Shared spatial representations for physical locations and location words in bilinguals’ primary language

For monolinguals, the Simon effect is eliminated when Simon task trials are intermixed with ones in which participants respond to the words left and right with incompatibly mapped keypresses. For bilingual Dutch/ French speakers, this result has been shown to occur when the words are in Dutch (their first and primary language), but not when they are in French. To dissociate the influence of order in which the languages were learned from whether the language was the primary one currently being used, we tested bilinguals who learned Spanish or Vietnamese as their first language but for whom English became their primary language. For both groups, the incompatible location-word mapping influenced performance of the Simon task when the words were in English but not when they were in the first language. These findings indicate that the strength of language, not order of acquisition, is the critical factor.     

Neuronal representations of cognitive state: reward or attention?

The effects of spatial or featural attention on the activity of neurons have been studied in many experiments that have used a variety of neurophysiological approaches. Other experiments have examined how expectations about reward are represented in neuronal activity in various brain regions. Although attention and reward are distinct concepts, I argue here that many neurophysiological experiments on attention and reward do not permit a clean dissociation between the two. This problem arises in part because reward contingencies are the only parameter manipulated in any of these experiments. I describe how attention and reward expectations have been confounded, giving rise to uncertainty about how signals related to attention and reward are distributed in the brain.     

Visual short-term memory for two sequential arrays: One integrated representation or two separate representations?

Two dot arrays, each containing a different set of six randomly selected locations from a 5 × 5 matrix, were presented briefly and were separated by an interstimulus interval (ISI) of 0, 200, 500, or 1,500 msec. Subjects were asked to remember these locations and to report whether a probe dot matched the locations in memory. To find out whether the subjects had formed an integrated representation of the two arrays, the probe dot was accompanied by matrix elements from the first array, from the second array, or from both arrays. Memory for Array 1 was significantly impaired when the retrieval context was drawn from Array 2, and vice versa, suggesting that the two arrays were represented separately. This effect was observed only at an ISI of 500 msec or longer. We propose that as Array 1 is better consolidated, its representation becomes more separated from that of Array 2.     

Vision and touch: multiple or multisensory representations of objects?

The relationship between visually and haptically derived representations of objects is an important question in multisensory processing and, increasingly, in mental representation. We review evidence for the format and properties of these representations, and address possible theoretical models. We explore the relevance of visual imagery processes and highlight areas for further research, including the neglected question of asymmetric performance in the visuo-haptic cross-modal memory paradigm. We conclude that the weight of evidence suggests the existence of a multisensory representation, spatial in format, and flexibly accessible by both bottom-up and top-down inputs, although efficient comparison between modality-specific representations cannot entirely be ruled out.     

Are individual or consecutive letters the unit affected by repetition blindness?

When 2 similar words (e.g., react reach) are briefly sequentially displayed, the 2nd word may be omitted from the report, a phenomenon known as repetition blindness (RB). Previous researchers have suggested that consecutive letters are the unit affected by RB. Six experiments provided new data on orthographic RB. Two letters at the beginning or end of words resulted in RB, as did alternating interior letters (tactile earthly) and 3 letters with different relative positions (arid bird). However, no RB was found with a single final letter (show view). Observed RB may reflect pattern completion because RB for pairs like throat theory was reduced when the nonrepeated letters (eory) were consistent with only a single word. The experiments point to a model of orthographic RB in which both individual letters and letter sequences of length 2 or more play a role.     

Duck or rabbit? Reversing ambiguous figures and understanding ambiguous representations

In two studies we investigated 3‐ to 5‐year‐old children’s ability to reverse ambiguous figures and the relation between this ability and the ability to understand multiple representations. Children never reversed before they were informed of the two alternative interpretations of the figures. Even when they were informed of the alternatives and understood that both were possible, 3‐year‐olds and most 4‐year‐olds did not reverse. In contrast, a majority of 5‐year‐olds did reverse. In general, children only reversed if they also passed a standard false belief task. However, there was a closer correlation between reversals and a ‘droodle’ task that involved an understanding of the ambiguity of perceptual representations. These results suggest that the immediate experience of reversal may depend on a more abstract understanding of ambiguous representations.     

Semantic self-knowledge and episodic self-knowledge: independent or interrelated representations?

