The Role of Semantic Features in Verb Processing

The present study examined the general hypothesis that, as for nouns, stable representations of semantic knowledge relative to situations expressed by verbs are available and accessible in long term memory in normal people. Regular associations between verbs and past tenses in French adults allowed to abstract two superordinate semantic features in the representation of verb meaning: durativity and resultativity. A pilot study was designed to select appropriate items according to these features: durative, non-resultative verbs and non-durative, resultative verbs. An experimental study was then conducted to assess semantic priming in French adults with two visual semantic-decision tasks at a 200- and 100-ms SOA. In the durativity decision task, participants had to decide if the target referred to a durable or non-durable situation. In the resultativity decision task, they had to decide if it referred to a situation with a directly observable outcome or without any clear external outcome. Targets were preceded by similar, opposite, and neutral primes. Results showed that semantic priming can tap verb meaning at a 200- and 100-ms SOA, with the restriction that only the positive value of each feature benefited from priming, that is the durative and resultative values. Moreover, processing of durativity and resultativity is far from comparable since facilitation was shown on the former with similar and opposite priming, whereas it was shown on the latter only with similar priming. Overall, these findings support Le Ny’s (in: Saint-Dizier, Viegas (eds) Computational lexical semantics, 1995; Cahier de Recherche Linguistique LanDisCo 12:85–100, 1998; Comment l’esprit produit du sens, 2005) general hypothesis that classificatory properties of verbs could be interpreted as semantic features and the view that semantic priming can tap verb meaning, as noun meaning.     

The development and effectiveness of memory strategies in kindergarten and elementary school: Findings from the Würzburg and Göttingen longitudinal memory studies

This article reports findings of the Würzburg and Göttingen Longitudinal Memory Studies, which focused on children's verbal memory development. The studies started with 102 (German) kindergarten children in Würzburg and 86 second-graders in Göttingen who were tested on various memory measures, including sort-recall, memory capacity, metamemory, and verbal IQ. Assessments were repeated nine times, with adjacent measurement points separated by 6-month time intervals. The main goals of the studies concerned the assessment of utilization deficiencies during the course of strategy development, the analysis of factors influencing the effectiveness of strategy use, and the occurrence of multiple strategy use. Findings confirmed the outcome of previous longitudinal studies in that semantic organization strategies were not always accompanied by superior recall, but utilization deficiency problems were comparably rare. Strategy effectiveness was shown as being affected mainly by memory capacity and by children's tendency to engage in multiple strategy use. However, children did not start to apply multiple strategies effectively until the end of Grade 2.     

Toward a New Understanding of Nature, Reality, and the Sacred: A Syllabus

Adjustments in the understanding of the relation of religion and science since the Enlightenment require new considerations in epistemology and metaphysics. Constructionist theories of knowledge and process theories of metaphysics better provide the new paradigms needed both to preserve and to limit the significance of each field of human understanding. In a course taught at Moravian College, this perspective is applied to the concepts of nature, reality, and the sacred, with a view to showing how we might develop one such paradigm. Key resources for this task are to be found in the work of artist René Magritte; theologians Langdon Gilkey, Arthur Peacocke, and John Haught; philosophers and historians of science Alfred North Whitehead, Timothy Ferris, Ernan Mc Mullin, and Ian Barbour; philosopher of religion Paul Ricoeur; and historians of religion Rudolph Otto and Mircea Eliade. Such a new paradigm calls for an ecologically sensitive religious awareness which is both sacramental and holistic.     

Evidence for dissociable neural mechanisms underlying inference generation in familiar and less-familiar scenarios

In this study, we investigated whether the left and right hemispheres are differentially involved in causal inference generation. Participants read short inference-promoting texts that described either familiar or less-familiar scenarios. After each text, they performed a lexical decision on a letter string (which sometimes constituted an inference-related word) presented directly to the left or right hemisphere. Response-time results indicated that hemisphere of direct presentation interacted with type of inference scenario. When test stimuli were presented directly to the left hemisphere, lexical decisions were facilitated following familiar but not following less-familiar inference scenarios, whereas when test stimuli were presented directly to the right hemisphere, facilitation was observed in both familiar and less-familiar conditions. Thus, inferences may be generated in different ways depending on which of two dissociable neural subsystems underlies the activation of background information.     

