Differentiation of affective and denotative meaning systems and their influence in personality ratings.

The present study presents an empirical example of the dichotomy of affective and denotative meaning systems and their influence on individual differences in personality ratings. The three-mode factor analytic technique with a newly developed transformation methodology for the scale mode was applied to data collected by Hogenraad from 50 French-speaking Belgians, rating 40 personality concepts against 40 semantic differential scales. Results indicated that three affective dimensions (evaluation, potency, and activity) proved to be dominant in the indigenous factor structure of personality impressions and that three dimensions in the "other" space, orthogonal to affect, are clearly interpretable denotative semantic features of personalities. Three idealized individual differences on interactions of these two meaning systems with four concept factors were highlighted by the final rotated inner core matrix. The present methodology along with the semantic differential technique and three-mode factor analysis can be applied to various types of subjects and/or concept domains for better understanding of intra- and intercultural differences.     

The comparability of verbal and nonverbal semantic differential scales in a joint semantic space

As an alternative to the verbal Semantic Differential (SD) measure of affective meaning systems, a nonverbal instrument-the Graphic Differential (GD)-has been developed for subject populations who have difficulty in verbal ratings. However, the factor structures of the pictographic scales have never been examined in a joint-verbal and nonverbal-semantic space as to whether their structures are equivalent to the affective systems defined by the verbal markers. The present study assessed this issue by reanalyzing the French (1977) data. The results indicated that when verbal SD and nonverbal GD scales were factor-analyzed separately, the three-dimensional structures of Evaluation (E), Potency (P), and Activity (A) were recaptured in both domains. However, when they were analyzed simultaneously in a joint semantic space, only the E and A dimensions were congruent. The GD P scales carried the meanings of denotative Heaviness, rather than the affective Potency. For future investigation, suggestion was made to systematically study both the affective and denotative semantic features within the contexts of nonverbal communciations.The authors made equal contributions toward the completion of the present research.     

The structure of interests as a structure of occupational stimuli and as a structure of affective responses

The structure of interests has usually been perceived as a structure of occupational stimuli, but it can also be conceived of as a structure of the affective responses that occupational stimuli elicit, or as a structure of these stimuli embedded within the matrix of affective responses which they produce. Each of these three structural representations was examined in this study. The semantic differential technique was used to rate a set of 10 occupational stimuli with 15 bipolar scales. A factor analysis of the stimuli yielded three occupational factors called Science, Things vs. People, and Social Welfare; a factor analysis of the scales indicated that the stimuli elicited Evaluation, Potency, and Activity responses. The three dimensions of affect were then used as the axes of a semantic space within which the occupational stimuli were located according to the unique affective meaning of each. The desirability of studying the structure of interests as a structure of occupational stimuli embedded within a structure of the responses they elicited was discussed.     

Social Representations of Human Rights Amongst Czech University Students

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a general legislative framework for democratic societies. Studying the social representations of these basic human rights helps to explain how people understand and assess the basic rights and how these rights relate to everyday life. Over 400 Czech university students rated the 30 articles of the Declaration of Human Rights on various scales (degree of understanding, personal relevance, consequences for individual responsibility, for government, political parties, etc.). A semantic space was identified in which concepts (i.e. the Articles of the Declaration) could be located. A typology (clusters) of articles was then established within that semantic space. A factor analysis of the scales resulted in a two-dimensional solution (‘positive attitude’ and ‘personal influence’). Five clusters of assessed articles were identified within this semantic space. (© 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.)     

A Study of the affective responses elicited by occupational stimuli

In this study the semantic differential was used to assess the properties of affect elicited by occupational stimuli. Vocationally committed men studying medicine (N = 119), business (N = 120), and engineering (N = 83) responded to a semantic differential containing occupational concepts representing the fields of medicine, business, engineering, the clergy, and law enforcement. A factor analysis of the data yielded a semantic space for all three groups composed of three orthogonal dimensions of affect called Evaluation, Activity, and Potency, in that order of salience. Tests of factorial similarity indicated that the semantic spaces of the three groups were virtually identical. It was concluded that occupational stimuli elicit Evaluative, Activity, and Potency responses, and that all three affective dimensions should be used when predicting occupational behavior.     

