The role of meaning in contextual cueing: Evidence from chess expertise

In contextual cueing, the position of a search target is learned over repeated exposures to a visual display. The strength of this effect varies across stimulus types. For example, real-world scene contexts give rise to larger search benefits than contexts composed of letters or shapes. We investigated whether such differences in learning can be at least partially explained by the degree of semantic meaning associated with a context independently of the nature of the visual information available (which also varies across stimulus types). Chess boards served as the learning context as their meaningfulness depends on the observer's knowledge of the game. In Experiment 1, boards depicted actual game play, and search benefits for repeated boards were 4 times greater for experts than for novices. In Experiment 2, search benefits among experts were halved when less meaningful randomly generated boards were used. Thus, stimulus meaningfulness independently contributes to learning context–target associations.     

Activation of semantic information at the sublexical level during handwriting production: Evidence from inhibition effects of Chinese semantic radicals in the picture‐word interference paradigm

Using a non‐alphabetic language (e.g., Chinese), the present study tested a novel view that semantic information at the sublexical level should be activated during handwriting production. Over 80% of Chinese characters are phonograms, in which semantic radicals represent category information (e.g., 椅 ‘chair,’ 桃 ‘peach,’ 橙 ‘orange’ are related to plants) while phonetic radicals represent phonetic information (e.g., 狼 ‘wolf,’ 朗 ‘brightness,’ 郎 ‘male,’ are all pronounced /lang/). Under different semantic category conditions at the lexical level (semantically related in Experiment 1; semantically unrelated in Experiment 2), the orthographic relatedness and semantic relatedness of semantic radicals in the picture name and its distractor were manipulated under different SOAs (i.e., stimulus onset asynchrony, the interval between the onset of the picture and the onset of the interference word). Two questions were addressed: (1) Is it possible that semantic information could be activated in the sublexical level conditions? (2) How are semantic and orthographic information dynamically accessed in word production? Results showed that both orthographic and semantic information were activated under the present picture‐word interference paradigm, dynamically under different SOAs, which supported our view that discussions on semantic processes in the writing modality should be extended to the sublexical level. The current findings provide possibility for building new orthography‐phonology‐semantics models in writing.     

多义词意义间的联系程度对词汇判断时间的影响

采用词汇判断法,考察双字多义词各意义间的联系程度对词汇判断时间的影响,同时考察,意义间联系程度不同的多义词与单义词的词汇判断时间的关系。实验结果表明:汉语中双字多义词意义间联系程度的高低没有对多义词词汇判断的时间产生影响。在低频词的条件下,双字多义词,不管其意义间联系程度的高低,词汇判断的时间都快于单义词的判断时间,这表明汉语词汇识别中,存在低频多义词的识别优势效应。     

Latent semantic analysis cosines as a cognitive similarity measure: Evidence from priming studies

In distributional semantics models (DSMs) such as latent semantic analysis (LSA), words are represented as vectors in a high-dimensional vector space. This allows for computing word similarities as the cosine of the angle between two such vectors. In two experiments, we investigated whether LSA cosine similarities predict priming effects, in that higher cosine similarities are associated with shorter reaction times (RTs). Critically, we applied a pseudo-random procedure in generating the item material to ensure that we directly manipulated LSA cosines as an independent variable. We employed two lexical priming experiments with lexical decision tasks (LDTs). In Experiment 1 we presented participants with 200 different prime words, each paired with one unique target. We found a significant effect of cosine similarities on RTs. The same was true for Experiment 2, where we reversed the prime-target order (primes of Experiment 1 were targets in Experiment 2, and vice versa). The results of these experiments confirm that LSA cosine similarities can predict priming effects, supporting the view that they are psychologically relevant. The present study thereby provides evidence for qualifying LSA cosine similarities not only as a linguistic measure, but also as a cognitive similarity measure. However, it is also shown that other DSMs can outperform LSA as a predictor of priming effects.     

The relation between children's reading comprehension level and their comprehension of idioms

We report an investigation of 9-year-olds' ability to interpret idioms in relation to their reading comprehension level. We manipulated whether the idioms were transparent or opaque, whether they were real or novel, whether they were presented in isolation or in a supportive narrative context. As predicted, children were better able to explain the meanings of idioms in context than in isolation. The good and poor comprehenders did not differ in their abilities to interpret transparent idioms in context, but the poor comprehenders were significantly worse at using context to work out the meanings of opaque idioms. The explanation task revealed the source of information used by the children to derive nontarget interpretations. We discuss these findings in relation to idiom processing strategies and Levorato and Cacciari's global elaboration model.     

Semantic similarity and grammatical class in naming actions

Italian speakers were asked to name pictures of actions (e.g. "bere", to drink). Pictures were presented at the same time as distracter words that were semantically related or unrelated to the picture names, and were of the same or different grammatical class (verbs or nouns). Half of the participants named the actions as verbs in citation form, the other half as verbs inflected for third person singular or plural. We found a reliable semantic interference effect. Crucially, we also observed a significant interaction between naming context and grammatical class: naming latencies were slower for verb distracters in the inflected form condition, but not in the citation form condition. The results are taken to provide evidence for the separability of semantics and grammatical class.     

Category specificity in normal episodic learning: applications to object recognition and category-specific agnosia

Studies of patients with category-specific agnosia (CSA) have given rise to multiple theories of object recognition, most of which assume the existence of a stable, abstract semantic memory system. We applied an episodic view of memory to questions raised by CSA in a series of studies examining normal observers' recall of newly learned attributes of familiar objects. Subjects first learned to associate arbitrarily assigned colors or textures to objects in a training phase, and then attempted to report the newly learned attribute of each object in a recall task. Our subjects' pattern of recall errors was similar both quantitatively and qualitatively to the identification deficits among patients with CSA for biological objects. Furthermore, errors tended to reflect conceptually and structurally based confusions. We suggest that object identification involves recruitment and integration of information across distributed episodic memories and that this process is susceptible to interference from objects that are structurally similar and conceptually related.     

Semantic gender assignment regularities in German

Gender assignment relates to a native speaker's knowledge of the structure of the gender system of his/her language, allowing the speaker to select the appropriate gender for each noun. Whereas categorical assignment rules and exceptional gender assignment are well investigated, assignment regularities, i.e., tendencies in the gender distribution identified within the vocabulary of a language, are still controversial. The present study is an empirical contribution trying to shed light on the gender assignment system native German speakers have at their disposal. Participants presented with a category (e.g., predator) and a pair of gender-marked pseudo-words (e.g., der Trelle vs. die Stisse) preferentially selected the pseudo-word preceded by the gender-marked determiner "associated" with the category (e.g., masculine). This finding suggests that semantic regularities might be part of the gender assignment system of native speakers.     

The impact of semantic transparency of morphologically complex words on picture naming

We examined the contribution of semantic similarity to morphological priming effects, using the immediate (Exp. 1 and 3) and the delayed variant (Exp. 2) of picture-word interference. Distractor words were either compounds morphologically related to the picture name, but differing with respect to their semantic transparency (hummingbird, jailbird (Exp. 1); butterfly, butter dish (Exp. 3)), or form-related non-compound words (e.g., trombone). All three experiments revealed strong facilitation of picture naming due to morphologically related distractors. Form-related distractors facilitated picture naming in the immediate variant only, and to a lesser degree than compounds. Interestingly, the size of the morphemic effect was almost identical for semantically transparent and opaque complex words, which suggests that they share morphemic representations. These results suggest that morphological complexity in speech production is coded at the level of form representations, independent of semantic transparency.