Neighborhood frequency effects and letter visibility in visual word recognition.

Two experiments are described that measured lexical decision latencies and errors to five-letter French words with a single higher frequency orthographic neighbor and control words with no higher frequency neighbors. The higher frequency neighbor differed from the stimulus word by either the second letter (e.g., ASTRE-AUTRE) or the fourth letter (CHOPE-CHOSE). Neighborhood frequency effects were found to interact with this factor, and significant interference was observed only to CHOPE-type words. The effects of neighborhood frequency were also found to interact with the position of initial fixation in the stimulus word (either the second letter or the fourth letter). Interference was greatly reduced when the initial fixation was on the critical disambiguating letter (i.e., the letter P in CHOPE). Moreover, word recognition was improved when subjects initially fixated the second letter relative to when they initially fixated the fourth letter of a five-letter word, but this second-letter advantage practically disappeared when the stimulus differed from a more frequent word by its fourth letter. The results are interpreted in terms of the interaction between visual and lexical factors in visual work recognition.     

Further evidence for phonological constraints on visual lexical access: TOWED primes FROG

If the phonological codes of visually presented words are assembled-rapidly and automatically for use in lexical access, then words that sound alike should induce similar activity within the internal lexicon.Towed is homophonous with TOAD, which is semantically related tofrog, andbeach is homophonous withbeech, which is semantically related totree. Stimuli such as these were used in a priming-of-namingtask, in which words homophonous with associates of the target words preceded the targets at an onset asynchrony of 100 msec. Relative to spelling controls (trod, bench), the low-frequencytowed and the high-frequencybeach speeded up the naming offrog andtree, respectively, to the same degree. This result was discussed in relation to the accumulating evidence for the primacy of phonological constraints in visual lexical access. nt]mis|This research was supported in part by National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Grants HD-08945 and HD-0 1994 to the first author and Haskins Laboratories, respectively.     

Influences on and consequences of parafoveal preview in reading

During reading, information is extracted from upcoming words to the right of the currently fixated word, which facilitates recognition of those words when they are later fixated. According to the foveal load hypothesis (Henderson & Ferreira, 1990), this parafoveal preview benefit depends on how difficult the currently fixated word is to recognize. Furthermore, there is evidence that the influence of lexical variables (frequency and predictability) on word processing changes when no preview of that word is available. The present study reports two moving-window experiments in which the upcoming word to the right of fixation was either included in or excluded from the window. Through this manipulation, accurate parafoveal information was either available or not for each word in the paragraph. Two critical interactions between preview condition and lexical variables were observed. First, the word frequency at word N was found to be the primary influence on the amount of preview benefit obtained at word N+1, consistent with the foveal load hypothesis. Second, denial of preview eliminated the word predictability effect. These findings have implications for models of eye movement control in reading.     

Mechanisms of facilitation in primed perceptual identification

We investigated the mechanism that produces priming in perceptual identification. In Experiment 1, subjects studied a series of compound words (e.g.,outdoor,sideline); in Experiment 2, subjects studied a series of pictures (photographs) of objects. All subjects later received perceptual identification tests in which old (primed) and new (unprimed) words (Experiment 1) or pictures (Experiment 2) were presented for varying durations and masked. In both experiments, performance for primed and unprimed stimuli was predicted essentially perfectly by a model that assumes that prior exposure to a stimulus results in increased visual information-acquisition rate when it is subsequently encountered. An ancillary purpose of Experiment 1 was to test whether or not priming occurs for recombined words (e.g.,outline); there was no evidence for such priming at any exposure duration.     

Delayed commitment in spoken word recognition: Evidence from cross-modal priming

Using the cross-modal priming paradigm, we attempted to determine whether semantic representations for word-final morphemes embedded in multisyllabic words (e.g., /lak/ in /hεmlak/) are independently activated in memory. That is, we attempted to determine whether the auditory prime, /hεmlak/, would facilitate lexical decision times to the visual target,key, even when the recognition point for/hεmlak / occurred prior to the end of the word, which should ensure deactivation of all lexical candidates. In the first experiment, a gating task was used in order to ensure that the multisyllabic words could be identified prior to their offsets. In the second experiment, lexical decision times for visually presented targets following spoken monosyllabic primes (e.g., /lak/-key) were compared with reaction times for the same visual targets following multisyllabic pairs (/hεmlak/-KEY). Significant priming was found for both the monosyllabic and the multisyllabic conditions. The results support a recognition strategy that initiates lexical access at strong syllables (Cutler & Norris, 1988) and operates according to a principle of delayed commitment (Marr, 1982).     

