Visual phonology: The effects of orthographic consistency on different auditory word recognition tasks

In this study, we investigated orthographic influences on spoken word recognition. The degree of spelling inconsistency was manipulated while rime phonology was held constant. Inconsistent words with subdominant spellings were processed more slowly than inconsistent words with dominant spellings. This graded consistency effect was obtained in three experiments. However, the effect was strongest in lexical decision, intermediate in rime detection, and weakest in auditory naming. We conclude that (1) orthographic consistency effects are not artifacts of phonological, phonetic, or phonotactic properties of the stimulus material; (2) orthographic effects can be found even when the error rate is extremely low, which rules out the possibility that they result from strategies used to reduce task difficulty; and (3) orthographic effects are not restricted to lexical decision. However, they are stronger in lexical decision than in other tasks. Overall, the study shows that learning about orthography alters the way we process spoken language.     

A Comparison of Phonological Awareness Skills in Early French Immersion and English Children

This 2-year study examined the effects of early second language exposure on phonological awareness skills. Syllable, onset-rime and phoneme awareness skills of 72 anglophone children attending English or French immersion programs in primary and grade 1 were investigated. Three-way mixed ANOVAS revealed the following effects and interactions. In terms of grade effect, grade 1 students performed significantly better than primary students on phoneme and onset-rime tasks. A stimulus language effect was observed for the three levels of phonological awareness. All children performed better on English tasks than on French ones. Interaction effects of stimulus language by program were revealed for phoneme as well as syllable tasks. Posthoc analyses revealed that French students performed better on English phoneme and syllable tasks than on French, while English students performed better than French immersion students on French syllable tasks. Correlational analyses revealed significant relationships between reading and phoneme and onset-rime phonological awareness tasks regardless of program of instruction (English, French immersion) or language of reading test (English, French). Syllable awareness was only significantly correlated with the French non-word reading task for the French immersion students.     

Visual illusions affect both movement planning and on-line control: a multiple cue position on bias and goal-directed action

Over the last decade, there has been an interest in the impact of visual illusions on the control of action. Much of this work has been motivated by Milner and Goodale's two visual system model of visual processing. This model is based on a hypothesized dissociation between cognitive judgments and the visual control of action. It holds that action is immune to the visual context that provides the basis for the illusion-induced bias associated with cognitive judgments. Recently, Glover has challenged this position and has suggested that movement planning, but not movement execution is susceptible to visual illusions. Research from our lab is inconsistent with both models of visual-motor processing. With respect to the planning and control model, kinematic evidence shows that the impact of an illusion on manual aiming increases as the limb approaches the target. For the Ebbinghaus illusion, this involved a decrease in the time after peak velocity to accommodate the 'perceived' size of the target. For the Müller-Lyer illusion, the influence of the figure's tails increased from peak velocity to the end of the movement. Although our findings contradict a strong version of the two visual systems hypothesis, we did find dissociations between perception and action in another experiment. In this Müller-Lyer study, perceptual decisions were influenced by misjudgment of extent, while action was influenced by misjudgment of target position. Overall, our findings are consistent with the idea that it is often necessary to use visual context to make adjustments to ongoing movements.     

Effects of internal clock and memory disorders on duration reproductions and duration productions in patients with Parkinson's disease

Patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) exhibit deficits in perceptual and motor timing as well as impairments in memory and attentional processes that are related to dysfunction of dopaminergic systems in the basal ganglia. The aim of the present study was to assess the relationships existing between impaired duration judgments and defective memory and attention in PD patients. We compared time performance of medicated PD patients and control subjects on a duration reproduction task that is highly memory-dependent, and on a duration production task that could reveal effects of changes in the speed of internal time-keeping mechanisms. Each task was performed in a control counting condition and in a condition requiring divided attention between the temporal task and a concurrent reading task. Moreover, PD patients and control subjects were assessed on memory and attention using a battery of neuropsychological tests. The results revealed that in the concurrent reading condition of the reproduction task, duration judgments tended to be more variable in PD patients than in control subjects. Moreover, variability of duration reproductions was correlated with both measures of memory and of disease severity. In the concurrent reading condition of the production task, duration judgments were significantly shorter in PD patients than in control subjects, and accuracy of duration productions was correlated with scores on sub-tests of short-term memory. The findings suggest that the administration of dopamine did not entirely remove the memory deficits in PD patients. Moreover, DA treatment would have abnormally accelerated the rate of the internal clock leading to shorter duration productions in PD patients. The whole results indicate that dopamine administration in patients might have overshadowed the slowing rate of the internal clock usually reported in non medicated PD patients, without entirely restoring all of the memory functions.     

