Semantic facilitation and lexical access during sentence processing: An investigation of individual differences

An earlier experiment (Blank & Foss, 1978) showed that the time required to access the object noun of a sentence was shortened if the noun was preceded by a semantically related verb or adjective. When both the verb and the adjective were semantically related to the noun, the amount of facilitation of lexical access was additive. However, additivity appeared to break down for subjects who did poorly on the comprehension test administered in that experiment, suggesting that the activation function among related lexical items was different for good and poor comprehenders. Such a finding would have implications for theories of lexical facilitation, especially the two-factor theories such as the one proposed by Posner and Snyder (1975). The present experiment again measured access time for the object noun of a sentence when it was preceded by an unrelated or a related verb or adjective (four sentence types). Two groups of college subjects were tested, relatively good (N = 63) and relatively poor (N = 42) comprehenders. The difference in the time taken to retrieve the object noun was ascertained by measuring reaction time to respond to the initial phoneme of the next word in the sentence (phoneme monitoring technique). Reaction times were shorter when the noun was preceded by a semantically related word; the effects of two sources of related context (verb and adjective) appeared to be additive forboth groups of subjects. These results were discussed within the context of two-factor theories of lexical activation and within the context of Morton’s (1969) logogen model.     

School Counselor Problems: Colorado and Massachusetts

600 randomly selected school counselors in Colorado and Massachusetts were asked to specify questions they would like research to “answer” for them. Questions submitted by the counselors were categorized into the three general headings of role, skill, and information. Questions were also categorized into more specific areas to identify needed research. Differences were noted between Colorado and Massachusetts counselors and implications were made for counselor education programs.     

Influence of Cognitive Factors on Sexual Assault Recovery: Descriptive Review and Methodological Concerns

This article aims to verify whether the empirical data presented in the literature on sexually assaulted victims support the hypothesis advanced by various aetiological models, which is that cognitions play an important role in the development and maintenance of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. The first objective is to present state-of-the-art results on sexually assaulted victims' post-traumatic cognitions and their link to post-assault symptomatology. The second objective is to analyse the various methodological facets of those studies. Finally, paths for future studies are traced and recommendations are made.     

A Canadian French Adaptation of the Agoraphobic Cognitions Questionnaire: Cross-cultural Validation and Gender Differences

The first objective of this study is to present different aspects of the reliability and validity of the Canadian French adaptation of the Agoraphobic Cognition Questionnaire (ACQ). A second objective is to determine the dimensionality of the Canadian French version (ACQ-FC) in comparison to the factorial solutions uncovered in the American and Dutch versions. The third objective is to present gender differences in the agoraphobic group. Results suggest that the ACQ-FC and ACQ have similar internal consistency, temporal stability, construct validity, and discriminative validity. The ACQ-FC uncovers a two-factor model, which is similar to the American and Dutch models. As such, the ACQ-FC shows cross-cultural validity with the ACQ. This study demonstrates that the multidimensional construct is not culturally bound.     

Personality Patterns in Adolescence as Portrayed by the Rorschach Ink-Blot Method: III. The “Erlebnistypus” (A Normative Study)

The effect of bigram cues on the solution of five-letter monosyllabic and bisyllabic solution-word anagrams was investigated. This was accomplished through the construction of anagrams with and without solution-word bigrams for both monosyllable and bisyllable words. The results revealed that the monosyllabic words were significantly easier to solve when bigram cues were provided, but that there was no difference between the two types of words when bigram cues were not present in the anagrams. Furthermore, no advantage was observed in the solution of bisyllable words even when the bigram in the anagram was also a syllable of the solution word. It was concluded that the facilitating effect of a bigram cue seems to be peculiar to monosyllabic words, and that the result appears to be a function of an initial solution process that favors a single-syllable response.