Semantic priming in number naming

The issue of semantic and non-semantic conversion routes for numerals is still debated in numerical cognition. We report two number-naming experiments in which the target numerals were preceded by another numeral (prime). The primes and targets could be presented either in arabic (digit) notation or in verbal (alphabetical) notation. The results reveal a semantically related distance effect: Latencies are fastest when the prime has the same value as the target and increase when the distance between prime and target increases. We argue that the present results are congruent with the idea that the numerals make access to an ordered semantic number line common to all notations, as the results are the same for within-notation priming (arabic-arabic or verbal- verbal) and between-notations priming (arabic-verbal or verbal-arabic). The present results also point to a rapid involvement of semantics in the naming of numerals, also when the numerals are words. As such, they are in line with recent claims of rapid semantic mediation in word naming.     

The nature of the syllabic neighbourhood effect in French

We investigated whether and how sublexical units such as phonological syllables mediate access to the lexicon in French visual word recognition. To do so, two lexical decision task (LDT) experiments examined the nature of the syllabic neighbourhood effect. In Experiments 1a and b, the number of higher frequency syllabic neighbours was manipulated while controlling for the first bigram. The results failed to show a pure syllabic neighbourhood effect. In Experiments 2a and b, syllabic neighbourhood and bigram frequency were factorially manipulated. The interaction showed that the syllabic neighbourhood effect was inhibitory when bigram frequency was high, whereas it was facilitatory when bigram frequency was low. Similar patterns of results were found in both the yes/no (Experiments 1a and 2a) and go/no-go LDTs (Experiments 1b and 2b), so varying task requirements of the lexical decision did not influence the effect. These findings are discussed in the context of parallel distributed processing and interactive-activation models, and suggest that orthographic redundancy properties contribute to the influence of phonological syllables.     

Effect of syllabic neighbourhood as a function of syllabic neighbour length

The concept of syllabic neighbours (words sharing the same first syllable) is central in the interpretive framework of syllabic effects in visual word recognition. However, the definition of this concept remains surprisingly vague, so it is not clear whether or not syllabic competition is driven by words of similar syllabic length. The present study aimed to refine the definition by investigating the effect of higher-frequency syllabic neighbourhood as a function of syllabic neighbour length (similar syllabic length to the target words vs. any syllabic length). In both standard and go/no-go lexical decision tasks, the data showed that increasing the number of higher-frequency syllabic neighbours had an influence only when this number was computed from words of the same syllabic length as the target. Syllabic neighbours may therefore be considered as words sharing the first syllable and the total number of syllables with the target. Implications for accounts of syllable neighbourhood effects are discussed.     

Differences between digit naming and number word reading in a flanker task

Numbers can be represented as number words or as digits, but are the two notations processed differently? Two experiments in which a flanker paradigm with a naming task was used were conducted, with digits and number words as targets and flankers. Reaction times were shortest when the flanker denoted the same numerical value as the target. The numerical distance between the target and a numerically different flanker modulated reaction times in all conditions, except for number word targets with digit flankers. The direction of this effect—targets were named faster when the flanker was numerically close than when it was far—indicates that the numerical magnitude representations of numbers are associatively connected. When the target and the flanker were presented in the same format, no difference was observed in the distance effects for the two formats. This indicates that number words activate the abstract representation of their numerical value in a way that is very similar to that for digits.     

Category-specific naming effect in non-brain-damaged individuals

A category effect (i.e., living vs. nonliving exemplars) in confrontation naming has been reported in association with various cerebral pathologies. However, the published reports conflict as to the presence of this category effect in normal controls. The present experiment included 90 subjects in three age groups (young, young-elderly, and old-elderly) and controlled the stimuli in two major ways: by increasing the difficulty level to avoid a ceiling effect, and by equating the stimulus lists on five important word property variables (word frequency, familiarity, age of acquisition, visual complexity, and name agreement). The results confirmed that the category effect was present in the two elderly groups but not in the younger group. However, a gender effect was evidenced in the younger group but not in the two elderly groups. Overall, these results suggest that the category effect reported in neurological populations represents at least in part the influence of normal aging on semantic memory.     

Failure to find differences in drinking behavior as a function of familial risk for alcoholism: a replication

Groups of high-risk (alcoholic fathers), middle-risk (second-degree alcoholic relatives) and low-risk (no first- or second-degree alcoholic relatives) male college students were compared with respect to drinking behavior, sociodemographic variables, personality, cognitive functioning, and mental health and drug use problems in themselves and in family members. The groups differed significantly on only one of a number of sociodemographic variables. No significant group differences were revealed in drinking behavior, or alcohol-related symptoms or consequences. High-risk subjects reported significantly more childhood attentional and social problems than did low-risk subjects. No group differences were found with respect to other childhood problem behaviors, cognitive functioning, subject or family drug use, or mental health problems. The findings are discussed in terms of the questions they raise concerning the results of high-risk studies and the contribution of genetic factors to alcoholism.     

