Spreading Activation in an Attractor Network With Latching Dynamics: Automatic Semantic Priming Revisited

Localist models of spreading activation (SA) and models assuming distributed representations offer very different takes on semantic priming, a widely investigated paradigm in word recognition and semantic memory research. In this study, we implemented SA in an attractor neural network model with distributed representations and created a unified framework for the two approaches. Our models assume a synaptic depression mechanism leading to autonomous transitions between encoded memory patterns (latching dynamics), which account for the major characteristics of automatic semantic priming in humans. Using computer simulations, we demonstrated how findings that challenged attractor‐based networks in the past, such as mediated and asymmetric priming, are a natural consequence of our present model’s dynamics. Puzzling results regarding backward priming were also given a straightforward explanation. In addition, the current model addresses some of the differences between semantic and associative relatedness and explains how these differences interact with stimulus onset asynchrony in priming experiments.     

An examination of racial bias in the Beck Depression Inventory-II

Historically, many psychological measures were developed and standardized based on a primarily Caucasian population. These tests are subsequently applied to minorities and may be inappropriate and possibly even pathologizing. The widely used Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II) was initially standardized on a sample of Caucasian university students and its use with minorities has only recently been investigated. This study examined the possibility of racial bias in the BDI-II by comparing Caucasian and African American Midwestern university students. A hierarchical multiple regression compared the scores of the BDI-II with a similar measure of depression that is standardized for use with African Americans. There was no evidence of racial bias discovered in the BDI-II in this sample. Implications and future directions of research are discussed.     

创造性思维中语义搜索过程：基于答案累积时间函数和语义相似性的量化分析

通过描绘发散性思维测验(物品多用途, AUT)中答案生成在累积函数和语义相似性等一系列参数上的量化特征, 揭示创造性思维的语义搜索过程。结果发现：(1)新颖AUT条件中, 语义搜索呈现与自由联想类似的负加速特点, 但搜索速度较寻常AUT条件更慢。(2)新颖AUT条件中所生成的答案与题目(即物品)均具有较低的语义相似性, 且显著小于寻常AUT条件。(3)新颖AUT条件中生成的答案比寻常AUT条件表现出显著更低的聚类程度, 其中可聚类答案和未聚类答案与题目的语义相似度均较低, 且不存在显著差异, 二者在新颖性上也不存在显著差异。以上结果说明了创造性思维的语义信息搜索过程具有与自由联想类似的激活扩散特征, 但总体搜索速度较慢。新颖性要求使得个体在最初搜索时便开始摆脱题目的语义限制而进行远距离搜索(避免就近搜索), 并倾向于在每个语义场中只生成一个答案(避免局部搜索), 但也可能会在远离题目的语义场中生成多个同类别答案。     

Cognitive impairments associated with formal thought disorder in people with schizophrenia

Formal thought disorder (FTD), or disorganized speech, is one of the central signs of schizophrenia. Despite extensive research, the cognitive processes associated with FTD are still unclear. However, the authors' review of FTD theories and research indicates that considerable progress has been made in identifying possible cognitive impairments associated with FTD. Specifically, FTD is strongly associated with impaired executive functioning and with impaired processing of semantic information. Their review indicates that previous research has not yet supported an association between FTD and either an increase in spreading activation or an impairment within the language production system.     

Infant-directed speech produced by fathers with symptoms of depression: effects on infant associative learning in a conditioned-attention paradigm

Infant-directed (ID) speech produced by fathers who varied in their number of self-reported symptoms of depressed was analyzed for differences its ability to promote infant voice-face associative learning. Infants of fathers with elevated scores on the Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II) showed significantly poorer learning than did infants of fathers with non-elevated BDI-II scores when their fathers' ID speech served as a conditioned stimulus for a face reinforcer in a conditioned-attention paradigm. Fathers with elevated BDI-II scores produced ID speech with marginally significantly lower F0 variability than fathers with non-elevated BDI-II scores. However, F0-related cues were uncorrelated with infant learning. Overall, fathers' ID speech contained significantly less F0 modulation than did mothers' ID speech. These findings show that paternal depression, like maternal depression, adversely affects infant learning in a conditioned-attention paradigm.     