Chinese child-rearing beliefs: Key dimensions and contributions to the development of culture-appropriate assessment

Socio-cultural perspectives explain inconsistency in Chinese child-rearing research when imported methods and concepts are applied. We sought to elucidate child-rearing belief constructs relevant to Chinese contexts. Exploratory factor analysis identified items representing child-rearing concepts both imported and indigenous to Chinese culture and forming four dimensions: Training, Shame, Authoritative, and Autonomy. Data from parents of preschool-aged children in Hong Kong ( N  = 228) and Taiwan ( N  = 213) were subject to confirmatory factor and scale internal consistency analyses. Results support the conceptual and psychometric coherence of each subscale. Discussion of findings focuses on the benefits of culturally responsive methodology and the potential utility of the scales in child-rearing research with Chinese and other Confucian cultural populations.     

The Integration of Behavior,Vol. III by Thomas M. French

This article presents a model for understanding development within children's psychotherapy groups. It is proposed that two complementary cultures exist within children's groups, one, indigenous peer culture, strictly of the children's making and the other, therapeutic group culture, created by the therapist in collaboration with group members. The therapist is wise to approach indigenous peer culture as an ethnographer might a native culture, with an emphasis on observation and seeking understanding rather than on intervention. The therapist can use the indigenous peer culture to speak to the children in their own language and eventually to engage them in collaboratively building a meaning system that is uniquely designed to address their psychotherapeutic needs. The article defines these concepts, develops them theoretically, and illustrates them clinically.     

THE STRUCTURE OF ATTITUDE TOWARD QUANTITATIVE CONCEPTS

The purpose of this study was to assess the dimensionality of attitude toward quantitative concepts. Subjects were 311 graduate students. The instrument employed was a semantic differential consisting of six quantitative concepts and 14 evaluative scales. The concepts were: Algebra, Statistics, Mathematics, Numbers, Calculations, and Formulas. An obliquely rotated principal factor analysis of the data yielded two categories of interpretable factors: (1) factors defined by all scales within one quantitative concept, and (2) factors defined by a sub-set of scales across quantitative concepts.     

LA PERSONNALITÉ COMME CONSTRUCTION SÉMANTIQUE UNIVERSELLE ET CULTURELLE1

Personality was approached by tracing back common usage terms, easily available to the layman, to their latent semantic organization — traits — which is supposedly revealed by their inter-correlations and subsequent factorization, that is, the usual semantic differential methodology. The measuring instrument is composed of 40 concepts and 40 scales, nine of which are pan-cultural and 31 are resulting from a genuine elicitation, and was applied to a sample of 100 male and female subjects. Strong similarities are found, as expected, between personality structure and the more fundamental affective EPA meaning structure. But even when the affective component of the meaning structure, which is nevertheless the main feature of personality ratings, is mathematically neutralized by partializing the nine pan-cultural scales out of the 31 genuine personality scales, the remaining personality structure is still universal enough, beyond its fundamental affective component. It is suggested that those unique and culture-bound factors appear as they do as a result of the limited number of scales selected and not as a result of a culture-determined personality structure.     

Repetition priming mediated by task similarity in semantic classification

In the present study, the specificity of repetition priming between semantic classification tasks was examined using Osgood's (Osgood, Suci, & Tannenbaum, 1957) semantic space as a heuristic for determining the similarity between classifications. The classification tasks involved judging the meaning of words on semantic scales, such as pleasant/unpleasant. The amount of priming across classifications was hypothesized to decrease with increasing distance (decreasing similarity) between semantic scales in connotative semantic space. The results showed maximum repetition priming when the study and the test classifications were the same, intermediate degrees of priming when the study and the test classification scales shared loadings on semantic factors, and little priming when the study and the test classification scales loaded primarily on orthogonal semantic factors--that is, when the distance between scales was maximized. Consistent with the transfer-appropriate processing framework, repetition priming in semantic classifications was highly task specific, decreasing with increasing distance between classification scales.     

An Experiment in Judging Personalities

Use of the semantic differential technique has largely been restricted to “paper and pencil” settings and student populations. In this study, adult respondents in an interview setting were asked to evaluate two concepts—use of lake (a) as a source of electric power and (b) as a recreational area—by means of eight seven-point scales. Results indicated considerable conceptscale interaction, suggesting that Osgood's interpretation of the semantic differential may be restricted by both technique of data collection and subpopulation. Respondent hostility might be an intervening variable. The semantic differential technique appeared to yield a preliminary evaluation of the two concepts, suggesting its use as an indicator of orientation.     

