Decomposition of repetition priming processes in word translation

Translation in fluent bilinguals requires comprehension of a stimulus word and subsequent production, or retrieval and articulation, of the response word. Four repetition-priming experiments with Spanish–English bilinguals (N = 274) decomposed these processes using selective facilitation to evaluate their unique priming contributions and factorial combination to evaluate the degree of process overlap or dependence. In Experiment 1, symmetric priming between semantic classification and translation tasks indicated that bilinguals do not covertly translate words during semantic classification. In Experiments 2 and 3, semantic classification of words and word-cued picture drawing facilitated word-comprehension processes of translation, and picture naming facilitated word-production processes. These effects were independent, consistent with a sequential model and with the conclusion that neither semantic classification nor word-cued picture drawing elicits covert translation. Experiment 4 showed that 2 tasks involving word-retrieval processes--written word translation and picture naming--had subadditive effects on later translation. Incomplete transfer from written translation to spoken translation indicated that preparation for articulation also benefited from repetition in the less-fluent language.     

图画口语命名中的语义效应

图画口语命名包括了概念准备、词条选择、音韵编码和发音等加工阶段, 是口语产生研究中经典的实验任务。文章首先简要介绍了两类言语产生的基础理论, 然后介绍了不同研究范式下的语义抑制效应与语义促进效应。在此基础上总结了影响语义效应的各种因素, 并重点介绍了竞争说、动态词汇网络假说、反应一致说、语义选择说以及反应排除说。最后基于已有的研究成果与研究现状指出了下一步的研究方向。     

Phonological effects in handwriting production: evidence from the implicit priming paradigm

In the present article, we report 3 experiments using the odd-man-out variant of the implicit priming paradigm, aimed at determining the role played by phonological information during the handwriting process. Participants were asked to write a small set of words learned in response to prompts. Within each block, response words could share initial segments (constant homogeneous) or not (heterogeneous). Also, 2 variable homogeneous blocks were created by including a response word that did not share orthographic onset with the other response (odd-man-out). This odd-man-out could be phonologically related to the targets or not. Experiment 1 showed a preparation effect in the constant homogeneous condition, which disappeared (spoil effect) in the variable condition not phonologically related. However, no spoil effect was found when the odd-man-out shared the phonological initial segment with the targets. In Experiment 2, we obtained a spoil effect in the variable phonologically related condition, but it was significantly smaller than in the variable not phonologically related condition. The effects observed in Experiment 2 vanished in Experiment 3 under articulatory suppression, suggesting that they originated at a sublexical level. These findings suggest that phonological sublexical information is used during handwriting and provide evidence that the implicit priming paradigm (and the odd-man-out version of this) is a suitable tool for handwriting production research.     

The syllable as the proximate unit in Mandarin Chinese word production: An intrinsic or accidental property of the production system?

Previous word production research employing the implicit-priming paradigm has shown that speakers can benefit from advance knowledge of the initial word form of the word to be produced. In Dutch and English, a single onset segment is sufficient to produce the benefit, but a complete syllable (without the tone) is required in Mandarin Chinese. These findings have been interpreted as suggesting language-dependent proximate units for word-form encoding, which are intrinsic to a language-specific system. Nonetheless, the absence of a segment effect in Mandarin Chinese might have to do with the orthographic characteristics of the prompts, which are syllable-based and could have motivated the production system to place more emphasis on the syllable than on the segment. Two experiments were conducted to test this hypothesis. In Experiment 1, we employed the implicit-priming paradigm with both spoken and written prompts, and in Experiment 2 we adopted a picture version of this paradigm. Spoken prompts are less likely to encourage an orthographically induced syllable bias, and picture naming involves no prompts, leaving no room for any syllable bias that prompts might induce. The results from both experiments showed syllable preparation effects but no segment preparation effects, regardless of whether prompts were written, spoken, or absent. These findings suggest that the syllable as the proximate unit in Mandarin Chinese word production is an intrinsic, and not an accidental or task-dependent, property of the production system.     

