Interplay of emotional valence and concreteness in word processing: An event-related potential study with verbs

The functional locus of emotional valence in word processing remains an open question. In event-related potentials, emotion has been found to elicit an early posterior negativity (EPN), which is assumed to reflect attention catching by the words’ meaning. Previously, the EPN was modulated by word category with verbs exhibiting longer EPN latencies compared with other word categories. Here we examined whether concreteness, a semantic variable, influences emotion processing. Within a lexical decision task for verbs, emotional valence (positive, negative, and neutral) was orthogonally combined with concreteness (concrete and abstract). EPN onset was found already at 250 ms post-stimulus for concrete verbs, whereas it started 50 ms later for abstract verbs. Concreteness effects occurred after the start of main effects of emotion. Thus, the elicitation of the EPN seems to be based on semantic processes, with emotional valence being accessed before other semantic aspects such as concreteness of verbs.     

To watch, to see, and to differ: an event-related potential study of concreteness effects as a function of word class and lexical ambiguity

Electrophysiological techniques were used to assess the generalizability of concreteness effects on word processing across word class (nouns and verbs) and different types of lexical ambiguity (syntactic only and combined syntactic/semantic). The results replicated prior work in showing an enhanced N400 response and a sustained frontal negativity to concrete as compared with abstract nouns. The effect of concreteness on the N400 generalized to all word class and ambiguity conditions, whereas the frontal effect was present for all word types except for the syntactically and semantically ambiguous items when these were used as verbs. The seemingly dissociable ERP effects of concreteness at frontal and central/posterior electrode sites revealed by these data suggest that concreteness may impact multiple aspects of neurocognitive processing.     

Semantic ambiguity effects on traditional Chinese character naming: A corpus-based approach

Words are considered semantically ambiguous if they have more than one meaning and can be used in multiple contexts. A number of recent studies have provided objective ambiguity measures by using a corpus-based approach and have demonstrated ambiguity advantages in both naming and lexical decision tasks. Although the predictive power of objective ambiguity measures has been examined in several alphabetic language systems, the effects in logographic languages remain unclear. Moreover, most ambiguity measures do not explicitly address how the various contexts associated with a given word relate to each other. To explore these issues, we computed the contextual diversity (Adelman, Brown, & Quesada, Psychological Science, 17; 814–823, 2006) and semantic ambiguity (Hoffman, Lambon Ralph, & Rogers, Behavior Research Methods, 45; 718–730, 2013) of traditional Chinese single-character words based on the Academia Sinica Balanced Corpus, where contextual diversity was used to evaluate the present semantic space. We then derived a novel ambiguity measure, namely semantic variability, by computing the distance properties of the distinct clusters grouped by the contexts that contained a given word. We demonstrated that semantic variability was superior to semantic diversity in accounting for the variance in naming response times, suggesting that considering the substructure of the various contexts associated with a given word can provide a relatively fine scale of ambiguity information for a word. All of the context and ambiguity measures for 2,418 Chinese single-character words are provided as supplementary materials.     

The Role of Sensory Perception,Emotionality and <Emphasis Type="BoldItalic">Lifeworld</Emphasis> in Auditory Word Processing: Evidence from Congenital Blindness and Synesthesia

Although it has been established that human beings process concrete and abstract words differently, it is still a matter of debate what factors contribute to this difference. Since concrete concepts are closely tied to sensory perception, perceptual experience seems to play an important role in their processing. The present study investigated the processing of nouns during an auditory lexical decision task. Participants came from three populations differing in their visual-perceptual experience: congenitally blind persons, word-color synesthetes, and sighted non-synesthetes. Specifically, three features with potential relevance to concreteness were manipulated: sensory perception, emotionality, and Husserlian lifeworld, a concept related to the inner versus the outer world of the self. In addition to a classical concreteness effect, our results revealed a significant effect of lifeworld: words that are closely linked to the internal states of humans were processed faster than words referring to the outside world. When lifeworld was introduced as predictor, there was no effect of emotionality. Concerning participants’ perceptual experience, an interaction between participant group and item characteristics was found: the effects of both concreteness and lifeworld were more pronounced for blind compared to sighted participants. We will discuss the results in the context of embodied semantics, and we will propose an approach to concreteness based on the individual’s bodily experience and the relatedness of a given concept to the self.     