Constructing Semantic Models From Words,Images, and Emojis

A number of recent models of semantics combine linguistic information, derived from text corpora, and visual information, derived from image collections, demonstrating that the resulting multimodal models are better than either of their unimodal counterparts, in accounting for behavioral data. Empirical work on semantic processing has shown that emotion also plays an important role especially in abstract concepts; however, models integrating emotion along with linguistic and visual information are lacking. Here, we first improve on visual and affective representations, derived from state-of-the-art existing models, by choosing models that best fit available human semantic data and extending the number of concepts they cover. Crucially then, we assess whether adding affective representations (obtained from a neural network model designed to predict emojis from co-occurring text) improves the model's ability to fit semantic similarity/relatedness judgments from a purely linguistic and linguistic–visual model. We find that, given specific weights assigned to the models, adding both visual and affective representations improves performance, with visual representations providing an improvement especially for more concrete words, and affective representations improving especially the fit for more abstract words.     

Differences among medical,business, and engineering students in the intensity and direction of their affective responses to occupational concepts

A semantic differential was used to measure the affective responses of vocationally committed male students in medicine, business, and engineering to occupational concepts representing the fields of medicine, business, engineering, the clergy, and law enforcement. A factor analysis of the data indicated that the students responded to the concepts with the Evaluative, Activity, and Potency dimensions of affective meaning. It was found that the groups differed significantly in the intensity and direction of their affective responses to the occupational concepts on the Evaluative and Activity dimensions. An examination of the nature of the group differences indicated that they held different affective meanings for their respective vocational choices, and for other occupational concepts as well. The medical students responded to medicine as good, potent, and active; the business students to business as bad, potent, and active, and the engineering students to engineering as good, weak, and active. The possible relationship of affective meaning to vocational behavior was discussed.     

Semantic embodiment,disembodiment or misembodiment? In search of meaning in modules and neuron circuits

“Embodied” proposals claim that the meaning of at least some words, concepts and constructions is grounded in knowledge about actions and objects. An alternative “disembodied” position locates semantics in a symbolic system functionally detached from sensorimotor modules. This latter view is not tenable theoretically and has been empirically falsified by neuroscience research. A minimally-embodied approach now claims that action–perception systems may “color”, but not represent, meaning; however, such minimal embodiment (misembodiment?) still fails to explain why action and perception systems exert causal effects on the processing of symbols from specific semantic classes. Action perception theory (APT) offers neurobiological mechanisms for “embodied” referential, affective and action semantics along with “disembodied” mechanisms of semantic abstraction, generalization and symbol combination, which draw upon multimodal brain systems. In this sense, APT suggests integrative-neuromechanistic explanations of why both sensorimotor and multimodal areas of the human brain differentially contribute to specific facets of meaning and concepts.     

Affective meanings of 1,469 Bengali concepts

This article provides semantic differential ratings of 1,469 concepts in Bengali, a language spoken by about 250 million individuals in eastern India and Bangladesh. These data were collected from 20 male and 20 female Calcutta respondents who rated stimuli on three culturally universal affective dimensions: evaluation–potency–activity (EPA). This study employs pan-respondent component analyses as a means of examining the respondents’ usage of the standard EPA scales. The pan-respondent component analyses indicate that some respondents used the rating scales in unexpected ways, recording their feelings about one component of concepts’ EPA with ratings on a scale intended to measure a different dimension. When scores were based only on respondents who used the scales appropriately, several interesting patterns were found. For respondents of both genders, potency scores have a curvilinear relation with evaluation, such that very good and very bad concepts are mostly seen as very potent, whereas evaluatively neutral concepts are seen as somewhat impotent or just slightly potent. A moderate linear correlation exists between activity and evaluation, and a modest positive relation exists between potency and activity. Gender correlations are high on evaluation, .93, but much lower for potency scores, with a correlation of .55, and even lower for activity, .30. In this article we examine several explanations for why scales denoting potency and activity were reinterpreted as indicating goodness by certain respondents, and consider the matter of including data collected from respondents who used scales in this way.     