On the parity of structural persistence in language production and comprehension

Structural priming creates structural persistence. That is, differences in experience with syntax can change subsequent language performance, and the changes can be observed in both language production and comprehension. However, the effects in comprehension and production appear to differ. In comprehension, persistence is typically found when the verbs are the same in primes and targets; in production, persistence occurs without verb overlap. The contrast suggests a theoretically important hypothesis: parsing in comprehension is lexically driven while formulation in production is structurally driven. A major weakness in this hypothesis about comprehension-production differences is that its empirical motivation rests on the outcomes of experiments in which the priming manipulations differ, the primed sentence structures differ, and the measures of priming differ. To sharpen the comparison, we examined structural persistence with and without verb overlap in both reading comprehension and spoken production, using the same prime presentation procedure, the same syntactic structures, the same sentences, and the same participants. These methods yielded abstract structural persistence in comprehension as well as production. A measure of the strength of persistence revealed significant effects of priming and verb overlap without significant comprehension—production differences. This argues for uniformity in the structural mechanisms of language processing.     

Index for Volume 20

Sixteen adult subjects served in an experiment in which the writing of six unfamiliar graphemes was practiced. To investigate the learning process, we analyzed the absolute and relative changes of movement time of the first three consecutive segments as a function of practice. The results showed that movement time of all three segments decreased. This decrease was significantly less in the first segment than it was in the second and third segment, however. We interpret these effects of practice, from an information-processing viewpoint, as follows: (a) Initially separate response segments become integrated in more comprehensive response chunks, and (b) the preparation of later segments of the grapheme is realized more and more during the real-time execution of the initial segment. The results further revealed that these learning effects were more pronounced in graphemes composed of familiar segments than in graphemes that contained unfamiliar segments. Finally, it turned out that similarity between initial and final segments hindered the writing speed of the first segment; the effect of similarity was independent of the above-mentioned effects of practice. The latter effect is interpreted as confirming evidence for the view that the preparation of later segments of a grapheme is reflected by changes of movement time of the first segments of a grapheme.     

Orthographic rime priming

Three experiments are described, each using a partial priming technique in which a target word was briefly preceded by a masked trigram. The relative strength of priming effects was assessed by comparing the difference in target word naming times between unprimed and primed trials in different priming conditions. Experiment 1 replicated previous work in demonstrating stronger priming when the target word was primed by the orthographic rime than when the prime constituted otherwise comparable word-final trigrams that do not constitute orthographic rimes. Experiment 2 compared orthographic, phonological rime, and control primes. Only orthographic rime primes reliably increased target word naming speed, although the priming effect was less selective with longer prime durations. In Experiment 3 priming was observed for both orthographic rime and phonological rime primes shown for 150 msec. However, stronger priming was observed with orthographic rime primes. These experiments demonstrate that orthographic rime priming effects do not simply reflect the activation of an intact subunit of the target word articulation program.     

Practice and the dynamics of handwriting performance: evidence for a shift of motor programming load

Sixteen adult subjects were served in an experiment in which the writing of six unfamiliar graphemes was practiced. To investigate the learning process, we analyzed the absolute and relative changes of movement time of the first three consecutive segments as a function of practice. The results showed that movement time of all three segments decreased. This decrease was significantly less in the first segment that it was in the second and third segment, however. We interpret these effects of practice, from an information-processing viewpoint, as follows: (a) Initially separate response segments become integrated in more comprehensive response chunks, and (b) the preparation of later segments of the grapheme is realized more and more during the real-time execution of the initial segment. The results further revealed that these learning effects were more pronounced in graphemes composed of familiar segments than in graphemes that contained unfamiliar segments. Finally, it turned out that similarity between initial and final segments hindered the writing speed of the first segment; the effect of similarity was independent of the above-mentioned effects of practice. The latter effect is interpreted as confirming evidence for the view that the preparation of later segments of a grapheme is reflected by changes of movement time of the first segments of a grapheme.     

Components of the between-language semantic priming effect

Abstract

The robustness of the between-language semantic priming effect was investigated in two experiments. In the first, we found that the effect is not affected by language expectation in a lexical decision task. In the second experiment, a reliable between-language effect was obtained when the subjects had to pronounce the target. For both experiments, there was equal between- and within-language semantic priming which was insensitive to SO A. The results suggest the effects of prime-language and target-language on semantic priming are additive, and are consistent with the amodal representation of concepts.     

Missing information in spoken word recognition: nonreleased stop consonants.