Contrasting graded effects of semantic similarity and association across the concreteness spectrum

Evidence from healthy individuals and neuropsychological patients with deep dyslexia or semantic refractory access dysphasia suggests that abstract and concrete concepts have different dependencies upon associative and similarity-based representational frameworks. However, the importance of information about semantic similarity for concepts that lie across the full concreteness spectrum has not been investigated. Here we report the performance of healthy individuals on an odd-one-out task involving semantically related word triplets that showed continuous variation for the key variables of concreteness, similarity strength, and association strength. In addition, data from a stroke aphasic patient tested on a matching-to-sample task based on the same abstract, middle-concreteness, and concrete stimuli are also presented. The effects of similarity and association strength upon performance were both shown to interact significantly with concreteness, but in opposite directions. The effect of semantic similarity increased with concreteness but the effect of association decreased with concreteness. This research provides further evidence for the proposal that abstract and concrete words have different dependencies upon associative and similarity-based information. It also develops the proposal by providing data that are consistent with a graded and not binary or ungraded model of the relationship between concreteness and these two forms of semantic relationship.     

Contrasting graded effects of semantic similarity and association across the concreteness spectrum

Evidence from healthy individuals and neuropsychological patients with deep dyslexia or semantic refractory access dysphasia suggests that abstract and concrete concepts have different dependencies upon associative and similarity-based representational frameworks. However, the importance of information about semantic similarity for concepts that lie across the full concreteness spectrum has not been investigated. Here we report the performance of healthy individuals on an odd-one-out task involving semantically related word triplets that showed continuous variation for the key variables of concreteness, similarity strength, and association strength. In addition, data from a stroke aphasic patient tested on a matching-to-sample task based on the same abstract, middle-concreteness, and concrete stimuli are also presented. The effects of similarity and association strength upon performance were both shown to interact significantly with concreteness, but in opposite directions. The effect of semantic similarity increased with concreteness but the effect of association decreased with concreteness. This research provides further evidence for the proposal that abstract and concrete words have different dependencies upon associative and similarity-based information. It also develops the proposal by providing data that are consistent with a graded and not binary or ungraded model of the relationship between concreteness and these two forms of semantic relationship.     

Linking somatic and symbolic representation in semantic memory: the dynamic multilevel reactivation framework

Biological plausibility is an essential constraint for any viable model of semantic memory. Yet, we have only the most rudimentary understanding of how the human brain conducts abstract symbolic transformations that underlie word and object meaning. Neuroscience has evolved a sophisticated arsenal of techniques for elucidating the architecture of conceptual representation. Nevertheless, theoretical convergence remains elusive. Here we describe several contrastive approaches to the organization of semantic knowledge, and in turn we offer our own perspective on two recurring questions in semantic memory research: (1) to what extent are conceptual representations mediated by sensorimotor knowledge (i.e., to what degree is semantic memory embodied)? (2) How might an embodied semantic system represent abstract concepts such as modularity, symbol, or proposition? To address these questions, we review the merits of sensorimotor (i.e., embodied) and amodal (i.e., disembodied) semantic theories and address the neurobiological constraints underlying each. We conclude that the shortcomings of both perspectives in their extreme forms necessitate a hybrid middle ground. We accordingly propose the Dynamic Multilevel Reactivation Framework—an integrative model predicated upon flexible interplay between sensorimotor and amodal symbolic representations mediated by multiple cortical hubs. We discuss applications of the dynamic multilevel reactivation framework to abstract and concrete concept representation and describe how a multidimensional conceptual topography based on emotion, sensation, and magnitude can successfully frame a semantic space containing meanings for both abstract and concrete words. The consideration of ‘abstract conceptual features’ does not diminish the role of logical and/or executive processing in activating, manipulating and using information stored in conceptual representations. Rather, it proposes that the materials upon which these processes operate necessarily combine pure sensorimotor information and higher-order cognitive dimensions involved in symbolic representation.     

