Refractoriness and the healthy brain: A behavioural study on semantic access

While many behavioural studies on refractory phenomena in lexical/semantic access have focused on the mechanisms involved in the oral production of names, comprehension tasks have been almost exclusively used in neuropsychological studies on brain damaged patients. We report the results of two experiments on healthy participants conducted by means of speeded word to picture matching tasks. They assess the effects of the same variables examined in the study of refractory access dysphasic patients: semantic distance and word frequency (experiment 1) and presentation rate and serial position effects (experiment 2). Semantic access patients usually show little effect of word frequency but a large semantic distance effect. However, critical in characterising the syndrome as ‘refractory’, effects of presentation rate and serial position should also be present. The experiments involved the use of a deadline response procedure. The critical manipulation was the absence of a Response Stimulus Interval (RSI) in the fast presentation rate conditions; slower presentation rates involved 1 s RSI. With these manipulations the typical behavioural pattern of performance provided by semantic access dysphasic patients was reproduced. Semantic distance effects were more powerful than word frequency effects (experiment1). Presentation rate effects were found and, most important for a “refractory” account of the effects, a serial position effect was obtained (experiment 2). These results provide the first evidence of such a broad range of refractory effects at the same time in comprehension tasks in healthy subjects and support a purely semantic account for the locus of refractoriness. Moreover, error analysis showed a predominance of perseverative errors with subsequent representations of the same target, supporting a failure of cognitive control mechanisms as the cause of refractory behaviour. The findings are discussed in the light of current models of lexical and semantic processing.     

Hierarchy and scope of planning in subject–verb agreement production

Two subject–verb agreement error elicitation studies tested the hierarchical feature-passing account of agreement computation in production and three timing-based alternatives: linear distance to the head noun, semantic integration, and a combined effect of both (a scope of planning account). In Experiment 1, participants completed subject noun phrase (NP) stimuli consisting of a head NP followed by two prepositional phrase (PP) modifiers, where the first PP modified the first NP, and the second PP modified one of the two preceding NPs. Semantic integration between the head noun and the local noun within each PP was held constant across structures. The mismatch error pattern showed an effect of linear distance to the head noun and no influence of hierarchical distance. In Experiment 2, participants completed NP PP PP stimuli in which both PPs modified the head noun, and both the order of the two PPs and the local nouns’ degree of semantic integration with the head noun were varied. The pattern of mismatch errors reflected a combination of semantic integration and linear distance to the head noun. These studies indicate that agreement processes are strongly constrained by grammatical-level scope of planning, with local nouns planned closer to the head having a greater chance of interfering with agreement computation.     

Integrative problem-centered metaframeworks therapy I: core concepts and hypothesizing

Over the last 20 years psychotherapy and family therapy have been inundated with a plethora of empirically validated treatments for particular disorders. That trend will increase. Psychotherapists will increasingly be exhorted and ultimately required to integrate empirical data and multicultural competence into their practice. Additionally, individual psychotherapy's default dominance of psychotherapeutic discourse needs to integrate and come to theoretical and clinical terms with the implications of the growing body of research demonstrating the validity and value of a multisystemic perspective. This article (and its companion article) presents a comprehensive, integrative, multisystemic, and empirically informed psychotherapeutic perspective to help therapists and psychotherapy trainers successfully address these challenges-Integrative Problem Centered Metaframeworks (IPCM) Therapy. This first article presents and illustrates IPCM's theoretical foundation, core concepts, and "case formulating" components. It delineates a Blueprint for the practice and teaching of 21st century psychotherapists who can meld science and art into best practice.     

The pathology of validity

Stephen Read has presented an argument for the inconsistency of the concept of validity. We extend Read’s results and show that this inconsistency is but one half of a larger problem. Like the concept of truth, validity is infected with what we call semantic pathology, a condition that actually gives rise to two symptoms: inconsistency and indeterminacy. After sketching the basic ideas behind semantic pathology and explaining how it manifests both symptoms in the concept of truth, we present cases that establish the indeterminacy of validity and that link this indeterminacy with the concept’s inconsistency. Our conclusion is that an adequate treatment of the semantic pathology thus revealed must deal with both of its symptoms. Further, it must extend to the occurrences of this condition elsewhere: in the concept of truth, in the other central semantic notions, and even in certain philosophical concepts outside semantics.     

