Early activation of object names in visual search

In a visual search experiment, participants had to decide whether or not a target object was present in a fourobject search array. One of these objects could be a semantically related competitor (e.g.,shirt for the targettrousers) or a conceptually unrelated object with the same name as the target—for example,bat (baseball) for the targetbat (animal). In the control condition, the related competitor was replaced by an unrelated object. The participants’ response latencies and eye movements demonstrated that the two types of related competitors had similar effects: Competitors attracted the participants’ visual attention and thereby delayed positive and negative decisions. The results imply that semantic and name information associated with the objects becomes rapidly available and affects the allocation of visual attention.     

Distracted by relatives: Effects of frontal lobe damage on semantic distraction

When young adults carry out visual search, distractors that are semantically related, rather than unrelated, to targets can disrupt target selection (see 2 and 22). This effect is apparent on the first eye movements in search, suggesting that attention is sometimes captured by related distractors. Here we assessed effects of semantically related distractors on search in patients with frontal-lobe lesions and compared them to the effects in age-matched controls. Compared with the controls, the patients were less likely to make a first saccade to the target and they were more likely to saccade to distractors (whether related or unrelated to the target). This suggests a deficit in a first stage of selecting a potential target for attention. In addition, the patients made more errors by responding to semantically related distractors on target-absent trials. This indicates a problem at a second stage of target verification, after items have been attended. The data suggest that frontal lobe damage disrupts both the ability to use peripheral information to guide attention, and the ability to keep separate the target of search from the related items, on occasions when related items achieve selection.     

Is it a letter? Is it a number? Processing of numbers within SMS shortcuts

For efficiency reasons, words in electronic messages are sometimes formed by combining letters with numbers, as in gr8 for “great.” The aim of this study was to investigate whether a digit incorporated into a letter-digit shortcut would retain its numerosity. A priming paradigm was used with letter-digit shortcuts (e.g., gr8) and matched pseudoshortcuts (e.g., qr8) as primes. The primes were presented simultaneously with sets of dots (targets) for which even/odd decisions were required, or they appeared 250 msec before target onset. When pseudoshortcuts were presented, decision latencies were shorter when the target and the digit in the prime were matched in parity than when they were mismatched. This main effect of match was not significant for shortcuts. The results suggest that the number concepts of digits combined with letters become activated but are quickly suppressed or deactivated when the digit is part of an existing shortcut.     

Pupillometry reveals increased pupil size during indirect request comprehension

Fluctuations in pupil size have been shown to reflect variations in processing demands during lexical and syntactic processing in language comprehension. An issue that has not received attention is whether pupil size also varies due to pragmatic manipulations. In two pupillometry experiments, we investigated whether pupil diameter was sensitive to increased processing demands as a result of comprehending an indirect request versus a direct statement. Adult participants were presented with 120 picture–sentence combinations that could be interpreted either as an indirect request (a picture of a window with the sentence “it's very hot here”) or as a statement (a picture of a window with the sentence “it's very nice here”). Based on the hypothesis that understanding indirect utterances requires additional inferences to be made on the part of the listener, we predicted a larger pupil diameter for indirect requests than statements. The results of both experiments are consistent with this expectation. We suggest that the increase in pupil size reflects additional processing demands for the comprehension of indirect requests as compared to statements. This research demonstrates the usefulness of pupillometry as a tool for experimental research in pragmatics.     

The Incan Quipus

Quipus, knotted structures of woollen or cotton cords, were used as a bureaucratic tool in the Inca state. In the absense of a writing system, numerals and possibly other pieces of information were encoded on the quipus by tying knots into elaborately structured coloured cords. Though interpretation of the quipu contents is far from complete, some information on Inca mathematics can be deducted from the analysis of ancient specimen, especially when combined with the results of anthropological and linguistic research in contemporary Andean societies. In this paper, the quipus are introduced, their structure is explained, and some results on mathematical concepts of the Incas are presented based on a comparison of mathematical and anthropological literature on the subject.     

Phonological priming effects on speech onset latencies and viewing times in object naming

An earlier experiment (Meyer, Sleiderink, & Levelt, 1998) had shown that speakers naming object pairs usually inspected the objects in the required order of mention (left object first) and that the viewing time for the left object depended on the word frequency of its name. In the present experiment, object pairs were presented simultaneously with auditory distractor words that could be phonologically related or unrelated to the name of the object to be named first. The speech onset latencies and the viewing times for that object were shorter after related distractors than after unrelated distractors. Since this phonological priming effect, like the word frequency effect, most likely arises during wordform retrieval, we conclude that the shift of gaze from the first to the second object is initiated after the word form of the first object’s name has been accessed.     

Der Einfluß der Darbietungsmodalität auf das kurzfristige Behalten

Zusammenfassung Ausgehend von der Zweikomponententheorie des menschlichen Gedächtnisses wird die bessere Behaltensleistung bei akustischer gegenüber optischer Darbietung diskutiert. Drei Erklärungsvorschläge dieses Modalitäts-effektes werden einander gegenübergestellt. Ein Experiment mit unimodaler und bimodaler Darbietungsweise bei freier Reproduktion unterstützt die Annahme zweier getrennter Speicher. Die Ergebnisse werden mit Markov-Modellen beschrieben. Abschließend wird vorgeschlagen, die Gedächtnistheorie flexibler zu gestalten.

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Effect of the mode of presentation on short-term memory

Summary The two-component theory of human memory is taken as the basis for a discussion on the effect of mode of presentation on recall probability. Three different explanations for this modality effect are compared. An experiment using auditory and visual and bimodal presentations with single-trial free recall supports the two-store hypothesis. The results are described with the aid of Markov models. It is suggested that the theory of human memory should be modified to allow for greater flexibility.

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Die Untersuchung wurde durch eine Sachmittelbeihilfe der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft an A.F. unterstützt. Wir danken Frau C. Klein und Herrn W. D. Müller für ihre Hilfe bei der Durchführung der Experimente.     

Measuring cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression in children: A parent-rating version of the emotion regulation questionnaire

The frequency of using cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression strategies to regulate emotions has been associated with social-emotional adjustment. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the Parent-Rating Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (P-ERQ), a parent-rating version of the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ) in children aged five to six years. Children from Germany (N = 112) and the U.S. (N = 59) participated. Confirmatory factor analyses of P-ERQ data from Germany indicated a two-factor structure that closely reflected the factor structure of the adult ERQ with adequate scale reliabilities. Correlations with a measure of coping strategies supported the convergent validity of the P-ERQ. Cross-country measurement invariance analyses between samples from Germany and the U.S. suggested partial scalar invariance for the cognitive reappraisal subscale and metric invariance for the expressive suppression subscale. Findings provide preliminary evidence that the P-ERQ can be recommended for use in developmental research.     

Investigating the influence of continuous babble on auditory short-term memory performance

A number of factors could explain the adverse effect that babble noise has on memory for spoken words (Murphy, Craik, Li, & Schneider, 2000). Babble could degrade the perceptual representation of words to such an extent that it compromises their subsequent processing, or the presence of speech noise in the period between word presentations could interfere with rehearsal. Thirdly, the top-down processes needed to extract the words from the babble could draw on resources that otherwise would be used for encoding. We tested all these hypotheses by presenting babble either only during word presentation or rehearsal, or by gating the babble on and off 500 ms before and after each word pair. Only the last condition led to a decline in memory. We propose that this decline in memory occurred because participants were focusing their attention on the auditory stream (to enable them to better segregate the words from the noise background) rather than on remembering the words they had heard. To further support our claim we show that a similar memory deficit results when participants perform the same memory task in quiet together with a nonauditory attention-demanding secondary task.