Development of Lexical and Sentence Level Context Effects for Dominant and Subordinate Word Meanings of Homonyms

Nine-ten-and twelve-year-old children (N = 75) read aloud dominant, subordinate or ambiguous bias sentences (N = 120) that ended in a homonym (BALL). After the sentence (1,000 ms), children read aloud targets that were related to the dominant (BAT) or subordinate (DANCE) meaning of the homonym or control targets. Participants were also divided into three reading skill groups based on an independent measure of single word oral reading accuracy. There were three main developmental and reading skill findings. First, 9-year-olds and low skill readers showed lexical level facilitation in accuracy. Second, 9- and 10-year-olds or low and moderate skill readers showed lexical level facilitation in reaction time. Third, 12-year-olds or high skill readers showed sentence level facilitation in reaction time with high skill readers additionally showing sentence level inhibition in reaction time. These results show that lexical level context effects decreased and that sentence level context effects increased with development and skill. These results are discussed in terms of connectionist models of visual word recognition that incorporate distributed attractor principles.     

Influence of consonantal context on the reading of vowels: evidence from children

When college students pronounce nonwords, their vowel pronunciations may be affected not only by the consonant that follows the vowel, the coda, but also by the preceding consonant, the onset. We presented the nonwords used by Treiman and colleagues in their 2003 study to a total of 94 first graders, third graders, fifth graders, and high school students to determine when these context influences emerge. According to some theories of reading development, early decoding is characterized by context-free links from graphemes to phonemes. However, we found that even children reading at the first-grade level (6-year-olds) were influenced to some extent by a vowel's context. The effect of context on vowel pronunciation increased in strength up to around the fifth-grade reading level (8- and 9-year-olds), and sensitivity to coda-to-vowel associations emerged no earlier than did sensitivity to onset-to-vowel associations. A connectionist model of reading reproduced this general pattern of increasing context effects as a function of training.     

FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS AND TREATMENT OF EYE POKING WITH RESPONSE BLOCKING

A functional analysis of eye poking by a 4-year-old female with severe disabilities and visual impairments showed that high rates occurred in all conditions. We conducted a series of probes to identify the maintaining variable for eye poking following an undifferentiated functional analysis. Results showed that eye poking decreased only when we interrupted finger-eye contact by blocking the response.     

Language transfer and blocking in second language vocabulary learning

The influence of different vocabulary instructional techniques upon the acquisition of different language words was examined in two experiments. In Experiment 1, comparisons were made between the learning of Chinese and French words employing both paired-associate presentations and spacing procedures. The results supported the view that language transfer affects the acquisition of second language words, with more French words being learned than Chinese words. The superiority of the spacing procedure over the paired-associate presentation found in these results suggested that the spacing method diminished the adverse effects of blocking and thus enhanced learning. However, no significant interaction between the teaching procedures and different language words was detected. That is, under the spacing procedure, greater improvement in learning of Chinese words was not found. The experiment was thus modified by substituting the spacing procedure with aural feedback in Experiment 2. In this experiment, a significant interaction between these two factors was detected. That is, the recall for French was more than Chinese in the paired-associate condition, however, under the aural feedback, performance in Chinese was statistically equivalent to that in French. Hence, these findings may contradict the prediction of language transfer. It appears that the phenomenon of language transfer may be far less important in vocabulary learning than the use of a method of instruction which neutralises the negative effects of blocking.     

The effect of aural feedback in second language vocabulary learning

We examined instructional procedures in the teaching of second language vocabulary, using a paired-associate paradigm. Four presentation methods were investigated, including simultaneous standard, simultaneous reversal, aural feedback, and visual feedback. The study involved 16 grade 7 school children as subjects. Subjects were tested on 28 second language words during the post-test stage. Orthogonal comparisons were carried out for the obtained data. The two feedback conditions proved to be the most beneficial and the more favourable out of these was the aural feedback condition. Also, reversing the two inputs proved to be better than the conventional paired-associate (e.g. presenting the second language word first with the first language word second). Based on the results of this study, it is advocated that the feedback procedures, in particular, be used in second language learning with aural feedback replacing visual feedback.     

