Semantic and translation priming from a first language to a second and back: Making sense of the findings

The present study investigated cross-language priming effects with unique noncognate translation pairs. Unbalanced Dutch (first language [L1])-English (second language [L2]) bilinguals performed a lexical decision task in a masked priming paradigm. The results of two experiments showed significant translation priming from L1 to L2 (meisje-GIRL) and from L2 to L1 (girl-MEISJE), using two different stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) (250 and 100 msec). Although translation priming from L1 to L2 was significantly stronger than priming from L2 to L1, the latter was significant as well. Two further experiments with the same word targets showed significant cross-language semantic priming in both directions ( jongen [boy]-GIRL; boy-MEISJE [GIRL]) and for both SOAs. These data suggest that L1 and L2 are represented by means of a similar lexico-semantic architecture in which L2 words are also able to rapidly activate semantic information, although to a lesser extent than L1 words are able to. This is consistent with models assuming quantitative rather than qualitative differences between L1 and L2 representations.     

Aggressive personality traits in the effects of violent imagery on unprovoked impulsive aggression

In a three-factor design varying the aggressive-behavior subtraits of physical aggression (low, high) and hostility (low, high) with exposure to film content (innocuous, violent imagery), respondents were exposed to film segments and thereafter engaged in a teaching task that involved the administration of noxious feedback for unproductive efforts by the learner. A display informed respondents of the intensity of delivered feedback. Instructions were to provide feedback as often as required and of intensities deemed appropriate. However, respondents were also told to refrain from using extremely high intensities, as these intensities would be hurtful to the learner. None of the three independent variables exerted appreciable influence on the frequency of use of recommended feedback. In contrast, the frequency of the use of the disallowed, hurtful feedback was markedly affected. Independent of exposure to film content, men scoring high on hostility used impulsive aggressive responses more frequently than men scoring low on that subtrait. Within the subtrait of physical aggression, however, the degree of trait manifestation proved inconsequential for impulsive aggression, but exposure to the violent film segment resulted in more frequent use of impulsive aggressive responses than exposure to the innocuous film segment.     

Irrelevance of mitigating circumstances in retaliatory behavior at high levels of excitation

Subjects were aggressively instigated by a provoker. They then performed either a nonstrenuous or a strenuous task in order to be placed in either a moderate or an extreme state of sympathetic arousal. Following the task, they either learned or did not learn about mitigating circumstances behind the provoker's behavior. This information was received prior to the provision of an opportunity to retaliate. Under conditions of moderate arousal, mitigating circumstances were found to reduce retaliation. In contrast, these circumstances failed to exert any appreciable effect on retaliation under conditions of extreme arousal. In addition, the induction of extreme arousal was observed to increase retaliatory behavior. The findings were considered to support a model of hostility and aggression that postulates a specific interdependency of cognitive and excitatory processes.     

Provoked and unprovoked aggressiveness in athletes

In a factorial design, athletic involvement (no varsity sport, varsity noncontact sport, varsity contact sport) was varied with induced disposition (unprovoked, provoked). Under conditions of no provocation, no significant differences in aggressiveness were observed between nonathletes and athletes, nor between noncontact- and contact-sport athletes. In contrast, under conditions of provocation, nonathletes displayed more aggressiveness than athletes. Non-contact-sport athletes behaved significantly less aggressively than both nonathletes and contact-sport athletes. Contact-sport athletes failed to behave significantly less aggressively than nonathletes, however. The findings were explained as the result of an acquired superior ability in athletes to cope with provocation under competitive circumstances, which is partially counteracted in contact-sport athletes by their aggressiveness habits and disinhibition training.     

Agrammatic production of subject-verb agreement: the effect of conceptual number.

Three experiments tested the hypothesis that the deficit underlying agrammatic sentence production difficulties can be characterized as a limitation of computational resources and that these resources are not restricted to syntactic processing. This hypothesis was tested by eliciting subject-verb agreement errors in a sentence fragment completion paradigm. Sentence fragments were complex noun phrases, containing a subject (head) noun and a modifying prepositional phrase, containing a "local" noun. We varied the number of "tokens" a singular head noun referred to. Therefore, in one condition, grammatical and conceptual number of the head noun mismatched, whereas these numbers were the same in another condition. In Experiments 1 and 2, we observed an effect of this variable (i.e., more agreement errors when conceptual number was plural and grammatical number singular) in normal controls. Broca's aphasics, on the other hand, showed no effect. Experiment 3 consisted of a sentence/picture matching test. This test showed that the lack of effect with Broca's aphasics cannot be attributed to a comprehension deficit. We argue that these results are incompatible with the notion of a limitation in resources specific for syntactic processing. Instead, we interpret this as the result of a trade-off: Broca's aphasics lack computational resources to take into account both grammatical and conceptual information in morphosyntactic processing and rely on grammatical information only.     

