Is a picture worth a thousand words? Evidence from concept definitions by patients with semantic dementia

Nine patients with semantic dementia (the temporal lobe variant of frontotemporal dementia) were asked to define concrete concepts either from presentation of a picture of the object or from its spoken name. As expected, the patients with the most severe semantic impairment produced the least detailed definitions, and the quality of the definitions overall was significantly related to concept familiarity. Further analyses of the definitions were designed to assess two key theoretical aspects of semantic organization. (i) Do objects and their corresponding names activate conceptual information in two neuroanatomically separable (modality-specific) semantic systems? If so, then-apart from any expected commonality in performance attributable to factors such as concept familiarity-one would not predict striking item-specific similarities in a patient's picture- and word-elicited definitions. (ii) Do sensory/perceptual features and more associative/functional attributes of conceptual knowledge form two neuroanatomically separable subsystems? If so, then one would predict significant dissociations in the prominence of these two types of information in the patients' definitions. The results lead us to favor a model of the semantic system that is divided by attribute type but not by modality.     

Is Phonology Embodied? Evidence from Mechanical Stimulation

Journal of Psycholinguistic Research - Across languages, certain syllables are systematically preferred to others (e.g., plaf?>?ptaf). Here, we examine whether these preferences...     

Is attention needed for word identification? Evidence from the Stroop paradigm

One of the most robust findings in attention research is that the time to name a color is lengthened markedly in the presence of an irrelevant word that spells a different color name: the Stroop effect. The Stroop effect is found even when the word is physically separated from the color, apparently indicating that words can be read outside the focus of spatial attention. The present study critically evaluated this claim. We employed several stringent measures within a Stroop paradigm to prevent participants from attending to the irrelevant words (e.g., limiting exposure duration to prevent attention capture). Nonetheless, residual Stroop effects were obtained for both color words and semantic associates (e.g., sky to blue). These data suggest that lexical processing can sometimes occur outside the focus of spatial attention.     

Is Risk Taking a Missing Ingredient in Pastoral Ministry?

This article describes the use of risk taking behaviors to accomplish objectives that, in certain circumstances, the more traditionally accepted practices of pastoral care and counselling, seem unable to achieve alone.     

Is the Bible Becoming a Closed Book? British Opinion Poll Evidence

Opinion poll data from 123 national sample surveys of the adult general population and 35 national and local sample surveys of adult religious populations are used to study changes in the status and influence of the Bible in Britain since the Second World War. The principal measures of ‘Bible-centricism’ comprise Bible ownership, readership, knowledge, literalism, beliefs, and attitudes. The analysis proceeds both at top-line level and by breaks for gender, age, social class, religious denomination, and churchgoing. Twelve broad conclusions are drawn, with declining allegiance to the Bible visible on various fronts, even among regular churchgoers. In an everyday sense, one interpretation could be that Christianity is becoming de-coupled from the holy book on which it is founded. This process, mirroring declines in other religious indicators, is attributed to the waning influence of three principal agencies of religious socialisation (church/Sunday school, state school, parents) which formerly underpinned the Bible’s role in faith and society.     

Is Forgotten Evidence a Problem for Evidentialism?

The “problem of forgotten evidence” is a common objection to evidentialist theories of epistemic justification. This objection is motivated by cases where someone forms a belief on the basis of supporting evidence and then later forgets this evidence while retaining the belief. Critics of evidentialist theories argue that in some of these cases the person's belief remains justified. So, these critics claim that one can have a justified belief that is not supported by any evidence the subject possesses. I argue that these critics are mistaken.     

Is Probabilistic Evidence a Source of Knowledge?

We report a series of experiments examining whether people ascribe knowledge for true beliefs based on probabilistic evidence. Participants were less likely to ascribe knowledge for beliefs based on probabilistic evidence than for beliefs based on perceptual evidence (Experiments 1 and 2A) or testimony providing causal information (Experiment 2B). Denial of knowledge for beliefs based on probabilistic evidence did not arise because participants viewed such beliefs as unjustified, nor because such beliefs leave open the possibility of error. These findings rule out traditional philosophical accounts for why probabilistic evidence does not produce knowledge. The experiments instead suggest that people deny knowledge because they distrust drawing conclusions about an individual based on reasoning about the population to which it belongs, a tendency previously identified by “judgment and decision making” researchers. Consistent with this, participants were more willing to ascribe knowledge for beliefs based on probabilistic evidence that is specific to a particular case (Experiments 3A and 3B).     

Is there a genuine advantage to the upper part of words during lexical access? Evidence from the Stroop task

A number of recent visual-word recognition and reading experiments have concluded that the upper part of words is more important for lexical access than is the lower part, which conforms with Huey’s (1908) observation. Here, we examined whether this phenomenon may simply be due to the fact that words in Indo-European languages tend to have a higher number of confusable letters in the lower than in the upper part. We manipulated the letter ambiguity of the upper and lower parts of words in two experiments in which we asked participants to report the presentation color of the upper and lower parts of color words and noncolor words, and in a baseline condition, of strings of &s (Stroop task). In Experiment 1, the lower part of noncolor words was more ambiguous than the upper part (upward-unbalanced words), whereas in Experiment 2, the ambiguities of the two parts of the noncolor words were similar (balanced words). For the upward-unbalanced noncolor words, the magnitude of lexical interference (relative to the baseline condition) was greater for the upper than for the lower part. Critically, the differences vanished when this factor was controlled (i.e., balanced words; Exp. 2). Thus, the apparent bias in favor of the upper part of words can be parsimoniously described as an idiosyncratic feature of the words’ component letters.     