Semantic satiation in healthy young and older adults

In four experiments, semantic satiation was investigated in young and old adults. In the first two experiments, subjects were repeatedly presented a word (e.g.,dog) and then were presented a pair of words (e.g.,dog-cat ordog-chair) for a relatedness decision. The results of both experiments indicated that for the young adults, the relatedness effect (the difference between response latency on related and unrelated trials) decreased as a function of the number of times the satiated word was repeated, whereas for the older adults, there was no evidence of a decrease in the relatedness effect across repetitions of the satiated word. In the third experiment, we investigated whether phonological codes are also susceptible to satiation. This experiment was similar to the first two experiments with the exception that subjects made rhyme decisions (same-claim vs.same-dime) instead of semantic relatedness decisions. The results of this experiment did not yield any evidence of satiation for either the young adults or the older adults. The final experiment eliminated a simple decrease in attentional alertness or fatigue account of the semantic satiation effects found in the first two experiments. In this experiment, the repeated word was always unrelated to the pair of words presented for the relatedness decision. The results of this experiment did not yield any evidence of semantic satiation for either the young or the older adults. The discussion focuses on the mechanisms underlying semantic satiation and the implications of age-related changes in these mechanisms.     

Is Confucianism a Source of Corruption in Chinese Society? A New Round of Debate in Mainland China

The debate on whether Confucianism is a source of corruption or root of morality, which initiated about ten years ago in China and was mainly between Liu Qingping 劉清平 and Guo Qiyong 郭齊勇, entered a second stage when Deng Xiaomang 鄧曉芒 criticized Confucian ethics based on filial piety, and Guo Qiyong and (mainly) his (former) students persistently defended their points of view. This essay is a review of the main theme of the debate at this second stage.     

Word skipping during sentence reading: effects of lexicality on parafoveal processing

Two experiments examined how lexical status affects the targeting of saccades during reading by using the boundary technique to vary independently the content of a letter string when seen in parafoveal preview and when directly fixated. Experiment 1 measured the skipping rate for a target word embedded in a sentence under three parafoveal preview conditions: full preview (e.g., brain–brain), pseudohomophone preview (e.g., brane–brain), and orthographic nonword control preview (e.g., brant–brain); in the first condition, the preview string was always an English word, while in the second and third conditions, it was always a nonword. Experiment 2 investigated three conditions where the preview string was always a word: full preview (e.g., beach–beach), homophone preview (e.g., beech–beach), and orthographic control preview (e.g., bench–beach). None of the letter string manipulations used to create the preview conditions in the experiments disrupted sublexical orthographic or phonological patterns. In Experiment 1, higher skipping rates were observed for the full (lexical) preview condition, which consisted of a word, than for the nonword preview conditions (pseudohomophone and orthographic control). In contrast, Experiment 2 showed no difference in skipping rates across the three types of lexical preview conditions (full, homophone, and orthographic control), although preview type did influence reading times. This pattern indicates that skipping not only depends on the presence of disrupted sublexical patterns of orthography or phonology, but also is critically dependent on processes that are sensitive to the lexical status of letter strings in the parafovea.     

Masked repetition and phonological priming in picture naming

We report a series of picture naming experiments in which target pictures were primed by briefly presented masked words. Experiment 1 demonstrates that the prior presentation of the same word prime (e.g.,rose-rose) facilitates picture naming independently of the target’s name frequency. In Experiment 2, primes that were homophones of picture targets (e.g.,rows-rose) also produced facilitatory effects compared with unrelated controls, but priming was significantly larger for targets with low-frequency names relative to targets with high-frequency names. In Experiment 3, primes that were higher frequency homophones of picture targets produced facilitatory effects compared with identical primes. These results are discussed in relation to different accounts of the effects of masked priming in current models of picture naming.     