Processing events: behavioral and neuromagnetic correlates of Aspectual Coercion

Much recent psycho- and neuro-linguistic work has aimed to elucidate the mechanisms by which sentence meanings are composed by investigating the processing of semantic mismatch. One controversial case for theories of semantic composition is expressions such as the clown jumped for ten minutes, in which the aspectual properties of a punctual verb clash with those of a durative modifier. Such sentences have been proposed to involve a coercion operation which shifts the punctual meaning of the verb to an iterative one. However, processing studies addressing this hypothesis have yielded mixed results. In this study, we tested four hypotheses of how aspectual mismatch is resolved with self-paced reading and magnetoencephalography. Using a set of verbs normed for punctuality, we identified an immediate behavioral cost of mismatch. The neural correlates of this processing were found to match effects in midline prefrontal regions previously implicated in the resolution of complement coercion. We also identified earlier effects in right-lateral frontal and temporal sites. We suggest that of the representational hypotheses currently in the literature, these data are most consistent with an account where aspectual mismatch initially involves the composition of an anomalous meaning that is later repaired via coercion.     

Nature and facts about natural and artifactual categories: Sex differences in the semantic priming paradigm

There is abundant evidence from behavioral and neurophysiological experiments for the distinction of natural versus artifactual categories and a gender-specific difference: women’s performances in cognitive tasks increase when natural categories are used, whereas men’s performances increase with artifactual categories. Here, we used the semantic priming paradigm to study retrieval processes by presenting category labels as primes and exemplars as targets. Overall, in two experiments we found larger priming effects for natural than for artifactual categories. In addition, females showed positive priming effects for natural but negative effects for artifactual categories, whereas males showed positive priming effects for both categories. This pattern matches with that from other tasks and can be interpreted as evidence that the findings from these other tasks are, at least partially, indeed due to different representations or processing modes for males and females and not (exclusively) due to—for example—different familiarity with a category. In a further experiment, we showed that the found pattern for females can be manipulated by focusing on perceptual vs. functional features. The results can be interpreted as first evidence that there are (eventually in addition to different “crystallized” semantic structures) specific default processing modes that differ for males and females.     

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.     

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.     

Salvaging and secularizing the semantic contents of religion: the limitations of Habermas’s postmetaphysical proposal

The article considers Jürgen Habermas’s views on the relationship between postmetaphysical philosophy and religion. It outlines Habermas’s shift from his earlier, apparently dismissive attitude towards religion to his presently more receptive stance. This more receptive stance is evident in his recent emphasis on critical engagement with the semantic contents of religion and may be characterized by two interrelated theses: (a) the view that religious contributions should be included in political deliberations in the informally organized public spheres of contemporary democracies, though translated into a secular language for the purposes of legislation and formal decision making and (b) the view that postmetaphysical philosophy should seek to salvage the semantic contents of religious traditions in order to supply the evocative images, exemplary figures, and inspirational narratives it needs for its social and political projects. With regard to (a), it argues that the translation requirement impairs the political autonomy of religious believers and other metaphysically inclined citizens, suggesting that this difficulty could be alleviated by making a distinction between epistemologically authoritarian and non-authoritarian religious beliefs. With regard to (b), it argues that the salvaging operation is not as straightforward as Habermas seems to suppose and that social and political philosophy may not be able to tap the semantic power of religious traditions without relying on metaphysical assumptions; it concludes that, here, too, a distinction between authoritarian and non-authoritarian approaches to knowledge and validity may be useful.     

Semantic boost on episodic associations: an empirically-based computational model

Words become associated following repeated co-occurrence episodes. This process might be further determined by the semantic characteristics of the words. The present study focused on how semantic and episodic factors interact in incidental formation of word associations. First, we found that human participants associate semantically related words more easily than unrelated words; this advantage increased linearly with repeated co-occurrence. Second, we developed a computational model, SEMANT, suggesting a possible mechanism for this semantic-episodic interaction. In SEMANT, episodic associations are implemented through lateral connections between nodes in a pre-existent self-organized map of word semantics. These connections are strengthened at each instance of concomitant activation, proportionally with the amount of the overlapping activity waves of activated nodes. In computer simulations SEMANT replicated the dynamics of associative learning in humans and led to testable predictions concerning normal associative learning as well as impaired learning in a diffuse semantic system like that characteristic of schizophrenia.