Bilingual Generation Effect: Variations in Participant Bilingual Type and List Type

Slamecka and Katsaiti (1987, Experiment 1) reported that there is no generation effect with bilingual materials under intentional learning instructions. In contrast, O'Neill, Roy, and Tremblay (1993, Experiment 1) demonstrated a bilingual generation effect when an incidental learning set was induced. In the present experiment, the possibility that another procedural variation between the two studies accounts for the disparate findings was examined. A 2-stimuli (read bilingual translations, generate bilingual translations) list was compared with a 3-stimuli (read bilingual translations, generate bilingual translations, read unilingual repetitions) list, in accordance with the procedures used in the earlier experiments. Under incidental learning conditions, for both list types, a strong generation effect was found. Participant type—coordinate or compound bilingualism—was also varied. The generation effect was much larger for compound bilinguals than for coordinate bilinguals, presumably because of a greater difference in the allocation of attention to read than to generate items by compound bilinguals.     

The generation effect extended: Memory enhancement for generation cues

The generation effect is the greater memorability of a response that is actively produced (e.g., in answering a question from memory) than one that is more passively produced (as in reading the answer). The present three experiments addressed a question that is critical to the theoretical interpretation of the generation effect: Is memory enhanced for the cues that are used to elicit generated responses? Using incidental learning procedures, Experiments 1 and 2 gave an affirmative answer (although the effect was substantially weaker than the generation effect for responses). Enhancement of memory for generation cues was observed both in a within-subject/within-list design (reading and generation items within the same trial blocks; Experiment 1) and in a between-subjects design (reading and generation tasks for different groups of subjects; Experiment 2). In Experiment 3, memory enhancement for generation cues was used to produce a previously unobtained result—a generation effect for nonsense responses under incidental learning conditions. These findings provide critical evidence required by theories that interpret the generation effect in terms of enhanced processing of the cue-response item.     

Design controversies and the generation effect: Support for an item-order hypothesis

We performed three experiments to investigate an earlier finding of Nairne, Riegler, and Serra (1991) that item generation disrupts the long-term retention of serial order. Experiment 1 demonstrated a clear advantage of reading over generating on a reconstruction test when reading and generating occurred in pure, but not mixed, lists. Experiment 2 showed that the standard generate advantage is seen in free recall of mixed, but not pure, lists, even when recall is immediately followed by reconstruction of serial order of the same items. Experiment 3 replicated Experiment 1, but with the use of an incidental learning procedure. The results of all three experiments are consistent with the claim that generation has dissociative effects on item and order memory; moreover, these dissociative effects help to explain design controversies-in the -generation effect literature.     

Self-Instruction Training to Increase Academic Performance of Educationally Handicapped Children

Two experiments were designed to test the effects of self-instructional procedures on the academic performance of educationally handicapped children. Self-instructional training consisted of general self-instruction components coupled with explicit instruction in task components. Experiemnt 1 included two severly educationally handicapped children in which self-instruction training for reading comprehension and spelling was assessed. Generalization of training effects was evaluated across person, task, and setting Experiment 2 included one child in which self-instructional training for mathematics and generalization to a classroom setting was evaluated. A multiple baseline design was used in Experiment 1 and a reversal design in Experiment 2 to assess treatment effects. For both experiments, self-instructional training improved academic performance. Generalization occurred across person and task in Experiment 1 and setting in Experiment 2. It was concluded that successful academic performance occurs when self-isntructional statements integrate global strategies while simultaneously directing attention to task specific information.     

The Effects of Data-Driven and Conceptually Driven Generation of Study Items on Direct and Indirect Measures of Memory

Two experiments are reported which investigated the effects of data-driven generation of study items on direct and indirect measures of memory. Previous research in the field of implicit memory has traditionally employed generation procedures at encoding which focused on conceptually driven processing. The present study undertook to devise data-driven generation procedures that were predicted to lead to a generation effect on word-stem completion.

In Experiment 1 subjects had to generate target items from anagrams and newly developed “assemblograms”, requiring mainly data-driven processing, as well as from semantic cues and definitions, involving mainly conceptually driven processing. Effects of these generate conditions were compared to the usual name condition on a direct word-stem cued recall test, and on an indirect word-stem completion test. Differences between data-driven generation on the stem completion task and the name condition failed to reach significant differences in retention.