Phonological codes are early sources of constraint in visual semantic categorization

Two experiments were directed at early phonological activation in the semantic categorization task. In Experiment 1, briefly exposed targets homophonic to category exemplars (rows for the categorya flower), and their graphemic controls (robs), were judged for category membership with and without a backward pattern mask False positives were greater for rows than robs to the same degree under both unmasked and masked conditions. In Experiment 2, false positives were examined in the semantic categorization task under backward dichoptic masking by pseudowords that were, in turn, masked monoptically by a pattern mask. Briefly exposed homophones (e.g.,weak), masked by a phonologically similar pseudoword (“feek”), a graphemic control (“felk”), or an unrelated pseudoword (“furt”), were categorized as category exemplars (a unit of time). The difference in false positives was significant forweak-feek versusweak-furt, but not forweak-felk versusweak-furt. It was suggested that the persistence of the homophonic effects under the pattern masking of Experiment 1 and their amplification under the phonological masking of Experiment 2 were because phonological codes cohere rapidly and provide, thereby, immediately available constraints on semantic processing.     

Information closure and the sceptical objection

In this article, I define and then defend the principle of information closure (pic) against a sceptical objection similar to the one discussed by Dretske in relation to the principle of epistemic closure. If I am successful, given that pic is equivalent to the axiom of distribution and that the latter is one of the conditions that discriminate between normal and non-normal modal logics, a main result of such a defence is that one potentially good reason to look for a formalization of the logic of “ $S$ is informed that $p$ ” among the non-normal modal logics, which reject the axiom, is also removed. This is not to argue that the logic of “ $S$ is informed that $p$ ” should be a normal modal logic, but that it could still be insofar as the objection that it could not be, based on the sceptical objection against pic, has been removed. In other word, I shall argue that the sceptical objection against pic fails, so such an objection provides no ground to abandon the normal modal logic B (also known as KTB) as a formalization of “ $S$ is informed that $p$ ”, which remains plausible insofar as this specific obstacle is concerned.     

Causal essentialism and mereological monism

Several philosophers have recently defended Causal Essentialism—the view that every property confers causal powers, and whatever powers it confers, it confers essentially. I argue that on the face of it, Causal Essentialism implies a form of Monism, and in particular, the thesis I call ‘Mereological Monism’: that there is some concretum that is a part of every concretum. However, there are three escape routes, three views which are such that if one of them is true, Causal Essentialism does not imply any form of Monism at all. I survey the costs associated with taking these escape routes along with the costs associated with accepting Mereological Monism.     

Neurocardiac toxicity of racemicd,l-lactate fluids

Racemicd,l-lactate has long been used in burn therapy as Ringer’s lactate and in peritoneal dialysis fluid for treatment of renal failure. The d-lactate component of this racemic mixture is known to cause two forms of neurological toxicity in patients: encephalopathy and, in a subset of the population, panic reaction. Here we demonstrate that coma, similar in degree to that produced by blood levels of 75 mM ethanol was induced in rats by the intraperitoneal infusion of sodiumd-lactate sufficient to raise serumd-lactate concentration to 25 mM, whereas infusion of equal quantities of sodiuml-lactate produced no observable neurological effect. We further demonstrate that the intravenous infusion of racemicd,l-lactic acid into 48-hour fasted rats produced serious disturbances of cardiac rate and rhythm leading to death. When serumd-lactate concentration had reached 1–2 mM there was bradycardia, at 2–3 mM prolongation of QT interval, at 6–7 mM AV block with ectopic escape rhythms, and at 11 mM death in ventricular standstill or fibrillation. In contrast, intravenous infusion ofl-lactic acid to blood levels of 25 mM failed to produce any change in cardiac rhythm. On the other hand, the isolated working heart, free of influence from the central nervous system, displayed no change of cardiac rhythm or physiological function when perfused with 25 mM sodiumd,l-lactate.     

