The Meaning of Drawing-Completion Stimuli: New Guidelines for Projective Interpretation

The study investigated whether the eight gestalt stimuli used in Kinget's Drawing-Completion Test (DCT) can be defined by the eight word-concepts Mundy hypothesized to “name” them and to reflect their meaning. Thirty college students made semantic differential ratings. The 4,320 ratings analyzed show some correspondence between stimuli and their respective meanings, suggesting new guidelines for interpreting such drawing completions.     

语义分解性在惯用语理解中的作用

惯用语是比喻性语言的一种。语义分解性的作用是惯用语理解机制争论的焦点。通过语义启动任务, 探究了汉语动宾结构的惯用语和偏正结构的惯用语的意义理解模式, 揭示语义分解性在短的SOA (300 ms)和长的SOA (800 ms)下的作用。结果发现, 语义分解性独立地影响惯用语的意义激活：当SOA短时, 语义高分解的两类惯用语均表现出显著的字面义激活效应; 当SOA长时, 语义低分解的偏正结构的惯用语的意义激活的正确率优势明显。同时, 两类惯用语的语义分解性不同导致了语义激活启动效应的差异：当SOA短时, 语义低分解的动宾结构的惯用语存在两种意义的激活效应, 语义高分解的动宾结构的惯用语和偏正结构的惯用语存在字面义的激活效应; 当SOA长时, 语义低分解的动宾结构的惯用语存在两种意义的激活效应, 语义高分解的偏正结构的惯用语存在比喻义的激活效应。研究证实语义分解性在惯用语加工早期即发挥作用, 在加工晚期, 语义高分解的动宾结构的惯用语的多种意义同时激活削弱了两种意义的启动优势。整个研究结果支持惯用语理解的混合表征模型和层级显性意义假说。     

前后语境在汉语成语义识别中的作用

通过自定步速阅读实验研究发现,语境前后位置对成语义识别有显著性影响,且影响方式和程度存在差异,符合多义词重组通达模型。根据动态自组织模式,句子中的成语义识别至少包括多种潜在词义启动和与语境倾向义匹配两个过程。前置语境对成语比喻义通达具有预设作用,加速或抑制成语比喻义通达;而后置语境则在句子语义整合过程中对成语比喻义起到返查纠偏的作用。     

Hemispheric Differences in Context Sensitivity During Lexical Ambiguity Resolution

Three experiments were conducted to investigate the influence of contextual constraint on lexical ambiguity resolution in the cerebral hemispheres. A cross-modal priming variant of the divided visual field task was utilized in which subjects heard sentences containing homonyms and made lexical decisions to targets semantically related to dominant and subordinate meanings. Experiment 1 showed priming in both hemispheres of dominant meanings for homonyms embedded in neutral sentence contexts. Experiment 2 showed priming in both hemispheres of dominant and subordinate meanings for homonyms embedded in sentence contexts that biased a central semantic feature of the subordinate meaning. Experiment 3 showed priming of dominant meanings in the left hemisphere (LH), and priming of the subordinate meaning in the right hemisphere (RH) for homonyms embedded in sentences that biased a peripheral semantic feature of the subordinate meaning. These results are consistent with a context-sensitive model of language processing that incorporates differential sensitivity to semantic relationships in the cerebral hemispheres.     

When do leotards get their spots? Semantic activation of lexical neighbors in visual word recognition

Shadowing and priming studies have provided strong evidence that during spoken word recognition, the meanings of different words that share their onset (e.g., captain and captive) are activated in parallel. In contrast, for visual word recognition, there is little evidence that the meanings of visually similar words are activated in parallel. This is consistent with the idea that for reading (in contrast to listening), since all the sensory information necessary to identify a word is available at once, any competition between visually similar words is resolved before their meanings are retrieved. However, Forster and Hector (2002) have recently shown that for nonwords (e.g., turple), some aspect of the meanings of lexical neighbors (e.g., turtle) can be activated. However, this finding is limited to non-words. The activation of turtle's meaning in response to turple may occur because turple has no meaning. In normal reading, we do not encounter nonwords, and there is strong pressure on the reading system to produce meaningful representations for every word (even misspelled words). The two semantic categorization experiments reported here extend this finding to real words. Participants are slower to decide that leotard is not an animal because of its animal neighbor leopard. This shows that information about a word's meaning can be available before it has been uniquely recognized.     

