There goes the neighbourhood: Contextual control over the breadth of lexical activation when reading aloud

There are currently two computational accounts of how the time to read pseudohomophones (like BRANE) and their nonword controls (like FRANE) varies with changes in context. In Reynolds and Besner's (2005) account, readers vary the breadth of lexical activation in response to changes in context. A competing account proposed by Kwantes and Marmurek (2007 Kwantes, P. and Marmurek, H. 2007. Controlling lexical contributions to the reading of pseudohomophones. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 14: 373–378. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) and independently by Perry, Ziegler, and Zorzi (2007 Perry, C., Ziegler, J. C. and Zorzi, M. 2007. Nested incremental modeling in the development of computational theories: The CDP+ model of reading aloud. Psychological Review, 114: 273–315. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) has readers varying their response criterion in response to changes in context. The present work adjudicates between these two accounts by examining how the effect of neighbourhood density changes as a function of list context when reading pseudohomophones aloud. The results of an experiment and simulations from a leading computational model support the lexical breadth account, but are inconsistent with the response criterion account.     

Homophonic context effects when naming Japanese kanji: evidence for processing costs?

The current study investigated the effects of phonologically related context pictures on the naming latencies of target words in Japanese and Chinese. Reading bare words in alphabetic languages has been shown to be rather immune to effects of context stimuli, even when these stimuli are presented in advance of the target word (e.g., Glaser & Düngelhoff, 1984 Glaser, W. R. and Düngelhoff, F. J. 1984. The time course of picture–word interference. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 10: 640–654. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]; Roelofs, 2003 Roelofs, A. 2003. Goal-referenced selection of verbal action: Modeling attentional control in the Stroop task. Psychological Review, 110: 88–125. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). However, recently, semantic context effects of distractor pictures on the naming latencies of Japanese kanji (but not Chinese hànzì) words have been observed (Verdonschot, La Heij, & Schiller, 2010 Verdonschot, R. G., La Heij, W. and Schiller, N. O. 2010. Semantic context effects when naming Japanese kanji, but not Chinese hànzì. Cognition, 115: 512–518. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). In the present study, we further investigated this issue using phonologically related (i.e., homophonic) context pictures when naming target words in either Chinese or Japanese. We found that pronouncing bare nouns in Japanese is sensitive to phonologically related context pictures, whereas this is not the case in Chinese. The difference between these two languages is attributed to processing costs caused by multiple pronunciations for Japanese kanji.     

Differential impacts of age of acquisition on letter and semantic fluency in Alzheimer's disease patients and healthy older adults

The degree to which the typical age of acquisition (AoA) of words and word frequency have separable influences on verbal production tasks has been strongly debated. To examine the overlap between these factors in verbal fluency tasks, the performance of Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients (N?=?34) and normal elderly controls (N?=?36) was compared on semantic (e.g., vegetables) and letter (e.g., words that begin with F) fluency tasks. These comparisons revealed that words generated for the semantic fluency task had an earlier AoA while words generated for the letter fluency task had a higher word frequency. Differences in AoA between AD patients and controls were larger for semantic than letter fluency. These results suggest that AoA has an effect on verbal production that is independent of word frequency and that AoA has a semantic locus.     

Producing and recognizing words with two pronunciation variants: Evidence from novel schwa words

This study examined the lexical representations and psycholinguistic mechanisms underlying the production and recognition of novel words with two pronunciation variants in French. Participants first learned novel schwa words (e.g., /??nyk/), which varied in their alternating status (i.e., whether these words were learned with one or two variants) and, for alternating words, in the frequency of their variants. They were then tested in picture-naming (free or induced) and recognition memory tasks (i.e., deciding whether spoken items were learned during the experiment or not). Results for free naming show an influence of variant frequency on responses, more frequent variants being produced more often. Moreover, our data show an effect of the alternating status of the novel words on naming latencies, with longer latencies for alternating than for nonalternating novel words. These induced naming results suggest that both variants are stored as lexical entries and compete during the lexeme selection process. Results for recognition show an effect of variant frequency on reaction times and no effect of variant type (i.e., schwa versus reduced variant). Taken together, our findings suggest that participants both comprehend and produce novel French schwa words using two lexical representations, one for each variant.     

Imageability,age of acquisition,and frequency factors in acronym comprehension

In spite of their unusual orthographic and phonological form, acronyms (e.g., BBC, HIV, NATO) can become familiar to the reader, and their meaning can be accessed well enough that they are understood. The factors in semantic access for acronym stimuli were assessed using a word association task. Two analyses examined the time taken to generate a word association response to acronym cues. Responses were recorded more quickly to cues that elicited a large proportion of semantic responses, and those that were high in associative strength. Participants were shown to be faster to respond to cues which were imageable or early acquired. Frequency was not a significant predictor of word association responses. Implications for theories of lexical organisation are discussed.     

