Unconscious semantic activation depends on feature-specific attention allocation

We examined whether semantic activation by subliminally presented stimuli is dependent upon the extent to which participants assign attention to specific semantic stimulus features and stimulus dimensions. Participants pronounced visible target words that were preceded by briefly presented, masked prime words. Both affective and non-affective semantic congruence of the prime-target pairs were manipulated under conditions that either promoted selective attention for affective stimulus information or selective attention for non-affective semantic stimulus information. In line with our predictions, results showed that affective congruence had a clear impact on word pronunciation latencies only if participants were encouraged to assign attention to the affective stimulus dimension. In contrast, non-affective semantic relatedness of the prime-target pairs produced no priming at all. Our findings are consistent with the hypothesis that unconscious activation of (affective) semantic information is modulated by feature-specific attention allocation.     

Neural responses to morphological, syntactic, and semantic properties of single words: an fMRI study

Dissociations in the recognition of specific classes of words have been documented in brain-injured populations. These include deficits in the recognition and production of morphologically complex words as well as impairments specific to particular syntactic classes such as verbs. However, functional imaging evidence for distinctions among the neural systems underlying these dissociations has been inconclusive. We explored the neural systems involved in processing different word classes in a functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging study, contrasting four groups of words co-varying morphological complexity (simple, monomorphemic words vs complex derived or inflected words) and syntactic class (verbs vs nouns/adjectives). Subtraction of word from letter string processing showed activation in left frontal and temporal lobe regions consistent with prior studies of visual word processing. No differences were observed for morphologically complex and simple words, despite adequate power to detect stimulus specific effects. A region of posterior left middle temporal gyrus showed significantly increased activation for verbs. Post hoc analyses showed that this elevated activation could also be related to semantic properties of the stimulus items (verbs have stronger action associations than nouns, and action association is correlated with activation). Results suggest that semantic as well as syntactic factors should be considered when assessing the neural systems involved in single word comprehension.     

义符的类别一致性和家族大小影响形声字的语义加工

采用行为实验和眼动技术考察义符的类别一致性和家族大小对形声字语义加工的影响。结果发现：(1) 在一致性判断和视觉选择中均存在着字词水平的类别一致性效应, 义符同整字类别一致的字容易认知。(2) 义符的家族大小影响形声字的语义加工, 义符家族大, 汉语母语者对形声字的加工更容易采用形旁推理策略。(3) 义符家族的类别一致性影响形声字的语义加工。(4) 义符家族的类别一致性和家族大小效应受义符与整字的类别一致性调节。     

Brain responses related to semantic meaning

Evoked Potentials from electroencephalogram (EEG) recording were averaged to many visually presented word stimuli whose semantic meanings were specified along Osgood's semantic dimensions of Evaluation, Potency, and Activity [Miron &; Osgood, 1966, in R. B. Cattell (Ed.), Handbook of multivariate experimental psychology, Chicago: Rand-McNally; Osgood, 1971, Journal of Social Issues, 27, 5–63; Osgood, May, &; Miron, 1975, Cross-cultural universals of affective meaning, Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press]. Multivariate analyses classified the Evoked Potentials to six semantic classes with success rates more than twice chance expectation. The pattern of brain activity related to the six semantic classes was similar for (i) two sets of words, (ii) 10 subjects used to develop the analyses, and (iii) an added, new subject.     

The structure of semantic meaning: A developmental study

According to the “Semantic Differential” the connotative meaning of words can be quantified in statistically defined dimensions where every word is uniquely located on the dimensions Evaluation (E), Potency (P), and Activity (A). We studied 249 children between 9 and 18 years of age who rated 72 German nouns on 12 bipolar adjective scales. Three age groups were compared: 9–11, 12–14, and 15–18 years. Varimax‐rotated factor analysis yielded the classical EPA dimensions that were independent of age. This indicates that the basic structure and dimensionality of the semantic space is stable. On the other hand, the connotative meaning of individual words changed with age, and it was also affected by gender. In about half of the cases boys differed in their ratings from girls. Our data confirm that the EPA structure is stable, and is not affected by age. Development of connotative meaning or emotion is reflected, however, by systematic changes of the factor scores of individual words over the 10 years span studied.     

