The conceptual basis of graded categories

Two implications of the Conceptual Base View of Categorization (Honeck, Kibler, & Sugar, 1985) were tested. First, to the extent that subjects form similar schemas or conceptual bases, their judgments of the exemplariness of various events should agree, and, second, whether a conceptual base is framed from verbal or pictorial inputs should not matter. To test these implications, subjects were provided different reference stimuli as guides for ranking a set of sentences in terms of how well they illustrated the deeper meaning of the reference stimuli. These stimuli were an excellent verbal instance of the figurative meaning of a proverb, a poor verbal instance of this meaning, an abstract picture representing this meaning, or nothing (control group). The results yielded four lines of evidence that were consistent with the Conceptual Base View.     

The role of imagery,analogy, and instantiation in proverb comprehension

The role of imagery, analogy, and instantiation in understanding proverbs was examined in the light of the Conceptual Base Theory (CBT). The CBT proposes that proverb comprehension involves four phases and that (a) after Problem Recognition, imagery is often used during the Literal Transformation Phase with the intention of constructing a figurative meaning but that imagery does not enter into this meaning; (b) figurative meaning is the solution to a four-part, a:b::c:d, analogy, which occurs during the Figurative Phase; (c) the Instantiation Phase can be entered only if a figurative meaning is constructed, but once instantiation occurs it serves to refine this meaning. A transfer paradigm was used to test these hypotheses. During acquisition, the subjects were presented proverbs and given rating tasks in connection with one of the following: pictures that illustrated the literal proverb information (picture groups), instructions to image the literal proverb information (imagery groups), or analogies involving literala andb terms drawn from the proverb andc andd terms that constituted an interpretation of the proverb (analogy group), concrete verbal instances that illustrated the proverbs' figurative meanings (instance group), or an analogy and an instance (analogy-instance group). During transfer, all subjects attempted to distinguish between novel sentences that were either positive or negative instances of the figurative meaning of the acquisition proverbs. The picture and imagery groups, which were assumed to have used imagery without the intention of constructing a figurative meaning, performed at chance. The analogy group performed above chance and on a par with the instance group subjects, who theoretically had constructed and solved an implicit analogy. The analogy-instance group showed superior performance. Discussion centered on the pattern of the results in relation to the CBT and on the role of imagery and analogy in understanding proverbs as opposed to metaphors.The authors wish to thank Suzanne Leake for help in designing the experiment, preparing materials, and running subjects.     

The bidirectionality of judgments of synonymy

This article reports an experiment and some observations on synonymy between sentences. The rationale derives from experimental evidence for the existence of a nonverbal, abstract semantic memory, and for the mutual deducibility of two synonymous sentences. In the first phase of the experiment, subjects ranked interpretations of proverbs in terms of their semantic distance from their proverb bases. In the second phase, different groups of subjects ranked proverbs, including the phase 1 original proverbs and some foils, in terms of their semantic distance from the interpretations. The results indicate that two synonymous sentences tend to be given similar rankings, linearly related, and that subjects are highly consensual in their rankings. It is argued that a deep structure account cannot explain the results and that, furthermore, available linguistic and psychological theories of meaning are likewise insufficient. Synonymy is discussed in terms of an event or operation which serves to restrict interpretation.     

Semantic memory for metaphor: The conceptual base hypothesis

The idea that people can encode and use an extremely abstract and general form of a complex linguistic (proverb) input-a conceptual base-was examined in two experiments. In Experiment I, each proverb was accompanied by either a conceptually related (good, mediocre, or poor) or an unrelated interpretation. The related interpretations were more effective recall prompts than were the unrelated interpretations, but only for high-imagery proverbs. In Experiment II, subjects wrote interpretations of the proverbs and then received either the proverb subject-noun or a brief story as a prompt. As was the case for the interpretations in Experiment I, the stories did not share any major vocabulary or propositional structure with their proverb source. Nonetheless, the stories were as effective as the nouns. Also, quality of proverb interpretation and of recall performance were positively related, with the correlations involving low-imagery proverbs, and stories, tending to be higher. Both experiments provided support for the conceptual-base notion, and underlined the importance of interpretive context, but more definitive evidence is needed.     