In this study of the structure of self-knowledge, we examined priming effects for the recall of personal episodes in order to investigate whether abstract trait knowledge and personal episodes are independent mental representations. We found that accessing similar abstract representations of traits facilitated a faster recall of related personal episodes than did accessing irrelevant abstract representations of traits (Experiments 1 and 2), reading a nonword prime (Experiments 2 and 3), accessing knowledge of one's mother (Experiment 3), or accessing semantic knowledge (Experiment 3). Contrary to previous findings, which indicated that abstract trait knowledge is represented independently of related personal episodes (e.g., Klein & Loftus, 1993; Tulving, 1993), our results suggest that abstract trait knowledge is associated with personal episodes, and therefore that semantic self-knowledge is associated with episodic self-knowledge in long-term self-knowledge.     

Representing young and older adult faces: Shared or age-specific prototypes?

ABSTRACT

Young adults recognize young adult faces more accurately than older adult faces and are more sensitive to how individual young faces deviate from a norm/prototype. Here we used an adaptation paradigm to examine whether young and older adult faces are represented by separable norms and the extent to which the coding dimensions for these two categories overlap. In Experiment 1, following adaptation to oppositely distorted young and older faces (e.g., expanded young and compressed older faces), adults’ normality judgments simultaneously shifted in opposite directions for the two face categories, providing evidence for separable norms. In Experiment 2, participants were adapted to distorted faces from a single age category (e.g., compressed young); aftereffects transferred across face age but were larger for the face age that matched adaptation. Collectively, these results provide evidence that young and older faces are processed with regard to separable norms that share some underlying coding dimensions.     

Instrumental and expressive representations of aggression: One scale or two?

The Expagg questionnaire was developed to measure a subject's view of their own aggression as a relatively instrumental or relatively expressive act. Two issues have been raised pertaining to the dimensional structure of the questionnaire: the use of principal components analysis on dichotomous responses and the possibility that instrumental and expressive representations might be independent dimensions rather than opposite ends of a single continuum. In study 1, dichotomous Expagg data from 405 subjects were subjected to microfact, principal components, and factor analysis. Each produced a first general factor, and the correlations between the item loadings were in excess of r = .99. In study 2, a 40‐item Likert scale version of Expagg was given to 295 subjects. Principal components analysis, paired item correlations, and subscale correlations suggested partial independence of instrumental and expressive items. Two new 8‐item scales measuring instrumental and expressive representations were constructed that maximise their independence. Potential uses of these revised scales are discussed. Aggr. Behav. 25:435–444, 1999. © 1999 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

Mechanisms of priming of pop-out: Stored representations or feature-gain modulations?

Previous research has shown that repetition of a task-relevant attention-capturing feature facilitates popout search. This priming of pop-out effect is due to some residual memory from recent trials. We explore two possible mechanisms of priming of pop-out: a top-down attentional benefit from a memory of the previous target representation that is stored in visual short-term memory (VSTM) and a bottom-up change of attentional gains from perceptual features of the previously attended target. We manipulated participants’ ability to form a memory trace in VSTM by occupying it with a distractor task and found that occupying VSTM did not interfere with priming of pop-out. We next manipulated attentional gains associated with feature values by inserting an irrelevant task between pop-out searches. We found that the color of the target from the intervening perceptual task influenced pop-out search: The current pop-out search was facilitated when the intervening task’s target matched the target color of the pop-out search. These results suggest that priming of pop-out might not be due to a memory trace of the previous targets in VSTM but, rather, might be due to changes in attentional control based on priming from relatively low-level feature representations of previously attended objects.     

Models and scientific representations or: who is afraid of inconsistency?

I argue that if we make explicit the role of the user of scientific representations not only in the application but also in the construction of a model or representation, then inconsistent modeling assumptions do not pose an insurmountable obstacle to our representational practices.     

Politics for Learning or Learning for Politics?

It is argued that political democracyand citizenship should not be taken as primarygoals within university education. Instead theauthor argues for a notion of ``academicdemocracy' with the overall goal or ethos oflearning together. Moreover it is argued that``learning' then should be understood accordingto ``practical traditions of knowledge', whichmeans that truth is not the ultimate goal. Theultimate goal is practices that lead to thegood of men and women.     

Effects of noise letters on decisions: Discrete or continuous flow of information?

Four forced-choice letter-detection experiments examined the effect on detection latency of noise letters that were visually similar to target letters. A single target letter was present in each display. Noise letters were similar to the target letter present in the display (the signal), to a different target letter assigned to the same response as the signal, or to a target letter assigned to the opposite response from the signal. Noise letters were present in either relevant or irrelevant display positions, and two quite different stimulus sets were used. The experiments were designed to test a prediction of models in which information about noise letters is transmitted continuously from the recognition to the decision process. These models predict that responses should be faster when noise letters are visually similar to a target assigned to the same response as the signal than when noise letters are similar to a target assigned to the opposite response. Statistically reliable effects of the type predicted by continuous models were obtained when noise letters appeared in relevant display positions, but not when they appeared in irrelevant positions.     

