The importance of semantics in auditory representations

The purpose of the present study was to examine the nature of auditory representations by manipulating the semantic and physical relationships between auditory objects. On each trial, listeners heard a group of four simultaneous sounds for 1 sec, followed by 350 msec of noise, and then either the same sounds or three of the same plus a new one. Listeners completed a change-detection task and an object-encoding task. For change detection, listeners made a same-different judgment for the two groups of sounds. Object encoding was measured by presenting probe sounds that either were or were not present in the two groups. In Experiments 1 and 3, changing the target to an object that was acoustically different from but semantically the same as the original target resulted in more errors on both tasks than when the target changed to an acoustically and semantically different object. In Experiment 2, comparison of semantic and acoustic effects demonstrated that acoustics provide a weaker cue than semantics for both change detection and object encoding. The results suggest that listeners rely more on semantic information than on physical detail.)     

The relation between body semantics and spatial body representations

The present study addressed the relation between body semantics (i.e. semantic knowledge about the human body) and spatial body representations, by presenting participants with word pairs, one below the other, referring to body parts. The spatial position of the word pairs could be congruent (e.g. EYE / MOUTH) or incongruent (MOUTH / EYE) with respect to the spatial position of the words’ referents. In addition, the spatial distance between the words’ referents was varied, resulting in word pairs referring to body parts that are close (e.g. EYE / MOUTH) or far in space (e.g. EYE / FOOT). A spatial congruency effect was observed when subjects made an iconicity judgment (Experiments 2 and 3) but not when making a semantic relatedness judgment (Experiment 1). In addition, when making a semantic relatedness judgment (Experiment 1) reaction times increased with increased distance between the body parts but when making an iconicity judgment (Experiments 2 and 3) reaction times decreased with increased distance. These findings suggest that the processing of body-semantics results in the activation of a detailed visuo-spatial body representation that is modulated by the specific task requirements. We discuss these new data with respect to theories of embodied cognition and body semantics.     

The verbal nature of representations of the canonical colors of objects

In selecting the canonical colors of color-specific objects, children may use verbal mediation, a cognitive process whereby an object and its color are matched using verbal rather than pictorial representation [British Journal of Developmental Psychology 14 (1996) 339]. To investigate this process, 108 2- to 5-year-old children were asked to identify 11 colors and to choose crayons to color pictures of color-specific objects. Canonical color choice was significantly predicted by color-labeling skill above the variance portion predicted by age alone. Children were also asked to explain their color choices. Children who knew their colors and who colored canonically provided explanations for their color choices consistent with verbal mediation. However, a high proportion of children who did not know a color, and thus could not use verbal mediation, also gave sophisticated explanations for their color choices if they colored the objects canonically. These findings provide modest support for the idea that identification of canonical colors of objects is a verbal process.     

WINDSOR: Windsor improved norms of distance and similarity of representations of semantics

Lexical co-occurrence models of semantic memory form representations of the meaning of a word on the basis of the number of times that pairs of words occur near one another in a large body of text. These models offer a distinct advantage over models that require the collection of a large number of judgments from human subjects, since the construction of the representations can be completely automated. Unfortunately, word frequency, a well-known predictor of reaction time in several cognitive tasks, has a strong effect on the co-occurrence counts in a corpus. Two words with high frequency are more likely to occur together purely by chance than are two words that occur very infrequently. In this article, we examine a modification of a successful method for constructing semantic representations from lexical co-occurrence. We show that our new method eliminates the influence of frequency, while still capturing the semantic characteristics of words.     

The role of sparsely distributed representations in familiarity recognition of verbal and olfactory materials

We present the generalized signal detection theory (GSDT), where familiarity is described by a sparse binomial distribution of binary node activity rather than by normal distribution of familiarity. Items are presented in a distributed representation, where each node receives either noise only, or signal and noise. An old response (i.e., a “yes” response) is made if at least one node receives signal plus noise that is larger than the activation threshold, and item variability is determined by the distribution of activated nodes as the threshold is varied. A distinct representation leads to better performance and a lower ratio of new to old item variability, than a more distributed and less distinct representations. Here we apply the GSDT to empirical data on verbal and olfactory memory and suggest that verbal memory relies on a distinct neural item representation, whereas olfactory memory has a fuzzy neural representation leading to poorer memory and inducing a larger ratio of new to old item variability.     