The effect of orthographic structure on word recognition in a visual search task

The effect of the orthographic structure of the stimulus field on the visual search performance of third graders (8-8 years), sixth graders (11-7 years) and adults was investigated in three experiments. In Experiment 1, where the predesignated target was one word, subjects of all ages searched equally fast through fields consisting of words, pseudowords, and nonwords. In contrast, subjects of all ages displayed effects of orthographic structure when searching for instances of a semantic category (Experiment 2) or for three words (Experiment 3). Subjects searched faster through nonwords than through pseudowords and faster through pseudowords than through words. The use of orthographic structure to facilitate search did not increase with age, suggesting that children of the youngest age group were already making maximal use of intraword redundancy.     

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.     

Semantic meaning and associative responding

Abstract.— The hypothesis tested was that the search for a response word in a single word, free association situation proceeds in the direction of decreasing semantic similarity between the stimulus and response words. Semantic features were assigned to the 50 first Kent-Rosanoff words and each of the three most frequent response words to each stimulus word, obtained in a single word, free association situation (N =176). An index for the number of semantic features shared by the stimulus and response words was found to decrease with increasing response latency, thus confirming the hypothesis. The findings further supports the assumption that semantic meanings of stimulus and response words are determinants of free. associative responding.     

Developmental changes in incidental memory as a function of processing level,congruity, and repetition

Second-, fifth-, and ninth-grade students (8, 11, and 14 years of age, respectively) answered acoustic and semantic questions about words which were either congruent or incongruent with the questions. Subsequently, students' free recall of the words was unexpectedly tested. For words presented once in the list, only orienting task and congruity main effects were found. For twice-presented words, grade level interacted with both variables in that older students' recall was better than younger students' only for semantically encoded, congruent words. This finding is consistant with the hypothesis that developmental increases in semantic knowledge enhance the potential for encoding elaboration, but is in apparent conflict with the results of M. F. Geis and D. M. Hall (Child Development, 1978, 49, 857–861) who found no such interaction for second- and fifth-grade children. The different age spans included in the two studies provides one resolution of the discrepancy in results. However, a second experiment tested the importance of a procedural difference between the two studies. M. F. Geis and D. M. Hall (Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 1976, 22, 58–66; 1978) presented the question after the stimulus word while we presented the question before the word. For ninth-grade students, the question after condition resulted in an attenuation of the recall difference between semantic and acoustic questions compared to the question before condition. It was argued that the pattern of developmental differences in incidental memory that is obtained may be related to which procedure is utilized.     

Altered patterns of word associations in dementia and aphasia

The word associations of 38 demented, 17 aphasic, and 22 normal subjects were studied. Both normal and brain-injured subjects appear to make judgments about the grammatical class of the word stimulus. Certain stimulus words (especially nouns and adjectives) elicit paradigmatic responses whereas other words (especially verbs and adverbs) elicit syntagmatic responses. The mechanism producing syntagmatic responses seems relatively resistant to deterioration in dementia or aphasia. However, in dementia the mechanism that generates paradigmatic responses becomes progressively less efficient (possibly due to a loss of semantic markers) and consequently more random (idiosyncratic) responses emerge. Perseverative responses, inhibited in normal subjects, are more prevalent in dementia. Anomic aphasics show a pattern of word associations similar to that of subjects with mild dementia. Broca's aphasics, while making fewer paradigmatic associations than normals, retain enough self-monitoring mechanisms so that few idiosyncratic and perseverative responses are made while more null responses occur. Wernicke's aphasics show a marked shift away from a paradigmatic word association strategy, possibly due to an inability to access semantic markers or a true loss of these markers. Metalinguistic deficits (i.e., a failure to adopt an appropriate strategy) may also contribute to this shift away from paradigmatic associations. Furthermore, a disruption of self-monitoring mechanisms in Wernicke's aphasia leads to an increase in perseverative and idiosyncratic responses.     