How verbs and non-verbal categories navigate the syntax/semantics interface: Insights from cognitive neuropsychology

We report on two individuals with acquired language impairment who made thematic role confusion errors in both comprehension and production. Their confusions were remarkably specific, affecting the roles associated with spatial prepositions (“The box is in the bag” confused with The bag is in the box) and adjectival comparatives (“The glove is darker than the hat” confused with The hat is darker than the glove) but not the roles associated with verbs (e.g., in The woman helps the man). Additional results showed that the confusions did not arise from spatial deficits, deficits affecting the semantics of spatial terms and adjectives, or difficulties with spatial and comparative relationships. Interestingly, the selective deficits are well-explained by linguistic theories that propose that non-verbal lexical categories, when used as predicates, depend on special mechanisms and structures for linking their thematic roles to syntactic argument structures. These are the first neuropsychological results to show that thematic role assignment is supported by distinct brain mechanisms for verbal and non-verbal lexical categories. These findings have important implications for our understanding of the linguistic knowledge associated with verbal vs. non-verbal word classes and of the conditions under which these forms of knowledge support sentence processing.     

The effects of total sleep deprivation on semantic priming: Event-related potential evidence for automatic and controlled processing strategies

There is general consensus that performance on a number of cognitive tasks deteriorates following total sleep deprivation. At times, however, subjects manage to maintain performance. This may be because of an ability to switch cognitive strategies including the exertion of compensatory effort. The present study examines the effects of total sleep deprivation on a semantic word priming task. Word priming is unique because it can be carried out using different strategies involving either automatic, effortless or controlled, effortful processing. Twelve subjects were presented with word pairs, a prime and a target, that were either highly semantically associated (cat…dog), weakly associated (cow…barn) or unassociated (apple…road). In order to increase the probability of the use of controlled processing following normal sleep, the subject’s task was to determine if the target word was semantically related to the prime. Furthermore, the time between the offset of the prime and the onset of the target was relatively long, permitting the use of an effortful, expectancy-predictive strategy. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded from 64 electrode sites. After normal sleep, RTs were faster and accuracy higher to highly associated targets; this performance advantage was also maintained following sleep deprivation. A large negative deflection, the N400, was larger to weakly associated and unassociated targets in both sleep-deprived and normal conditions. The overall N400 was however larger in the normal sleep condition. Moreover, a long-lasting negative slow wave developed between the offset of the prime and the onset of the target. These physiological measures are consistent with the use of an effortful, predictive strategy following normal sleep but an automatic, effortless strategy following total sleep deprivation. A picture priming task was also run. This task benefits less from the use of a predictive strategy. Accordingly, in this task, ERPs following the target did not differ as a function of the amount of sleep.     

工匠传统在心理治疗(咨询)中的复兴

作者站在科学史的高度,分析了学者传统对心理咨询的方向性误导。从精神分析、行为主义,以至人本主义,心理治疗显示朝向整体论的倾向。但此种倾向被作为科学时代范式的学者传统所阻碍。心理治疗仍专注于根本原因,而忽视效果;专注于学派提供的片面视野,而忽视解决问题的完整过程;重于知而轻于行。伊根博士的模式提供了真正整体论的．能将各种视野,方法有效组织起来的心理咨询路线图,它能将知行整合、创造心理咨询最大成效。推动了心理咨询方法论根本转变。     

Cognitive–emotional distinctiveness: Separating emotions from non-emotions in the representation of a stressful memory

Current theories on autobiographical memory and recent neurological evidence suggest that emotional and non-emotional features of a memory may be retrieved by separate systems. To test this notion, 207 participants who had experienced the break-up of a significant romantic relationship in the last 12 months completed a Multidimensional Scaling (MDS) procedure in relation to the previous relationship. The resulting MDS model revealed two dimensions: a valence and an emotional/non-emotional dimension. Further, participants who associated a high level of distress with their relationship break-up perceived less dissimilarity between emotional and non-emotional features than participants who associated a low level of distress with their relationship break-up. Theoretical and methodological implications for stress and memory are discussed.