Binding serial order to representations in working memory: a spatial/verbal dissociation

Verbal information is coded naturally as ordered representations in working memory (WM). However, this may not be true for spatial information. Accordingly, we used memory span tasks to test the hypothesis that serial order is more readily bound to verbal than to spatial representations. Removing serial-order requirements improved performance more for spatial locations than for digits. Furthermore, serial order was freely reproduced twice as frequently for digits as for locations. When participants reordered spatial sequences, they minimized the mean distance between items. Participants also failed to detect changes in serial order more frequently for spatial than for verbal sequences. These results provide converging evidence for a dissociation in the binding of serial order to spatial versus verbal representations. There may be separable domain-specific control processes responsible for this binding. Alternatively, there may be fundamental differences in how effectively temporal information can be bound to different types of stimulus features in WM.     

Quality of phonological representations, verbal learning, and phoneme awareness in dyslexic and normal readers

This study of dyslexia was concerned with the quality of phonological representations of lexical items. It extended the studies of verbal learning in dyslexia from learning new vocabulary items (pseudo-names) to the learning of more well-specified variants of known words. The participants were 19 dyslexic adolescents in grades 4 to 6 and 19 younger normal readers in grade 2 matched on single word decoding. The dyslexics were significantly outperformed by the reading-age controls in non-word reading and in phoneme awareness. The dyslexics also took longer time to learn to associate a set of pseudo-names with pictures of persons although the dyslexics learned to associate familiar names with pictures as quickly as the controls did. The acquisition of new phonological representations of words was studied in an imitation task with maximally distinct pronunciations of long, familiar words. The dyslexics gained less than the controls in this task. They also gained less on one measure taken from a phoneme substitution task with the same words as in the distinctness task. The results are interpreted in the light of the hypothesis that poorly specified phonological representations may be an underlying problem in dyslexia.     

Body image and comprehension of body part names

The relation between awareness of body topology and auditory comprehension of body part names was studied in 22 aphasic subjects. Two nonverbal tasks—human figure drawing and placement of individual body parts in relation to a drawn face—were compared with two auditory tests of body part comprehension. The two nonverbal and the two verbal tasks were closely correlated with each other, but there was no relation involving either of the verbal tests with either of the nonverbal tests. Selection errors in the auditory comprehension tasks were predominantly semantically based and equally distributed between functionally analogous parts and parts related by location on the body.Dr. Benedet's effort in this study was supported by a grant from the Hispano-North American Joint Committee for Cultural and Educational Cooperation.     

Visuospatial bootstrapping: Long-term memory representations are necessary for implicit binding of verbal and visuospatial working memory

It has recently been shown that presenting additional visuospatial information alongside to-be-remembered numbers in a digit span task enhances participants’ memory for those items. However, the mechanisms behind this visuospatial bootstrapping effect have remained unspecified. In this article, we report evidence that this effect involves an integration of information from verbal and visuospatial temporary memory with long-term-memory (LTM) representations and that the existence of a relevant LTM representation is necessary for bootstrapping to occur.     

Body representations and cognitive ontology: Drawing the boundaries of the body image

The distinction between body image and body schema has been incredibly influential in cognitive neuroscience. Recently, researchers have begun to speculate about the relationship between these representations (Gadsby, 2017, 2018; Pitron & de Vignemont, 2017; Pitron et al., 2018). Within this emerging literature, Pitron et al. (2018) proposed that the long-term body image and long-term body schema co-construct one another, through a process of reciprocal interaction. In proposing this model, they make two assumptions: that the long-term body image incorporates the spatial characteristics of tools, and that it is distorted in the case of Alice in wonderland syndrome. Here, I challenge these assumptions, with a closer examination of what the term “long-term body image” refers to. In doing so, I draw out some important taxonomic principles for research into body representation.