Grasping the invisible: Semantic processing of abstract words

The problem of how abstract word meanings are represented has been a challenging one. In the present study, we extended the semantic richness approach (e.g., Yap, Tan, Pexman, & Hargreaves in Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 18:742–750, 2011) to abstract words, examining the effects of six semantic richness variables on lexical–semantic processing for 207 abstract nouns. The candidate richness dimensions were context availability (CA), sensory experience rating (SER), valence, arousal, semantic neighborhood (SN), and number of associates (NoA). The behavioral tasks were lexical decision (LDT) and semantic categorization (SCT). Our results showed that the semantic richness variables were significantly related to both LDT and SCT latencies, even after lexical and orthographic factors were controlled. The patterns of richness effects varied across tasks, with CA effects in the LDT, and SER and valence effects in the SCT. These results provide new insight into how abstract meanings may be grounded, and are consistent with a dynamic, multidimensional framework for semantic processing.     

Why does self-reference promote incidental encoding?

Answering a question regarding a stimulus word can cause incidental encoding of the word itself. The thoroughness of the encoding depends in part upon what question is answered. For example, saying whether a word describes oneself causes a particularly high degree of incidental encoding. The study reported here investigated several variables that have been proposed as mediators of that effect. As in previous research, subjects completed an incidental-encoding and recall procedure. They then rated (a) the quality and degree of affect that they would experience if each stimulus word were to be applied to them, (b) the importance to them of the behavioral/psychological dimension implied by the stimulus word, and (c) the degree to which they saw themselves as distinctive on that dimension. As in previous studies, deciding whether a word described the self increased the likelihood of subsequent recall. There also was a highly significant interaction such that words judged to be applicable to self were recalled better than those judged not to be applicable. There was no evidence, however, of a mediational role for any other variable studied. Discussion centers on theoretical implications of the data.     

汉语双字多义词的识别优势效应

采用词汇判断法、命名法考察汉语双字多义词的识别优势效应。结果发现,在词汇判断任务中存在着多义词较单义词的识别优势,但这种识别优势只表现在低频词中。在命名任务中未发现多义词的识别优势。作者根据分布表征模型的观点对双字多义词的识别优势效应做出了可能的解释。     

Effects of stimulus and contextual information on the lexical decision process

Two experiments were conducted to investigate context effects on the lexical decision process. In both experiments, observers classified letter strings as words or nonwords following the presentation of context in the form of an incomplete sentence. In Experiment 1, the predictability of congruous word stimuli and their frequency of occurrence in printed English were varied. These two factors had independent and additive effects on decision latencies. Stimulus quality, word frequency, and semantic congruity (i.e., congruous vs. incongruous) between the context and the stimulus were varied in Experiment 2. The effects of semantic congruity and word frequency on decision latencies combined additively, as did the effects of semantic congruity and stimulus quality. Two complementary mechanisms were proposed within the framework of a modified version of Becker’s verification model to account for the differential effects of single-word and sentence context priming on the lexical decision process.     

The semantics of prosody: acoustic and perceptual evidence of prosodic correlates to word meaning

This investigation examined whether speakers produce reliable prosodic correlates to meaning across semantic domains and whether listeners use these cues to derive word meaning from novel words. Speakers were asked to produce phrases in infant-directed speech in which novel words were used to convey one of two meanings from a set of antonym pairs (e.g., big/small). Acoustic analyses revealed that some acoustic features were correlated with overall valence of the meaning. However, each word meaning also displayed a unique acoustic signature, and semantically related meanings elicited similar acoustic profiles. In two perceptual tests, listeners either attempted to identify the novel words with a matching meaning dimension (picture pair) or with mismatched meaning dimensions. Listeners inferred the meaning of the novel words significantly more often when prosody matched the word meaning choices than when prosody mismatched. These findings suggest that speech contains reliable prosodic markers to word meaning and that listeners use these prosodic cues to differentiate meanings. That prosody is semantic suggests a reconceptualization of traditional distinctions between linguistic and nonlinguistic properties of spoken language.     