Excitation and hedonic valence in the effect of erotica on motivated Intermale aggression

The excitatory potential (low, high), the hedonic valence (negative, positive), and the type of content (erotic, non-erotic) of visual stimuli were varied in a factorial design. Male subjects were provoked by a same-sex peer, exposed to communication or, in a no-exposure control, made to wait for a period of time equal to that of communication exposure, and then provided with an opportunity to retaliate against their annoyer. High excitatory potential and negative hedonic valence were found to combine additively in a facilitative effect on retaliatory aggression. No appreciable differences were found in the effect of excitationally and hedonically matched erotica and non-erotica. Exposure to either arousing and displeasing erotica or non-erotica produced levels of aggression significantly above the level associated with the no-exposure control. Exposure to comparatively non-arousing and pleasing erotica or non-erotica failed to reduce aggression, however. The findings were considered to support a model that projects the effect of erotica on retaliatory aggression as a joint function of their excitatory potential and their hedonic valence.     

New visuospatial associations by training verbospatial mappings in the first language

We investigated whether verbospatial and visuospatial information share a common representation. We demonstrate that when the associations from spatial words to spatial responses are altered, so that the word left becomes associated with a right response and the word right with a left response, the associations from the spatial locations left and right to the spatial responses also change. This effect was only observed for first-language spatial words (Dutch) and not for second-language spatial words (French), and it did not increase when these languages were combined. The findings argue for shared spatial representations for different types of spatial input.     

Visual word recognition by bilinguals in a sentence context: evidence for nonselective lexical access

Recent research on bilingualism has shown that lexical access in visual word recognition by bilinguals is not selective with respect to language. In the present study, the authors investigated language-independent lexical access in bilinguals reading sentences, which constitutes a strong unilingual linguistic context. In the first experiment, Dutch-English bilinguals performing a 2nd language (L2) lexical decision task were faster to recognize identical and nonidentical cognate words (e.g., banaan-banana) presented in isolation than control words. A second experiment replicated this effect when the same set of cognates was presented as the final words of low-constraint sentences. In a third experiment that used eyetracking, the authors showed that early target reading time measures also yield cognate facilitation but only for identical cognates. These results suggest that a sentence context may influence, but does not nullify, cross-lingual lexical interactions during early visual word recognition by bilinguals.     

The use-conditional indexical conception of proper names

In this essay I will defend a novel version of the indexical view on proper names. According to this version, proper names have a relatively sparse truth-conditional meaning that is represented by their rigid content and indexical character, but a relatively rich use-conditional meaning, which I call the (contextual) constraint of a proper name. Firstly, I will provide a brief outline of my favoured indexical view on names in contrast to other indexical views proposed in the relevant literature. Secondly, two general motivations for an indexical view on names will be introduced and defended. Thirdly, I will criticize the two most popular versions of the indexical view on names: formal variable accounts and salience-based formal constant accounts. In the fourth and final section, I will develop my own use-conditional indexical view on names in three different steps by confronting an initial version of this view with three different challenges.     

The frequency effect in second-language visual word recognition

A lexical decision experiment with Dutch-English bilinguals compared the effect of word frequency on visual word recognition in the first language with that in the second language. Bilinguals showed a considerably larger frequency effect in their second language, even though corpus frequency was matched across languages. Experiment 2 tested monolingual, native speakers of English on the English materials from Experiment 1. This yielded a frequency effect comparable to that of the bilinguals in Dutch (their L1). These results constrain the way in which existing models of word recognition can be extended to unbalanced bilingualism. In particular, the results are compatible with a theory by which the frequency effect originates from implicit learning. They are also compatible with models that attribute frequency effects to serial search in frequency-ordered bins (Murray & Forster, 2004), if these models are extended with the assumption that scanning speed is language dependent, or that bins are not language specific.