Long-term repetition priming in spoken and written word production: evidence for a contribution of phonology to handwriting

Although it is relatively well established that access to orthographic codes in production tasks is possible via an autonomous link between meaning and spelling (e.g., Rapp, Benzing, & Caramazza, 1997), the relative contribution of phonology to orthographic access remains unclear. Two experiments demonstrated persistent repetition priming in spoken and written single-word responses, respectively. Two further experiments showed priming from spoken to written responses and vice versa, which is interpreted as reflecting a role of phonology in constraining orthographic access. A final experiment showed priming from spoken onto written responses even when participants engaged in articulatory suppression during writing. Overall, the results support the view that access to orthography codes is accomplished via both the autonomous link between meaning and spelling and an indirect route via phonology.     

Being the same and different: A model explaining new product adoption

• The study suggests an alternative conceptualization for understanding adoption behavior over time, based on Optimal Distinctiveness Theory. This theory states that social identity derives from a fundamental tension between human needs for validation and similarity to others—the need for assimilation—and a countervailing need for uniqueness and individuation—the need for differentiation. The present study proposes that the effect of the size of the group of consumers who have already adopted a new product on an individual consumer's decision to adopt this product is contingent upon the consumer's two predispositions: the need for assimilation and the need for distinctiveness. Results of empirical research suggested that differently perceived subgroup sizes fulfill consumers' dual needs for distinctiveness and assimilation differently. The influence of the adopters' group size on a consumer's decision to adopt a new product varied among individuals with different levels of needs for distinctiveness and assimilation: when need for distinctiveness was low, the higher was the need for assimilation and the larger was the perceived group size, the higher was the probability of adopting the product. When the need for distinctiveness was high, the lower was the need for assimilation and the larger was the perceived group size, the lower was the probability of adopting the product. In addition, when the need for both distinctiveness and assimilation were high, the probability of adopting the product rose as the perceived group size increased. Implications for product variation, marketing communication, and target groups are discussed.

Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

For a psycholinguistic model of handwriting production: testing the syllable-bigram controversy

This study examined the theoretical controversy on the impact of syllables and bigrams in handwriting production. French children and adults wrote words on a digitizer so that we could collect data on the local, online processing of handwriting production. The words differed in the position of the lowest frequency bigram. In one condition, it coincided with the word's syllable boundary. In the other condition, it was located before the syllable boundary. The results yielded higher movement durations at the position where the low-frequency bigram coincided with the syllable boundary compared to where the low-frequency bigram appeared before the syllable boundary. Syllable-oriented strategies failed with the presence of a very low-frequency bigram within the initial syllable. Further analysis showed that children in grades 3 and 4 privileged syllable-oriented programming strategies. The production times of children in grade 4 were also affected by syllable frequency and, to a lesser extent, bigram frequency. The adults writing durations were modulated by bigram frequency. Therefore, both bigrams and syllables regulate handwriting production although the influence of bigrams was stronger in adults than children. In the light of these results, we propose a psycholinguistic model of handwriting production.     

Bodies and other visual objects: the dialectics of reaching toward objects

Participants viewed video clips of a left or right-handed reach toward an object that was orientated with a handle to the left or right. They were required to classify the object by making a left or right-handed key-press and ignore the reach. These responses were, never-the-less, affected by the observed reach in ways which largely reflected the opportunities for complementary actions in the viewed scenes, given the simultaneous constraints of the object orientation combined with the direction and hand of reach. These influences are claimed to reflect the interdependency of the action possibilities that arise from a set of objects and agents in three-dimensional space that together determine behaviour.     

Comparing groups in a before–after design: When t test and ANCOVA produce different results

Background. Researchers often test people before and after some treatment and compare these scores with a control group. Sometimes it is not possible to allocate people into conditions randomly, which means the initial scores for the two groups may differ. There are two main approaches: t test on the gain scores and ANCOVA partialling out the initial scores. Lord (1967) showed that these can lead to different conclusions. This is an often‐discussed paradox in psychology and education. Aims. The reasons why these approaches can lead to different conclusions, the assumptions that each approach makes and how the approaches relate to group allocation, are discussed Methods. Three sets of simulations are reported that investigate the relationships among effect size, group allocation, measurement error and Lord's paradox. Conclusions. Recommendations are given that stress careful examination of the research questions, sampling and allocation of participants and graphing the data. ANCOVA is appropriate when allocation is based on the initial scores, t test can be appropriate if allocation is associated non‐causally with the initial scores, but often neither approach provides adequate results.     