阈下语义启动的任务分离研究模式及其理论模型

阈下语义启动（subliminal semantic activation SSA）作为无意识研究的一个重要领域,目前已取得丰富的研究成果。在阈下语义启动研究中主要有一致和不一致模式、无直接效应的间接效应模式、大于直接效应的间接效应模式和回归分析模式等4种研究模式。研究者运用激活扩散模型﹑反应竞争模型和复合线索模型等理论模型对阈下语义启动的无意识机制进行理论解释。     

Spreading activation versus compound cue accounts of priming: mediated priming revisited.

Spreading activation theories and compound cue theories have both been proposed as accounts of priming phenomena. According to spreading activation theories, the amount of activation that spreads between a prime and a target should be a function of the number of mediating links between the prime and target in a semantic network and the strengths of those links. The amount of activation should determine the amount of facilitation given by a prime to a target in lexical decision. To predict the amount of facilitation, it is necessary to measure the associative links between prime and target in memory. Free-association production probability has been the variable chosen in previous research for this measurement. However, in 3 experiments, the authors show priming effects that free-association production probabilities cannot easily predict. Instead, they argue that amount of priming depends on the familiarity of the prime and target as a compound, where the compound is formed by the simultaneous presence of the prime and target in short-term memory as a test item.     

The structure of semantic person memory: evidence from semantic priming in person recognition

This paper reviews research on the structure of semantic person memory as examined with semantic priming. In this experimental paradigm, a familiarity decision on a target face or written name is usually faster when it is preceded by a related as compared to an unrelated prime. This effect has been shown to be relatively short lived and susceptible to interfering items. Moreover, semantic priming can cross stimulus domains, such that a written name can prime a target face and vice versa. However, it remains controversial whether representations of people are stored in associative networks based on co-occurrence, or in more abstract semantic categories. In line with prominent cognitive models of face recognition, which explain semantic priming by shared semantic information between prime and target, recent research demonstrated that priming could be obtained from purely categorically related, non-associated prime/target pairs. Although strategic processes, such as expectancy and retrospective matching likely contribute, there is also evidence for a non-strategic contribution to priming, presumably related to spreading activation. Finally, a semantic priming effect has been demonstrated in the N400 event-related potential (ERP) component, which may reflect facilitated access to semantic information. It is concluded that categorical relatedness is one organizing principle of semantic person memory.     

Self-Reported Depression in Mothers of Children Who Have Experienced Sexual Abuse

The Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II; A. T. Beck, R. A. Steer, & G. K. Brown, 1996) was administered to 164 biological mothers of sexually abused children to determine the psychometric characteristics of the BDI-II and to estimate the prevalence of self-reported depression in this population. The study also sought to ascertain whether the mothers’ BDI-II total scores were correlated with various psychosocial characteristics of the mothers and their children. It was found that there was only one dimension underlying the 21 BDI-II responses, and the internal consistency of the BDI-II total scores was high. Twenty-six percent of these mothers had scores indicative of clinical depression. The mothers’ BDI-II total scores were significantly correlated with their husbands’ or paramours’ having sexually abused their children and their ratings of the children’s internalizing behaviors. These results were discussed as supporting the use of the BDI-II with mothers of sexually abused children to measure self-reported depression.     

重复启动条件下语义启动效应减少的机制

采用重复启动范式探讨语义启动效应减少的机制。结果发现,在SOA为短的167ms条件下,重复/相同和重复/相关的启动效应无差异,且重复/相关启动并未导致语义启动效应的减少;而在SOA为长的1200ms条件下,重复/相同和重复/相关的启动效应差异显著,且重复/相关启动导致了语义启动效应的减少,而重复/相同未导致语义启动效应的减少。在抵消了期望和消退的作用后,在SOA为1200ms条件下所得到的重复/相同和重复/相关启动效应的差异,是由于扩散受到了阻碍而导致的。这一结论支持了激活扩散是有一定条件的观点。     