The masked onset priming effect in picture naming

Reading aloud is faster when targets (e.g., PAIR) are preceded by visually masked primes sharing just the onset (e.g., pole) compared to all different primes (e.g., take). This effect is known as the masked onset priming effect (MOPE). One crucial feature of this effect is its presumed non-lexical basis. This aspect of the MOPE is tested in the current study. Dutch participants named pictures having bisyllabic names, which were preceded by visually masked primes. Picture naming was facilitated by first-segment but not last-segment primes, and by first-syllable as well as last-syllable primes. Whole-word primes with first or last segment overlap slowed down picture naming latencies significantly. The first-segment priming effect (i.e., MOPE) cannot be accounted for by non-lexical response competition since pictures cannot be named via the non-lexical route. Instead, the effects obtained in this study can be accommodated by a speech-planning account of the MOPE.     

Reading aloud polysyllabic words and nonwords: The syllabic length effect reexamined

Two experiments were run in order to reinvestigate the role of the number of syllables in naming. Experiment 1 (word naming) showed that effects of number of syllables on naming latency were observed for very low-frequency words but not for high-frequency words (thus replicating Jared & Seidenberg’s, 1990, finding). In Experiment 2 (nonword naming), syllabic length effects were also obtained for nonwords. Control experiments found no effect on the latency of delayed naming of the same words and nonwords. These results suggest that naming does require syllabic decomposition, at least for very low-frequency words and nonwords in French. In particular, these data are compatible with any model of reading that postulates that reading aloud depends on the activity of two procedures: (1) a procedure that operates in parallel across a letter string (and does not generate a strong syllabic length effect) and that is the predominant process in generating responses to high-frequency words, and (2) another procedure that operates serially across a letter string (and generates a strong syllabic length effect) and that is the predominant process in generating responses to very low-frequency words and nonwords. These results are discussed in the context of the multiple-trace memory model for polysyllabic word naming (Ans, Carbonnel, & Valdois, 1998).     

Failure to obtain a generation effect during naturalistic learning

Memory & Cognition - Many experiments have obtained a generation effect (GE)with various kinds of laboratory items. Six of the present seven experiments failed to find a GE when the responses...     

Masked priming effects with syllabic neighbors in a lexical decision task

Four lexical decision experiments using a masked priming paradigm were conducted to analyze whether the previous presentation of a syllabic neighbor (a word sharing the same 1st syllable) influences recognition performance. The results showed an inhibitory effect of more frequent syllabic primes and some facilitation of nonword syllabic primes (Experiments 1-3). When monosyllabic pairs were used (Experiment 3), no priming effects of the 2 initial letters were found. Finally, when using only syllables as primes, latencies to words were shorter when preceded by primes that corresponded to the 1st syllable than by primes that contained 1 letter more or less than the 1st syllable (Experiment 4). Results are interpreted using activation models that take into account a syllabic level of representation.     

The effect of spelling-to-sound regularity on naming in French

Summary In two experiments the naming task was used to investigate the effect of spelling-to-sound regularity on performance for French words varying in frequency of usage. In both experiments the results showed a significant effect of regularity on naming latencies. Contrary to what has been found in previous experiments using English stimuli, the regularity effect did not vary as a function of word frequency. However, in both experiments significantly more errors, and specifically regularisation errors, were observed with low-frequency irregular words. Several possible interpretations of this atypical pattern of results are discussed. An additional observation was that the regularity effect, both on naming latencies and on error rates, and independently of frequency of use, was limited to the irregular words in which the idiosyncratic orthographic segment was either in initial or in medial position in the word.     

Cross-notation number priming investigated at different stimulus onset asynchronies in parity and naming tasks

In this paper, a parity judgment task and a number naming task were used to investigate cross-notational number priming. Primes and targets could be verbal (e.g., seven) or Arabic numbers (e.g., 7), and were always presented in a different notation within the same trial (either a verbal prime and an Arabic target or an Arabic prime and a verbal target). Previous experiments showed that response latencies increase when the distance between prime and target increases (for example, in a naming task, seven is pronounced faster after 6 than after 5). This semantic distance priming effect was the same for Arabic and verbal targets and was the same for within-notation trials as for cross-notation trials. In the present experiments, we wanted to investigate whether the cross-notational priming effect also occurs at SOAs shorter than the ones used in previous experiments. Therefore, we used SOAs of 43, 57, 86, and 115 ms. Semantic distance effects were indeed present at these shorter SOAs: Processing times in the semantic parity judgment task and in the non-semantic naming task increased when the distance between prime and target increased. The results are discussed and integrated within an interactive dual-route model of number processing that postulates that the impact of the semantic and the non-semantic route depends on the task and the notation of the stimuli.     

