Frequency effects in language acquisition, language use, and diachronic change

Recent work in psychology and linguistics has shown that frequency of occurrence is an important determinant of language acquisition, language use, and diachronic change. This paper surveys the effects of frequency on the use and development of language and considers the psychological mechanisms that underlie the various frequency effects. The paper shows that frequency has an impact on the emergence of linguistic structure and that some well-known cross-linguistic tendencies arise from frequency effects.     

Grammatical gender effects on cognition: implications for language learning and language use

In 4 experiments, the authors addressed the mechanisms by which grammatical gender (in Italian and German) may come to affect meaning. In Experiments 1 (similarity judgments) and 2 (semantic substitution errors), the authors found Italian gender effects for animals but not for artifacts; Experiment 3 revealed no comparable effects in German. These results suggest that gender effects arise as a generalization from an established association between gender of nouns and sex of human referents, extending to nouns referring to sexuated entities. Across languages, such effects are found when the language allows for easy mapping between gender of nouns and sex of human referents (Italian) but not when the mapping is less transparent (German). A final experiment provided further constraints: These effects during processing arise at a lexical-semantic level rather than at a conceptual level.     

Language and the use of language

Antony Flew's ‘A Strong Programme for the Sociology of Belief (Inquiry 25 {1982], 365–78) critically assesses the strong programme in the sociology of knowledge defended in David Bloor's Knowledge and Social Imagery. I argue that Flew's rejection of the epistemological relativism evident in Bloor's work begs the question against the relativist and ignores Bloor's focus on the social relativity of mathematical knowledge. Bloor attempts to establish such relativity via a sociological analysis of Frege's theory of number. But this analysis only succeeds if the rejection of an explanatory theory entails that there are reasonable grounds for the rejection of the set of propositions which that theory was intended to explain. I argue against such an entailment, and thus against Bloor's attempt to relativize mathematical knowledge.     

On the effects of second language immersion on first language production

The present study was aimed at investigating how the effects of a second language (L2) immersion on first language (L1) production are modulated by lexical frequency and the cognate status of words. By means of a picture naming and a semantic fluency task, we longitudinally explored the changes in L1 performance of a group of immersed learners. Our results revealed slower naming latencies at the end than at the beginning of the immersion period but only for those pictures whose corresponding names were low frequency and non-cognates. Moreover, the semantic fluency task revealed a decrease in the percentage of non-cognate words produced at the end of the immersion period. The observed decline in the accessibility to L1 words after a short L2 immersion period is explained in terms of the general bilingual lexical access disadvantage and studies of L1 attrition in speech production. Specifically, the present findings are more in line with theoretical accounts that consider lexical difficulties to be the result of changes in the frequency of use of the L1 during a short L2 immersion period.     

Atypical lateralization of memory for location: effects of deafness and sign language use

This paper examines the impact of auditory deprivation and sign language use on the enhancement of location memory and hemispheric specialization using two matching tasks. Forty-one deaf signers and non-signers and 51 hearing signers and non-signers were tested on location memory for shapes and objects (Study 1) and on categorical versus coordinate spatial relations (Study 2). Results of the two experiments converge to suggest that deafness alone supports the atypical left hemispheric preference in judging the location of a circle or a picture on a blank background and that deafness and sign language experience determine the superior ability of memory for location. The importance of including a sample of deaf non-signers was identified.     

Exploring the Attitudinal Structure of Partisanship

This study examined the structure of attitudes toward the political party an individual primarily identifies with and attitudes toward the other party with an emphasis on differentiating between the cognitive and affective components. Participants responded to a telephone survey that included measures of party identification, partisan attitudes, political information involvement activities, and voting behavior. Results indicated attitudes toward the parties were a function of both cognitive and affective components, although strong partisans had an attitudinal structure characterized as having a stronger cognitive component. Strong partisans were more polarized in their attitudes across parties. In addition, individuals with more cognitive‐affective ambivalence toward their own parties were less likely to vote, and their votes were less likely to be along party lines.     

Attitudinal maintenance of cognitive categorization

Two experiments were performed that investigated attitudinal influences on cognitive categorization. The studies assessed categorization as a dynamic process with a multiple-sort (MS) technique, having Ss recategorize sentences unti! they ran out of meaningful categories. Condition I allowed Ss to use any dimensions they chose, and Condition It imposed the restraint of the “favorable-unfavorable” dimension. No effects of involvement were found when unrestricted sorting was allowed but were found when the evaluative dimension was imposed. There appeared to be a tendency for attitudinal involvement to maintain complexity across sorts. Results were discussed in terms of the influence of dimensions and the possible effects of certain stimulus properties on the maintenance of categorization complexity.     