Cross-modal semantic priming and phoneme monitoring experiments investigated processing of word-final nonreleased stop consonants (e.g., kit may be pronounced /kit/ or /ki/), which are common phonological variants in American English. Both voiced /d/ and voiceless /t/ segments were presented in release and no-release versions. A cross-modal semantic priming task (Experiment 1) showed comparable priming for /d/ and /t/ versions. A second set of stimuli ending in /s/ were presented as intact, missing /s/, or with a mismatching final segment and showed significant but reduced priming for the latter two conditions. Experiment 2 showed that phoneme monitoring reaction time for release and no-release words and onset mismatching stimuli (derived pseudowords) increased as acoustic-phonetic similarity to the intended word decreased. The results suggest that spoken word recognition does not require special mechanisms for processing no-release variants. Rather, the results can be accounted for by means of existing assumptions concerning probabilistic activation that is based on partial activation.     

False memories for script actions in a mugging account

Abstract

A number of cross-language priming experiments are reported that evaluate whether word meanings in the first and second language are represented in common or separate systems. A masked priming procedure was used on the assumption that when prime awareness is limited, any priming effects directly reveal the underlying structure of the semantic system. Primes were presented in the subjects' first language, while targets were in their second language. Priming effects were obtained for word pairs that were semantically highly similar but not translation equivalents, for example fence-haie (= hedge in French), suggesting that words in the two languages share common elements of semantic code. Priming was also obtained between translation equivalents which, in conjunction with the results for semantically similar pairs, is most naturally interpreted in terms of partially shared semantic representations. However, no masked priming effects were obtained between associated pairs of relatively low semantic similarity, for example shoe-pied (= foot in French), whereas such pairs did produce an effect when primes were unmasked. The results are discussed in terms of limitations on the semantic activation produced by masked words, and the role of collocational relationships in priming between associated words in the same language.     

The influence of orthographic experience on the development of phonological preparation in spoken word production

Three sets of experiments using the picture naming tasks with the form preparation paradigm investigated the influence of orthographic experience on the development of phonological preparation unit in spoken word production in native Mandarin-speaking children. Participants included kindergarten children who have not received formal literacy instruction, Grade 1 children who are comparatively more exposed to the alphabetic pinyin system and have very limited Chinese character knowledge, Grades 2 and 4 children who have better character knowledge and more exposure to characters, and skilled adult readers who have the most advanced character knowledge and most exposure to characters. Only Grade 1 children showed the form preparation effect in the same initial consonant condition (i.e., when a list of target words shared the initial consonant). Both Grade 4 children and adults showed the preparation effect when the initial syllable (but not tone) among target words was shared. Kindergartners and Grade 2 children only showed the preparation effect when the initial syllable including tonal information was shared. These developmental changes in phonological preparation could be interpreted as a joint function of the modification of phonological representation and attentional shift. Extensive pinyin experience encourages speakers to attend to and select onset phoneme in phonological preparation, whereas extensive character experience encourages speakers to prepare spoken words in syllables.     

非熟练潮-粤双言者的语义通达：来自听觉词加工的证据

采用听觉跨语言启动的语义判断范式, 考察非熟练潮-粤双言者的两种方言之间的语义通达方式。结果发现, 无论是以潮语词为启动词, 还是以粤语词为启动词, 当二者具有翻译关系时, 启动词均促进对目标词的识别, 但L1对L2的启动量比L2对L1的启动量大。当启动词与目标词具有语义联想关系时, 启动词亦能促进对目标词的识别, 但L1→L2与L2→L1的启动量差异不显著。整个研究表明, 非熟练潮-粤双言者的两种方言的词汇独立表征, 语义共享表征; 第二方言的词汇能够直接通达语义表征, 不需要以第一方言的词汇为中介, 但双言的词汇表征与语义表征的联结强度仍然存在着不对称性。     

Representation and competition in the perception of spoken words

We present data from four experiments using cross-modal priming to examine the effects of competitor environment on lexical activation during the time course of the perception of a spoken word. The research is conducted from the perspective of a distributed model of speech perception and lexical representation, which focuses on activation at the level of lexical content. In this model, the strength of competition between simultaneously active lexical items depends on the degree of coherence between their distributed semantic and phonological representations. Consistent with this model, interference effects are more complete when the purely semantic aspects of these coactive representations are probed (using semantic priming) than when phonological aspects are probed as well (using repetition priming).     