The tool for the automatic analysis of lexical sophistication (TAALES): version 2.0

This study introduces the second release of the Tool for the Automatic Analysis of Lexical Sophistication (TAALES 2.0), a freely available and easy-to-use text analysis tool. TAALES 2.0 is housed on a user’s hard drive (allowing for secure data processing) and is available on most operating systems (Windows, Mac, and Linux). TAALES 2.0 adds 316 indices to the original tool. These indices are related to word frequency, word range, n-gram frequency, n-gram range, n-gram strength of association, contextual distinctiveness, word recognition norms, semantic network, and word neighbors. In this study, we validated TAALES 2.0 by investigating whether its indices could be used to model both holistic scores of lexical proficiency in free writes and word choice scores in narrative essays. The results indicated that the TAALES 2.0 indices could be used to explain 58% of the variance in lexical proficiency scores and 32% of the variance in word-choice scores. Newly added TAALES 2.0 indices, including those related to n-gram association strength, word neighborhood, and word recognition norms, featured heavily in these predictor models, suggesting that TAALES 2.0 represents a substantial upgrade.     

词的具体性对词汇识别的影响

采用词汇判断法、命名法两种方法考察词的具体性特征对词汇识别的影响。结果表明：（１）两种任务中都存在着词的具体性效应;（２）词的具体性效应只表现在高频词中。作者给出了可能的解释并认为词汇识别中形、音、义的加工存在着交互作用。     

The Multilevel Modality-Switch Effect: What Happens When We See the Bees Buzzing and Hear the Diamonds Glistening

Previous studies demonstrated that the sequential verification of different sensory modality properties for concepts (e.g., BLENDER-loud; BANANA-yellow) brings about a processing cost, known as the modality-switch effect. We report an experiment designed to assess the influence of the mode of presentation (i.e., visual, aural) of stimuli on the modality-switch effect in a property verification and lexical decision priming paradigm. Participants were required to perform a property verification or a lexical decision task on a target sentence (e.g., “a BEE buzzes”, “a DIAMOND glistens”) presented either visually or aurally after having been presented with a prime sentence (e.g., “the LIGHT is flickering”, “the SOUND is echoing”) that could either share both, one or none of the target’s mode of presentation and content modality. Results show that the mode of presentation of stimuli affects the conceptual modality-switch effect. Furthermore, the depth of processing required by the task modulates the complex interplay of perceptual and semantic information. We conclude that the MSE is a task-related, multilevel effect which can occur on two different levels of information processing (i.e., perceptual and semantic).     

Psycholinguistic measures for German verb pairs: Semantic transparency,semantic relatedness,verb family size,and age of reading acquisition

A central issue in visual and spoken word recognition is the lexical representation of complex words—in particular, whether the lexical representation of complex words depends on semantic transparency: Is a complex verb like understand lexically represented as a whole word or via its base stand, given that its meaning is not transparent from the meanings of its parts? To study this issue, a number of stimulus characteristics are of interest that are not yet available in public databases of German. This article provides semantic association ratings, lexical paraphrases, and vector-based similarity measures for German verbs, measuring (a) the semantic transparency between 1,259 complex verbs and their bases, (b) the semantic relatedness between 1,109 verb pairs with 432 different bases, and (c) the vector-based similarity measures of 846 verb pairs. Additionally, we include the verb regularity of all verbs and two counts of verb family size for 184 base verbs, as well as estimates of age of acquisition and age of reading for 200 verbs. Together with lemma and type frequencies from public lexical databases, all measures can be downloaded along with this article. Statistical analyses indicate that verb family size, morphological complexity, frequency, and verb regularity affect the semantic transparency and relatedness ratings as well as the age of acquisition estimates, indicating that these are relevant variables in psycholinguistic experiments. Although lexical paraphrases, vector-based similarity measures, and semantic association ratings may deliver complementary information, the interrater reliability of the semantic association ratings for each verb pair provides valuable information when selecting stimuli for psycholinguistic experiments.     

