Morphological effects in children word reading: A priming study in fourth graders

A growing corpus of evidence suggests that morphology could play a role in reading acquisition, and that young readers could be sensitive to the morphemic structure of written words. In the present experiment, we examined whether and when morphological information is activated in word recognition. French fourth graders made visual lexical decisions to derived words preceded by primes sharing either a morphological or an orthographic relationship with the target. Results showed significant and equivalent facilitation priming effects in cases of morphologically and orthographically related primes at the shortest prime duration, and a significant facilitation priming effect in the case of only morphologically related primes at the longer prime duration. Thus, these results strongly suggest that a morphological level is involved in children's visual word recognition, although it is not distinct from the formal one at an early stage of word processing.     

The reproduction of vertical and oblique orientations in the visual, haptic, and somatovestibular systems

This study investigates whether the vertical orientation may be predominantly used as an amodal reference norm by the visual, haptic, and somato-vestibular perceptual systems to define oblique orientations. We examined this question by asking the same sighted adult subjects to reproduce, in the frontal (roll) plane, the vertical (0°) and six oblique orientations in three tasks involving different perceptual systems. In the visual task, the subjects adjusted a moveable rod so that it reproduced the orientation of a visual rod seen previously in a dark room. In the haptic task, the blindfolded sighted subjects scanned an oriented rod with one hand and reproduced its orientation, with the same hand, on a moveable response rod. In the somato-vestibular task, the blindfolded sighted subjects, sitting in a rotating chair, adjusted this chair in order to reproduce the tested orientation of their own body. The results showed that similar oblique effects (unsigned angular error difference between six oblique orientations and vertical orientation) were observed across the three tasks. However, there were no positive correlations between the visual, haptic,     

Blocking and sensory preconditioning effects in morphine analgesic tolerance: Support for a pavlovian conditioning model of drug tolerance

Two experiments on rats tested predictions of a Pavlovian conditioning model of drug tolerance which holds that tolerance is the result of compensatory conditioned responses, developed to environmental stimuli accompanying the drug administrations, which attenuate the direct effects of the drug. In Experiment I, the acquisition of tolerance-modulating properties by the tone component of a tone-light compound stimulus which accompanied morphine administrations was reduced by prior light-morphine pairings (blocking). In Experiment II, a tone stimulus acquired tolerance-modulating properties through prior pairings with a light stimulus which later accompanied morphine administrations (sensory preconditioning). These findings are uniquely predicted by the Pavlovian conditioning model of drug tolerance and are incompatible with traditional theories which assign no role to environmental stimuli present at the time of drug administration.