The loss of repetition priming and automaticity over time as a function of degree of initial learning

Two experiments were performed to investigate the buildup of repetition priming in a lexical decision task with repeated presentations and its decline over the course of 2 months. Priming was found to accumulate as a power function of presentations and to decline as a power function of time. Accuracy measures indicated that the loss rate of priming was unaffected by the amount of initial priming. Response time measures indicated the same result when the experiments were analyzed separately; however, when the data were combined, increased initial priming was associated with greater losses in priming over time. The data were interpreted in terms of automaticity, and the power function decline in priming was taken as support for memory-based models of automaticity. Possible ways to incorporate forgetting into memory-based theories of automaticity are discussed.     

The left-to-right nature of the masked onset priming effect in naming

Two experiments were performed to investigate the nature of the masked onset priming effect in naming, that is, the facilitation in naming latency that is observed when a target shares the initial grapheme/phoneme with a masked prime. Experiment 1 showed that the effect is not due to position-independent letter priming, since the naming of nonword targets preceded by masked primes was facilitated only if the prime shared the initial letter with the target (e.g., suf-SIB) and not if the prime shared the final letter (e.g., mub-SIB). Experiment 2 showed that the effect reflects the sharing of onsets rather than the initial letter, since facilitation due to an overlap of the initial letter was observed only for the simple onset target (e.g., penny-PASTE) for which the letter corresponded to the onset, and not for complex onset targets (e.g., bingo-BLISS). It is argued that the serial nature of the masked onset priming effect is best interpreted as the planning of articulation, rather than as the computation of phonology from orthography.     

非熟练中—英双语者跨语言长时重复启动效应

采用跨语言长时重复启动研究范式进一步探讨非熟练中－英双语者的记忆表征模型。被试为华南师范大学大一本科生共140名。实验自变量是语言条件（同语言和跨语言）和学习状况（学习过的和未学习过的）,实验因变量是单词判断的反应时和正确率。实验1中被试在学习和测验阶段都完成概念任务,结果表明获得了跨语言长时重复启动效应。实验2中被试在学习和测验阶段完成词汇任务,结果表明没有获得跨语言长时重复启动效应。实验3中被试在学习阶段完成概念任务,在测验阶段完成词汇任务,结果表明没有获得跨语言长时重复启动效应。实验4中在学习阶段的概念任务中呈现汉语单字词,在测验阶段的词汇任务中呈现英语翻译对等词,结果表明没有获得跨语言长时重复启动效应。总的实验结果表明,在基于内隐记忆的跨语言重复启动的范式下,非熟练中－英双语者的记忆表征支持概念表征共享、词汇表征分离的观点。更重要的是,非熟练中－英双语者需要经由汉语翻译对等词的词汇表征,才能通达英语单词的概念表征,支持了词汇连接模型的观点     

Is Literary Arabic a Second Language for Native Arab Speakers?: Evidence from Semantic Priming Study

The mother tongue of the absolute majority of native Arabic speakers is Spoken Arabic (SA), which is a local dialect that does not have a written form. For reading and writing, as well as for formal communication Literary Arabic (LA) is used. For the literate Arabs, these two languages are extensively inter-twined in every day life. Consequently, it is possible that, despite the difference between them, LA is not processed like a regular second language by the cognitive system of the native Arabic speakers but rather as an enhancement of the spoken lexicon. In the present study we examined this possibility comparing semantic priming effects in auditory lexical decision within SA (L1), with the effects found across languages with LA or in Hebrew (L2). Hebrew is doubtlessly a second language for native Arabic speakers. In this study we have manipulated semantic priming. In Experiment 1 the targets were in Spoken Arabic and the primes in any of the three languages. The semantic priming effect was twice as large within L1 as between languages and there was no difference between Hebrew and LA. In Experiment 2, all primes were in SA whereas the targets were in any of the three languages. The priming effects in that experiment were doubled relative to the previous experiment, but the inter-language relationships were the same. For both language pairings, the semantic priming was larger when the primes were presented in SA (and the targets in either Hebrew or LA) than when the primes were presented in one of the second languages and the targets in SA. The conclusion is that, despite the intensive daily use adult native Arabic speakers make of SA and LA, and despite their shared origin, the two languages retain their status as first and second languages in the cognitive system.