The influence of cue type on backward inhibition

Backward inhibition is proposed as a process of lateral inhibition that operates during response selection in task switching, reducing interference caused by the most recently abandoned task set. The effect has been observed across a wide range of contexts but is eliminated by using spatial location to cue tasks (K. D. Arbuthnott & T. S. Woodward, 2002). The present studies replicated this finding, showing that spatial cues are also associated with greater response congruity than verbal cues, consistent with the lateral inhibition model. Spatial cues may introduce greater discriminability between competing category-response rules, reducing the need for lateral inhibition. However, when participants named the task before target presentation, backward inhibition was observed with spatial cues, suggesting that verbalization increased competition between sets, despite spatial localization.     

Do unto others as they do unto you: reciprocity and social identification as determinants of ingroup favoritism

Predictions from the bounded and unbounded reciprocity hypotheses and from social identity theory (SIT) were examined in a minimal group experiment in which ingroup outcome dependence, outgroup outcome dependence, and the strength of social identity were orthogonally manipulated. Both ingroup and outgroup outcome dependence affected reward allocations. Participants made more ingroup-favoring reward allocations across all conditions. The identification manipulation produced hypothesized effects on social identification measures and marginal effects of identification on reward allocations in the no-dependence condition. Support was found for both an unbounded and bounded version of the reciprocity hypothesis and marginal support for a SIT approach to intergroup discrimination. The study highlights insufficiencies of both theoretical approaches and suggests possibilities for integration and elaboration.     

Looking on the bright side: downward counterfactual thinking in response to negative life events

Past research has found that downward counterfactual thoughts are rarely generated in response to negative life events. However, the authors suggest that under conditions in which self-enhancement motives are prominent, downward counterfactuals will be more frequent than upward counterfactuals. When motives were explicitly manipulated (Study 1), people generated more downward counterfactuals in the self-enhancement than in the self-improvement and control conditions. In Study 2, among those chronically more motivated to self-enhance (i.e., European Canadians), a manipulation of event severity led to the generation of more downward than upward counterfactuals. This finding was mediated by the desire for self-enhancement. In Study 3, cultural background and the opportunity for self-affirmation were related to the generation of downward counterfactuals in expected ways. Implications of these findings are discussed.     

Integration of multiple speech segmentation cues: a hierarchical framework

A central question in psycholinguistic research is how listeners isolate words from connected speech despite the paucity of clear word-boundary cues in the signal. A large body of empirical evidence indicates that word segmentation is promoted by both lexical (knowledge-derived) and sublexical (signal-derived) cues. However, an account of how these cues operate in combination or in conflict is lacking. The present study fills this gap by assessing speech segmentation when cues are systematically pitted against each other. The results demonstrate that listeners do not assign the same power to all segmentation cues; rather, cues are hierarchically integrated, with descending weights allocated to lexical, segmental, and prosodic cues. Lower level cues drive segmentation when the interpretive conditions are altered by a lack of contextual and lexical information or by white noise. Taken together, the results call for an integrated, hierarchical, and signal-contingent approach to speech segmentation.     

Psychometric properties of the temperament and character inventory-revised (TCI-R) in a Belgian sample

The Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI; Cloninger, Przybeck, Svrakic, & Wetzel, 1994) is a self-questionnaire developed to assess the 7 dimensions of personality described by Cloninger et al. (1994) with a total of 29 subscales. In 1999, a revised version was proposed by Cloninger (TCI-R). In this study, we present psychometric properties of the TCI-R from 958 French-speaking participants of Belgium. Women exhibited higher scores for harm avoidance, reward dependence, and cooperativeness dimensions. The proposed factorial structure of 4 temperament dimensions and 3 character dimensions was confirmed. The TCI-R inventory had good test-retest reliabilities as well as good alpha coefficients. The addition of 3 new subscales to the original scale for Persistence has produced a very reliable dimension in the TCI-R.     

Treatment of panic disorder: live therapy vs. self-help via the Internet

A randomized trial was conducted comparing 10 individual weekly sessions of cognitive behaviour therapy for panic disorder (PD) with or without agoraphobia with a 10-module self-help program on the Internet. After confirming the PD diagnosis with an in-person structured clinical interview (SCID) 49 participants were randomized. Overall, the results suggest that Internet-administered self-help plus minimal therapist contact via e-mail can be equally effective as traditional individual cognitive behaviour therapy. Composite within-group effect sizes were high in both groups, while the between-group effect size was small (Cohen's d=16). One-year follow-up confirmed the results, with a within-group effect size of Cohen's d=0.80 for the Internet group and d=0.93 for the live group. The results from this study generally provide evidence to support the continued use and development of Internet-distributed self-help programs.