How context shapes category inferences and attribute preference for new ambiguous products

Extant research suggests that when marketers introduce products with functions that span multiple categories, consumers tend to generate beliefs in line with only a single category. This has been regarded as a major marketing challenge because it leads consumers to ignore key attributes from the product's supplementary category. Contrary to this prediction, the authors find that because consumers tend to classify new hybrid products by contrasting them against the competitive context, attributes from the supplementary category become more salient and thus contribute greater utility in choice. The authors pit the strength of this effect against several of the most dominant and favored category cues. The results confirm that classification inferences and attribute preference for new hybrid products are highly contextual, and as such, single category inferences need not translate directly into attribute preference.     

Context effects in multi-alternative decision making: empirical data and a Bayesian model

For decisions between many alternatives, the benchmark result is Hick's Law: that response time increases log-linearly with the number of choice alternatives. Even when Hick's Law is observed for response times, divergent results have been observed for error rates-sometimes error rates increase with the number of choice alternatives, and sometimes they are constant. We provide evidence from two experiments that error rates are mostly independent of the number of choice alternatives, unless context effects induce participants to trade speed for accuracy across conditions. Error rate data have previously been used to discriminate between competing theoretical accounts of Hick's Law, and our results question the validity of those conclusions. We show that a previously dismissed optimal observer model might provide a parsimonious account of both response time and error rate data. The model suggests that people approximate Bayesian inference in multi-alternative choice, except for some perceptual limitations.     

Effects of traffic context on eHMI icon comprehension

External human–machine-interfaces (eHMIs) might support the interaction between automated vehicles and pedestrians. The messages conveyed by eHMIs need to be understood quickly and correctly by their addressees. If implemented in the future, pedestrians will repeatedly encounter eHMIs in situations that feature different traffic context. So far, little is known about the influence of contextual cues like regulatory elements or (presumed) model behavior of fellow road users on the comprehension of eHMIs. In order to investigate possible effects of such contextual cues on comprehension, we conducted a picture-based online study among German residents (N = 175). Participants repeatedly interpreted three eHMI icons (“you can cross”, “do not cross”, and “pedestrian detected”) either without any context (control group) or within varying degrees of relevant context (experimental group). Context facilitated comprehensibility in terms of accuracy and subjective certainty. Relevant context was especially beneficial at first encounter. As soon as an icon’s meaning was internalized, the necessity of relevant context decreased. The effect of context should therefore be considered in future eHMI research as real-world comprehension might be underestimated otherwise.     

Memory retrieval as a self-propagating process

Retrieval of a subset of studied items and the presentation of those items as retrieval cues typically impair retrieval of the other items. Previous research on this self-limiting property of memory retrieval has relied heavily on short retention intervals and similar context between encoding and test. Here, we examined retrieval dynamics also after a prolonged retention interval with different spatial and social context between encoding and test, conditions that mimic people’s remembering in many situations of daily life. For both unrelated word lists and more integrated prose material, we found retrieval and cuing to impair recall of other studied items after a short retention interval, but to improve recall in the prolonged retention interval condition. The results demonstrate that retrieval dynamics depend critically on situation, indicating that quite often in daily life, retrieval may be a self-propagating, rather than a self-limiting process.     

Context reinstatement and memory for intrinsic versus extrinsic context: The role of item generation at encoding or retrieval

According to many theoretical accounts, reinstating study context at the time of test creates optimal circumstances for item retrieval. The role of context reinstatement was tested in reference to context memory in several experiments. On the encoding phase, participants were presented with words printed in two different font colors (intrinsic context) or two different sides of the computer screen (extrinsic context). At test, the context was reinstated or changed and participants were asked to recognize words and recollect their study context. Moreover, a read‐generate manipulation was introduced at encoding and retrieval, which was intended to influence the relative salience of item and context information. The results showed that context reinstatement had no effect on memory for extrinsic context but affected memory for intrinsic context when the item was generated at encoding and read at test. These results supported the hypothesis that context information is reconstructed at retrieval only when context was poorly encoded at study.