Pre-training to find a hidden platform in the Morris water maze can compensate for a deficit to find a cued platform in a rat model of Parkinson's disease

The bilateral intranigral infusion of 1 micromol 1-methyl-4-phenyl-1,2,3,6-tetrahydropyridine (MPTP) in adult male Wistar rats caused a specific and partial loss of substantia nigra pars compacta (SNc) dopamine neurons, a partial depletion of striatal dopamine, and a deficit to learn the intra-maze cued version of the Morris water maze. Pre-training the SNc rats in the spatial version of the water maze or simply maintaining the animals on the water maze platform reversed this deficit. This improvement was even observed when the order of the extra-maze cues presented to the rats during pre-training of the spatial version was changed during training of the intra-maze cued version. However, this deficit was not reversed either by maintaining the animals on the platform if the spatial cues were surrounded and covered with a curtain or by swimming sessions in the maze without the escape platform and the curtain. These findings suggest that none of the following elements alone, learned during the spatial task pre-training, could help SNc rats learn the intra-maze cued task: improvement of swimming skills or knowledge of the existence of the escape platform; distance between the platform and the border of the pool; location of a particular extra-maze cue; relations among extra-maze cues. However, the simultaneous presence of the escape platform and extra-maze cues (irrespective of their relational configuration) during the pre-training sessions proved to be necessary for this improving effect to occur.     

The left-to-right nature of the masked onset priming effect in naming

Two experiments were performed to investigate the nature of the masked onset priming effect in naming, that is, the facilitation in naming latency that is observed when a target shares the initial grapheme/phoneme with a masked prime. Experiment 1 showed that the effect is not due to position-independent letter priming, since the naming of nonword targets preceded by masked primes was facilitated only if the prime shared the initial letter with the target (e.g., suf-SIB) and not if the prime shared the final letter (e.g., mub-SIB). Experiment 2 showed that the effect reflects the sharing of onsets rather than the initial letter, since facilitation due to an overlap of the initial letter was observed only for the simple onset target (e.g., penny-PASTE) for which the letter corresponded to the onset, and not for complex onset targets (e.g., bingo-BLISS). It is argued that the serial nature of the masked onset priming effect is best interpreted as the planning of articulation, rather than as the computation of phonology from orthography.     

Using semantic memory to find vs create a mood

Ss produced words from semantic memory which satisfied certain constraints. In Experiment I, a noun category plus a number and a letter were presented (e.g., ANIMAL-I-D, FRUIT-P-3), and S produced an instance of the category which had the given letter in the position designated by the given number. Faster responses occurred when the position cue occurred before the letter rather than after it. In Experiments II and III, Ss saw only a number and a letter (e.g., l-D, P-3) and were required to produce any word that had the given letter in the position designated by the given number. Order of the position and letter cues did not influence response times. The effect of order in one case and not the other strongly suggests that producing a word that satisfies certain semantic constraints involves a different process from producing a word that satisfies only certain orthographic restrictions.     

Drawing: its contribution to naming in aphasia

Drawing in aphasia therapy has been used predominately as a substitution for speech or to augment communication when other modalities are non-functional. The value of drawing as a route for facilitating verbal expression has not been a focus of prior research. We compared the usefulness of drawing and writing as compensatory strategies for improving naming in individuals with aphasia. Activation patterns of writing and drawing in healthy adults were examined using fMRI. Clinical results suggest that drawing facilitated naming whereas writing diminished accurate naming responses, and that drawing quality is not relevant to this facilitatory effect. Functional MRI findings revealed strong bi-hemispheric activation of semantic and phonological networks while drawing that may support our clinical findings.     

The high-hurdle technique put to the test: Failure to find evidence that increasing loading times enhances data quality in Web-based studies

Two Web-based experiments examined the usefulness of artificially delaying the loading of the first page of the study. The idea pursued in this technique is to filter out less-motivated respondents through a higher respondent burden in the form of waiting time. Participants who remain in the study despite having had to wait for the first page of the study to appear on the screenare expected to be more highly motivated, and thus to produce data of higher quality. In both experiments, as expected, the longer the loading time, the lower the likelihood of people responding to the study. However, contrary to expectation, the dropout rate and quality of data were independent of the loading time. Therefore, artificially delaying the loading of the first page of the study is counterproductive.