Metaphor priming in sentence production: Concrete pictures affect abstract language production

People speak metaphorically about abstract concepts—for instance, a person can be “full of love” or “have a lot of love to give.” Over the past decade, research has begun to focus on how metaphors are processed during language comprehension. Much of this work suggests that understanding a metaphorical expression involves activating brain and body systems involved in perception and motor control. However, no research to date has asked whether the same is true while speakers produce language. We address this gap using a sentence production task. Its results demonstrate that visually activating a concrete source domain can trigger the use of metaphorical language drawn from that same concrete domain, even in sentences that are thematically unrelated to the primes, a metaphorical priming effect. This effect suggests that conceptual metaphors play a part in language production. It also shows that activation in the perceptual system that is not part of an intended message can nevertheless influence sentence formulation.     

Mantle region accommodating two-dimensional grain boundary sliding in ODS ferritic steel

Two-dimensional grain-boundary sliding (GBS) was achieved microscopically in an oxide-dispersion-strengthened ferritic steel with an elongated and aligned grain structure, which was deformed perpendicular to the long axis. At the border between superplastic regions II and III, microscopic deformation was observed using sub-micron grids drawn on the material surface using a focused ion beam. GBS was accommodated by intragranular deformations in narrow areas around grain boundaries, which has been predicted by earlier researchers as characteristics of the core–mantle model. These observations suggest that dislocations slip only in the mantle regions around wavy boundaries to relax the stress concentration caused by GBS during superplasticity.     

Action observation modulates auditory perception of the consequence of others' actions

We can easily discriminate self-produced from externally generated sensory signals. Recent studies suggest that the prediction of the sensory consequences of one’s own actions made by forward model can be used to attenuate the sensory effects of self-produced movements, thereby enabling a differentiation of the self-produced sensation from the externally generated one. The present study showed that attenuation of sensation occurred both when participants themselves performed a goal-directed action and when they observed experimenter performing the same action, although they clearly reported that the tones were produced by other during action observation and by themselves during their own action. These results suggest that sensory prediction of action modulates ongoing auditory processing irrespective of who produces the sounds and that the explicit judgment of agency does not necessarily rely on the same mechanisms on which implicit perceptual measures such as sensory attenuation rely.     

Salivary conditioning with antennal gustatory unconditioned stimulus in an insect

Classical conditioning of olfactory conditioning stimulus (CS) with gustatory unconditioned stimulus (US) in insects has been used as a pertinent model for elucidation of neural mechanisms underlying learning and memory. However, a conditioning system in which stable intracellular recordings from brain neurons are feasibly obtained while monitoring the conditioning effect has remained to be established. Recently, we found classical conditioning of salivation in cockroaches Periplaneta americana, in which an odor was associated with sucrose solution applied to the mouth, and this conditioning could be monitored by activities of salivary neurons. Application of gustatory US to the mouth, however, leads to feeding movement accompanying a movement of the brain that prevents stable recordings from brain neurons. Here we investigated whether a gustatory stimulus presented to an antenna could serve as an effective US for producing salivary conditioning. Presentation of sucrose or sodium chloride solution to an antenna induced salivation and also increased activities of salivary neurons. A single pairing trial of an odor with antennal presentation of sucrose or sodium chloride solution produced conditioning of salivation or of activities of salivary neurons. Five pairing trials led to a conditioning effect that lasted for one day. Water or tactile stimulus presented to an antenna was not effective for producing conditioning. The results demonstrate that gustatory US presented to an antenna is as effective as that presented to the mouth for producing salivary conditioning. This conditioning system provides a useful model for studying the neural basis of learning at the level of singly identifiable neurons.     

Hypermnesia: A further examination of age differences between young and older adults

Previous studies that examined age differences in hypermnesia reported inconsistent results. The present experiment investigated whether the different study materials in these studies were responsible for the inconsistency. In particular, the present experiment examined whether the use of a video, as opposed to words and pictures, would eliminate previously reported age differences in hypermnesia. Fifteen college students and 15 older adults viewed a 3‐minute video clip followed by two free‐recall tests. The results indicated that older adults, as a whole, did not show hypermnesia. However, when older adults were divided into low and high memory groups based on test 1 performance, the high memory group showed hypermnesia whereas the low memory group did not show hypermnesia. The older adults in the low memory group were significantly older than the older adults in the high memory group – indicating that hypermnesia is inversely related to age in older adults. Reminiscence did not show an age‐related difference in either the low or high memory group whereas inter‐test forgetting did show an age difference in the low memory group. As expected, older adults showed greater inter‐test forgetting than young adults in the low memory group. Findings from the present experiment suggest that video produces a pattern of results that is similar to the patterns obtained when words and pictures are used as study material. Thus, it appears that the nature of study material is not the source of inconsistency across the previous studies.     