The medium can influence the message: Print-based versus digital reading influences how people process different types of written information

While electronic reading devices are extremely popular, research is equivocal regarding their benefits for outcomes such as reader comprehension. Integrating literatures on reading medium comparisons and matching effects in persuasion, this research tested whether comprehension is maximized when the content of the material (e.g., whether it is traditional vs. modern) matches the medium (e.g., reading from a traditional book vs. digital e-reader). In Study 1, participants read a traditional- or modern-themed short story from either a book or an e-reader. Story comprehension was greater when participants read from the printed medium compared to the e-reader, an effect that was marginally moderated by story content, consistent with a matching effect. In Study 2, participants read a persuasive message that emphasized either a traditional versus modern solution to improving health in either a magazine format or on an iPad. Message comprehension was marginally greater among participants who read their message in a printed format. Participants’ interest in weight loss showed evidence of a matching effect – participants were more interested in losing weight when a modern solution to obesity article was presented on an iPad compared to a printed format. The results are applied to the study of reading and attitude change.     

Braking reaching movements: a test of the constant tau-dot strategy under different viewing conditions

Following F. Zaal and R. J. Bootsma (1995), the authors studied whether the decelerative phase of a reaching movement could be modeled as a constant tau-dot strategy resulting in a soft collision with the object. Specifically, they investigated whether that strategy is sustained over different viewing conditions. Participants (N = 11) were required to reach for 15- and 50-mm objects at 2 different distances under 3 conditions in which visual availability of the immediate environment and of the reaching hand were varied. Tau-dot estimates and goodness-of-fit were highly similar across the 3 conditions. Only within-participant variability of tau-dot estimates was increased when environmental cues were removed. That finding suggests that the motor system uses a tau-dot strategy involving the intermodal (i.e., visual, proprioceptive, or both) specification of information to regulate the decelerative phase of reaching under restricted viewing conditions. The authors provide recommendations for improving the derivation of tau;(x) estimates and stress the need for further research on how time-to-contact information is used in the regulation of the dynamics of actions such as reaching.     

The controlled application of a strategy can still produce automatic effects: reply to Redington (2000)

The deliberate application of a strategy can have unintended discriminative effects. It is argued that these effects or influences on discriminative responding are the source of automatic influences and can be dissociated from controlled influences under appropriate circumstances. Such automatic influences are often latent in the interaction between the memory structures and the strategies that participants bring to bear in many implicit learning tasks.     

How love and sex can influence recognition of faces and words: A processing model account

A link between romantic love and face recognition and sexual desire and verbal recognition is suggested. When in love, people typically focus on a long‐term perspective which enhances global perception, whereas when experiencing sexual encounters they focus on the present which enhances a perception of details. Because people automatically activate these processing styles when in love or sex, subtle reminders of love versus sex should suffice to change ways of perception. Global processing should further enhance face recognition, whereas local processing should enhance recognition of verbal information. In two studies participants were primed with concepts and thoughts of love versus sex. Compared to control groups, recognition of verbal material was enhanced after sex priming, whereas face recognition was enhanced after love priming. In Experiment 2 it was demonstrated that differences in global versus local perception mediated these effects. However, there was no indication for mood as a mediator. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Articulatory coding and phonological judgements on written words and pictures: The role of the phonological output buffer

Abstract

The ability of Italian subjects to make phonological judgements was investigated in three experiments. The judgements comprised initial sound similarity and stress assignment on pain of both written words and pictures. Stress assignment on both words and pictures as well as initial sound similarity on pictures required the activation of phonological lexical representations, but this was not necessarily the case for initial sound similarity judgements on word pairs. The first study assessed the effects of concurrent articulatory suppression on the judgements. Experiment 2 used a concomitant task (chewing), which shares with suppression the use of articulatory components but does not involve speech programming and production. The third experiment investigated the effects of unattended speech on the phonological judgements. The results of these three experiments showed that articulatory suppression had a significant disrupting effect on accuracy in all four conditions, while neither articulatory non-speech (chewing) or unattended auditory speech had any effect on the subjects' performance. The results suggest that these phonological judgements involve the operation of an articulatory speech output component, which is not implemented peripherally and does not require the involvement of a non-articulatory input system.     