Figurative understanding of pictures and sentences

Figurative language use involves the appropriate relatings of normally discrepant domains of knowledge. The present study determined whether college students could match a picture of the literal content of a proverb with a one-sentence target scenario which instantiated an interpretation of the proverb. More specifically, the subjects chose between a target scenario and a foil scenario designed to be a poorer instance of the interpretation. The results indicated that the subjects were successful despite the wide discrepancy in literal meaning between the pictures and scenarios. Supporting studies determined that this finding could not be attributed to response (scenario) bias or to certain characteristics of the pictures or of the scenarios alone. Apparently, the all important interaction between these materials induced the subjects to construct abstract ideas which served to relate the materials figuratively. Idea construction was heuristically described as involving analogic processes.The research was supported, in part, by a grant from the University Research Council of the University of Cincinnati to K. Voegtle.     

Communicative deficits in agenesis of the corpus callosum: nonliteral language and affective prosody

While some individuals with agenesis of the corpus callosum can perform normally on standardized intelligence tests, clinical observations suggest that they nevertheless have deficits in the domains of fluid and social intelligence. Particularly important for social competence is adequate understanding and use of paralinguistic information. This study examined the impact of callosal absence on the processing of pragmatic and paralinguistic information. Young adult males with agenesis of the corpus callosum (ACC) were evaluated in the areas of nonliteral language comprehension, proverb recognition and interpretation, and perception of affective prosody. Ten ACC individuals with normal Wechsler IQ were compared to 14 sex, age, and IQ matched normal controls. The Formulaic and Novel Language Comprehension Test (FANL-C), Gorham Proverbs Test, and LA Prosody Test were administered. ACC subjects exhibited significant impairment on the nonliteral items of the FANL-C, but no significant difference from controls in comprehension of literal items. ACC subjects also exhibited significant deficits in both self-generated interpretation and recognition of proverb meaning, and in recognition of affective prosody. These results demonstrate that normally intelligent individuals with ACC are impaired in the understanding of nonliteral language and emotional-prosodic cues that are important in social communication. In all three tests, the performance of individuals with ACC was similar to patients with right hemisphere brain damage. Thus, persons with ACC appear to lack interhemispheric integration of critical aspects of language processed by the right hemisphere.     

Positive thought disorder in a hypothetically psychosis-prone population

Proverb interpretations of subjects who scored high on the Perceptual Aberration-Magical Ideation Scale (Chapman & Chapman, 1985) were compared with those of low-scoring controls. Responses to 10 familiar and 3 unfamiliar proverbs were scored for Bizarre-idiosyncratic thinking (Marengo, Harrow, Lanin-Kettering, & Wilson, 1986) and literalness (Hertler, Chapman, & Chapman, 1978). A Group by Type of Proverb (familiar versus unfamiliar) interaction was found for bizarre-idiosyncratic scores; (Per-Mags) scored higher than controls on unfamiliar, but not familiar proverbs. The Group X Familiarity interaction for bizarre-idiosyncratic scores indicates that the Per-Mag group displayed a subclinical, positive-thought disorder that is affected by the familiarity of the proverbs.     

Developmental trends in the salience of meaning versus structural attributes of written words

Summary This study was designed to evaluate Gibson's contention that maximum sensitivity to the meanings of printed words does not occur until the individual has become a fluent reader. Also of interest was the degree to which reading ability would significantly influence the developmental course. These questions were evaluated by means of a sorting task which allowed subjects to group printed words on the basis of either semantic-syntactic (meaning) or graphic-phonologic (structural) attributes, and differential grouping tendencies along the age/grade continuum were the dependent measures specifically evaluated. Subjects consisted of normal and poor readers from grades 1–6, as well as ninth graders and college sophomores. The study was quasi-longitudinal in that available subjects from grades 2–5 were retested a year later to evaluate the reliability of developmental trends.Results were consistent with Gibson's theory. Sensitivity to word meanings was much more stable in fluent readers than it was in less fluent readers, although there was considerable individual variability noted at all levels. Poor readers were inclined to place words they could identify more often in meaning than in structural categories. However, structural categories that were utilized, were often idiosyncratic, suggesting that poor readers are less atuned to orthographic regularities than are normal readers.     