Implicit and explicit memory for compound words

Subjects studied visually presented compound words (e.g.,toothpaste, heartache) and then received a recognition, perceptual identification, or word-fragment completion test that contained old, recombined (e.g.,toothache), and partially and completely new words. False recognitions increased with the increasing number of previously studied components; however, priming in perceptual identification occurred only for old words. Priming in word-fragment completion occurred for old and recombined words. Reducing the time available to solve word fragments, from 20 sec to 5 sec, did not affect the pattern of results; it is therefore unlikely that priming for recombined words resulted from the use of a recollection-based strategy. Memory tasks that involve a conceptual component access memories that are constructed from parts; memory tasks that are primarily perceptual do not access such memories.     

Jazz Redux: a reply to Möller

This paper is a response to Niklas Möller’s (Philosophical Studies, 2013) recent criticism of our relational (Jazz) model of meaning of thin evaluative terms. Möller’s criticism rests on a confusion about the role of coordinating intentions in Jazz. This paper clarifies what’s distinctive and controversial about the Jazz proposal and explains why Jazz, unlike traditional accounts of meaning, is not committed to analycities.     

Does the advantage of the upper part of words occur at the lexical level?

Several recent studies have shown that the upper part of words is more important than the lower part in visual word recognition. Here, we examine whether or not this advantage arises at the lexical or at the letter (letter feature) level. To examine this issue, we conducted two lexical decision experiments in which words/pseudowords were preceded by a very brief (50-ms) presentation of their upper or lower parts (e.g., ). If the advantage for the upper part of words arises at the letter (letter feature) level, the effect should occur for both words and pseudowords. Results revealed an advantage for the upper part of words, but not for pseudowords. This suggests that the advantage for the upper part of words occurs at the lexical level, rather than at the letter (or letter feature) level.     

Shen Dao��s Own Voice in the Shenzi Fragments

Shen Dao ???? is known as one of the Legalists who influenced Han Feizi ?n???? in terms of the concept of shi ?? (circumstantial advantage, power, or authority). This argument is based on the ??A Critique of Circumstantial Advantage (Nanshi ?y??)?? chapter of the Hanfeizi, where Han Feizi advances his own idea of shi after criticizing both Shen Dao and an anonymous Confucian. However, there are other primary sources to contain Shen Dao??s thought, namely, seven incomplete Shenzi ???? chapters of the Essentials on Government from the Assemblage of Books (Qunshu zhi yao ??????) and other fragments preserved in other Chinese texts. This article examines the Shenzi fragments in order to ask whether Shen Dao stresses the concept of shi.     

The function of regressions in reading: Backward eye movements allow rereading

Standard text reading involves frequent eye movements that go against normal reading order. The function of these “regressions” is still largely unknown. The most obvious explanation is that regressions allow for the rereading of previously fixated words. Alternatively, physically returning the eyes to a word’s location could cue the reader’s memory for that word, effectively aiding the comprehension process via location priming (the “deictic pointer hypothesis”). In Experiment 1, regression frequency was reduced when readers knew that information was no longer available for rereading. In Experiment 2, readers listened to auditorily presented text while moving their eyes across visual placeholders on the screen. Here, rereading was impossible, but deictic pointers remained available, yet the readers did not make targeted regressions in this experiment. In Experiment 3, target words in normal sentences were changed after reading. Where the eyes later regressed to these words, participants generally remained unaware of the change, and their answers to comprehension questions indicated that the new meaning of the changed word was what determined their sentence representations. These results suggest that readers use regressions to reread words and not to cue their memory for previously read words.     

Two Senses of “Wei 偽”: A New Interpretation of Xunzi’s Theory of Human Nature

In contrast to the traditional and ordinary interpretation of Xunzi??s theory of human nature, which considers Xunzi??s theory as claiming that human nature is bad or evil, this article aims at, first, arguing that the interpretation is wrong or at least incomplete and, second, constructing a new interpretation that, according to Xunzi??s text, there are some factors in human nature that are able to promote good behaviors. I shall demonstrate that some major paragraphs in Xunzi??s text were misinterpreted and misarranged, analyze that the word wei (artifice) in the chapter of ??Zhengming?? has two different but related senses, one of which designates some of the potential capacities of human nature, and argue that the 23 words in the chapter of ??Rongru?? should not be deleted as redundant, as was done by the two famous philologists in Qing dynasdy, Wang Niansun and Wang Xianqian.