Talker adaptation in speech perception: adjusting the signal or the representations?

Past research has established that listeners can accommodate a wide range of talkers in understanding language. How this adjustment operates, however, is a matter of debate. Here, listeners were exposed to spoken words from a speaker of an American English dialect in which the vowel /ae/ is raised before /g/, but not before /k/. Results from two experiments showed that listeners' identification of /k/-final words like back (which are unaffected by the dialect) was facilitated by prior exposure to their dialect-affected /g/-final counterparts, e.g., bag. This facilitation occurred because the competition between interpretations, e.g., bag or back, while hearing the initial portion of the input [bae], was mitigated by the reduced probability for the input to correspond to bag as produced by this talker. Thus, adaptation to an accent is not just a matter of adjusting the speech signal as it is being heard; adaptation involves dynamic adjustment of the representations stored in the lexicon, according to the characteristics of the speaker or the context.     

How lexical is the lexicon? Evidence for integrated auditory memory representations

Previous research has shown that lexical representations must include not only linguistic information (what word was said), but also indexical information (how it was said, and by whom). The present work demonstrates that even this expansion is not sufficient. Seemingly irrelevant information, such as an unattended background sound, is retained in memory and can facilitate subsequent speech perception. We presented participants with spoken words paired with environmental sounds (e.g., a phone ringing), and had them make an “animate/inanimate” decision for each word. Later performance identifying filtered versions of the words was impaired to a similar degree if the voice changed or if the environmental sound changed. Moreover, when quite dissimilar words were used at exposure and test, we observed the same result when we reversed the roles of the words and the environmental sounds. The experiments also demonstrated limits to these effects, with no benefit from repetition. Theoretically, our results support two alternative possibilities: (1) Lexical representations are memory representations, and are not walled off from those for other sounds. Indexical effects reflect simply one type of co-occurrence that is incorporated into such representations. (2) The existing literature on indexical effects does not actually bear on lexical representations – voice changes, like environmental sounds heard with a word, produce implicit memory effects that are not tied to the lexicon. We discuss the evidence and implications of these two theoretical alternatives.     

Contingent with quality or quality contingent?

The world of the modern academy relies heavily upon contingent faculty in the teaching and training of students. Theological studies readily evidences this practice in innumerable ways. While the contingent faculty member is intrinsic to the mission of many modern schools, this piece ponders whether or not a trade‐off exists in the quality of learning contingent faculty can offer in comparison to residential or tenure track faculty members? The piece explores the constraints that many contingent faculty face in the world of theological education and asks the academy at large if such limits are something it really feels comfortable with. Ultimately, the piece voices a view that the modern academy must come to grips with its utilization of contingent faculty both for the sake of those faculty members, but more‐so for the sake of its students. See companion essays published in this issue of the journal by Hoon J. Lee, Bradley Burroughs, Kyle Schenkewitz, and Charles Harrell.     

An Atlantic Jewish republic of letters?

Atlantic port Jews began publishing English-language periodicals, pamphlets, and books during the 1840s as a means to advance an enlightened, observant form of Judaism, identified in large part with Sephardic rather than Ashkenazic religious culture and history. Three of their Jewish periodicals, the Voice of Jacob, edited by Jacob Franklin, Morris Raphall and David Aron de Sola and published in London, the Occident and American Jewish Advocate, edited by Isaac Leeser and published in Philadelphia, and the First Fruits of the West, edited by Moses N. Nathan and Lewis Ashenheim, and published in Kingston, Jamaica, provide historical evidence of the persistence of Atlantic port Jewish networks of commerce, communication, kinship and community well into the Victorian era. Publishing in a non-Jewish vernacular, and printing almost entirely in a non-Hebrew alphabet, this new “Atlantic Jewish republic of letters” did not however represent a secularizing trend. Rhetorically, ancient Jewish wisdom was invoked as the foundation, not the antithesis, of progress. The primary forces against which these editors, authors, and translators were reacting were religious, not secular in nature, namely Christian proselytizing and Jewish religious reform. Their self-conscious, programmatic activities led to the establishment of new kinds of enlightened religious educational institutions. Taken together, these phenomena constituted an Atlantic haskalah. I offer here my deep thanks and appreciation to Jonathan Karp, David Ruderman, Lois Dubin, and Kenneth Stow for their close readings and criticisms of earlier versions of this paper.