Faceted Thesauri

The basic elements of faceted thesauri are described, together with a review of their origins and some prominent examples. Their use in browsing and searching applications is discussed. Faceted thesauri are distinguished from faceted classification schemes, while acknowledging the close similarities. The paper concludes by comparing faceted thesauri and related knowledge organization systems to ontologies and discussing appropriate areas of use.     

Categorical priming of famous person recognition: a hitherto overlooked methodological factor can resolve a long-standing debate

The Burton, Bruce and Johnston [Burton, A. M., Bruce, V., & Johnston, R. A. (1990). Understanding face recognition with an interactive activation model. British Journal of Psychology, 81, 361-380] model of person recognition proposes that representations of known persons are connected by shared semantic attributes. This predicts that priming should be observed between persons from the same category, e.g. famous persons with the same occupation. Empirical investigations to date have produced mixed results, and comparison of methods suggests that priming based on shared occupation may have been suppressed by the presence of prime-target pairs representing a stronger relationship of close association. In the present experiment, 72 participants performed a familiarity decision to famous names preceded by close associates or members of the same occupational category. As predicted, categorical priming was observed in the group of participants for whom the same occupation prime-target pairs were presented before the close-associate pairs, but not in the group for whom the two types of relationship were intermixed. Associate priming was significant in both groups. These results are attributed to differing levels of processing of the primes, invoked by participants' observation of the most salient prime-target relationship.     

Interactions of reading and semantics along the ventral visual processing stream

Converging evidence supports a distributed-plus-hub view of semantic processing, in which there are distributed modular semantic sub-systems (e.g., for shape, colour, and action) connected to an amodal semantic hub. Furthermore, object semantic processing of colour and shape, and lexical reading and identification, are processed mainly along the ventral stream, while action semantic processing occurs mainly along the dorsal stream. In Experiment 1, participants read a prime word that required imagining either the object or action referent, and then named a lexical word target. In Experiments 2 and 3, participants performed a lexical decision task (LDT) with the same targets as in Experiment 1, in the presence of foils that were legal nonwords (NW; Experiment 2) or pseudohomophones (PH; Experiment 3). Semantic priming was similar in effect size regardless of prime type for naming, but was greater for object primes than action primes for the LDT with PH foils, suggesting a shared-stream advantage when the task demands focus on orthographic lexical processing. These experiments extend the distributed-plus-hub model, and provide a novel paradigm for further research.     

Connectivity among semantic associates: an fMRI study of semantic priming

Semantic priming refers to a reduction in the reaction time to identify or make a judgment about a stimulus that has been immediately preceded by a semantically related word or picture and is thought to result from a partial overlap in the semantic associates of the two words. A semantic priming lexical decision task using spoken words was presented in event-related fMRI and behavioral paradigms. Word pairs varied in terms of semantic relatedness and the connectivity between associates. Thirteen right-handed subjects underwent fMRI imaging and 10 additional subjects were tested in a behavioral version of the semantic priming task. It was hypothesized priming would be greatest, reaction time fastest, and cortical activation reduced the most for related word pairs of high connectivity, followed by related word pairs of low connectivity, and then by unrelated word pairs. Behavioral and fMRI results confirmed these predictions. fMRI activity located primarily in bilateral posterior superior and middle temporal regions showed modulation by connectivity and relatedness. The results suggest that these regions are involved in semantic processing.     

Lexical coherence in short-term memory: Strategic reconstruction or “semantic glue”?

This study explores the foundation of lexical/semantic phoneme binding effects in verbal short-term memory (STM). The immediate serial recall of pure lists of words and nonwords was compared with the recall of mixed lists that had either a predictable, alternating structure (e.g., wnwnwn) or an unpredictable structure (i.e., the serial positions of the words/nonwords could not be known in advance). The study provides evidence for two separate mechanisms by which long-term linguistic knowledge contributes to STM. First, there was evidence for automatic lexical/semantic binding effects that were independent of knowledge of lexical status. The nonwords in both types of mixed list damaged word recall and encouraged the phonological elements of words to migrate. In both alternating and unpredictable mixed lists, the phonemes of words were more likely than the phonemes of nonwords to be recalled together as a coherent item, suggesting that lexical/semantic knowledge encourages the phonological elements of words to emerge together in immediate serial recall, even when lexical status is unknown. Secondly, there was evidence for “strategic redintegration”, which was dependent on prior knowledge of the lexical status of the items in mixed lists. When participants recalled items that they knew to be words in advance, they were able to use this knowledge to constrain their responses so that they were more likely to be lexically appropriate. These findings motivate modifications to current theories of the interaction between linguistic knowledge and verbal short-term memory.     