In Experiment 2 subjects generated targets from assemblograms and from semantic cues. The data revealed the predicted occurrence of a generation effect on an indirect memory test following data-driven generation. The finding of a generation effect in an indirect as opposed to a direct memory test was seen as support for the view that generating a study item may enhance data-driven as well as conceptually driven processing, depending on the processing demands made by generation procedures. The results were interpreted within the transfer-appropriate processing framework, with additional reference to Glisky and Rabinowitz's two-component account of generation effects (Glisky & Rabinowitz, 1985).     

An Interaction Between the Effects of Bilingualism and Cross-linguistic Similarity in Balanced and Unbalanced Bilingual Adults’ L2 Mandarin Word-Reading Production

We conducted three experiments investigating in more detail the interaction between the two effects of bilingualism and L1–L2 similarity in the speech performance of balanced and unbalanced bilinguals. In Experiment 1, L1 Mandarin monolinguals and two groups of Hakka and Minnan balanced bilinguals (Hakka: more similar to Mandarin) performed a non-contextual single-character reading task in Mandarin, which required more inhibitory control. The two bilingual groups outperformed the monolinguals, regardless of their L1 background. However, the bilingual advantage was not found in a contextual multi-word task (Experiment 2), but instead the effect of cross-linguistic similarity emerged. Furthermore, in Experiment 3, the Hakka unbalanced bilinguals showed an advantage in the non-contextual task, while their Minnan counterparts did not, and the impact of L1–L2 similarity emerged in both tasks. These results unveiled the way the two effects dynamically interplayed depending on the task contexts and the relative degrees of using L1 and L2.     

Repetition priming within and between languages in verb generation: evidence for shared verb concepts

Although translation equivalents for concrete nouns are known to have shared core conceptual representations in bilingual memory (Francis, 1999), the status of translation-equivalent verbs has not been systematically tested. Three repetition-priming experiments using a verb generation task were used to determine whether verbs have shared representations across languages and to identify the processes facilitated in repeated verb generation. In Experiment 1 fluent Spanish-English bilingual speakers exhibited repetition priming both within and between languages, but between-language priming was weaker. In Experiment 2 performance of non-bilingual English and Spanish speakers was equivalent to that of bilingual speakers responding in their dominant language. Experiment 3 used manipulations meant to isolate noun comprehension, verb concept selection, and verb production. The between-language priming in Experiments 1 and 3 indicates that verb concepts are shared across languages and that verb concept selection exhibits facilitation. Experiment 3 showed that the greater within-language priming was due primarily to facilitation of verb production processes.     

Repetition priming within and between languages in verb generation: Evidence for shared verb concepts

Although translation equivalents for concrete nouns are known to have shared core conceptual representations in bilingual memory (Francis, 1999), the status of translation-equivalent verbs has not been systematically tested. Three repetition-priming experiments using a verb generation task were used to determine whether verbs have shared representations across languages and to identify the processes facilitated in repeated verb generation. In Experiment 1 fluent Spanish–English bilingual speakers exhibited repetition priming both within and between languages, but between-language priming was weaker. In Experiment 2 performance of non-bilingual English and Spanish speakers was equivalent to that of bilingual speakers responding in their dominant language. Experiment 3 used manipulations meant to isolate noun comprehension, verb concept selection, and verb production. The between-language priming in Experiments 1 and 3 indicates that verb concepts are shared across languages and that verb concept selection exhibits facilitation. Experiment 3 showed that the greater within-language priming was due primarily to facilitation of verb production processes.     

Aging, imagery, and the bizarreness effect

ABSTRACT This study examined the bizarre imagery effect in young and older adults, under incidental and intentional conditions. Intentionality was manipulated across experiments, with participants receiving an incidental free recall test in Experiment 1 and an intentional test in Experiment 2. This study also examined the relation between working memory resources and the bizarreness effect. In Experiment 1 young and older adults were presented with common and bizarre sentences; they later received an incidental recall test. There were no age differences in sensitivity to the bizarreness effect in Experiment 1 when ANOVAs were used to analyze the data. However, when the bizarreness effect was examined in terms of effect size, there was evidence that younger adults produced larger bizarreness effect sizes than younger adults. Experiment 2 further explored age differences in sensitivity to the bizarreness effect by presenting young and older adults with bizarre and common sentences under intentional learning conditions. Experiment 2 failed to yield age differences as a function of item type (bizarre vs. common). In addition, Experiment 2 failed to yield significant evidence that the bizarreness effect is modulated by working memory resources. The results of this study are most consistent with the distinctiveness account of the bizarreness effect.     

