Priming vs. rhyming: orthographic and phonological representations in the left and right hemispheres

The right cerebral hemisphere has long been argued to lack phonological processing capacity. Recently, however, a sex difference in the cortical representation of phonology has been proposed, suggesting discrete left hemisphere lateralization in males and more distributed, bilateral representation of function in females. To evaluate this hypothesis and shed light on sex differences in the phonological processing capabilities of the left and right hemispheres, we conducted two experiments. Experiment 1 assessed phonological activation implicitly (masked homophone priming), testing 52 (M=25, F=27; mean age 19.23years, SD 1.64years) strongly right-handed participants. Experiment 2 subsequently assessed the explicit recruitment of phonology (rhyme judgement), testing 50 (M=25, F=25; mean age 19.67years, SD 2.05years) strongly right-handed participants. In both experiments the orthographic overlap between stimulus pairs was strictly controlled using DICE [Brew, C., & McKelvie, D. (1996). Word-pair extraction for lexicography. In K. Oflazer & H. Somers (Eds.), Proceedings of the second international conference on new methods in language processing (pp. 45-55). Ankara: VCH], such that pairs shared (a) high orthographic and phonological similarity (e.g., not-KNOT); (b) high orthographic and low phonological similarity (e.g., pint-HINT); (c) low orthographic and high phonological similarity (e.g., use-EWES); or (d) low orthographic and low phonological similarity (e.g., kind-DONE). As anticipated, high orthographic similarity facilitated both left and right hemisphere performance, whereas the left hemisphere showed greater facility when phonological similarity was high. This difference in hemispheric processing of phonological representations was especially pronounced in males, whereas female performance was far less sensitive to visual field of presentation across both implicit and explicit phonological tasks. As such, the findings offer behavioural evidence indicating that though both hemispheres are capable of orthographic analysis, phonological processing is discretely lateralised to the left hemisphere in males, but available in both the left and right hemisphere in females.     

Zipf's Law and Avoidance of Excessive Synonymy

Zipf's law states that if words of language are ranked in the order of decreasing frequency in texts, the frequency of a word is inversely proportional to its rank. It is very reliably observed in the data, but to date it escaped satisfactory theoretical explanation. This article suggests that Zipf's law may result from a hierarchical organization of word meanings over the semantic space, which in turn is generated by the evolution of word semantics dominated by expansion of meanings and competition of synonyms. A study of the frequency of partial synonyms in Russian provides experimental evidence for the hypothesis that word frequency is determined by semantics.     

Hemispheric asymmetries in semantic processing: evidence from false memories for ambiguous words

We used fMRI to investigate competition during language production in two word production tasks: object naming and color naming of achromatic line drawings. Generally, fMRI activation was higher for color naming. The line drawings were followed by a word (the distractor word) that referred to either the object, a related object, or an unrelated object. The effect of the distractor word on the BOLD response was qualitatively different for the two tasks. The activation pattern suggests two different kinds of competition during lexical retrieval: (1) Task-relevant responses (e.g., red in color naming) compete with task-irrelevant responses (i.e., the object’s name). This competition effect was dominant in prefrontal cortex. (2) Multiple task-relevant responses (i.e., target word and distractor word) compete for selection. This competition effect was dominant in ventral temporal cortex. This study provides further evidence for the distinct roles of frontal and temporal cortex in language production, while highlighting the effects of competition, albeit from different sources, in both regions.     

Influences of high and low variability on infant word recognition

Although infants begin to encode and track novel words in fluent speech by 7.5 months, their ability to recognize words is somewhat limited at this stage. In particular, when the surface form of a word is altered, by changing the gender or affective prosody of the speaker, infants begin to falter at spoken word recognition. Given that natural speech is replete with variability, only some of which determines the meaning of a word, it remains unclear how infants might ever overcome the effects of surface variability without appealing to meaning. In the current set of experiments, consequences of high and low variability are examined in preverbal infants. The source of variability, vocal affect, is a common property of infant-directed speech with which young learners have to contend. Across a series of four experiments, infants' abilities to recognize repeated encounters of words, as well as to reject similar-sounding words, are investigated in the context of high and low affective variation. Results point to positive consequences of affective variation, both in creating generalizable memory representations for words, but also in establishing phonologically precise memories for words. Conversely, low variability appears to degrade word recognition on both fronts, compromising infants' abilities to generalize across different affective forms of a word and to detect similar-sounding items. Findings are discussed in the context of principles of categorization that may potentiate the early growth of a lexicon.     