Coding categorical and coordinate spatial relations in visual–spatial short-term memory

Four experiments explored the coding of categorical and coordinate spatial relations in visual–spatial short-term memory (VSSTM). Participants judged whether two stimuli presented successively on a computer screen were the same or different. On positional change trials the two stimuli differed in the position of one element. Positional changes were of two types, coordinate and categorical. On coordinate trials the position of one element changed by a small amount, but retained the categorical relationships (above, below, left of, right of) to all other elements. On categorical trials one element moved by the same amount but additionally changed its categorical relationship to one of the other elements (e.g., changed from below to above). Participants detected categorical changes more accurately than coordinate changes when the elements were independent locations marked by squares, indicating that the categorical relationships amongst the squares were encoded in memory. Furthermore, this categorical advantage was unmodulated by either the suppression of articulation (Experiment 2) or by the requirement to retain either colour–position associations or positions only (Experiment 3). When the elements to be remembered were the vertices of simple outline polygons (Experiment 4) there was no categorical advantage, establishing the effect as spatial in nature. Contrary to predictions derived from Postma and De Haan (1996) Postma, A. and De Haan, E. H. 1996. What was where? Memory for object locations. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 49A: 178–199. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], the employment of categorical relations appears not to be specifically linked to either verbal coding or to the requirement to associate objects with positions. The results suggest that the categorical relations are an intrinsic property of the representation of spatial configurations.     

Effects of the degree of meaning similarity on cross-language semantic priming in highly proficient bilinguals

This study aimed to determine if access to meaning can be directly achieved from the words in the two languages, examining the influence of the degree of semantic overlap between related words across languages in the pattern of priming effects. Nonassociative semantically related words (members of the same category) were used, avoiding explicitly associative relationships. Using a priming paradigm, highly proficient Catalan–Spanish bilinguals were visually presented with pairs of words that either were translations of each other, had a very close semantic relationship (in terms of shared features), a close semantic relationship, or no semantic relationship at all. Participants performed either a lexical decision task (Experiment 1) or a semantic decision task (Experiment 2). The main results of the study were the same in both language directions (Spanish–Catalan and Catalan–Spanish), showing that the degree of semantic overlap (in terms of shared features) between words in different languages can modulate priming effects, regardless of the language of the prime and the task used. These results demonstrate that there is cross-language activation of shared semantic representations and, thus, that highly proficient bilinguals can have direct access to word meaning from the two languages.     

La subjetividad,sin más. Concepto e implicaciones epistemológicas e interventivas

Resumen

Este artículo introductorio se dedica a presentar el concepto de subjetividad desde una perspectiva teórica socioconstruccionista y desde la lógica disciplinaria de la Psicología Cultural. Eso implica entenderla como socialmente construida, en permanente transformación y con contenidos de naturaleza cultural. Posteriormente, el texto se adentra en algunas de las implicaciones que comporta trabajar con la subjetividad. Implicaciones y retos para la investigación, en relación al objeto y al sentido epistemológico del conocimiento construido, hasta implicaciones y retos en el ámbito interventivo, concretamente para la práctica terapéutica. Con todo, no se pretende un texto de profundización teórica, filosófica o histórica, sino que quiere ser fundamentalmente una invitación, un abordaje orientado a la difusión social de la necesidad de recuperar este concepto y ponerlo en el centro del pensamiento psicológico, tanto para el orientado a la investigación como para el que actúa de base de la intervención.     

Personality and Substance Use in Midlife: Conscientiousness as a Moderator and the Effects of Trait Change

Personality traits predict substance use in adolescence, but less is known about prospective substance use in middle age and beyond. Moreover, there is growing interest in how personality change and the multiplicative effects among personality traits relate to substance use. Participants included approximately 4000 adults aged 25-74 who participated in two waves of the Midlife in the US (MIDUS) study. Higher levels of neuroticism, extraversion, openness, and lower levels of conscientiousness and agreeableness predicted longitudinal substance use. Increases in neuroticism and openness predicted increased substance use while increases in conscientiousness and agreeableness predicted decreased substance use. Higher levels of conscientiousness moderated two of the other trait main effects. Personality, trait change, and interactions among traits reliably forecasted 10-year substance-use behaviors.     

Effects of speed of word processing on semantic access: the case of bilingualism

Bilingual speakers generally manifest slower word recognition than monolinguals. We investigated the consequences of the word processing speed on semantic access in bilinguals. The paradigm involved a stream of English words and pseudowords presented in succession at a constant rate. English-Welsh bilinguals and English monolinguals were asked to count the number of letters in pseudowords and actively disregard words. They were not explicitly told that pairs of words in immediate succession were embedded and could either be semantically related or not. We expected that slower word processing in bilinguals would result in semantic access indexed by semantic priming. As expected, bilinguals showed significant semantic priming, indexed by an N400 modulation, whilst monolinguals did not. Moreover, bilinguals were slower in performing the task. The results suggest that bilinguals cannot discriminate between pseudowords and words without accessing semantic information whereas monolinguals can dismiss English words on the basis of subsemantic information.