Aging,imagery, and the bizarreness effect

ABSTRACT

This study examined the bizarre imagery effect in young and older adults, under incidental and intentional conditions. Intentionality was manipulated across experiments, with participants receiving an incidental free recall test in Experiment 1 and an intentional test in Experiment 2. This study also examined the relation between working memory resources and the bizarreness effect. In Experiment 1 young and older adults were presented with common and bizarre sentences; they later received an incidental recall test. There were no age differences in sensitivity to the bizarreness effect in Experiment 1 when ANOVAs were used to analyze the data. However, when the bizarreness effect was examined in terms of effect size, there was evidence that younger adults produced larger bizarreness effect sizes than younger adults. Experiment 2 further explored age differences in sensitivity to the bizarreness effect by presenting young and older adults with bizarre and common sentences under intentional learning conditions. Experiment 2 failed to yield age differences as a function of item type (bizarre vs. common). In addition, Experiment 2 failed to yield significant evidence that the bizarreness effect is modulated by working memory resources. The results of this study are most consistent with the distinctiveness account of the bizarreness effect.     

The effect of childhood bilingualism on episodic and semantic memory tasks

Kormi-Nouri, Moniri and Nilsson (2003) demonstrated that Swedish-Persian bilingual children recalled at a higher level than Swedish monolingual children, when they were tested using Swedish materials. The present study was designed to examine the bilingual advantage of children who use different languages in their everyday life but have the same cultural background and live in their communities in the same way as monolingual children. In four experiments, 488 monolingual and bilingual children were compared with regard to episodic and semantic memory tasks. In experiments 1 and 2 there were 144 boys and 144 girls in three school groups (aged 9-10 years, 13-14 years and 16-17 years) and in three language groups (Persian monolingual, Turkish-Persian bilingual, and Kurdish-Persian bilingual). In experiments 3 and 4, there were 200 male students in two school groups (aged 9-10 years and 16-17 years) and in two language groups (Persian monolingual and Turkish-Persian bilingual). In the episodic memory task, children learned sentences (experiments 1-3) and words (Experiment 4). Letter and category fluency tests were used as measures of semantic memory. To change cognitive demands in memory tasks, in Experiment 1, the integration of nouns and verbs within sentences was manipulated by the level of association between verb and noun in each sentence. At retrieval, a recognition test was used. In experiments 2 and 3, the organization between sentences was manipulated at encoding in Experiment 2 and at both encoding and retrieval in Experiment 3 through the use of categories among the objects. At retrieval, free recall or cued recall tests were employed. In Experiment 4, the bilingual children were tested with regard to both their first and their second language. In all four experiments, a positive effect of bilingualism was found on episodic and semantic memory tasks; the effect was more pronounced for older than younger children. The bilingual advantage was not affected by changing cognitive demands or by using first/second language in memory tasks. The present findings support the cross-language interactivity hypothesis of bilingual advantage.     

Differences in semantic and translation priming across languages: The role of language direction and language dominance

In the present study, we examined bilingual memory organization, using the priming paradigm. Many of the previous studies in which this experimental technique has been used in the bilingual domain appear to have had several differences in methodology that have caused there to be a lot of variation in the data reported. The aim of the present work was to create an experimental situation that was well constrained so that automatic processes could be observed. In Experiment 1, Spanish-English bilinguals participated in an unmasked semantic- and translation-priming study in which a lexical decision task was used. The results revealed significant translation-priming effects in both language directions and, unexpectedly, significant semantic priming in the L2-L1 direction only. In Experiment 2, we examined semantic- and translation-priming effects with a forward mask design. The results indicated that significant priming was obtained only for translation word pairs in both language directions. These results are discussed with regard to current models of bilingual memory representation.     

Memory for internally generated words in Alzheimer-type dementia: breakdown in encoding and semantic memory

The "generation effect" is a phenomenon in which words that are generated by the subject are remembered better than words which are read. The present experiments examined this effect in patients with mild-to-moderate dementia of the Alzheimer type (DAT), healthy elderly adults, and young adults under a variety of different encoding and retrieval conditions. Experiment 1 employed an intentional learning task with multiple study/test trials using the same list of words. While both the young and elderly adults exhibited higher recall for internally generated words than read words, the DAT patients failed to demonstrate the effect even after repeated exposures to the same stimulus list. Experiment 2 replicated this same pattern of results using an incidental learning paradigm with both recall and recognition tests. Various explanations as to why the DAT patients failed to show the generation effect were discussed with particular emphasis placed on the role of semantic memory and encoding failure.     

