The modality-specific and -nonspecific components of long-term priming are frequency sensitive

Five experiments were carried out to test the claim that the modality-specific and modality-nonspecific components of long-term priming are differentially sensitive to word frequency, with the specific component being less affected. In contrast with this claim, specific and nonspecific priming were similarly reduced for high-frequency words in three lexical decision and two perceptual identification experiments. These findings highlight the important role of frequency in modulating priming as well as provide a basic constraint for future theories of priming. In addition, the roles of task and student population in modulating priming are examined.     

Orthography plays a critical role in cognate priming: Evidence from French/English and Arabic/French cognates

A series of three experiments was carried out in order to better characterize the representations that support long-term cognate priming. In Experiment 1, robust priming was obtained between orthographically similar French/English cognates in bilingual speakers, and this priming was mediated, in part, by orthographic codes, given that priming for these items was dramatically reduced following a study-test modality shift. In Experiment 2, no priming was obtained between the same set of French/English cognates in monolingual English speakers. Finally, in Experiment 3, priming for orthographically unrelated Arabic/French cognates was no larger than cross-modal priming, suggesting that these effects were mediated by nonorthographic representations. The role of orthography in supporting cognate priming is discussed.     

Effects of working memory load on long-term word priming

Three experiments assessed the role of verbal and visuo-spatial working memory in supporting long-term repetition priming for written words. In Experiment 1, two priming tasks (word stem completion and category-exemplar production) were included with three levels of load on working memory: (1) without memory load, (2) memory load that involved storing a string of six digits, and (3) memory load that involved storing a graphic shape. Experiments 2 and 3 compared the effects of a verbal (Experiment 2) or a visual (Experiment 3) working memory load at encoding on both an implicit (word stem completion) and an explicit test (cued recall). The results show no effect of memory load in any of the implicit memory tests, suggesting that priming does not rely on working memory resources. By contrast, loading working memory at encoding causes a significant disruptive effect on the explicit memory test for words when the load is verbal but not visual.     

It is not how much you have but how you use it: toward a rational use of simulation to support aviation training

One of the most remarkable changes in aviation training over the past few decades is the use of simulation. The capabilities now offered by simulation have created unlimited opportunities for aviation training. In fact, aviation training is now more realistic, safe, cost-effective, and flexible than ever before. However, we believe that a number of misconceptions--or invalid assumptions--exist in the simulation community that prevent us from fully exploiting and utilizing recent scientific advances in a number of related fields in order to further enhance aviation training. These assumptions relate to the overreliance on high-fidelity simulation and to the misuse of simulation to enhance learning of complex skills. The purpose of this article is to discuss these assumptions in the hope of initiating a dialogue between behavioral scientists and engineers.     

On the surface structure of infinitive-complement sentences

Linguists' inability to reach consensus about the surface structure of infinitive-complement sentences with verbs likebelieve is a consequence of unresolved foundational disputes about the nature of generative grammar. Naive native speakers' linguistic intuitions about sentences of this type, as assessed by elicitation of judgments about surface structure, also fail to provide a solution to this problem. Insofar as we have no way of deciding on the surface structure ofbelieve-type infinitive-complement sentences, click-displacement results with these materials cannot be used to support either a surface-structure account or a deep-structure account of the parsing of sentences in the process of comprehension.This research was supported in part by Grant MH 08520-12 from the National Institute of Mental Health.The order of appearance of the names of the first and second authors was determined by a flip of a coin.     

Ear asymmetries on a selective attentional task

To ascertain whether there are ear-hemisphere asymmetries of selective attention, signal stimuli (tonal sequences) were presented monaurally with and without complex maskers (music and speech). The right ear-left hemisphere was more disrupted by language maskers; the left ear-right hemisphere was more disrupted by music maskers. These results suggest that there are hemispheric asymmetries of selective attention and that the ear hemisphere that usually processes a class of stimuli has greater difficulty filtering out those stimuli than does the nonspecialized hemisphere.     

More qualia trouble for functionalism: The Smythies TV-hood analogy

It is the purpose of this article to explicate the logical implications of a television analogy for perception, first suggested by John R. Smythies (1956). It aims to show not only that one cannot escape the postulation of qualia that have an evolutionary purpose not accounted for within a strong functionalist theory, but also that it undermines other anti-representationalist arguments as well as some representationalist ones.I should like to thank John R. Smythies for his helpful comments and advice. This article was written at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in the Social Sciences, in Uppsala, Sweden.     

Contrasting five different theories of letter position coding: evidence from orthographic similarity effects

Five theories of how letter position is coded are contrasted: position-specific slot-coding, Wickelcoding, open-bigram coding (discrete and continuous), and spatial coding. These theories make different predictions regarding the relative similarity of three different types of pairs of letter strings: substitution neighbors, neighbors-once-removed, and double-substitution neighbors. In Experiment 1, we used an illusory word paradigm and found that neighbor-once-removed similarity contexts resulted in fewer illusory word reports than substitution neighbors but more illusory words than double-substitution neighbors. In Experiments 2 and 3, we used a masked form priming technique with a lexical-decision task. The pattern of facilitation was as predicted by spatial coding but was incompatible with slot-coding, Wickelcoding, and both versions of open-bigram coding. These results provide further support for the SOLAR (self-organizing lexical aquisition and recognition) model of visual word identification.     

Challenging the widespread assumption that connectionism and distributed representations go hand-in-hand

One of the central claims associated with the parallel distributed processing approach popularized by D.E. Rumelhart, J.L. McClelland and the PDP Research Group is that knowledge is coded in a distributed fashion. Localist representations within this perspective are widely rejected. It is important to note, however, that connectionist networks can learn localist representations and many connectionist models depend on localist coding for their functioning. Accordingly, a commitment to distributed representations should be considered a specific theoretical claim regarding the structure of knowledge rather than a core principle, as often assumed. In this paper, it is argued that there are fundamental computational and empirical challenges that have not yet been addressed by distributed connectionist theories that are readily accommodated within localist approaches. This is highlighted in the context of modeling word and nonword naming, the domain in which some of the strongest claims have been made. It is shown that current PDP models provide a poor account of naming monosyllable items, and that distributed representations make it difficult for these models to scale up to more complex language phenomena. At the same time, models that learn localist representations are shown to hold promise in supporting many of the core reading and language functions on which PDP models fail. It is concluded that the common rejection of localist coding schemes within connectionist architectures is premature.