Me, myself, and I: different recognition rates for three photo-IDs of the same person

In all contemporary societies, photo-identity documents are used routinely for person identification, but this process is surprisingly fallible. Here we show that this problem is not limited to the identification of specific photographs of a person, but transcends three identity cards of the same person with different images. These identity cards varied substantially from each other in how well they could be recognised but identification rates were generally poor. We also present a potential solution to this problem by demonstrating that person identification can be improved when several photographs of the same person are made available.     

How to use the diffusion model: Parameter recovery of three methods: EZ, fast-dm, and DMAT

Parameter recovery of three different implementations of the Ratcliff diffusion model was investigated: the EZ model (Wagenmakers, van der Maas, & Grasman, 2007), fast-dm (Voss & Voss, 2007), and DMAT (Vandekerckhove & Tuerlinckx, 2007). Their capacity to recover both the mean structure and individual differences in parameter values was explored. The three methods were applied to simulated data generated by the diffusion model, by the leaky, competing accumulator (LCA) model (Usher & McClelland, 2001) and by the linear ballistic accumulator (LBA) model (Brown & Heathcote, 2008). Results show that EZ and DMAT are better capable than fast-dm in recovering experimental effects on parameters. EZ was best in recovering individual differences in parameter values. When data were generated by the LCA model, the diffusion model estimates obtained with all three methods correlated well with corresponding LCA model parameters. No such one-on-one correspondence could be established between parameters of the LBA model and the diffusion model.     

How the mind understands other minds: cognitive psychology, attachment and reflective function

Jung's epistemological relativistic attitude was very advanced for his time and very much in line with the contemporary philosophy of science. Further, Jung states that the patient's unconscious has the capacity to represent itself by creating metaphors which give the therapist all the help he might need in treating his patient. As such, Jungian analysts have not been encouraged to embark on theoretical work and as a result, the Jungian movement has been lacking those theories that connect general psychological principles with clinical practices. In an attempt to enlarge our 'middle-range theories', we shall discuss Peter Fonagy's concept of reflective function. In our opinion, the theoretical hypothesis regarding the instinct of reading the mind (Baron-Cohen 1995) and Fonagy's idea of reflective function are extremely useful in our Jungian clinical practice and these concepts are utilizable because they are not at odds with analytical psychology's general epistemological and theoretical framework.     

Movement trajectories in the presence of a distracting stimulus: Evidence for a response activation model of selective reaching

Consistent with action-based theories of attention, the presence of a nontarget stimulus in the environment has been shown to alter the characteristics of goal-directed movements. Specifically, it has been reported that movement trajectories veer away from (Howard & Tipper, 1997) or towards (Welsh, Elliott, & Weeks, 1999) the location of a nontarget stimulus. The purpose of the experiments reported in this paper was to test a response activation model of selective reaching conceived to account for these variable results. In agreement with the model, the trajectory changes in the movements appear to be determined by the activation levels of each competing response at the moment of response initiation. The results of the present work, as well as those of previous studies, are discussed within the framework of the model of response activation.     

Emotional consciousness: a neural model of how cognitive appraisal and somatic perception interact to produce qualitative experience

This paper proposes a theory of how conscious emotional experience is produced by the brain as the result of many interacting brain areas coordinated in working memory. These brain areas integrate perceptions of bodily states of an organism with cognitive appraisals of its current situation. Emotions are neural processes that represent the overall cognitive and somatic state of the organism. Conscious experience arises when neural representations achieve high activation as part of working memory. This theory explains numerous phenomena concerning emotional consciousness, including differentiation, integration, intensity, valence, and change.     

Hybrid search in context: How to search for vegetables in the produce section and cereal in the cereal aisle

ABSTRACT

The own race bias (ORB) refers to a finding that faces of members of one's own racial or ethnic group are easier to recognize. Holistic processing theories suggest that the ORB might be moderated by viewing distance. Participants studied photographs of own and other race individuals and then took a recognition memory test. Viewing distance was simulated by varying the degree to which photographs were blurred (Experiment 1) and by varying photograph size (Experiment 2). Findings indicated that own race faces were better recognized, that recognition was impaired by simulated viewing distance, but the size of the ORB was not contingent upon distance.