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.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

Effect of motivation on academic fluency performance in survivors of pediatric medulloblastoma

It has been proposed previously that extrinsic motivation may enable survivors of childhood medulloblastoma to significantly improve aspects of neurocognitive performance. In healthy populations, enhanced motivation has been shown to promote academic fluency, a domain likely more relevant to the educational outcomes of pediatric medulloblastoma survivors than academic skill development. The present study investigates the effect of enhanced extrinsic motivation on fluent (i.e., accurate and efficient) academic performance in pediatric medulloblastoma survivors. Participants were 36 children, ages 7–18, who had completed treatment for medulloblastoma. Participants completed a neuropsychological battery that included administration of equivalent tasks on Forms A and B of the Woodcock-Johnson III Tests of Achievement. Half were randomly assigned to an incentive condition prior to the administration of Form B. Provision of a performance-based incentive resulted in statistically significant improvement, but not normalization of function, in performance on measures of academic fluency. No demographic, treatment-related, academic, neuropsychological, or self-perception variables predicted response to incentive. Findings suggest that academic performance of survivors may significantly improve under highly motivating conditions. In addition to implications for educational services, this finding raises the novel possibility that decreased motivation represents an inherent neuropsychological deficit in this population and provides a rationale for further investigation of factors affecting individual differences in motivational processes. Further, by examining effort in a context where effort is not inherently suspect, present findings also significantly contribute to the debate regarding the effects of effort and motivation on neuropsychological performance.     

Emotional state affects gait initiation in individuals with Parkinson’s disease

The purpose of the present study was to determine the impact of manipulating emotional state on gait initiation in persons with Parkinson’s disease (PD) and healthy older adults. Following the presentation of pictures that are known to elicit specific emotional responses, participants initiated gait and continued to walk for several steps at their normal pace. Reaction time, the displacement and velocity of the center of pressure (COP) trajectory during the preparatory postural adjustments, and length and velocity of the first two steps were measured. Analysis of the gait initiation measures revealed that exposure to (1) threatening pictures, relative to all other pictures, speeded the initiation of gait for PD patients and healthy older adults; (2) approach-oriented emotional pictures (erotic and happy people), relative to withdrawal-oriented pictures, facilitated the anticipatory postural adjustments of gait initiation for PD patients and healthy older adults, as evidenced by greater displacement and velocity of the COP movement; and (3) emotional pictures modulated gait initiation parameters in PD patients to the same degree as in healthy older adults. Collectively, these findings hold significant implications for understanding the circuitry underlying the manner by which emotions modulate movement and for the development of emotion-based interventions designed to maximize improvements in gait initiation for individuals with PD.