Laws of language use and formal logic

After a review of recent work connected with Grice's maxims of conversation, special attention is paid to the principles related to the concept of informativeness. The operation of those principles constrains logic by limiting the meaning of logical particles and, more importantly, by contradicting axioms and many theorems of the propositional calculus. It is argued that, as the development of the individual's formal operations proceeds, a conflict with laws of language use arises. The notion of a conflict between two subsystems, logical and linguistic, is used in a developmental perspective to account, in a unified manner, for the observed discrepancy between subjects' behavior in deductive and inductive reasoning tasks and predictions based on formal logic.     

关于矛盾态度的研究述评

矛盾态度是个体对同一客体同时存在的积极和消极评价与情感。本文主要阐述了矛盾态度的概念界定与测量方法,矛盾态度的相关因素与基本特性,以及矛盾态度对信息加工、行为意图和实际行为的影响。最后,文章指出矛盾态度的界定与测量还需扩展,对引发矛盾的客体、矛盾态度特性有待深入研究。     

Attitudinal Consequences of the Preemployment Polygraph Examination1

An important factor concerning the use of the polygraph in employment settings has been overlooked: How does the polygraph experience affect a new employee's work-related attitudes? In two experiments, subjects were exposed to different hiring scenarios-one included a polygraph examination, the other did not—and then responded to a questionnaire of work-related attitudes. Results indicated that preemployment polygraph examinations may induce negative work-related attitudes. These findings suggest that the polygraph experience acts as a symbolic communication from the employer to the prospective employee, imparting information that may induce feelings of distrust and dislike. Moreover, the polygraph experience may be interpreted by prospective employees as evidence of high levels of employee theft, thus establishing a new (higher) norm of peer theft behavior.     

Attitudinal Control of Human Conditioning

Female college students (N = 293) completed an unreversed (Q1) and a reversed (Q2) form of the Mother's Parental Attitude Research Instrument (PARI). By comparison of answers on the two forms, three response sets were calculated: acquiescence, opposition, and extreme sets. The acquiescence and opposition sets showed substantial correlation with Ql scales, and the extreme set correlated substantially with Q2 scales. Factor analysis corroborated scale analyses. The investigators suggested a method of developing a new Mother's PARI (Q4) which would minimize acquiescence and opposition sets by selecting appropriate Q1 and Q2 scales.     

Words of wisdom: language use over the life span

Two projects explored the links between language use and aging. In the first project, written or spoken text samples from disclosure studies from over 3,000 research participants from 45 different studies representing 21 laboratories in 3 countries were analyzed to determine how people change in their use of 14 text dimensions as a function of age. A separate project analyzed the collected works of 10 well-known novelists, playwrights, and poets who lived over the last 500 years. Both projects found that with increasing age, individuals use more positive and fewer negative affect words, use fewer self-references, use more future-tense and fewer past-tense verbs, and demonstrate a general pattern of increasing cognitive complexity. Implications for using language as a marker of personality among current and historical texts are discussed.     

From reorienting of attention to biased competition: Evidence from hemifield effects

When a distractor was presented simultaneously with or directly following a target, it produced more interference when it was presented in the same visual hemifield as the target than when it was presented in the opposite visual field. This result is interpreted in terms of biased competition; there is more competition between stimuli when they are presented in the same visual field, rather than in opposite visual fields. However, when the distractor was presented 125 msec or more prior to the target, this pattern was reversed. In those cases, there was more distractor interference when target and distractor were presented in opposite visual fields. This can be explained by assuming that attention was captured by the distractor, and that there was an additional cost of reorienting to a location in the opposite visual field.     

Attitudinal qualities relating to the strength of the attitude-behavior relationship

A study was conducted to examine the relation between each of several attitudinal qualities and attitude-behavior consistency. Subjects' attitudes toward volunterring to participate in psychological research were assessed. The number of experiments in which each subject volunteered to participate was employed as the measure of behavior. Attitude-behavior consistency was significantly related to (1) the amount of direct experience upon which the subject's attitude was based (specifically, the number of experiments in which the subject had previously participated), (2) the degree of certainty with which the attitude was held, and (3) how well-defined the subject's attitude was, as measured by the width of his latitude of rejection. These three attitudinal qualities were significantly intercorrelated, suggesting that direct experience with an attitude object may produce an attitude that is both better defined and more confidently held than an attitude formed through more indirect means.