The curious case of spillover: Does it tell us much about saccade timing in reading?

In completing daily activities, the eyes make a series of saccades by gazing at stimuli in succession. The duration of gaze on each stimulus has been used to infer how the initiation of a saccade is timed relative to the underlying mental processing. In reading, gaze dwells longer on a word that occurs infrequently in English text (low frequency) than on a more frequent word (high frequency), but also on the following word, which is referred to as spillover. Accounts of spillover attribute it to mechanisms of lexical access. A low-frequency word n is assumed to delay the onset of cognitive processing of word n+1 more than it delays the saccade to n+1, leaving more processing to be done on n+1 once it is fixated. We tested this assumption by having participants perform a series of speeded lexical decisions on a linear array of letter strings spaced 5° apart, using low- and high-frequency words to vary the lexical difficulty. Lexical decision adds a response selection stage that is absent in reading, which should eliminate differential effects on saccades and cognitive processing. Nonetheless, we found the typical pattern of lengthened gaze duration and spillover for low-frequency words, with effects that were consistent in magnitude with those seen in studies of reading. These data challenge existing accounts of spillover and argue against the idea that reading has a unique interaction with oculomotor control. Instead, the similarity of our gaze patterns to those of reading suggests a common pattern of saccade initiation across tasks.     

Formal distinctiveness of high- and low-imageability nouns: analyses and theoretical implications

Words associated with perceptually salient, highly imageable concepts are learned earlier in life, more accurately recalled, and more rapidly named than abstract words (R. W. Brown, 1976; Walker & Hulme, 1999). Theories accounting for this concreteness effect have focused exclusively on semantic properties of word referents. A novel possibility is that word structure may also contribute to the effect. We report a corpus-based analysis of the phonological and morphological structures of a large set of nouns with imageability ratings (N = 2,023). High- and low-imageability nouns differed by length, etymology, prosody, affixation, phonological neighborhood density, and rates of consonant clustering. On average, nouns denoting abstract concepts were longer, more derivationally complex, and emerged in English from a different distribution of languages than did concrete nouns. We address implications for interactivity of word form and meaning as pertain to theories of word concreteness, lexical acquisition, and word processing.     

Gradients versus dichotomies: How strength of semantic context influences event-related potentials and lexical decision times

In experiments devoted to word recognition and/or language comprehension, reaction time in the lexical decision task is perhaps the most commonly used behavioral dependent measure, and the amplitude of the N400 component of the event-related potential (ERP) is the most common neural measure. Both are sensitive to multiple factors, including frequency of usage, orthographic similarity to other words, concreteness of word meaning, and preceding semantic context. All of these factors vary continuously. Published results have shown that both lexical decision times and N400 amplitudes show graded responses to graded changes of word frequency and orthographic similarity, but a puzzling discrepancy in their responsivity to the strength of a semantic context has received little attention. In three experiments, we presented pairs of words varying in the strengths of their semantic relationships, as well as unrelated pairs. In all three experiments, N400 amplitudes showed a gradient from unrelated to weakly associated to strongly associated target words, whereas lexical decision times showed a binary division rather than a gradient across strengths of relationship. This pattern of results suggests that semantic context effects in lexical decision and ERP measures arise from fundamentally different processes.     