Differential encoding as a function of semantic polarity and form of visual stimulus presentation

The present study investigated the saliency of form of visual stimulus presentation (printed word or picture) and of the semantic evaluative dimension (positive or negative) as encoding attributes for fifth-grade children. Three short-term memory trials within one visual form of presentation or one pole of the evaluative dimension were followed by a fourth short-term memory trial on which the stimulus material was shifted on one or both attributes (experimentals) or held constant (controls). The recall of the experimental groups consistently exceeded that of the control groups on the shift trial, providing evidence for a release from proaetive inhibition and implying the saliency of both the form of visual stimulus presentation and the evaluative polarity of the stimulus concepts as encoding dimensions.     

Semantic priming effects on picture and word processing

The effects of semantic priming on picture and word processing were assessed under conditions in which subjects were required simply to identify stimuli (label pictures or read words) as rapidly as possible. Stimuli were presented in pairs (a prime followed by a target), with half of the pairs containing members of the same semantic category and half containing unrelated concepts. Semantic relatedness was found to facilitate the identification of both pictures (Experiment 1) and words (Experiment 2), and obtained interactions of semantic relatedness and stimulus quality in both experiments suggested that semantic priming affects the initial encoding of both types of stimuli. In Experiment 3, subjects received pairs of pictures, pairs of words, and mixed pairs composed of a picture and a word or of a word and a picture. Significant priming effects were obtained on mixed as well as unmixed pairs, supporting the assumption that pictures and words access semantic information from a common semantic store. Of primary interest was the significantly greater priming obtained in picture-picture pairs than in word-word or mixed pairs. This suggests that, in addition to priming that is mediated by the semantic system, priming may occur in picture-picture pairs that results from the overlap in visual features common to the pictorial representations of objects from the same semantic category.     

Criterion bias and search sequence bias in word recognition

Six experiments that were designed to test the adequacy of criterion bias explanations of the word frequency effect and the semantic priming effect are reported. It was found that criterion bias models correctly predicted higher error rates in a lexical decision task for nonwords that were misspelled versions of high-frequency words (e.g., MOHTER), rather than low-frequency words (e.g., BOHTER). Also correct was the prediction of increased error rates for misspelled words preceded by a semantically related word (e.g., NURSE-DOTCOR). However, in a misspelling decision task (in which the subject must decide whether the stimulus is a word, a misspelled word, or a nonword), it can be argued that criterion bias should be inoperative, since correct responses must be delayed until all orthographic information has been checked; this should eliminate both frequency and semantic priming effects. This was found not to be the case; clear frequency and priming effects were obtained for both words and misspelled words.     

Perceptual interference at encoding enhances recall for high- but not low-imageability words

Interfering with stimulus perception during encoding can improve later explicit memory (the perceptual-interference effect). The compensatory-processing hypothesis attributes the perceptualinterference effect to enhanced processing of higher level (nonvisual) information during perception. Recent research indicates that the semantic dimension of imageability is one type of higher level information that plays a role in word perception. To the extent that semantic representations play a more important role in the perception of high- than for low-imageability words, the compensatoryprocessing hypothesis predicts a larger perceptual-interference effect for high- than for lowimageability words. Two experiments confirm this prediction. A robust effect of perceptual interference was found for high- but not for low-imageability words.     

Age-of-acquisition effects in semantic processing tasks

In two experiments, we examined whether word age-of-acquisition (AoA) is a reliable predictor of processing times in semantic tasks. In the first task, participants were asked to say the first associate that came to mind when they saw a stimulus word; the second task involved a semantic categorisation between words with a definable meaning and first names. In both tasks, there were significantly faster responses to earlier-acquired than to later-acquired words. On the basis of these results, we argue that age-of-acquisition effects do not originate solely from the speech output system, but from the semantic system as well.