A developmental study of proverb comprehension

Growth in proverb comprehension was hypothesized to result from the gradual emergence of cognitive abilities reflected in a sequence of increasingly complex abilities: story matching, transfer of relations, desymbolization, proverb matching, and paraphrase. Items for these abilities for each of 10 proverbs of two structural types were administered in three test sessions to 438 students in grades three to seven. An analogy subtest was used to measure general intelligence. ANOVA yielded significant main effects for grade, tasks, and proverbs (all p's less than .01). A significant task x proverb interaction (p less than .01) revealed the difficulty of precise control over the language of the items. Proverb structure had no measurable impact on difficulty. Analogy score was a significant factor in performance (p less than .01) but not as potent as age (p less than .01). The sequential order of abilities received only weak confirmation, though tasks did correlate among themselves with medium strength (r's = .50-.70). Individual interviews added a qualitative dimension to the findings. The suitability of cognitive hierarchical models for proverb comprehension was questioned.     

The meaning of race in psychology and how to change it: a methodological perspective

The primary purpose of this article was to offer a methodological critique in support of arguments that racial categories should be replaced as explanatory constructs in psychological research and theory. To accomplish this goal, the authors (a) summarized arguments for why racial categories should be replaced; (b) used principles of the scientific method to show that racial categories lack conceptual meaning; (c) identified common errors in researchers' measurement, statistical analyses, and interpretation of racial categories as independent variables; and (d) used hierarchical regression analysis to illustrate a strategy for replacing racial categories in research designs with conceptual variables. Implications for changing the study of race in psychology are discussed.     

Domains and facets: hierarchical personality assessment using the revised NEO personality inventory

Personality traits are organized hierarchically, with narrow, specific traits combining to define broad, global factors. The Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R; Costa & McCrae, 1992c) assesses personality at both levels, with six specific facet scales in each of five broad domains. This article describes conceptual issues in specifying facets of a domain and reports evidence on the validity of NEO-PI-R facet scales. Facet analysis-the interpretation of a scale in terms of the specific facets with which it correlates-is illustrated using alternative measures of the five-factor model and occupational scales. Finally, the hierarchical interpretation of personality profiles is discussed. Interpretation on the domain level yields a rapid understanding of the individual interpretation of specific facet scales gives a more detailed assessment.     

A closer look at the complex structure of gender stereotypes

In the present paper an experimental design is introduced for the analysis of the conceptual categories used by subjects when stereotyping males and females. Subjects were asked to name as many familiar types of women and men as they could think of, and describe them in terms of various characteristic properties (e.g., traits, attitudes, interests, skills, and demographic features). The most frequently mentioned types were then sorted by a second sample according to their perceived similarity. Finally, a third group of subjects categorized the initial set of properties in terms of their relevance to either male or female types. Clustering and scaling analyses yielded a clear cut picture of the cognitive ordering principles underlying gender stereotypes. Distinct property clusters were found for the female and male types, underlining the important role of gender stereotypes in the knowledge base of the subjects.The authors would like to thank Kay Deaux for helpful comments on an earlier draft.     

Anagram solution speed as a joint function of manifest anxiety and number of category sets

Anagrams constructed from words in 1,2,3, or 4 conceptual categories were administered in random sequences to subjects scoring at the extremes of the Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale. Scince explicit instructions were given to the subjects concerning the nature of the categories involved, it is assumed that sets for responding with words from these categories were present from the start. The results demonstrate a negative relation of solution rate to number of category sets and an interaction of this variable with manifest anxiety. Anxiety facilitates performance in the presence of a single category set but inhibits performance when multiple sets are concurrently operative. The latter finding is consistent with the drive interpretation of manifest anxiety by Taylor and Spence.     

The effect of prosody on conceptual combination

Research into people's comprehension of novel noun-noun phrases has long neglected the possible influences of prosody during meaning construction. At the same time, work in conceptual combination has disagreed about whether different classes of interpretation emerge from single or multiple processes; for example, whether people use distinct mechanisms when they interpret octopus apartment as property-based (e.g., an apartment with eight rooms) or relation-based (e.g., an apartment where an octopus lives). In two studies, we manipulate the prosodic emphasis patterns of novel noun-noun combinations (placing stress on the modifier noun, the head noun, or dual stress on both nouns) and ask participants to generate an interpretation for the novel phrase. Results show that people are faster to generate property-based interpretations when dual emphasis stresses both nouns equally, with prosody having little effect on the speed of relation-based interpretations. These findings highlight a role for prosody during meaning construction and underline important differences between relation- and property-based interpretations that are difficult to reconcile with unitary process views of conceptual combination.     

Self-observation of social behavior and metaperception.