Estimating the average need of semantic knowledge from distributional semantic models

Continuous bag of words (CBOW) and skip-gram are two recently developed models of lexical semantics (Mikolov, Chen, Corrado, & Dean, Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems, 26, 3111–3119, 2013). Each has been demonstrated to perform markedly better at capturing human judgments about semantic relatedness than competing models (e.g., latent semantic analysis; Landauer & Dumais, Psychological Review, 104(2), 1997 211; hyperspace analogue to language; Lund & Burgess, Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers, 28(2), 203–208, 1996). The new models were largely developed to address practical problems of meaning representation in natural language processing. Consequently, very little attention has been paid to the psychological implications of the performance of these models. We describe the relationship between the learning algorithms employed by these models and Anderson’s rational theory of memory (J. R. Anderson & Milson, Psychological Review, 96(4), 703, 1989) and argue that CBOW is learning word meanings according to Anderson’s concept of needs probability. We also demonstrate that CBOW can account for nearly all of the variation in lexical access measures typically attributable to word frequency and contextual diversity—two measures that are conceptually related to needs probability. These results suggest two conclusions: One, CBOW is a psychologically plausible model of lexical semantics. Two, word frequency and contextual diversity do not capture learning effects but rather memory retrieval effects.     

语境情绪韵律对新异词汇学习过程的影响

模拟自然学习语境,探讨情绪韵律对具体和抽象词学习的调节作用及其产生原因。被试在高兴、愤怒、中性语境情绪韵律条件下学习抽象和具体词,记录学习过程及测试过程中的行为与脑电反应。结果发现在愤怒韵律背景下学习的抽象词加工的正确率更低、反应时更长;并且诱发了更为显著的脑电成分。表明愤怒韵律对词汇学习尤其是抽象词学习有显著的消极作用。此外,情绪韵律对词汇学习的调节作用是在学习过程中对词汇语义提取及晚期语义整合产生影响而形成的。     

汉语名词、动词和动名兼类词语义加工的偏侧化现象——来自ERP的研究

将ERP技术和半视野技术相结合,采用词汇判断任务,对汉语名词、动词和动名兼类词在左脑和右脑中的加工机制进行了考察。实验结果显示,名词和动词的N400仅在左视野/右脑存在差异,名词和动词的N400在左视野/右脑和右视野/左脑中都比偏（动）和偏（名）更负。不同词类的LPC在右视野/左脑中没有显著差异;偏（名）和偏（动）的LPC在左视野/右脑中比名词和动词更正。实验结果表明,在没有语境条件下,汉语名词和动词的差异主要在具体性上,动名兼类词体现出不同于名词、动词的加工机制。     

情绪名词的具体性效应：来自ERP的证据

词汇的具体性和情绪性是影响词汇加工的不同因素, 高具体性和情绪性都能够促进词汇的加工。本研究同时操纵词汇的具体性和情绪性, 使用词汇判定任务和愉悦度判断任务, 探讨了情绪名词的具体性效应及其具体性效应是否受词汇情绪信息的影响。结果发现：情绪名词的具体性效应受内隐或外显情绪条件的影响, 具体的情绪词比抽象的情绪词反应时间更短、正确率更高, 诱发了更大的N400和减小的LPC, 但LPC的具体性效应只表现在内隐情绪任务中。词汇的具体性和情绪性的相互影响发生在内隐情绪任务中的语义加工阶段, 正性、负性的具体词和抽象词的加工在N400成分上差异不显著, 而中性具体词和抽象词在N400成分上差异显著, 说明词汇的情绪信息为抽象词的加工提供了充分的语境, 因此消除了具体词的加工优势。     

Orthographic neighborhood and concreteness effects in the lexical decision task

The experiment reported here investigated the sensitivity of concreteness effects to orthographic neighborhood density and frequency in the visual lexical decision task. The concreteness effect was replicated with a sample of concrete and abstract words that were not matched for orthographic neighborhood features and in which concrete words turned out to have a higher neighborhood density than abstract words. No consistent effect of concreteness was found with a sample of concrete and abstract words matched for orthographic neighborhood density and frequency and having fewer neighbors and higher-frequency neighbors than the words of the first sample. Post hoc analyses of the results showed that orthographic neighborhood density was not a nuisance variable producing a spurious effect of concreteness but, instead, that the existence of higher-frequency neighbors constitutes a necessary condition for concreteness effects to appear in the lexical decision task. This finding is consistent with the hypothesis that semantic information is accessed and used to generate the responses in lexical decision when inhibition from orthographic forms delays the target word recognition.