All Dressed Up With Something to Say: Effects of Typeface Semantic Associations on Brand Perceptions and Consumer Memory

In this research, a conceptual framework is developed that addresses the impact of typeface semantic cues within a marketing context. Visual properties of typefaces are conceptualized as communicating unique semantic associations to individuals distinct from the content of the written words they clothe. Typeface associations are investigated across varying levels of involvement in terms of their effect upon brand perceptions. These associations also influenced the memorability of advertised benefit claims. Memorability was enhanced as the degree of consistency among typeface semantic cues, advertisement visual cues, and advertisement copy claims increased. Extensions of this framework focus on obtaining a more complete understanding concerning the semantic pathways through which typefaces convey meaning.     

Typeface emphasis and information focus in written language

This paper looks at the typographical resource of written emphasis (changing the typeface style on specific words or passages within text)–for signalling information focus. Some investigations into the effects of two conventional typefaces, upper case and italic, for signalling modulatory and contrastive stress upon word content are reported, illustrating the effectiveness of strategies using this resource for economically transmitting intended content from writer to reader. At this time of heightened interest in writing competence, and the potential of electronic writing systems for providing more typographical resources to the author than were available with pen-and-paper or typewriting modes, the function of paralinguistic signalling within written language is suggested as a key issue for research.     

Reading between the lines: Event-related brain potentials during natural sentence processing

Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded from subjects as they silently read 160 different seven-word sentences, presented one word at a time. Each sentence was in itself a natural, meaningful phrase. Substantial intersubject variability was observed in the ERP waveshapes following the words. More than half of the subjects generated P3 components to word stimuli, but those who did showed similar responses to repeated control presentations of a single word. In addition, it was found that all but the first word in the sentence elicited an ERP with a significant left-greater-than-right asymmetry in the late positivity over temporo-parietal regions. The ERPs to the last words were associated with more late positivity than those to the preceding words. One quarter of the sentences, at random, ended with a word printed in a typeface that was different from that of the preceding words. This infrequent change in typeface elicited a complex ERP having three consistent late positive components.     

Abstraction and perceptual individuation in primed word identification are modulated by distortion and repetition: a dissociation

One experiment investigated the effects of distortion and multiple prime repetition (super-repetition) on repetition priming using divided-visual-field word identification at test and mixed-case words (e.g., goAT). The experiment measured form-specificity (the effect of matching lettercase at study and test) for two non-conceptual study tasks. For an ideal typeface, super-repetition increased form-independent priming leaving form-specificity constant. The opposite pattern was found for a distorted typeface; super-repetition increased form-specificity, leaving form-independent priming constant. These priming effects did not depend on the study task or test hemifield for either typeface. An additional finding was that only the ideal typeface showed the usual advantage of right hemifield presentation. These results demonstrate that super-repetition produced abstraction for the ideal typeface and perceptual individuation for the distorted typeface; abstraction and perceptual individuation dissociated. We suggest that there is a fundamental duality between perceptual individuation and abstraction consistent with Tulving's (1984) distinction between episodic and semantic memory. This could reflect a duality of system or process.     

The power of the written word: Comparing word meaning inferencing from auditory and written modalities throughout grade school

Previous research indicates that word learning from auditory contexts may be more effective than written context at least through fourth grade. However, no study has examined contextual differences in word learning in older school-aged children when reading abilities are more developed. Here we examined developmental differences in children’s ability to deduce the meanings of unknown words from the surrounding linguistic context in the auditory and written modalities and sought to identify the most important predictors of success in each modality. A total of 89 children aged 8–15 years were randomly assigned to either read or listen to a narrative that included eight novel words, with five exposures to each novel word. They then completed three posttests to assess word meaning inferencing. Children across all ages performed better in the written modality. Vocabulary was the only significant predictor of success on the word inferencing task. Results indicate support for written stimuli as the most effective modality for novel word meaning deduction. Our findings suggest that the presence of orthographic information facilitates novel word learning even for early, less proficient readers.     

Brain activations associated with sign production using word and picture inputs in deaf signers

Effective literacy education in deaf students calls for psycholinguistic research revealing the cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying their written language processing. When learning a written language, deaf students are often instructed to sign out printed text. The present fMRI study was intended to reveal the neural substrates associated with word signing by comparing it with picture signing. Native deaf signers were asked to overtly sign in Chinese Sign Language (CSL) common objects indicated with written words or presented as pictures. Except in left inferior frontal gyrus and inferior parietal lobule where word signing elicited greater activation than picture signing, the two tasks engaged a highly overlapping set of brain regions previously implicated in sign production. The results suggest that word signing in the deaf signers relies on meaning activation from printed visual forms, followed by similar production processes from meaning to signs as in picture signing. The present study also documents the basic brain activation pattern for sign production in CSL and supports the notion of a universal core neural network for sign production across different sign languages.     