名词具体性效应的眼动研究

通两个实验考察名词的具体性效应.实验一采用词汇判断法,考察名词的具体性效应.采用2（具体性：具体、抽象）×2（词频：高频、低频）的两因素被试内实验设计.结果表明：低频词存在具体性效应.实验二应用眼动技术,以EyelinkⅡ眼动仪为工具,考察在句子阅读中的名词具体性效应.实验为单因素被试内设计,自变量为句子中目标词的具体性.结果表明：在句子语境条件下,低频词也存在具体性效应,而且这种效应表现在低频词的晚期加工阶段.     

The generation effect and the modeling of associations in memory

The search of associative memory (SAM) model of Gillund and Shiffrin (1984) was applied to data of two experiments that examined the generation effect (Slamecka & Graf, 1978). Subjects studied a list of related word pairs, in which they either read both words in the pair or generated the righthand response term using the left-hand stimulus term plus the response word fragment as generation cues. Experiment 1 manipulated encoding condition within subjects and used an incidental learning procedure. Experiment 2 manipulated encoding condition between subjects and used an intentional learning procedure. Memory was tested with recognition, cued recall, and free recall. A higher order association model gave a better and more parsimonious fit to the results than did an item-level association model. The relationship between various versions of SAM and current accounts of the generation effect are discussed, particularly the two-factor theory of Hirshman and Bjork (1988).     

Representation in the mental lexicon: Implications for theories of the generation effect

Three experiments investigated the finding by McElroy and Slamecka (1982) that the “generation effect” (the retention advantage for self-produced over read items) is not obtained when artificial, meaningless nonwords are used as the to-be-remembered items. In Experiment 1, some subjects were asked to generate or read items that they thought were words, but, in fact, were not; no generation effect was found. In Experiment 2, subjects were taught definitions to experimenter-created items. Despite the fact that these subjects could readily retrieve each item’s assigned semantic properties, no generation effect was found. Finally, Experiment 3 examined the read]generate variable as a function of an item’s frequency of use in the language. Whereas medium- and high-frequency words produced large generation effects, no comparable effects were found for low-frequency words or nonwords. These results indicate that representation in the mental lexicon is a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition for the generation effect. Rather, it may be necessary to consider how related the generated item is to other potential retrieval cues in the memory system.     

The spacing effect,free recall,and two-process theory: a closer look

Two experiments used procedures similar to those used by R. L. Greene (1989) to test the 2-process theory of the spacing effect and, in particular, the contextual-variability subtheory that applies to free-recall performance. Experiment 1 obtained a spacing effect in free recall following intentional learning but not following incidental learning, contrary to a previous result supporting the 2-process theory. Experiment 2 replicated the incidental-learning results when a slow presentation rate was used. However, with a faster presentation rate, a spacing effect was obtained, and performance exceeded that of the slow-presentation-rate condition at the longest lag. Neither the contextual-variability subtheory of 2-process theory nor an alternative deficient-processing hypothesis was able to account for all of the data.     

Processing modifier-head agreement in reading: Evidence for a delayed effect of agreement

The present study examined whether type of inflectional case (semantic or grammatical) and phonological and morphological transparency affect the processing of Finnish modifier-head agreement in reading. Readers' eye movement patterns were registered. In Experiment 1, an agreeing modifier condition (agreement was transparent) was compared with a no-modifier condition, and in Experiment 2, similar constructions with opaque agreement were used. In both experiments, agreement was found to affect the processing of the target noun with some delay. In Experiment 3, unmarked and case-marked modifiers were used. The results again demonstrated a delayed agreement effect, ruling out the possibility that the agreement effects observed in Experiments 1 and 2 reflect a mere modifier-presence effect. We concluded that agreement exerts its effect at the level of syntactic integration but not at the level of lexical access.     

Bilingual Reading of Compound Words

The present study investigated whether bilingual readers activate constituents of compound words in one language while processing compound words in the other language via decomposition. Two experiments using a lexical decision task were conducted with adult Korean-English bilingual readers. In Experiment 1, the lexical decision of real English compound words was more accurate when the translated compounds (the combination of the translation equivalents of the constituents) in Korean (the nontarget language) were real words than when they were nonwords. In Experiment 2, when the frequency of the second constituents of compound words in English (the target language) was manipulated, the effect of lexical status of the translated compounds was greater on the compounds with high-frequency second constituents than on those with low-frequency second constituents in the target language. Together, these results provided evidence for morphological decomposition and cross-language activation in bilingual reading of compound words.