Phonotactics, neighborhood activation, and lexical access for spoken words.

Probabilistic phonotactics refers to the relative frequencies of segments and sequences of segments in spoken words. Neighborhood density refers to the number of words that are phonologically similar to a given word. Despite a positive correlation between phonotactic probability and neighborhood density, nonsense words with high probability segments and sequences are responded to more quickly than nonsense words with low probability segments and sequences, whereas real words occurring in dense similarity neighborhoods are responded to more slowly than real words occurring in sparse similarity neighborhoods. This contradiction may be resolved by hypothesizing that effects of probabilistic phonotactics have a sublexical focus and that effects of similarity neighborhood density have a lexical focus. The implications of this hypothesis for models of spoken word recognition are discussed.     

A method of matrix analysis of group structure

Matrix methods may be applied to the analysis of experimental data concerning group structure when these data indicate relationships which can be depicted by line diagrams such as sociograms. One may introduce two concepts,n-chain and clique, which have simple relationships to the powers of certain matrices. Using them it is possible to determine the group structure by methods which are both faster and more certain than less systematic methods. This paper describes such a matrix method and applies it to the analysis of practical examples. At several points some unsolved problems in this field are indicated.     

Does perceptual learning in speech reflect changes in phonetic category representation or decision bias?

Recent studies show that perceptual boundaries between phonetic categories are changeable with training (Norris, McQueen, & Cutler, 2003). For example, Kraljic and Samuel (2005) exposed listeners in a lexical decision task to ambiguous /s-integral/ sounds in either s-word contexts (e.g., legacy) or integral-word contexts (e.g., parachute). In a subsequent /s/-/integral/ categorization test, listeners in the /s/ condition categorized more tokens as /s/ than did those in the /integral/ condition. The effect--termed perceptual learning in speech--is assumed to reflect a change in phonetic category representation. However, the result could be due to a decision bias resulting from the training task. In Experiment 1, we replicated the basic Kraljic and Samuel (2005) experiment and added an AXB discrimination test. In Experiment 2, we used a task that is less likely to induce a decision bias. Results of both experiments and signal detection analyses point to a true change in phonetic representation.     

Beyond totem and idol,the sexuate other

The author interprets idolatry, totemism, sacrilege and taboo through her theory of sexual difference and her study of Eastern spirituality. She argues that the taboo on spirituality in Western culture has cancelled difference, resulting in our current forms of idolatry. Preserving difference, however, would allow the transcendence of the human other to exist. The task of learning to respect difference is central to human spirituality and spiritual progression. The article is a translation of “La transcendance de l’autre” in Autour d’idôlatrie: figures actuelles de pouvoir et de domination, Ed. Bernard Van Meenen, Publications des Facultés Universitaires Saint-Louis, Brussels: 2003.     

Relation between adverse psychosocial risks, assessed by means of the DECORE Multidimensional Questionnaire, and deficient occupational health

This paper describes our search for the possible relationship between workers' health and quality of life and several psychosocial risks: Cognitive demands, Control, Rewards and Organizational support. These psychosocial risks were assessed by means of the DECORE Multidimensional Questionnaire, which provides five scores, one for each factor, plus a global score. Workers' health was assessed with the following variables: job satisfaction, stress perception, fatigue perception, medical leave, occupational accidents, and disease. 614 workers from various business sectors were examined. Results show that workers who feel more fatigued, stressed, and less satisfied perceive their work environment more adversely. Similar results were obtained for workers who went on medical leave, had an occupational accident, or suffered from disease.     

Representational specificity of within-category phonetic variation in the long-term mental lexicon

This study examines the potential encoding in long-term memory of subphonemic, within-category variation in voice onset time (VOT) and the degree to which this encoding of subtle variation is mediated by lexical competition. In 4 long-term repetition-priming experiments, magnitude of priming was examined as a function of variation in VOT in words with voiced counterparts (cape-gape) and without (cow-*gow) and words whose counterparts were high frequency (pest-best) or low frequency (pile-bile). The results showed that within-category variation was indeed encoded in memory and could have demonstrable effects on priming. However, there were also robust effects of prototypical representations on priming. Encoding of within-category variation was also affected by the presence of lexical counterparts and by the frequency of counterparts.     

Conditions Equivalent to Unit Representations of Ordered Relational Structures

This paper studies several concepts about subgroups of automorphisms of linearly ordered relational structures. In particular, it focuses on conditions that are equivalent to the translations (automorphisms with no fixed points plus the identity) forming a homogeneous, Archimedean ordered group under the asymptotic order. For the automorphisms of an ordered relational structure, these properties are equivalent to the structure having a numerical representation whose scale type lies between, but does not exclude, the ratio and interval types (Alper, 1987; Luce, 1987; Narens, 1981a, 1981b). One result of this paper (Theorem 5) is that for the automorphisms of an ordered relational structure the following necessary conditions for such a representation are also sufficient: the asymptotic order induced on the automorphisms is connected, the structure is homogeneous, the translations are Archimedean, and the dilations (i.e., automorphisms with fixed points) are Archimedean relative to all automorphisms. The last property is equivalent to there being at most one proper, nontrivial convex subgroup. Contrary to hope, these results do not seem to lead to a simpler proof than Alper's for the Dedekind complete case. The paper concludes with an examination of the structure of parallel automorphisms. Copyright 2001 Academic Press.     

Empirical comparisons of bilinear and nonbilinear utility theories

Several bilinear and nonbilinear utility theories are evaluated using individual data from 144 informants. The nonbilinear models are best for 67% of the informants. The nonrational property of duplex decomposition linking joint receipts and mixed gambles of gains and losses is more adequate than the rational link of general segregation for 73% of the informants. The correlations are very high and linear, even in the worst fitting case. The weighting functions are mostly inverse-S-shaped and for 84% of the informants are fit best by the class of functions proposed by D. Prelec. These fits were generally excellent, with a minimum correlation of.81, a maximum of.99, and an average of.97.     

Theory and tests of the conjoint commutativity axiom for additive conjoint measurement

The empirical study of the axioms underlying additive conjoint measurement initially focused mostly on the double cancellation axiom. That axiom was shown to exhibit redundant features that made its statistical evaluation a major challenge. The special case of double cancellation where inequalities are replaced by indifferences–the Thomsen condition–turned out in the full axiomatic context to be equivalent to the double cancellation property but without exhibiting the redundancies of double cancellation. However, it too has some undesirable features when it comes to its empirical evaluation, the chief among them being a certain statistical asymmetry in estimates used to evaluate it, namely two interlocked hypotheses and a single conclusion. Nevertheless, thinking we had no choice, we evaluated the Thomsen condition for both loudness and brightness and, in agreement with other lines of research, we found more support for conjoint additivity than not. However, we commented on the difficulties we had encountered in evaluating it. Thus we sought a more symmetric replacement, which as Gigerenzer and Strube (1983) first noted, is found in the conjoint commutativity axiom proposed by Falmagne (1976, who called it the “commutative rule”). It turns out that, in the presence of the usual structural and other necessary assumptions of additive conjoint measurement, we can show that conjoint commutativity is equivalent to the Thomsen condition, a result that seems to have been overlooked in the literature. We subjected this property to empirical evaluation for both loudness and brightness. In contrast to Gigerenzer and Strube (1983), our data show support for the conjoint commutativity in both domains and thus for conjoint additivity.