Convergent validity of the Beck depression inventory-II with the reynolds adolescent depression scale in psychiatric inpatients

The Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II; Beck, Steer, & Brown, 1996) and the Reynolds Adolescent Depression Scale (RADS; Reynolds, 1987) were administered to 56 female and 44 male psychiatric inpatients whose ages ranged from 12 to 17 years old. The Cronbach coefficient alpha(s) for the BDI-II and RADS were, respectively, .92 and .91 and indicated comparably high levels of internal consistency. The correlation between the BDI-II and RADS total scores was .84,p <.001. Binormal receiver-operating-characteristic analyses indicated that both instruments were comparably effective in differentiating inpatients who were and were not diagnosed with a major depressive disorder; the areas under the ROC curves for the BDI-II and RADS were, respectively, .78 and .76. The results (a) indicate that the BDI-II and the RADS have similar psychometric characteristics and (b) support the convergent validity of the BDI-II for assessing self-reported depression in adolescent inpatients.     

Pertinence Generation in Radiological Diagnosis: Spreading Activation and the Nature of Expertise

An empirical study of human expert reasoning processes is presented. Its purpose is to test a model of how a human expert's cognitive system learns to detect, and does detect, pertinent data and hypotheses. This process is called pertinence generation. The model is based on the phenomenon of spreading activation within semantic networks. Twenty-two radiologists were asked to produce diagnoses from two very difficult X-ray films. As the model predicted, pertinence increased with experience and with semantic network integration. However, the experts whose daily work involved explicit reasoning were able, in addition, to go beyond and to generate more pertinence. The results suggest that two qualitatively different kinds of expertise, basic and super, should be distinguished. A reinterpretation of the results of Lesgold et al. (1988) is proposed, suggesting that apparent nonmonotonicities in performance are not representative of common radiological expertise acquisition but result from the inclusion of basic and super expertise on the same curve.     

Influence of emotional valence and arousal on the spread of activation in memory

Controversy still persists on whether emotional valence and arousal influence cognitive activities. Our study sought to compare how these two factors foster the spread of activation within the semantic network. In a lexical decision task, prime words were varied depending on the valence (pleasant or unpleasant) or on the level of emotional arousal (high or low). Target words were carefully selected to avoid semantic priming effects, as well as to avoid arousing specific emotions (neutral). Three SOA durations (220, 420 and 720 ms) were applied across three independent groups. Results indicate that at 220 ms, the effect of arousal is significantly higher than the effect of valence in facilitating spreading activation while at 420 ms, the effect of valence is significantly higher than the effect of arousal in facilitating spreading activation. These findings suggest that affect is a sequential process involving the successive intervention of arousal and valence.     

Severity of Self-Reported Depression in Patients with a Schizoaffective Disorder

  To investigate the severity of self-reported depression in patients diagnosed with a schizoaffective disorder (SZA), the Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II; Beck, Steer, & Brown, 1996) was administered to 75 patients with a SZA. For comparative purposes, the BDI-II was also administered to 75 patients with a major depressive disorder without psychotic features (MDD) who were matched to the SZA sample with respect to sex, being Caucasian, and age. The Cronbach coefficient αs of the BDI-II total scores for the patients with a SZA or a MDD were, respectively, .94 and .92. The mean BDI-II total score (M = 23.71, SD = 15.44) of the patients with a SZA was minimally lower than the mean BDI-II score (M = 28.73, SD = 12.46) of the patients with a MDD. The BDI-II was discussed as being useful for assessing self-reported depression in patients diagnosed with a SZA.     

Dynamics of thematic activation in recognition testing

Two experiments investigated the effects of spreading semantic activation during a recognition test. In Experiment 1, activation spreading during testing from words that were thematic associates of unstudied critical words yielded a linear increase in false alarms to such critical words as the number of tested associates increased, regardless of whether the theme appeared during study or whether any thematic processing occurred during study at all. In Experiment 2, the number of tested associates was held constant, and false alarms to critical words from unstudied themes increased linearly with the strength of association between the critical word and its tested associates, consistent with predictions of spreading-activation theory. For studied themes, however, testing weaker or stronger associates yielded similar rates of such false alarms, contrary to spreading-activation theory. These results suggest that test-induced thematic priming is driven by spreading activation for unstudied themes but by thematic reactivation for studied themes.     

