The Processing Costs of Presupposition Accommodation

The present study investigates the processing of presupposition accommodation. In particular, it concerns the processing costs and the time-course of accommodation as compared to presupposition satisfaction. Data collected in a self-paced word-by-word reading times experiment support three results. First, independently on the presupposition trigger in use, accommodation is costlier than satisfaction. Second, presupposition accommodation takes places immediately just as the trigger becomes available and proceeds incrementally during the sentence processing. Third, accommodated information is harder to be recalled. The results offer evidence for the on-line processing of presuppositions and, consistently with the traditional semantic framework, support the idea that, presuppositions are semantic properties encoded in the lexical meaning of the presupposition triggers.     

Singing more,singing harsher: occurrence of nonlinear phenomena in a primate’ song

Animal Cognition - Nonlinear phenomena (NLP) in animal vocalizations arise from irregularities in the oscillation of the vocal folds. Various non-mutually exclusive hypotheses have been put forward...     

Modification of EEG power spectra and EEG connectivity in autobiographical memory: a sLORETA study

The aim of the present study was to explore the modifications of scalp EEG power spectra and EEG connectivity during the autobiographical memory test (AM-T) and during the retrieval of an autobiographical event (the high school final examination, Task 2). Seventeen healthy volunteers were enrolled (9 women and 8 men, mean age 23.4 ± 2.8 years, range 19–30). EEG was recorded at baseline and while performing the autobiographical memory (AM) tasks, by means of 19 surface electrodes and a nasopharyngeal electrode. EEG analysis was conducted by means of the standardized LOw Resolution Electric Tomography (sLORETA) software. Power spectra and lagged EEG coherence were compared between EEG acquired during the memory tasks and baseline recording. The frequency bands considered were as follows: delta (0.5–4 Hz); theta (4.5–7.5 Hz); alpha (8–12.5 Hz); beta1 (13–17.5 Hz); beta2 (18–30 Hz); gamma (30.5–60 Hz). During AM-T, we observed a significant delta power increase in left frontal and midline cortices (T = 3.554; p < 0.05) and increased EEG connectivity in delta band in prefrontal, temporal, parietal, and occipital areas, and for gamma bands in the left temporo-parietal regions (T = 4.154; p < 0.05). In Task 2, we measured an increased power in the gamma band located in the left posterior midline areas (T = 3.960; p < 0.05) and a significant increase in delta band connectivity in the prefrontal, temporal, parietal, and occipital areas, and in the gamma band involving right temporo-parietal areas (T = 4.579; p < 0.05). These results indicate that AM retrieval engages in a complex network which is mediated by both low- (delta) and high-frequency (gamma) EEG bands.     

Doing Well: A SEM Analysis of the Relationships Between Various Activities of Daily Living and Geriatric Well-Being

An existing large data set, the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) with the subsequent addition of the Consumption and Activities Mail Survey (CAMS) data, provides a rich data set for the examination of the activities of older adults. In this study HRS and CAMS data are used to examine relationships between various activities of daily living (ADLs) and well-being in older adults. Using structural equation modeling, influences of direct and indirect factors that affect older individuals' cognitive and emotional well-being are analyzed. The data suggest ability to perform ADLs has little to do with cognitive well-being, but is an influential factor in determining emotional well-being.     

Binocular vision enhances phase discrimination by filtering the background.

Previous studies have shown that the detectability of a noise-masked target can be enhanced under stereoscopic viewing when the target's interocular disparity differs from that of the noise. This enhanced detectability can be accounted for by a model postulating that the binocular system linearly sums the left-eye and right-eye views of a visual scene. This model also predicts enhanced phase discrimination under specifiable interocular disparities of target and noise. Two experiments were conducted in which subjects were asked to discriminate between two luminance patterns (target and foil) that differed only in phase. The target patterns were constructed by summating two vertical sinusoidal gratings in which the phase difference between the higher and the lower spatial frequency gratings was 45 degrees. The foils contained the same two component frequencies, with a phase difference of -45 degrees. Thus, targets and foils were mirror images of one another. The ability of subjects to discriminate between these stereoscopically viewed mirror-image patterns was investigated under two sets of interocular disparities: those that, according to our model, would unmask one or both spatial frequency components, and those that would leave both components masked by the noise. Phase discrimination was enhanced only when both component frequencies of the target and foil were unmasked. The implications of these findings for template-matching and phase-discrimination models of pattern discrimination are considered.     

What do humans feel with mistreated humans,animals, robots,and objects? Exploring the role of cognitive empathy

Motivation and Emotion - The aim of this paper is to present a study in which we compare the degree of empathy that a convenience sample of university students expressed with humans, animals,...     

The effects of phonological similarity on the semantic categorisation of pictorial and lexical stimuli: evidence from continuous behavioural measures

Behavioural and neuroimaging studies provide evidence of automatic activation of phonology (e.g., covert speech) during the recognition of lexical stimuli. Implicit processing of phonological information was investigated in a kinematic study of semantic categorisation of pictures (session A) or words (session B). Participants clicked one of two items (target and distractor) based on their semantic congruency (artefact or natural) with a cued-word. Phonological similarity between cued-word and distractor was varied. The presence of the phonological distractor produced trajectories with greater curvature towards the competing semantic category than did the presence of a distractor not phonologically related. This suggests that the semantic categorisation of pictorial and lexical stimuli is influenced by the automatic activation of phonological information. Trajectories’ curvature reveals competition between partially activated phonological and semantic representations suggesting that phonological codes involved in linguistic processing influence the dynamic competition underlying the semantic categorisation of lexical and pictorial.     

Rapid naming deficits in dyslexia: a stumbling block for the perceptual anchor theory of dyslexia

According to a recent theory of dyslexia, the perceptual anchor theory, children with dyslexia show deficits in classic auditory and phonological tasks not because they have auditory or phonological impairments but because they are unable to form a ‘perceptual anchor’ in tasks that rely on a small set of repeated stimuli. The theory makes the strong prediction that rapid naming deficits should only be present in small sets of repeated items, not in large sets of unrepeated items. The present research tested this prediction by comparing rapid naming performance of a small set of repeated items with that of a large set of unrepeated items. The results were unequivocal. Deficits were found both for small and large sets of objects and numbers. The deficit was actually bigger for large sets than for small sets, which is the opposite of the prediction made by the anchor theory. In conclusion, the perceptual anchor theory does not provide a satisfactory account of some of the major hallmark effects of developmental dyslexia.     

Separating global and specific factors in developmental dyslexia

The general goal of the study was to identify global and specific components in developmental dyslexia using various manipulations based on the rapid automatization paradigm (RAN). In two experiments, we used both factor analysis and the Rate-and-Amount Model to verify if one (or more) global factor(s) and a variety of specific effects contribute to the naming (and visual search) deficits in children with dyslexia.

Results of Experiment 1 indicated the presence of three global components: pictorial naming, detailed orthographic analysis, and visual search. Pictorial naming is predicated by typical RAN tasks (such as naming colors or objects), independent of set size, but also from a variety of other tasks including Stroop interference conditions. The detailed orthographic analysis factor accounts for naming of orthographic stimuli at high set size. Visual search marked tasks requiring the scanning of visual targets.

Results of Experiment 2 confirmed the separation between the pictorial naming and detailed orthographic analysis factors both in the original sample and in a new group of children. Furthermore, specific effects of frequency, lexicality, and length were shown to contribute to the reading deficit.

Overall, it is proposed that focusing on the profile of both global and specific effects provides a more effective and, at the same time, simpler account of the dyslexics' impairment.