Lexical configuration and lexical engagement: when adults learn new words

People know thousands of words in their native language, and each of these words must be learned at some time in the person's lifetime. A large number of these words will be learned when the person is an adult, reflecting the fact that the mental lexicon is continuously changing. We explore how new words get added to the mental lexicon, and provide empirical support for a theoretical distinction between what we call lexical configuration and lexical engagement. Lexical configuration is the set of factual knowledge associated with a word (e.g., the word's sound, spelling, meaning, or syntactic role). Almost all previous research on word learning has focused on this aspect. However, it is also critical to understand the process by which a word becomes capable of lexical engagement--the ways in which a lexical entry dynamically interacts with other lexical entries, and with sublexical representations. For example, lexical entries compete with each other during word recognition (inhibition within the lexical level), and they also support the activation of their constituents (top-down lexical-phonemic facilitation, and lexically-based perceptual learning). We systematically vary the learning conditions for new words, and use separate measures of lexical configuration and engagement. Several surprising dissociations in behavior demonstrate the importance of the theoretical distinction between configuration and engagement.     

Study on emotion spaces with centrality measure

In this paper, we study existing models of emotion space using centrality, which is borrowed from network theory, to identify key emotions as the central nodes in a network, for the purposes of understanding the existing emotion spaces better in a new way. With several different definitions of centrality, key emotions are identified for four existing emotion space models. We also propose a method for integrating existing spaces to build a refined space with more emotion terms. Each model identified different key emotions. When we reduced emotion spaces such that they each contained 21 common emotions, the key emotions identified remained different, implying fundamental structural differences among existing emotion space models. These findings call for further experimental verification and the refinement of emotion models for future research to make it more useful in emotion research.     

言语吸引力影响因素探索：物理属性和社会特征

语音吸引力是个体吸引力的重要组成部分。为探索言语吸引力影响因素,以汉语词汇为材料,设计实验分析语音基频、共振峰等物理属性以及词义、声音受喜欢程度和语音性别等社会属性对语音吸引力的影响。结果表明：分析物理属性,基频、共振峰等并未能预测语音吸引力;分析社会属性,较之词语意义,声音本身具有的吸引力水平对言语吸引力评价影响更大;而男性和女性对两种性别言语吸引力评价差异不显著。言语吸引力评价在男性和女性间具有一致性：＂好声音＂比＂会说话＂更加容易被认为具有吸引力。     

A phonetic approach to consonant repetition in early words

The goal of this study was to evaluate movement-based principles for understanding early speech output patterns. Consonant repetition patterns within children's actual productions of word forms were analyzed using spontaneous speech data from 10 typically developing American-English learning children between 12 and 36 months of age. Place of articulation, word level patterns, and developmental trends in CVC and CVCV repeated word forms were evaluated. Labial and coronal place repetitions dominated. Regressive repetition (e.g., [gag] for “dog”) occurred frequently in CVC but not in CVCV word forms. Consonant repetition decreased over time. However, the children produced sound types available reported as being within young children's production system capabilities in consonant repetitions in all time periods. Findings suggest that a movement-based approach can provide a framework for comprehensively characterizing consonant place repetition patterns in early speech development.     

BALDEY: A database of auditory lexical decisions

In an auditory lexical decision experiment, 5541 spoken content words and pseudowords were presented to 20 native speakers of Dutch. The words vary in phonological make-up and in number of syllables and stress pattern, and are further representative of the native Dutch vocabulary in that most are morphologically complex, comprising two stems or one stem plus derivational and inflectional suffixes, with inflections representing both regular and irregular paradigms; the pseudowords were matched in these respects to the real words. The BALDEY (“biggest auditory lexical decision experiment yet”) data file includes response times and accuracy rates, with for each item morphological information plus phonological and acoustic information derived from automatic phonemic segmentation of the stimuli. Two initial analyses illustrate how this data set can be used. First, we discuss several measures of the point at which a word has no further neighbours and compare the degree to which each measure predicts our lexical decision response outcomes. Second, we investigate how well four different measures of frequency of occurrence (from written corpora, spoken corpora, subtitles, and frequency ratings by 75 participants) predict the same outcomes. These analyses motivate general conclusions about the auditory lexical decision task. The (publicly available) BALDEY database lends itself to many further analyses.     