Task related modulation of the motor system during language processing

Recent neurophysiological and brain imaging studies have shown that the motor system is involved in language processing. However, it is an open question whether this involvement is a necessary requisite to understand language or rather a side effect of distinct cognitive processes underlying it. In order to clarify this issue we carried out three behavioral experiments, using a go-no go paradigm. Italian verbs expressing hand actions, foot actions or an abstract content served as stimuli. Participants used their right hands to respond. In Experiment 1, in which a semantics decision task with an early delivery of the go signal (during processing language material) was used, slower responses were found for hand action-related verbs than for foot action-related verbs. In Experiment 2, using the same task with either an early or a delayed delivery of the go signal (when language material had been already processed), no difference was found between responses to the two verb categories in the delayed delivery condition. In Experiment 3, in which a lexical decision task with an early delivery of the go signal was used, again no difference between the two verb categories was found. The present findings demonstrate that during language processing the modulation of the motor system crucially occurs while performing a semantics decision task, thus supporting the notion that this involvement is a necessary step to understand language rather than a side effect of upstream cognitive processes.     

Minding Money: How Understanding of Value is Culturally Promoted

Adding to the issues of cognitive economics (Cortes and Londoño IPBS: Integrative Psychological &; Behavioral Science 43(2):178–184, 2009) and the social psychology of “shadow economics” (Salvatore et al. IPBS: Integrative Psychological &; Behavioral Science 43(2), 2009), the carrier of economic exchanges, money, plays a key role in children’s socialization in different societies. Money given to children, ‘pocket money,’ is a negotiated settlement between children’s social demands and those of their parents. I analyze such negotiations here on the basis of a concrete case of a Korean family in which the provision of pocket money given the child was inconsistent over time. The results indicate the social ecology of money use, in both children and their parents, sets the stage for value construction of the meaning of money.     

Facilitation of corticospinal excitability during motor imagery of wrist movement with visual or quantitative inspection of EMG activity

The present study investigated facilitation of corticospinal excitability during motor imagery of wrist movement with visual or quantitative inspection of background electromyographic (EMG) activity. Ten healthy participants imagined wrist extension from a first-person perspective in response to a start cue. Transcranial magnetic stimulation was delivered to the motor cortex 2 sec. after the start cue. EMG signals were recorded from the extensor carpi radialis muscle. Trials with background EMG activity were discarded based on visual inspection. Both motor-evoked potential (MEP) and background EMG amplitudes increased during motor imagery. The amount of increase in MEP amplitude was positively correlated with the amount of increase in background EMG amplitude during motor imagery. The statistically significant increase in MEP amplitude during motor imagery disappeared when the effect of muscle activity was statistically eliminated or after trials with background EMG activity were discarded based on strict quantitative criteria. Facilitation of corticospinal excitability during motor imagery of wrist movement depends partially on muscle activity. Discarding background EMG activity during motor imagery based on visual inspection is not sufficient to equalize background EMG amplitude between resting and motor imagery. Discarding trials with background EMG activity through strict quantitative criteria is useful to equalize background EMG amplitude between at rest and during motor imagery.     

Mirror vision: perceived size and perceived distance of virtual images

We investigated spatial perception of virtual images that were produced by convex and plane mirrors. In Experiment 1, 36 subjects reproduced both the perceived size and the perceived distance of virtual images for five targets that had been placed at a real distance of 10 or 20 m. In Experiment 2, 30 subjects verbally judged both the perceived size and the perceived distance of virtual images for five targets that were placed at each of five real distances of 2.5-45 m. In both experiments, the subjects received objective-size and objective-distance instructions. The results were that (1) size constancy was attained for a distance of up to 45 m, (2) distance was readily discriminated within this distance range, although virtual images produced by the mirror of strong curvature were judged to be farther away than those produced by the mirrors of less curvature, and (3) the ratio of perceived size to perceived distance was described as a power function of visual angle, and the ratio for the convex mirror was larger than that for the plane mirror. We compared the taking-into-account model and the direct perception model on the basis of a correlation analysis for proximal, virtual, and real levels of the stimuli. The taking-into-account model, which assumes that visual angle is transformed into perceived size by taking perceived distance into account, was supported by an analysis for the proximal level of stimuli. The direct perception model, which assumes that there is no inferential process between perceived size and perceived distance, was partially supported by an analysis for the distal level of the stimuli.