Interference in a typeface variant of the Stroop test

Ss were asked to name the typeface in which a printed item appeared in a discrete trial variant of the Stroop color-word test. Two kinds of items were used: (a) typeface names appearing in antagonistic typefaces, e.g., the word SCRIPT printed in bold type; and (b) nonsense strings constructed by jumbling; the letters in a typeface name, e.g., PSRTCI printed in bold type. Typeface-naming latencies were found to be significantly longer for items of the first kind. Examination of the distributions of individual trial latencies for the two kinds of items indicated that modification of Morton’s (1969) account of the Stroop test is required.     

LEADERS IN READING RESEARCH AND INSTRUCTION

Recent research on negation has demonstrated that while readers are aware that this text construction is difficult, they seem to be able to do little to improve their comprehension. The present research evaluated whether a change in typeface could improve comprehension and metacomprehension of negation. Results indicated that while readers were aware that placing a word in bold typeface should attract their attention to that item, and therefore improve their comprehension, comprehension did not improve differentially for negation presented in bold. Additionally, readers' awareness of the necessity of attention to the bold component was not specific to negative sentences.     

Estimating valence from the sound of a word: Computational,experimental, and cross-linguistic evidence

It is assumed linguistic symbols must be grounded in perceptual information to attain meaning, because the sound of a word in a language has an arbitrary relation with its referent. This paper demonstrates that a strong arbitrariness claim should be reconsidered. In a computational study, we showed that one phonological feature (nasals in the beginning of a word) predicted negative valence in three European languages (English, Dutch, and German) and positive valence in Chinese. In three experiments, we tested whether participants used this feature in estimating the valence of a word. In Experiment 1, Chinese and Dutch participants rated the valence of written valence-neutral words, with Chinese participants rating the nasal-first neutral-valence words more positive and the Dutch participants rating nasal-first neutral-valence words more negative. In Experiment 2, Chinese (and Dutch) participants rated the valence of Dutch (and Chinese) written valence-neutral words without being able to understand the meaning of these words. The patterns replicated the valence patterns from Experiment 1. When the written words from Experiment 2 were transformed into spoken words, results in Experiment 3 again showed that participants estimated the valence of words on the basis of the sound of the word. The computational study and psycholinguistic experiments indicated that language users can bootstrap meaning from the sound of a word.     

Can one written word mean many things? Prereaders' assumptions about the stability of written words' meanings

Results of three experiments confirmed previous findings that in a moving word task, prereaders 3 to 5 years of age judge as if the meaning of a written word changes when it moves from a matching to a nonmatching toy (e.g., when the word "dog" moves from a dog to a boat). We explore under what circumstances children make such errors, we identify new conditions under which children were more likely correctly to treat written words' meanings as stable: when the word was placed alongside a nonmatching toy without having been alongside a matching toy previously, when two words were moved from a matching toy to a nonmatching toy, and when children were asked to change what the print said. Under these conditions, children more frequently assumed that physical forms had stable meanings as they do with other forms of external representation.     

The Roles of Semantic and Phonological Information in Word Production: Evidence from Spanish–English Bilinguals

The research investigated the roles of semantic and phonological processing in word production. Spanish–English bilingual individuals produced English target words when cued with definitions that were also written in English. When the correct word was not produced, a secondary task was performed in which participants rated the ease of pronunciation of a Spanish prime word. We varied the relatedness between target and prime words. In related conditions, the target and prime words were cognates (i.e., similar in meaning and sound), false cognates (i.e., similar in sound, but different in meaning), or noncognates (i.e., similar in meaning, but different in sound). In unrelated conditions, target and primes were dissimilar in sound and meaning. The results showed that participants’ performance was influenced by semantic as well as phonological information. These results provided evidence that semantic as well as phonological information can influence word production, as is predicted by memory models in which representations for semantic and phonological levels of representation are interconnected.     

The Effect of Non-sentential Context Prosody on Homographs’ Lexical Activation in Persian

This study examines the effect of non-sentential context prosody pattern on lexical activation in Persian. For this purpose a questionnaire including target and non-target words is used. The target words are homographs with two possible stress patterns belonging to different syntactic categories. Participants are asked to read out the words aloud and note the first word that comes to their mind. The results show that by reading the target words, both meanings of the target words are activated in mind and the prosodic pattern of the non-sentential preceding context does not affect the activation of the other stress pattern meaning. This result suggests that the metrical prosodic pattern of non-sentential context is not a strong constraint to determine which meaning of the target word must be activated. The experiment also illustrates that the stress pattern used to read the target words does not necessarily matches the stress pattern of the target word which relates to the written word. These findings confirm Swinney (Verb Learn Verb Behav 18:645–665, 1979) and Elston-Güttler and Friederici’s (J Mem Lang 52(2):256–283, 2005) finding that both meanings of an ambiguous word are accessed at the first stage. This study shows that in lack of semantic context, Persian natives behave homographs as ambiguous words and there is no bias towards preferring one meaning over another.     