Written threat: Electrophysiological evidence for an attention bias to affective words in social anxiety disorder

Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is associated with heightened sensitivity to threat cues, typically represented by emotional facial expressions. To examine if this bias can be transferred to a general hypersensitivity or whether it is specific to disorder relevant cues, we investigated electrophysiological correlates of emotional word processing (alpha activity and event-related potentials) in 20 healthy participants and 20 participants with SAD. The experimental task was a silent reading of neutral, positive, physically threatening and socially threatening words (the latter were abusive swear words) while responding to a randomly presented dot. Subsequently, all participants were asked to recall as many words as possible during an unexpected recall test. Participants with SAD showed blunted sensory processing followed by a rapid processing of emotional words during early stages (early posterior negativity – EPN). At later stages, all participants showed enhanced processing of negative (physically and socially threatening) compared to neutral and positive words (N400). Moreover, at later processing stages alpha activity was increased specifically for negative words in participants with SAD but not in healthy controls. Recall of emotional words for all subjects was best for socially threatening words, followed by negative and positive words irrespective of social anxiety. The present findings indicate that SAD is associated with abnormalities in emotional word processing characterised by early hypervigilance to emotional cues followed by cognitive avoidance at later processing stages. Most importantly, the specificity of these attentional biases seems to change as a function of time with a general emotional bias at early and a more specific bias at later processing stages.     

Do handwritten words magnify lexical effects in visual word recognition?

An examination of how the word recognition system is able to process handwritten words is fundamental to formulate a comprehensive model of visual word recognition. Previous research has revealed that the magnitude of lexical effects (e.g., the word-frequency effect) is greater with handwritten words than with printed words. In the present lexical decision experiments, we examined whether the quality of handwritten words moderates the recruitment of top-down feedback, as reflected in word-frequency effects. Results showed a reading cost for difficult-to-read and easy-to-read handwritten words relative to printed words. But the critical finding was that difficult-to-read handwritten words, but not easy-to-read handwritten words, showed a greater word-frequency effect than printed words. Therefore, the inherent physical variability of handwritten words does not necessarily boost the magnitude of lexical effects.     

Attention and semantic processing during speech: an fMRI study

This fMRI study was conducted to investigate whether language semantics is processed even when attention is not explicitly directed to word meanings. In the “unattended” condition, the subjects performed a visual detection task while hearing semantically related and unrelated word pairs. In the “phoneme” condition, the subjects made phoneme judgements between prime and target words, and in the “word” condition, they indicated whether the words in each word pair were semantically related or unrelated. In the word condition, stronger activity was obtained for unrelated than related words in the superior temporal gyrus/sulcus (STG/STS), lingual/fusiform gyri and cuneus, whereas in the phoneme condition no such effect was observed. However, during the unattended condition, stronger activity was found in the right STG. Our results suggest that both semantic judgement of word pairs and their passive hearing activate the same neural networks but this activation is more restricted in the passive hearing.     

汉语隐喻理解时程的ERPs研究

摘 要 本研究使用ERPs技术考察隐喻句与本义句理解时程的异同,以研究汉语隐喻的理解机制。以句尾范式向被试随机呈现本义句、熟悉隐喻句、新奇隐喻句及错误义句各50句,被试的任务为判断每句话是否有意义。结果显示：两种隐喻句诱发的N400波形与头皮分布情况和本义句无明显差异,且两种隐喻句诱发的N400波幅高于本义句。本研究结果证明汉语隐喻义和本义理解的认知机制类似,支持隐喻理解的平行加工假说,且加工隐喻义需要耗费更多的认知资源。     

自尊与记忆偏向的关系

采用2（外显自尊：高、低）×2（内隐自尊：高、低）×2（编码深度：浅、深）×3（词汇效价：积极、中性、消极）混合设计,考察了89名不同自尊类型的大学生在不同编码深度下对不同效价形容词的再认记忆。结果发现：（1）在浅水平编码组中,低内隐自尊被试比高内隐自尊被试有更强的积极记忆偏向,而高低不同水平的外显自尊者对于词语记忆偏向没有显著差异;（2）在深程度编码组中不同自尊水平影响被试对积极词的无意识提取;（3）所有被试均有积极记忆偏向。