WordGen: A tool for word selection and nonword generation in Dutch,English, German,and French

WordGen is an easy-to-use program that uses the CELEX and Lexique lexical databases for word selection and nonword generation in Dutch, English, German, and French. Items can be generated in these four languages, specifying any combination of seven linguistic constraints: number of letters, neighborhood size, frequency, summated position-nonspecific bigram frequency, minimum position-nonspecific bigram frequency, position-specific frequency of the initial and final bigram, and orthographic relatedness. The program also has a module to calculate the respective values of these variables for items that have already been constructed, either with the program or taken from earlier studies. Stimulus queries can be entered through WordGen’s graphical user interface or by means of batch files. WordGen is especially useful for (1) Dutch and German item generation, because no such stimulus-selection tool exists for these languages, (2) the generation of nonwords for all four languages, because our program has some important advantages over previous nonword generation approaches, and (3) psycholinguistic experiments on bilingualism, because the possibility of using the same tool for different languages increases the cross-linguistic comparability of the generated item lists. WordGen is free and available athttp://expsy.ugent.be/wordgen.htm.     

Let it be? Pain control attempts critically amplify attention to somatosensory input

Psychological Research - Recent studies have suggested that the threat of pain may redirect attention towards specific features of the pain stimulus via attentional control settings. For instance,...     

Semantic access in number word translation: the role of crosslingual lexical similarity

The revised hierarchical model of bilingualism (e.g., Kroll & Stewart, 1994) assumes that second language (L2) words primarily access semantics through their first language (L1) translation equivalents. Consequently, backward translation from L2 to L1 should not imply semantic access but occurs through lexical wordform associations. However, recent research with Dutch-French bilinguals showed that both backward and forward translation of number words yields a semantic number magnitude effect (Duyck & Brysbaert, 2004), providing evidence for strong form-to-meaning mappings of L2 number words. In two number-word translation experiments with Dutch-English-German trilinguals, the present study investigated whether semantic access in L1-L2 and L1-L3 number-word translation depends on lexical similarity of the languages involved. We found that backward translation from these more similar language pairs to L1 still yields a semantic magnitude effect, whereas forward translation does not, in contrast with the Dutch-French results of Duyck and Brysbaert (2004). We argue against a dual route model of word translation and suggest that the degree of semantic activation in translation depends on lexical form overlap between translation equivalents.     

A late locus of the distractor frequency effect in picture–word interference: Evidence from event-related potentials

In this study, we investigated how people deal with irrelevant contextual information during speech production. Two main models have been proposed. WEAVER++ assumes that irrelevant information is removed from the production system by an early blocking mechanism. On the other hand, the response exclusion hypothesis assumes a blocking mechanism that operates late, after lexical selection has finished. To delineate between these models, we focused on the distractor frequency effect (i.e., longer picture naming latencies in the context of low-frequency compared to high-frequency words) and measured ERPs concurrently. Behaviorally, the distractor frequency effect was replicated. In the ERPs, three effects were found. One effect occurred very early and is interpreted as an effect of low-level visual feature processing. The two other effects occurred after lexical access and are thus in line with the response exclusion hypothesis.     

Multi‐level aspects of social cohesion of secondary schools and pupils' feelings of safety

Background. School safety and corresponding feelings of both pupils and school staff are beginning to receive more and more attention. The social cohesion characteristics of a school may be useful in promoting feelings of safety, particularly in pupils. Aims. To conceptualize theoretically, and check empirically a two‐level model of social cohesion between and within schools, in order to explain a pupil's feelings of safety at school. Samples. Data were collected aided by a national Dutch survey in secondary education carried out via the Internet. In 2008, digital questionnaires were completed by about 78,800 pupils, 6,200 teachers and educational support staff, and 600 school managers. Methods. Data were checked for reliability and representativity. Social cohesion was indicated by self‐reported measures of individual pupils and by aggregating scale and item scores of school managers, teachers, and other support staff within schools. Multi‐level analysis using individual pupil data and school‐level data was performed using MLwiN. Results. A pupil's age, educational attainment level, experience of mild physical violence, prosocial rules of conduct and joint control of these rules, and school measures against playing truant, show positive influences on a pupil's feelings of safety at school. Negative influences are exerted by not feeling most at home in The Netherlands, peers taking drugs and weapons into school, and by experiencing social violence, severe physical violence, and sexual violence. Negative school effects exist simultaneously in severe physical violence experienced by teachers and other staff, and in curriculum differentiation applied by teachers and other staff; a positive school effect is school size. Some interaction effects between pupil and school‐level variables were explored. Conclusions. The variance at school level is relatively low compared with the variance at pupil level. However, a much higher percentage of variance at school level than at pupil level is explained with respect to the pupils' feelings of safety at school. The resulting two‐level model also reflects the streaming of pupils in Dutch secondary schools. To improve school safety, the national results emphasize the need to enhance prosocial behaviour rules and to enhance the shared control of these rules between teachers and pupils. They also emphasize the need for the school to take measures that prevent truancy and redefine curriculum differentiation procedures. National educational policy and research can combine efforts to assist schools in developing reliable and valid procedures to increase effectively safety in and around schools.     

Knowledge of a second language influences auditory word recognition in the native language

Many studies in bilingual visual word recognition have demonstrated that lexical access is not language selective. However, research on bilingual word recognition in the auditory modality has been scarce, and it has yielded mixed results with regard to the degree of this language nonselectivity. In the present study, we investigated whether listening to a second language (L2) is influenced by knowledge of the native language (L1) and, more important, whether listening to the L1 is also influenced by knowledge of an L2. Additionally, we investigated whether the listener's selectivity of lexical access is influenced by the speaker's L1 (and thus his or her accent). With this aim, Dutch-English bilinguals completed an English (Experiment 1) and a Dutch (Experiment 3) auditory lexical decision task. As a control, the English auditory lexical decision task was also completed by English monolinguals (Experiment 2). Targets were pronounced by a native Dutch speaker with English as the L2 (Experiments 1A, 2A, and 3A) or by a native English speaker with Dutch as the L2 (Experiments 1B, 2B, and 3B). In all experiments, Dutch-English bilinguals recognized interlingual homophones (e.g., lief [sweet]-leaf /li:f/) significantly slower than matched control words, whereas the English monolinguals showed no effect. These results indicate that (a) lexical access in bilingual auditory word recognition is not language selective in L2, nor in L1, and (b) language-specific subphonological cues do not annul cross-lingual interactions.     

Increased Stroop interference with better second-language reading skill

Skilled readers demonstrate remarkable efficiency in processing written words, unlike beginning readers for whom reading occurs more serially and places higher demands on visual attention. In the present study, we used the Stroop paradigm to investigate the relationship between reading skill and automaticity, in individuals learning a second language with a different orthographic system. Prior studies using this paradigm have presented a mixed picture, finding a positive, a negative, or no relationship between the size of Stroop interference and reading skills. Our results show that Stroop interference in the second language was positively related to reading skill (when controlled for interference in the first language). Furthermore, interference was positively related to objective but not subjective indices of the amount of exposure to the second language. We suggest that the lack of consistency in the results of earlier studies may be due, at least in part, to these studies looking at Stroop interference in isolation, rather than comparing interference between languages.