Intra‐sentential context effects on the interpretation of logical metonymy⋆

Verbs such as enjoy in the student enjoyed the book exhibit logical metonymy: enjoy is interpreted as enjoy reading. Theoreticalwork [Computational Linguistics 17 (4) (1991) 409; The Generative Lexicon, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1995] predicts that this interpretation can be influenced by intra‐sentential context, e.g., by the subject of enjoy. In this article, we test this prediction using a completion experiment and find that the interpretation of a metonymic verb is influenced by the semantic role of its subject. We present a Bayesian model that accounts for the interpretation of logical metonymy and achieves a good fit on our experimental data. We show that the parameters of the model can be estimated from completion data or from corpus data.     

A METHODOLOGY FOR DISTINGUISHING BETWEEN EXTINCTION AND PUNISHMENT EFFECTS ASSOCIATED WITH RESPONSE BLOCKING

We present one method for distinguishing between extinction and punishment effects. The proportion of responses that produced a consequence (blocking) was varied while hand mouthing was treated in a man diagnosed with profound mental retardation. Response patterns across the schedule changes suggested that the blocking procedure functioned as a punishing event.     

Failure of Retrospective Inference in Rats' Taste Aversion

Three experiments explored the possibility of retrospective inference in the rat. Experiment 1 revealed that poisoning of an element of a taste compound after single compound poisoning enhanced aversion to the other element, and that presentation of an element without poison after the compound poisoning reduced aversion to the other element. These results were opposite to those predicted by retrospective inference. Experiment 2 eliminated some confounding variables and examined the effect of element poisoning after compound poisoning. The result again was opposite to what the retrospective view predicts. The results, however, accorded with the idea that within-compound learning was established during compound presentation, and subsequent poisoning or nonpoisoning of one element affected response to the other element via the within-compound learning. In Experiment 3, the possibility of within-compound learning was reduced by using sequential presentation of tastes, but there was no indication of retrospective inference even under this condition.     

Scene congruency biases Binocular Rivalry

Contextual regularities, that is, objects’ tendency to appear with certain other objects, facilitate the processing of visual scenes and confer contextually incongruent objects with a special attentional status. This study was aimed at investigating the mechanisms underlying this attentional advantage using Binocular Rivalry (BR). In two experiments, congruent and incongruent images (e.g., a man drinking from a glass vs. a man “drinking” from a hairbrush) were pitted against each other, yielding a version of BR in which two objects rival within a given scene. Incongruent objects predominated in awareness longer than congruent ones. This effect stemmed from the fact that their dominance epochs lasted longer on the average than those of congruent objects, suggesting a difficulty to disengage attention from such objects. On the other hand, no support was found for the notion that incongruent objects also attract attention.     

Accounting for fluctuations in body dissatisfaction

The present study evaluated whether the strength of relationship between contextual cues (presence of company and mood) and state body dissatisfaction varied as a function of individual differences in key trait measures (body shame, body surveillance tendencies, internalization of appearance standards, and trait affect) which have been linked to trait body dissatisfaction. Fifty-five undergraduate women completed a questionnaire containing the trait-based measures and then carried a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) for a 7-day period. The PDA prompted participants six times daily to self-report their current mood and state body dissatisfaction. Multi-level modeling revealed that individual differences in body shame predicted inter-individual variability in the strength of the relationships between presence of company and state body dissatisfaction, and positive mood and state body dissatisfaction. Trait positive affect also explained variance in the positive mood state-body dissatisfaction relationship. The implications of the findings for prevention of body image disturbances are discussed.     

Acquired flavour preferences: Contextual control of adaptation-level effects

This experiment investigated the role of context in the expression of conditioned flavour preferences. Rats were trained on a mixture of almond and sucrose and were then given intermixed exposures to almond in one context (Context A) and to sucrose in a second context (Context S). Finally, choice tests were given in both contexts, with one group given almond-versus-water tests and the other almond + sucrose-versus-sucrose tests. Preference for almond over water was greater in Context A than in Context S. Conversely, preference for almond + sucrose over sucrose was greater in Context S than in Context A. These results suggest that the perceived sweetness of a flavour depends on the context in which it is presented and confirm that expression of a flavour preference depends on the type of test employed.     

Forgotten but not gone: Context effects on recognition do not require explicit memory for context

Context effects on recognition memory provide an important indirect assay of associative learning and source memory. Neuropsychological studies have indicated that such context effects may obtain even if the contexts themselves are not remembered—for example, in individuals impaired on direct tests of memory for contextual information. In contrast, a recent study indicated that the effects of temporal context reinstatement on visual recognition obtain only when the contextual information itself was explicitly recollected. Here we report that the effects of reinstatement of spatial-simultaneous context on visual object recognition memory obtain irrespective of whether those context stimuli are explicitly recognized. We suggest that spatial-simultaneous context effects might be based on ensemble unitization of target and context stimuli at encoding, whereas temporal context effects may require recollective processes.     

The selective directed forgetting effect: Can people forget only part of a text?

Participants studied sentences describing two different characters and then were told to forget the sentences about only one of the characters. A second list contained sentences attributed to a third character. Subsequently, they received a recall test on the sentences about the original two characters. When the sentences could be thematically integrated, participants showed no directed forgetting relative to a control group that was never told to forget. However, with unrelated sentences, participants selectively forgot the target character's sentences without forgetting the other character's sentences. This selective directed forgetting effect is a novel empirical result. We interpret the results as consistent with Radvansky's (1999) ideas about inhibition with textual materials.     

How does encoding context affect memory in younger and older adults?

How does encoding context affect memory? Participants studied visually presented words viewed concurrently with a rich (intact face) or weak (scrambled face) image as context and subsequently made “Remember”, “Know”, or “New” judgements to words presented alone. In Experiment 1a, younger, but not older, adults showed higher recollection accuracy to words from rich- than from weak-context encoding trials. The age-related deficit in recollection occurred, in Experiment 1b, even when encoding and retrieval time was doubled in older adults, suggesting that insufficient processing time cannot account for this age-related deficit. In Experiment 1c, dividing attention in young, during encoding, reduced overall memory, though the recollection boost from rich encoding contexts remained, suggesting that reduced attention resources cannot explain this age-related deficit. Experiment 2 showed that an own-age bias, to face images as context, could not explain the age-related differences either. Results suggest that age deficits in recollection stem from a lack of spontaneous binding, or elaboration, of context to target information during encoding.