Children construct novel word meaning ad-hoc based on known words: Computational model of shape and material biases

Taking the stance that two well-known word learning biases (shape and material bias) are formed through learning (learned bias account, LBA), we illustrated a concrete computational mechanism with “ad-hoc meaning substitution (AMS)” hypothesis, and verified it by two computer simulations. AMS represents that when given a novel word and a corresponding instance, children create novel word meaning by using the known word meaning and the instance as an ad-hoc template. The AMS function enables fast mapping and vocabulary spurt. To describe the AMS process computationally, we introduced “word distributional prototype (WDP),” which is the explicit representation of word meaning with an inductive learning function. Simulation 1 revealed that when a network with WDP and AMS was given a biased vocabulary reflecting young children, it demonstrated shape, material, and overgeneralized shape biases. This result suggested that a triad of word meaning induction, ad-hoc meaning substitution, and early biased vocabulary is essential for the emergence of biases. Simulation 2 introduced the notion of maturity that denoted a degree of learning convergence for each word meaning, and then the network showed neither shape nor material bias during an early small vocabulary. This result indicated that the period at which each bias emerges is decided by maturity. Though AMS consists of simpler and valider mechanisms than those proposed in previous studies, it could reproduce behavior of shape and material biases and explain their emergence process clearly. These results suggest that phenomena concerning shape and material biases are explicable with a simple ad-hoc learning instead of meta-learning among LBA or innate language-specific ones.     

Definitions as theories of word meaning

Dictionary definitions are often used in education and in computerized databases for processing natural language, but their accuracy as models of word meaning has not been carefully evaluated. An experiment involving fourth graders and adults measured the efficacy of dictionary definitions in marking distinctions in sense and found them to be very poor for children, but fairly helpful for adults. A second experiment compared dictionary definitions to definitions written by college students who had sorted sets of sentence citations, and found both moderately effective in teaching word use. Good definitions were produced less often for high-frequency words than for low-frequency words, given equivalent numbers of citations, suggesting that sentences using high-frequency words are less informative overall. Also, the more citations available to the definition writer, the better the definition was in teaching word use, suggesting that information about word meaning is cumulative and describable.This research was partially supported by grants from the Spencer and Sloan Foundations to George A. Miller.     

Think the thought, walk the walk - social priming reduces the Stroop effect

In the Stroop task, participants name the color of the ink that a color word is written in and ignore the meaning of the word. Naming the color of an incongruent color word (e.g., RED printed in blue) is slower than naming the color of a congruent color word (e.g., RED printed in red). This robust effect is known as the Stroop effect and it suggests that the intentional instruction – “do not read the word” – has limited influence on one’s behavior, as word reading is being executed via an automatic path. Herein is examined the influence of a non-intentional instruction – “do not read the word” – on the Stroop effect. Social concept priming tends to trigger automatic behavior that is in line with the primed concept. Here participants were primed with the social concept “dyslexia” before performing the Stroop task. Because dyslectic people are perceived as having reading difficulties, the Stroop effect was reduced and even failed to reach significance after the dyslectic person priming. A similar effect was replicated in a further experiment, and overall it suggests that the human cognitive system has more success in decreasing the influence of another automatic process via an automatic path rather than via an intentional path.     

Stroop effects on redemption and semantic effects on confession: simultaneous automatic activation of embedded and carrier words

The present study was aimed at assessing whether focusing attention on a task-relevant part of a word prevents processing of its meaning. Participants performed a color-naming task on a prime word followed by lexical decision on a probe. Primes were words, which could contain an embedded color word (e.g., “redemption”) written in an incongruent color. Probes were either semantically related (e.g., “confession”) or unrelated (e.g., “production”) to the prime word. A Stroop effect emerged for color words appearing either in the initial or in the final position of the carrier word. A priming effect also emerged, with faster responses to probes semantically related to the prime. These results are evidence that focusing attention on part of a prime (i.e., the embedded color word) does not prevent the semantic processing of the entire word.     

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.     

Predication

In Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) the meaning of a word is represented as a vector in a high-dimensional semantic space. Different meanings of a word or different senses of a word are not distinguished. Instead, word senses are appropriately modified as the word is used in different contexts. In N-VP sentences, the precise meaning of the verb phrase depends on the noun it is combined with. An algorithm is described to adjust the meaning of a predicate as it is applied to different arguments. In forming a sentence meaning, not all features of a predicate are combined with the features of the argument, but only those that are appropriate to the argument. Hence, a different "sense" of a predicate emerges every time it is used in a different context. This predication algorithm is explored in the context of four different semantic problems: metaphor interpretation, causal inferences, similarity judgments, and homonym disambiguation.