Learning new meanings for old words: effects of semantic relatedness

Changes to our everyday activities mean that adult language users need to learn new meanings for previously unambiguous words. For example, we need to learn that a "tweet" is not only the sound a bird makes, but also a short message on a social networking site. In these experiments, adult participants learned new fictional meanings for words with a single dominant meaning (e.g., "ant") by reading paragraphs that described these novel meanings. Explicit recall of these meanings was significantly better when there was a strong semantic relationship between the novel meaning and the existing meaning. This relatedness effect emerged after relatively brief exposure to the meanings (Experiment 1), but it persisted when training was extended across 7?days (Experiment 2) and when semantically demanding tasks were used during this extended training (Experiment 3). A lexical decision task was used to assess the impact of learning on online recognition. In Experiment 3, participants responded more quickly to words whose new meaning was semantically related than to those with an unrelated meaning. This result is consistent with earlier studies showing an effect of meaning relatedness on lexical decision, and it indicates that these newly acquired meanings become integrated with participants' preexisting knowledge about the meanings of words.     

词汇识别中歧义词素语义加工:ERP研究

结合掩蔽启动范式和ERP技术,利用歧义词素的加工,本研究探讨了歧义词素语义的激活。实验采用3×2两因素被试内设计,歧义词素两含义互为启动刺激和目标刺激,两变量分别为启动词类型(歧义词素含义1 vs.含义2 vs.无关词)和目标词类型(歧义词素含义1 vs.含义2)。行为结果发现启动词类型和目标词类型存在交互作用,即只有当共享词素同形同义的情况下,目标词的加工才可能被启动,共享词素同形不同义时并没有产生启动效应。ERP结果进一步肯定了行为结果,在N250和N400两个脑电成分上都发现了启动类型和目标类型交互作用有关的效应,当启动词和目标词共享词素同形同义时,同时引发了N250和N400的变化;当共享词素同形不同义时,时程分析时虽然也发现了N250的变化,但是N250的效应较小,小于同形同义所引发的N250效应,持续时间也较短。实验结果说明,在词汇识别中歧义词素语义可以激活,并对目标词汇加工的早期加工阶段发挥作用。     

Semantic Primitivism and Normativity

Kripke-Wittgenstein meaning scepticism appears as a serious threat to the idea that there could be meaning-constituting facts. Some people argue that the only viable response is to adopt semantic primitivism (SP). SP is the doctrine that meaning-facts are sui generis and irreducibly semantic. The idea is that by allowing such primitive semantic facts into our ontology Kripke's sceptical paradox cannot arise. I argue that SP is untenable in spite of its apparent resourcefulness. No version of SP can account for the normative and practical aspects of meaning while remaining non-reductive. A sparse, basic SP does not adequately deal with the sceptical paradox. A richer SP, with an added intuitive epistemology, can only explain the practical aspect of meaning by aligning itself with reductive use-based accounts of meaning. SP with essential relations between meanings and meaning-bearers could possibly avoid these problems, but we have no reason to think such a version of SP is really non-reductive. I conclude that Kripke-Wittgenstein meaning scepticism should not lead us to adopt SP, instead we should re-examine use-based, dispositionalist accounts of meaning.     

熟悉性对汉语隐喻义与本义加工机制的影响

采用句子违反范式考察汉语隐喻义与本义加工机制的差异及隐喻熟悉性的调节作用。要求被试阅读不同熟悉性的隐喻和本义句子并判断句子正确性,记录其行为与脑电反应。结果显示,熟悉句子隐喻义的加工显著快于本义的加工,而新奇句子则本义的加工更快;脑电水平上,对于熟悉句子,隐喻义违反比本义违反诱发增强的N400和降低的P600效应,而对于新奇句子,隐喻义和本义违反诱发出基本类似的ERP反应。这些结果表明隐喻义和本义加工存在差异,熟悉性显著影响隐喻义的加工,这种影响在较早语义分析和较晚的语义整合阶段均有体现。     

Ambiguity Advantage Revisited: Two Meanings are Better than One When Accessing Chinese Nouns

This paper revisits the effect of lexical ambiguity in word recognition, which has been controversial as previous research reported advantage, disadvantage, and null effects. We discuss factors that were not consistently treated in previous research (e.g., the level of lexical ambiguity investigated, parts of speech of the experimental stimuli, and the choice of non-words) and report on a lexical decision experiment with Chinese nouns in which ambiguous nouns with homonymic and/or metaphorical meanings were contrasted with unambiguous nouns. An ambiguity advantage effect was obtained—Chinese nouns with multiple meanings were recognized faster than those with only one meaning. The results suggested that both homonymic and metaphorical meanings are psychologically salient semantic levels actively represented in the mental lexicon. The results supported a probability-based model of random lexical access with multiple meanings represented by separate semantic nodes. We further discuss these results in terms of lexical semantic representation and how different experimental paradigms result in different ambiguity effects in lexical access.     