Is the Chinese number-naming system transparent? Evidence from Chinese-English bilingual children.

Chinese-speaking children have been shown to have an advantage over English-speaking children in a variety of mathematical areas, including counting. One possible explanation for the advantage in counting is that the Chinese number-naming system is relatively transparent, compared to English, in that number names typically are directly indicative of base-10 structure (e.g., 12 is named "ten-two" rather than "twelve"). To determine whether the transparency of the Chinese number-naming system influences counting in bilingual children, we tested 25 Chinese-English bilingual children between the ages of 3 and 5 years, both in English and in Chinese. Children were asked to count as high as they could (abstract counting) and also to count objects in small, medium, and large arrays (object counting). No evidence was found for transparency or for transfer from one language to the other. Instead, relative proficiency in the two languages influenced counting skill. These results are discussed in terms of linguistic and cultural variables that might account for cross-linguistic differences in counting.     

Is flashbulb memory a special instance of source memory? Evidence from older adults

Flashbulb memories (FMs) are vivid, stable memories for the reception of arousing, consequential news. Although such memories have been found in people of all ages, in the only examination of age differences to date, Cohen, Conway, and Maylor (1994) reported that older adults were less likely than young adults to experience a FM. We hypothesised that FM would be impaired in older adults with reduced frontal lobe (FL) function. To test this hypothesis, we asked older adults, who had been characterised according to FL function, to recall details of the moment that they first heard the news about the deaths of Princess Diana and Mother Teresa. Long-term retention was tested 6 months later. Details concerning the reception of the news about Princess Diana's death were retained better than those associated with Mother Teresa's death. Importantly, there was no evidence that memory for these contextual details was related to FL function. A measure of medial temporal lobe function, derived from neuropsychological tests of episodic memory, was also not associated with memory for the reception events, although it was associated with memory for the details of an everyday autobiographical event. We speculated that emotionally arousing autobiographical memories may be qualitatively different from everyday memories and may involve the amygdala.     

Is perseveration caused by inhibition failure? Evidence from preschool children's inferences about word meanings

Four studies examined the relation between children's cognitive inhibition and flexibility in a lexical inference task. Children's linguistic flexibility was assessed by the Flexible Induction of Meaning (FIM) test (Deák, 2000a), which requires that children shift inferences about the meanings of several words for novel objects. In Study 1, 54 3-year-olds either were trained between blocks of problems, for a delay of 3 min, or received no training or delay. Training delays did not influence perseveration. In Study 2 (N=72 3- and 4-year-olds') novel word problems were grouped either to increase the frequency of cue switches (i.e., reduce response "set") or minimize the interval between problems about the same objects. Again, no effect was found. In Study 3, 48 3- and 4-year-olds completed 6 preliminary trials; in a high interference group these trials generated a response set to be inhibited upon the first switch to a new cue context. This group did not perseverate more than a control group. There was no association between FIM perseveration and a Stroop-like test of verbal inhibition though both were marginally related to receptive vocabulary. In study 4 (48 3- and 4-year-olds), FIM was again unrelated to Stroop performance, but was related to the ability to tell whether a situation or problem is indeterminate. Thus, flexibility across semantic inferences is not influenced by timing, order, and number of pre-switch problems and is not predicted by individual differences in a test of verbal inhibition. However previously reported age and individual differences in flexible induction of word meanings are robust and related to vocabulary and logical ability.     

Is visual lexical access based on phonological codes? Evidence from a picture-word interference task

The claim that lexical access for visual words is mandatorily mediated by their phonological codes was investigated. Ninety-six subjects performed timed naming responses to pictures while instructed to ignore printed words superimposed on the pictures. Distractor words were either semantically related to the picture label or were homophones of a word semantically related to the picture name. On the basis of the claim that homophones initially activate multiple semantic codes, we hypothesized that the homophone and semantic distractors would yield comparable interference. Picture-word stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) was varied between subjects as 0 or +100 msec. For an SOA of 0 msec, semantic interference, but no effect from the homophones, was obtained. For an SOA of +100 msec, no effect was obtained in either condition. In combination, these findings indicate a limited role of phonological codes in visual lexical access. It is suggested that the role of phonology in written word identification may vary dependent on procedure and utility to the task.     

Is surface dysgraphia tied to semantic impairment? Evidence from a case of semantic dementia

Recent models of lexical processing suggest that written spelling partly depends upon the semantic system. According to these models, a deterioration in word meanings would necessarily lead to a spelling impairment, especially for low-frequency and orthographically irregular words. We report a case study of a patient (MK) with semantic dementia who presents impairments in knowledge of word meanings and surface dysgraphia. By specifically identifying concepts that are still known or that are partially or completely deteriorated, we show that the patient's spelling deficit is highly correlated with word comprehension. These data confirm that surface dysgraphia is directly linked to the breakdown in semantic memory.     