Abstract Conceptual Feature Ratings Predict Gaze Within Written Word Arrays: Evidence From a Visual Wor(l)d Paradigm

The Abstract Conceptual Feature (ACF) framework predicts that word meaning is represented within a high‐dimensional semantic space bounded by weighted contributions of perceptual, affective, and encyclopedic information. The ACF, like latent semantic analysis, is amenable to distance metrics between any two words. We applied predictions of the ACF framework to abstract words using eyetracking via an adaptation of the classical “visual word paradigm” (VWP). Healthy adults (n = 20) selected the lexical item most related to a probe word in a 4‐item written word array comprising the target and three distractors. The relation between the probe and each of the four words was determined using the semantic distance metrics derived from ACF ratings. Eye movement data indicated that the word that was most semantically related to the probe received more and longer fixations relative to distractors. Importantly, in sets where participants did not provide an overt behavioral response, the fixation rates were nonetheless significantly higher for targets than distractors, closely resembling trials where an expected response was given. Furthermore, ACF ratings which are based on individual words predicted eye fixation metrics of probe‐target similarity at least as well as latent semantic analysis ratings which are based on word co‐occurrence. The results provide further validation of Euclidean distance metrics derived from ACF ratings as a measure of one facet of the semantic relatedness of abstract words and suggest that they represent a reasonable approximation of the organization of abstract conceptual space. The data are also compatible with the broad notion that multiple sources of information (not restricted to sensorimotor and emotion information) shape the organization of abstract concepts. While the adapted “VWP” is potentially a more metacognitive task than the classical visual world paradigm, we argue that it offers potential utility for studying abstract word comprehension.     

EFFECTS OF RATER-CONCEPT-SCALE INTERACTIONS AND USE OF DIFFERENT FACTORING PROCEDURES UPON EVALUATIVE FACTOR STRUCTURE

Subjects (N=225) drawn from ten subpopulations were asked to rate nine different concepts on 39 evaluative semantic differential scales plus the “strong-weak” and “fast-slow” scales. Nineteen separate factor analyses (principal factoring with iteration followed by Varimax rotation) were performed for: (1) all subjects rating all concepts, (2–10) all subjects rating each concept, (11) adult males rating all concepts, (12) adult females rating all concepts, (13) college students rating all concepts, (14) nonstudents rating all concepts, (15) fifth grade students rating all concepts, (16) all males rating “Liz Taylor,” (17) all females rating “Liz Taylor,” (18) all males rating “your father,” and (19) all females rating “your father.” Rotated factor loadings greater than .50 are displayed for all analyses. There is little apparent similarity among the factor structures. In addition, oblique (Oblimin) and Quartimax rotations are performed for two of the analyses (all subjects rating “LBJ” and “U.S. Government”). The three rotated factor structures for each concept differ radically.     

Attitudes and attitude change of indigenous teacher trainees in Papua New Guinea

The study reported used the semantic differential as an instrument to collect data for an examination of attitudes and attitude change of indigenous teacher trainees at Port Moresby Teachers College. The sample consisted of three Intakes of students, differing widely in exposure to Western education and experience of the teaching role. Teaching in College was almost entirely the responsibility of Australian academics. Analysis of the results showed a strong similarity between Intakes on pre-test factor patterns. The major factor in each case was clearly identifiable as Osgood's evaluative factor. Two other factors gave evidence of splintering of the evaluative dimension. The basic three factor pattern of Osgood was not established. Ten evaluative scales were identified and used in calculation of pre and posttest attitude scores on the sixty concepts rated. Tests of significance of differences between means and variances were carried out by Intakes and, in the case of one Intake which was made up of males and females, by sex. Results were described and tentative explanations offered taking account of Intake differences, cultural setting and the possible effect of teacher/student cross-cultural differences.     

CROSS-CULTURAL COMPARISONS ON PSYCHOSEMANTICS OF ICONS AND GRAPHICS

This study is to report a cross-cultural comparison on perceptions of icons and graphics and their relationships. Data were ratings of 10 icons and 10 graphics against 21 bipolar semantic differential scales from 325 college students in three countries, Mexico, Columbia, and Japan. Cross-cultural factor analyses resulted in the identification of four semantic (three affective and one denotative) features, three icon factors, and three graphic factors. Indigenous cultural means of these iconic and graphic factors were computed and used to probe cross-cultural similarities and differences in perceptions. Psychosemantics of icon factors were further predicted by graphic factors through canonical correlation. This study concludes the importance of implicit cultural meanings of nonverbal figures in intercultural communications. The implications of this study are also discussed.