual differences in the rod-and-frame (RF) effect was investigated. Field-dependent and field-independent observers, selected on the basis of Witkin and Asch’s (1948) classical procedure, were submitted to the small RF test (Coren & Hoy, 1986). Four frame tilts and two gap sizes were used. As expected, direct effects (i.e., rod settings in the direction of frame tilt) were observed at small degrees of frame tilt, while indirect effects (i.e., rod settings in the direction opposite that of frame tilt) were observed at larger frame tilts. Fielddependent observers showed larger direct effects in the case of the small gap. Indirect effects were comparable in both field-dependent and field-independent subjects, regardless of gap size. Following the model proposed by Wenderoth and Johnstone (1987), these findings indicate that low-level visual mechanisms, responsible for local orientation interactions, have a different gain in fielddependent and field-independent individuals. In contrast, global visual mechanisms, presumably acting     

The Neural Bases of Drawing. A Meta-analysis and a Systematic Literature Review of Neurofunctional Studies in Healthy Individuals

Neuropsychology Review - Drawing is a multi-component process requiring a wide range of cognitive abilities. Several studies on patients with focal brain lesions and functional neuroimaging studies...     

Semantic and syntactic forces in noun phrase production

Three experiments investigated semantic and syntactic effects in the production of phrases in Dutch. Bilingual participants were presented with English nouns and were asked to produce an adjective + noun phrase in Dutch including the translation of the noun. In 2 experiments, the authors blocked items by either semantic category or grammatical gender. Participants performed the task slower when the target nouns were of the same semantic category than when they were from different categories and faster when the target nouns had the same gender than when they had different genders. In a final experiment, both manipulations were crossed. The authors replicated the results of the first 2 experiments, and no interaction was found. These findings suggest a feedforward flow of activation between lexico-semantic and lexico-syntactic information.     

Semantic similarity and grammatical class in naming actions

Italian speakers were asked to name pictures of actions (e.g. "bere", to drink). Pictures were presented at the same time as distracter words that were semantically related or unrelated to the picture names, and were of the same or different grammatical class (verbs or nouns). Half of the participants named the actions as verbs in citation form, the other half as verbs inflected for third person singular or plural. We found a reliable semantic interference effect. Crucially, we also observed a significant interaction between naming context and grammatical class: naming latencies were slower for verb distracters in the inflected form condition, but not in the citation form condition. The results are taken to provide evidence for the separability of semantics and grammatical class.     

Syntactic Accuracy in Sentence Production: The Case of Gender Disagreement in Italian Language-Impaired and Unimpaired Speakers

We report three experiments with language-impaired and unimpaired speakers of Italian, assessing: (1) whether nonsyntactic (both conceptual and morphophonological) information is used in encoding the syntactic structure of a sentence; and (2) whether the integration of syntactic and non-syntactic information can be differentially impaired in Broca's aphasics. In all the experiments, gender agreement errors between a noun, subject of the sentence, and a predicative adjective were induced by presenting participants with sentence fragments to complete. The first experiment assessed the role of conceptual information. The second experiment investigated whether agreement is disrupted by the presence of another noun with different gender in the subject noun phrase. In the last experiment, we assessed whether morphophonological cues are used. We found that both populations used nonsyntactic information (both conceptual and morphophonological). However, patients were disrupted to a greater extent than normals by the presence of a gender mismatching noun in the subject noun phrase. The results are discussed in terms of how information integration during production is achieved and how it can be disrupted in aphasia.     

Distinguishing Language from Thought: Experimental Evidence That Syntax Is Lexically Rather Than Conceptually Represented

It is generally assumed that syntax is represented linguistically rather than conceptually, consistent with the more general view that language and thought are coded separately. This claim is widely defended on logical grounds, but it has received little experimental support. In the present study, we asked Spanish and English speakers to make semantic and syntactic categorizations for pictures and their corresponding names. Consistent with past results, latencies to semantically categorize pictures and words were similar. The new finding is that participants were faster to make syntactic decisions for words compared with pictures, suggesting that syntactic features such as grammatical gender and the count-mass distinction are more closely linked to lexical than conceptual representations.     

Comprehension and utilisation of pointing gestures and gazing in dog–human communication in relatively complex situations

The aim of the present investigation was to study the visual communication between humans and dogs in relatively complex situations. In the present research, we have modelled more lifelike situations in contrast to previous studies which often relied on using only two potential hiding locations and direct association between the communicative signal and the signalled object. In Study 1, we have provided the dogs with four potential hiding locations, two on each side of the experimenter to see whether dogs are able to choose the correct location based on the pointing gesture. In Study 2, dogs had to rely on a sequence of pointing gestures displayed by two different experimenters. We have investigated whether dogs are able to recognise an ‘indirect signal’, that is, a pointing toward a pointer. In Study 3, we have examined whether dogs can understand indirect information about a hidden object and direct the owner to the particular location. Study 1 has revealed that dogs are unlikely to rely on extrapolating precise linear vectors along the pointing arm when relying on human pointing gestures. Instead, they rely on a simple rule of following the side of the human gesturing. If there were more targets on the same side of the human, they showed a preference for the targets closer to the human. Study 2 has shown that dogs are able to rely on indirect pointing gestures but the individual performances suggest that this skill may be restricted to a certain level of complexity. In Study 3, we have found that dogs are able to localise the hidden object by utilising indirect human signals, and they are able to convey this information to their owner.