Is there a neighborhood frequency effect in English? Evidence from reading and lexical decision

What is the effect of a word's higher frequency neighbors on its identification time? According to activation-based models of word identification (J. Grainger & A. M. Jacobs, 1996; J. L. McClelland & D. E. Rumelhart, 1981), words with higher frequency neighbors will be processed more slowly than words without higher frequency neighbors because of the lexical competition mechanism embodied in these models. Although a critical prediction of these models, this inhibitory neighborhood frequency effect has been elusive in studies that have used English stimuli. In the present experiments, the effect of higher frequency neighbors was examined in the lexical decision task and when participants were reading sentences while their eye movements were monitored. Results suggest that higher frequency neighbors have little, if any, effect on the identification of English words. The implications for activation-based models of word identification are discussed.     

Is flashbulb memory a special instance of source memory? Evidence from older adults.

Flashbulb memories (FMs) are vivid, stable memories for the reception of arousing, consequential news. Although such memories have been found in people of all ages, in the only examination of age differences to date, Cohen, Conway, and Maylor (1994) reported that older adults were less likely than young adults to experience a FM. We hypothesised that FM would be impaired in older adults with reduced frontal lobe (FL) function. To test this hypothesis, we asked older adults, who had been characterised according to FL function, to recall details of the moment that they first heard the news about the deaths of Princess Diana and Mother Teresa. Long-term retention was tested 6 months later. Details concerning the reception of the news about Princess Diana's death were retained better than those associated with Mother Teresa's death. Importantly, there was no evidence that memory for these contextual details was related to FL function. A measure of medial temporal lobe function, derived from neuropsychological tests of episodic memory, was also not associated with memory for the reception events, although it was associated with memory for the details of an everyday autobiographical event. We speculated that emotionally arousing autobiographical memories may be qualitatively different from everyday memories and may involve the amygdala.     

Is the Counselor a Woman?

The 16 PF was administered to 75 male and 43 female high school counselors to determine whether they manifested the femininity (loving receptivity) and the masculinity (potency) that have been said to be important to the counseling role. The men differed significantly from male norms in the feminine direction on warmth, tender-mindedness, and trust. They deviated significantly in the direction of potency on brightness, ego strength, adequacy, and tranquility, but away from potency on caution and group-dependency. The women differed significantly from female norms in the feminine direction only on trust, but in the masculine direction on assertiveness, venturesomeness, and practicality. They deviated significantly in the direction of personal strength on brightness, ego strength, superego strength, adequacy, experimentation, and tranquility.     

Is the Humean defeated by induction?

Many necessitarians about cause and law (Armstrong, What is a law of nature. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1983; Mumford, Laws in nature. Routledge Studies in Twentieth-Century Philosophy. Routledge, Abingdon, 2004; Bird, Nature’s metaphysics: Laws and properties. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2007) have argued that Humeans are unable to justify their inductive inferences, as Humean laws are nothing but the sum of their instances. In this paper I argue against these necessitarian claims. I show that Armstrong is committed to the explanatory value of Humean laws (in the form of universally quantified statements), and that contra Armstrong, brute regularities often do have genuine explanatory value. I finish with a Humean attempt at a probabilistic justification of induction, but this fails due to its assumption that the proportionality syllogism is justified. Although this attempt fails, I nonetheless show that the Humean is at least as justified in reasoning inductively as Armstrong.     

Is the emotional Stroop task a special case of mood induction? Evidence from sustained effects of attention under emotion

Sustained effects of emotion are well known in everyday experience. Surprisingly, such effects are seldom recorded in laboratory studies of the emotional Stroop task, in which participants name the color of emotion and neutral words. Color performance is more sluggish with emotion words than with neutral words, the emotional Stroop effect (ESE). The ESE is not sensitive to the order in which the two groups of words are presented, so the effect of exposure to emotion words does not extend to disrupting performance in a subsequent block with neutral words. We attribute this absence of a sustained effect to habituation engendered by excessive repetition of the experimental stimuli. In a series of four experiments, we showed that sustained effects do occur when habituation is removed, and we also showed that the massive exposure to negative stimuli within the ESE paradigm induces a commensurately negative mood. A novel perspective is offered, in which the ESE is considered a special case of mood induction.     

Structure of the Dospert: Is There Evidence for a General Risk Factor?

The Domain‐specific Risk‐taking scale was designed to assess risk taking in specific domains. This approach is unconventional in personality assessment but reflects conventional wisdom in the decision community that cross‐situational consistency in risk taking is more myth than reality. We applied bifactor analysis to a large sample (n = 921) of responses to the Domain‐specific Risk Taking. Results showed that, in addition to domain‐specific facets, there does appear to be evidence for a general risk‐taking disposition. And this general appetite for risk appears to be useful for predicting real‐world outcomes. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.