Age-related differences in lexical access, spreading activation, and simple pronunciation

An experiment was conducted to address age-related differences in lexical access, spreading activation, and pronunciation. Both young and older adults participated in a delayed pronunciation task to trace the time course of lexical access and a semantic priming task to trace the time course of spreading activation. In the delayed pronunciation task, subjects were presented a word and then, after varying delays, were presented a cue to pronounce the word aloud. Older adults benefited considerably more from the preexposure to the word than did the younger adults, suggesting an age-related difference in lexical access time. In the semantic priming pronunciation task, semantic relatedness (related vs. neutral), strength of the relationship (high vs. low), and prime-target stimulus onset asynchrony (200 ms, 350 ms, 500 ms, 650 ms, and 800 ms) were factorially crossed with age to investigate age-related differences in the buildup of semantic activation across time. The results from this task indicated that the activation pattern of the older adults closely mimicked that of the younger adults. Finally, the results of both tasks indicated that older adults were slower at both their onset to pronounce and their actual production durations (i.e., from onset to offset) in the pronunciation task. The results were interpreted as suggesting that input and output processes are slowed with age, but that the basic retrieval mechanism of spreading activation is spared by age.     

The Experience of Insight Facilitates Long-Term Semantic Priming in the Right Hemisphere

While past research has demonstrated a link between the subjective “Aha” experience of insight and verbal insight problem solution activation in the right hemisphere (RH), no one has yet linked insight to long term semantic priming. We propose that through a shared process of semantic integration both of these concepts are linked and thus the experience of insight should facilitate semantic priming in the RH. Participants attempted to solve a group of compound remote associate problems and afterwards completed a lexical decision task. The results showed that the experience of insight facilitated semantic priming in the RH, but only for unsolved compound remote associate problems. It was also shown that participants who indicated that they generated more solutions through insight that were incorrect demonstrated the most semantic priming in the RH. These results indicate that long-term semantic priming can occur as a result of insight solutions, and that this activation occurs predominantly in the RH. This study extends both the evidence for long-lasting semantic priming as well the theory of coarse semantic coding in the RH.     

Validating the Beck Depression Inventory-II in Indonesia's general population and coronary heart disease patients

This study assesses the validity and determines the cut-off point for the Beck Depression Inventory-II (the BDI-II) among Indonesians. The Indonesian version of the BDI-II (the Indo BDI-II) was administered to 720 healthy individuals from the general population, 215 Coronary Heart Disease (CHD) patients, and 102 depressed patients. Confirmatory factor analysis indicated factorial similarity across the three samples. Significant correlations between the Indo BDI-II and other self-report measures related to depression demonstrated construct validity of the Indo BDI-II. Furthermore, there was a highly significant difference in the Indo BDI-II scores between depressed patients and non-depressed participants. Internal consistency and re-test reliability of the Indo BDI-II were acceptable. The receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve indicated that the cut-off point of the Indo BDI-II for a mild severity of depression in Indonesian population should be 17. We conclude that the Indo BDI-II is a valid measure of depression, both in the Indonesian general population and in CHD patients.     

Recall of word lists is enhanced with increased spreading activation

ABSTRACT

Some evidence exists supporting a relationship between spreading activation in semantic/lexical memory networks and episodic memory. However, the results have been mixed and there have been no investigations examining whether a relationship exists between variability in spreading activation and episodic memory. Hence, we sought to investigate these potential relationships. Thirteen individuals were administered the Hopkins Verbal Learning Test–Revised (HVLT-R) and the Controlled Oral Word Association Test (COWAT). The average word frequency of all the “F” words generated on the COWAT was used as a measure of spreading activation. Variability in spreading activation was assessed by calculating the variability of the word frequencies from the COWAT across time. The results confirmed our hypotheses, with significant negative correlations found between free recall on the HVLT-R and both the average word frequency and measures of variability in spreading activation.