High-performers use the phonological loop less to process mental arithmetic during working memory tasks

This study investigated the effects of three working memory components—the central executive, phonological loop, and visuospatial sketchpad—on performance differences in complex mental arithmetic between individuals. Using the dual-task method, we examined how performance during two-digit addition was affected by load on the central executive (random tapping condition), phonological loop (articulatory suppression condition), and visuospatial sketchpad (spatial tapping condition) compared to that under no load (control condition) in high- and low-performers of complex mental arithmetic in Experiment 1. Low-performers showed an increase in errors under the random tapping and articulatory suppression conditions, whereas high-performers showed an increase of errors only under the random tapping condition. In Experiment 2, we conducted similar experiments on only the high-performers but used a shorter presentation time of each number. We found the same pattern for performing complex mental arithmetic as seen in Experiment 1. These results indicate that high-performers might reduce their dependence on the phonological loop, because the central executive enables them to choose a strategy in which they use less working memory capacity.     

Perceived product instrumentality: the process of scale purification and validation

Perceived product instrumentality (PPI) is a new construct that is proposed as a key process component of a general model of family purchasing behaviour. PPI reflects the degree to which consumers, apprehended as actors of social roles, deem a product to be helpful, facilitative of role performance, compatible with role identity and congruent with the self‐concept. The objective of this paper is threefold: (1) assess the PPI unidimensionality and reliability; (2) purify the PPI scale, and (3) assess its validity. First, a pilot survey was administered to a convenience sample of men and women, who filled in four identical lists of 33 items tapping their attitudes towards durables, and exploratory factor analysis was conducted on each set to explore the overall pattern of the items relationships. Five try‐out pools of different sizes (33, 28, 15, 13 and 9 items) were involved in the analysis. The 15‐item scale was retained. Secondly, a large‐scale survey was administered to 500 couples as part of an extensive research involving comprehensive model testing. Exploratory factor analysis was conducted on the whole sample for reliability and unidimensionality assessment. At times, the analysis is done on men's and women's sub‐samples separately in order to account for eventual differences among both populations. Thirdly, confirmatory factor was conducted, splitting the sample into two random halves: the generation sample and the validation sample. The first half served for the PPI scales purification. In this case, PPI was posited as the latent variable and the scale items were posited as the manifest ones. The second served to validate the PPI theory in a system's framework: PPI was posited as a latent dependent variable while other role orientations variables were posited as latent independent variables. Copyright © 2002 Henry Stewart Publications.     

中学生知识获得过程是从情景记忆向语义记忆转化的过程

本研究探讨中学生的知识掌握过程。针对2001—2002年度上学期教学内容,对初中二年级学生的四门课程分别进行两次测验。对于每道选择题,学生首先选择正确答案,然后指出记忆的意识状态：记住的、知道的、猜测的。结果发现,学生记忆意识类型的转变(由记住向知道)取决于课程类型、保持时间和学生等级。对于不同课程,学生占优势的意识类型不同,自然学科知道的反应占优势,社会学科记住的反应占优势;优等生知道的反应多于其他学生;随着学习时间的延长,中学生的意识类型发生了由记住向知道的转变,这表明知识掌握过程中,中学生的知识表征发生了由情景记忆向语义记忆的转变。     

Examining the Relationship Between Mathematics Anxiety and Mathematics Performance: An Instructional Hierarchy Perspective

This study investigated the relationship between mathematics anxiety, fluency, and error rates in basic mathematical operations among college students. College students were assigned to one of two groups (high anxiety or low anxiety) based on results from the Fennema-Sherman Mathematics Anxiety Scale (FSMAS). Both groups were then presented with timed tests in basic mathematical operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and linear equations). Results suggested that the higher mathematics anxiety group had significantly lower fluency levels across all mathematical operations tests. However, there were no significant differences in error rates between the two groups across any of the probes suggesting that mathematics anxiety is more related to higher levels of learning than to the initial acquisition stage of learning. Discussion focuses on a) stages of learning and their potential relationship to mathematics anxiety, b) the relationship between mathematics anxiety and mathematics performance, and c) directions for future research.     

Frames of reference in spatial language acquisition

Languages differ in how they encode spatial frames of reference. It is unknown how children acquire the particular frame-of-reference terms in their language (e.g., left/right, north/south). The present paper uses a word-learning paradigm to investigate 4-year-old English-speaking children’s acquisition of such terms. In Part I, with five experiments, we contrasted children’s acquisition of novel word pairs meaning left-right and north-south to examine their initial hypotheses and the relative ease of learning the meanings of these terms. Children interpreted ambiguous spatial terms as having environment-based meanings akin to north and south, and they readily learned and generalized north-south meanings. These studies provide the first direct evidence that children invoke geocentric representations in spatial language acquisition. However, the studies leave unanswered how children ultimately acquire “left” and “right.” In Part II, with three more experiments, we investigated why children struggle to master body-based frame-of-reference words. Children successfully learned “left” and “right” when the novel words were systematically introduced on their own bodies and extended these words to novel (intrinsic and relative) uses; however, they had difficulty learning to talk about the left and right sides of a doll. This difficulty was paralleled in identifying the left and right sides of the doll in a non-linguistic memory task. In contrast, children had no difficulties learning to label the front and back sides of a doll. These studies begin to paint a detailed account of the acquisition of spatial terms in English, and provide insights into the origins of diverse spatial reference frames in the world’s languages.