提取诱发遗忘的研究现状与展望

提取诱发遗忘强调对相关项目的提取会造成对其竞争项目的抑制,从而导致对这些竞争项目的暂时遗忘。文章阐释了提取诱发遗忘的概念界定与实验范式、有关理论以及实证研究,并重点介绍了提取诱发遗忘的机制研究,对抑制说与非抑制说的争论及实验研究进行了全面的综述,最后指出未来的研究应更侧重于抑制的具体过程、抑制在哪个水平上执行、激活扩展如何被限制及提取诱发遗忘的情境化研究     

流畅性对自然概念类别检索的影响

探讨不同转换条件下,流畅性对自然概念类别检索的影响.实验1探讨自由转换条件下,流畅性对自然概念类别检索的影响.实验2探讨限制转换条件下,流畅性对自然概念类别检索的影响.结果表明:两种转换条件下,对熟悉性流畅性一致类别的检索时间策略主要受到根据熟悉性形成的知晓感的调节和监控.对熟悉性流畅性不一致的类别,知晓感的形成主要受流畅性的影响,并以此来控制和调节检索时间策略.     

Retrieval Inhibition and Memory Distortion: Negative Consequences of an Adaptive Process

ABSTRACT— Despite the fact that misinformation effects have long been studied by both applied researchers and modelers of human memory, there is little consensus as to the value of such endeavors. We argue that this may be due to a failure to identify the underlying mechanism responsible for such memory distortions. We consider novel evidence for a relationship between retrieval-induced forgetting and the reporting of misinformation. We also explore the extent to which retrieval inhibition underpins this relationship and the implications this has for the modeling of memory and finding potential solutions to real-world problems.     

小学数学真实性问题解决的调查研究

在常规课堂上对来自北京市两所小学148位10-12岁的小学生进行真实性问题的测验,研究结果表明:1)被试中对真实数学问题作出真实性解答的人数比例约为四分之一,高于国外同类研究中比例.2)作出常规解答的人数比例约为一半,显著高于作出真实解答的人数比例.3)六年级被试作出真实解答的人数比例普遍高于四年级,但是在某些问题上,六年级被试中作出常规解答的人数比例反而高于四年级.4)被试对不同真实问题的反应存在一定的差异,这可能与真实问题的特点有关.     

材料性质对有意遗忘影响的实验研究

以大学生为被试 ,采用字表方式 ,探讨了词语和图片两种材料下的有意遗忘。结果发现 :①被试在词语和图片两种材料下的有意遗忘没有显著差异 ;②对于词语材料 ,被试既对指示记忆的项目进行了更加精细的编码 ,又对指示遗忘的项目产生了抑制 ;③对于图片材料 ,被试只对指示遗忘的项目产生了提取抑制 ,而没有对指示记忆的项目进行有意复述。     

New multinomial models for the Chechile-Meyer task

This paper provides a critique of the Chechile and Meyer (J. Math. Psychol. 13 (1976) 269) multinomial processing tree (MPT) models that were generated for the measurement of storage and retrieval components of the correct recall rate. These models were developed for a specific test procedure that involved the random mixing of recall and recognition trials. A key problem with the Chechile and Meyer (J. Math. Psychol. 13 (1976) 269) models is the validity of an assumption made for foil recognition test trials. Three new MPT models for obtaining separate storage and retrieval measures are provided. These new models circumvent the difficulties of the Chechile and Meyer (J. Math. Psychol. 13 (1976) 269) models. Both maximum likelihood estimates (MLE) and population-parameter mapping (PPM) estimates (discussed in Chechile (J. Math. Psychol. 42 (1998) 432)) are provided for the model parameters. Monte Carlo studies were conducted to compare the relative accuracy of the MLE and PPM storage estimates. Both methods have the same average error rate for samples that are very large in size; however, for all the more practical sample sizes, the PPM estimates were more accurate. Statistical methods for model selection were also developed and tested. Finally, the new models were used to reanalyze some existing data. The new analyses provide strong validation evidence for the new models.