In 3 experiments (Ns = 68, 72, and 101) the authors tested the hypothesis that the opportunity to observe oneself in social interaction increases the accuracy of metaperception (prediction of others' social judgments of oneself). Small groups were videotaped during a decision-making task, after which group members judged each other's social anxiety. Participants watched either the videotape of their group's interaction or a videotape of another group's interaction. After watching the videotape, participants predicted how they were judged by each member of the group. Results from the 3 experiments confirmed the hypothesis that self-observation increases the accuracy of metaperception. Presumably, self-observation provides objective information about one's behavior, which increases the ability to determine how one is judged by others, assuming self and others share meaning systems.     

Effects of syntactic category assignment on lexical ambiguity resolution in reading: an eye movement analysis

Readers' eye movements were monitored as they read sentences containing lexically ambiguous words whose meanings share a single syntactic category (e.g., calf), lexically ambiguous words whose meanings belong to different syntactic categories (e.g., duck), or unambiguous control words. Information provided prior to the target always unambiguously specified the context-appropriate syntactic-category assignment for the target. Fixation times were longer on ambiguous words whose meanings share a single syntactic category than on controls, both when prior context was semantically consistent with the subordinate interpretation of a biased ambiguous word (Experiment 1) and when prior context was semantically neutral as to the intended interpretation of a balanced ambiguous word (Experiment 2). These ambiguity effects, which resulted from differences in difficulty with meaning resolution, were not found when the ambiguity crossed syntactic categories. These data indicate that, in the absence of syntactic ambiguity, syntactic-category information mediates the semantic-resolution process.     

Cognitive integration of language and memory in bilinguals: semantic representation

Understanding cognitive research on the integration of 2 languages in bilingual memory is difficult because of the different terminology, methodology, analysis, and interpretation strategies that scholars with different backgrounds bring to the research. These studies can be usefully categorized on 2 dimensions: memory for verbal experience versus linguistic knowledge, and systemwise versus pairwise issues. Experimental findings in this area converge on the conclusion that at the word meaning/conceptual level, both episodic and linguistic memory can be characterized as shared at the systems level and at least partly shared at the pairwise translation-equivalent level. Interpretation problems that stem from weak hypothesis testing structure and from covert translation can be minimized by using appropriate design and analysis techniques.     

Meaning dominance norms for 120 homographs

Over the past two decades, homographs have been used in psychological experiments aimed at testing a variety of theoretical issues concerning memory and language. Often, such research requires prior knowledge of the dominance relations among various meanings of the homographs. Previously available homograph meaning norms are limited because they are now more than 10 years old, and they have typically reported only the two most dominant meanings even though many homographs have three or more common meanings. This paper presents normative data on 120 homographs from a relatively large, heterogeneous sample of subjects (N = 100). Meaning dominance was assessed by having subjects write the first definition that came to mind for each homograph. Definition responses were grouped by similarity, and the resulting meaning categories were verified against dictionary meaning classifications. The number of distinct meanings varied from two to six for the homographs investigated, and frequency of response is reported for all definition categories.     

Preschool Ontology: The Role of Beliefs About Category Boundaries in Early Categorization

These studies examined the role of ontological beliefs about category boundaries in early categorization. Study 1 found that preschool-age children (N = 48, aged 3–4 years old) have domain-specific beliefs about the meaning of category boundaries; children judged the boundaries of natural kind categories (animal species, human gender) as discrete and strict, but they judged the boundaries of other categories (artifact categories, human race) as more flexible. Study 2 demonstrated that these domain-specific ontological intuitions guide children's learning of new categories; children (N = 28, 3-year-olds) assumed that the boundaries of novel animal categories would be narrower and more strictly defined than novel artifact categories. These data demonstrate that abstract beliefs about the meaning of category boundaries shape early conceptual development.     

Social buffering in rats: prolactin attenuation of active interaction

Stress may result when the present environment is interpreted as threatening, and stress is known to increase the prolactin-secretory response. In the present study, rats (N=83) were exposed to a conditioned-fear paradigm (environment paired with footshock), and on testing day, rats were exposed to the experimental chamber without shock while alone (Alone n=16), with an object (Object n=17), with a euthanized conspecific (Euthanized n=16), or with a social partner (Social n=19). The control group (Control n=15) was exposed to the experimental chamber but was never shocked. The Control group had significantly lower levels of prolactin than the Alone, Object, and Euthanized groups; however, the Control group's levels of prolactin were not significantly different than that of the Social group, which was significantly lower than that for the Alone group. Social interaction decreased fear independent of the distraction provided by a stimulus in the chamber. Active touch appeared to be crucial for social buffering to occur.