Learning new vocabulary during childhood: Effects of semantic training on lexical consolidation and integration

Research suggests that word learning is an extended process, with offline consolidation crucial for the strengthening of new lexical representations and their integration with existing lexical knowledge (as measured by engagement in lexical competition). This supports a dual memory systems account, in which new information is initially sparsely encoded separately from existing knowledge and integrated with long-term memory over time. However, previous studies of this type exploited unnatural learning contexts, involving fictitious words in the absence of word meaning. In this study, 5- to 9-year-old children learned real science words (e.g., hippocampus) with or without semantic information. Children in both groups were slower to detect pauses in familiar competitor words (e.g., hippopotamus) relative to control words 24 h after training but not immediately, confirming that offline consolidation is required before new words are integrated with the lexicon and engage in lexical competition. Children recalled more new words 24 h after training than immediately (with similar improvements shown for the recall and recognition of new word meanings); however, children who were exposed to the meanings during training showed further improvements in recall after 1 week and outperformed children who were not exposed to meanings. These findings support the dual memory systems account of vocabulary acquisition and suggest that the association of a new phonological form with semantic information is critical for the development of stable lexical representations.     

The semantics of prosody: acoustic and perceptual evidence of prosodic correlates to word meaning

This investigation examined whether speakers produce reliable prosodic correlates to meaning across semantic domains and whether listeners use these cues to derive word meaning from novel words. Speakers were asked to produce phrases in infant-directed speech in which novel words were used to convey one of two meanings from a set of antonym pairs (e.g., big/small). Acoustic analyses revealed that some acoustic features were correlated with overall valence of the meaning. However, each word meaning also displayed a unique acoustic signature, and semantically related meanings elicited similar acoustic profiles. In two perceptual tests, listeners either attempted to identify the novel words with a matching meaning dimension (picture pair) or with mismatched meaning dimensions. Listeners inferred the meaning of the novel words significantly more often when prosody matched the word meaning choices than when prosody mismatched. These findings suggest that speech contains reliable prosodic markers to word meaning and that listeners use these prosodic cues to differentiate meanings. That prosody is semantic suggests a reconceptualization of traditional distinctions between linguistic and nonlinguistic properties of spoken language.     

象似性和手语学习经验对中国手语-汉语跨模态语义启动效应的影响

采用启动条件下的词汇判断任务,考察熟练手语使用者和无手语经验成年听人的跨模态语义启动效应。结果发现：1)在象似词条件下,两组被试判断汉语语义相关词的反应时均快于语义无关词,说明手语象似词和汉语词之间存在跨模态语义启动效应。2)在非象似词条件下,仅手语熟练被试判断汉语语义相关词的反应时快于语义无关词,无手语经验被试判断汉语语义相关词和无关词的速度没有差异。这是由于前者心理词库中的手语词和口语词共享语义表征,而后者主要依赖手语象似词的视觉模拟性。整个研究表明,中国手语和汉语间存在跨模态语义启动效应,但该效应受到手语词象似性和手语学习经历的调节。     

The study of inhibitory processes in aging with the Faust et al. paradigm (1997): methodological issues

Information provided by a word activates various potential meanings. Comprehension involves the suppression of inappropriate meanings of ambiguous words in order to finetune the intended meaning of sentences. If older adults become less efficient at inhibiting contextually irrelevant information, then multiple meanings of ambiguous words would be activated regardless of contextual bias. An alternative to multiple access was that older adults activate only the most dominant meaning of ambiguous words. According to this reservation, support for an inhibition deficit would require evidence that older adults activated the multiple meanings of ambiguous words. The effects of aging on both activation and inhibition of different meanings of ambiguous words were studied using Faust et al. (1997) paradigms. Results showed that both activation and inhibition response latency differed for the dominant and subordinate target and that the dominant meaning for one subject was not the same for another one. The implication of these results is that studies of inhibition should take dominance meaning of ambiguous word for each subject into account.     

Effects of relative embodiment in lexical and semantic processing of verbs

Research examining semantic richness effects in visual word recognition has shown that multiple dimensions of meaning are activated in the process of word recognition (e.g., Yap et al., 2012). This research has, however, been limited to nouns. In the present research we extended the semantic richness approach to verb stimuli in order to investigate how verb meanings are represented. We characterized a dimension of relative embodiment for verbs, based on the bodily sense described by Borghi and Cimatti (2010), and collected ratings on that dimension for 687 English verbs. The relative embodiment ratings revealed that bodily experience was judged to be more important to the meanings of some verbs (e.g., dance, breathe) than to others (e.g., evaporate, expect). We then tested the effects of relative embodiment and imageability on verb processing in lexical decision (Experiment 1), action picture naming (Experiment 2), and syntactic classification (Experiment 3). In all three experiments results showed facilitatory effects of relative embodiment, but not imageability: latencies were faster for relatively more embodied verbs, even after several other lexical variables were controlled. The results suggest that relative embodiment is an important aspect of verb meaning, and that the semantic richness approach holds promise as a strategy for investigating other aspects of verb meaning.     

Semantic context influences memory for verbs more than memory for nouns

Three experiments revealed that memory for verbs is more dependent on semantic context than is memory for nouns. The participants in Experiment 1 were asked to remember either nouns or verbs from intransitive sentences. A recognition test included verbatim sentences, sentences with an old noun and a new verb, sentences with an old verb and a new noun, and entirely new sentences. Memory for verbs was significantly better when the verb was presented with the same noun at encoding and at retrieval. This contextual effect was much smaller for nouns. Experiments 2 and 3 replicated this effect and provided evidence that context effects reflect facilitation from bringing to mind the same meaning of a verb at encoding and at retrieval. Memory for verbs may be more dependent on semantic context because the meanings of verbs are more variable across semantic contexts than are the meanings of nouns.     

Lexical ambiguity, semantic context, and visual word recognition.

Some alternative hypotheses about the recognition of ambiguous words are considered. According to the selective-access hypothesis, prior semantic context biases people to access one meaning of an ambiguous word rather than another in lexical memory during recognition. In contrast, the nonselectiveaccess hypothesis states that all meanings of the word are accessed regardless of the context. We tested certain versions of these hypotheses by having students decide whether selected strings of letters were English words. The stimuli included test sequnces of three words in which the second word had two distinct possible meanings, whereas the first and third words were related to these meanings in various ways. When the first and third words were related to the same meaning of the ambiguous second word (e.g., SAVE-BANK-MONEY), the reaction time to recognize the third word decreased. But when the first and third words were related to different meanings of the second word (e.g., RIVER-BANK-MONEY), the reaction time for the third word was not reliably different from a control sequence with unrelated words. These and other data favor the selective-access hypothesis. Selective access to lexical memory is discussed in relation to models of word recognition.     

Cognitive associations of bimanual haptico-visual recognition in preschoolers.

We have investigated the relation between haptico-visual recognition of objects and cognitive tasks in two large samples of preschoolers (n = 534; n = 750). Children aged 6 years completed a cross-modal task in which they have first to haptically explore an object and second to visually recognize it; they also performed phonological, verbal semantic, and visual tasks. For two consecutive years, bimanual haptico-visual recognition was significantly correlated to performance at all the cognitive tasks. The meaning of this relationship is discussed. The study supports the view that haptico-visual recognition tasks should be used as screening tools for early identification of children at risk of learning difficulties.     

The University Of Colorado Meaning Norms

There exist surprisingly few normative lists of word meanings even though homographs—words having single spellings but two or more distinct meanings—are useful in studying memory and language. The meaning norms that are available all have one or more weaknesses, including: (1) the collection of free associates rather than meanings as responses to the stimulus words; (2) the collection of single rather than multiple responses to the stimulus words; (3) the inclusion of only the two most frequently occurring meaning categories, rather than all meaning categories, for the stimulus words; (4) omission of the responses typical of each meaning category; (5) inadequate randomization of the presentation order of the stimulus words; and (6) unpaced presentation of the stimulus words. We have compiled meaning norms for 90 common English words of low, medium, and high concreteness using a methodology designed to correct these weaknesses. Analysis showed that words of medium concreteness have significantly more first-response meanings than do words of either low or high concreteness, lending support to the view that concreteness is a categorical, rather than a continuous, semantic attribute.