Event-specific attributions and daily life events as predictors of depression symptom change

A prospective study was conducted to investigate whether event-specific attributions, either alone or in interaction with daily life events predict depression symptom change, and whether this is affected by systematic variation in intertest intervals. Baseline measures of attributional style, event-specific attributions, life events, and depression were administered to 96 adults enrolled in a cigarette-smoking cessation program who were readministered the event-specific attributions, life events, and depression measures 2, 4, 6, and 8 weeks later. Results indicated that (a) the interaction between event-specific attributions and life events was a better predictor of depression symptom change than were event-specific attributions alone; (b) event-specific attributions and life events demonstrated a tendency to predict depression symptom change over 2 and 4 weeks but not over 6 and 8 weeks; (c) the stability and globality of event-specific attributions was associated with the number of reported life events; and (d) baseline attributional style predicted event-specific attributions 2, 4, 6, and 8 weeks later.     

Pupillometry reveals processing load during spoken language comprehension

This study investigated processing effort by measuring peoples’ pupil diameter as they listened to sentences containing a temporary syntactic ambiguity. In the first experiment, we manipulated prosody. The results showed that when prosodic structure conflicted with syntactic structure, pupil diameter reliably increased. In the second experiment, we manipulated both prosody and visual context. The results showed that when visual context was consistent with the correct interpretation, prosody had very little effect on processing effort. However, when visual context was inconsistent with the correct interpretation, prosody had a large effect on processing effort. The interaction between visual context and prosody shows that visual context has an effect on online processing and that it can modulate the influence of linguistic sources of information, such as prosody. Pupillometry is a sensitive measure of processing effort during spoken language comprehension.     

Effects of referential ambiguity,time constraints and addressee orientation on the production of morphologically complex words

In five experiments, participants were asked to describe unambiguously a target picture in a picture–picture paradigm. In the same-category condition, target (e.g., water bucket) and distractor picture (e.g., ice bucket) had identical names when their preferred, morphologically simple, name was used (e.g., bucket). The ensuing lexical ambiguity could be resolved by compound use (e.g., water bucket). Simple names sufficed as means of specification in other conditions, with distractors identical to the target, completely unrelated, or geometric figures. With standard timing parameters, participants produced mainly ambiguous answers in Experiment 1. An increase in available processing time hardly improved unambiguous responding (Experiment 2). A referential communication instruction (Experiment 3) increased the number of compound responses considerably, but morphologically simple answers still prevailed. Unambiguous responses outweighed ambiguous ones in Experiment 4, when timing parameters were further relaxed. Finally, the requirement to name both objects resulted in a nearly perfect ambiguity resolution (Experiment 5). Together, the results showed that speakers overcome lexical ambiguity only when time permits, when an addressee perspective is given and, most importantly, when their own speech overtly signals the ambiguity.     

The Strategy and Attribution Questionnaire: Psychometric properties of a Lithuanian translation in an adolescent sample

The present study provides a preliminary validation of the Lithuanian version of the Strategy and Attribution Questionnaire (SAQ, Nurmi, et al., 1995), a self-reported measure of social and cognitive behavioral strategies. An attempt to validate SAQ subscales was made by correlating them with the Youth Self-Report (Achenbach, 1991) and school grades. This was done with a sample of 14- to 17-year-old adolescents (N= 734). The results showed that although internal consistency reliabilities were good, they were lower when compared with the original version of SAQ. The SAQ subscales were moderately associated with various validity criteria, such as anxiety/depression, withdrawal, social problems and somatic complaints and school grades. Results also showed moderate correlations between similar strategic components across achievement and affiliative situations. The results provide preliminary evidence for concurrent validity of the Lithuanian version of SAQ.     

A Time Course View of Sentence Priming Effects

Meaning activation was estimated during (standard naming) and after (delayed naming) target presentation to chart the time course of priming effects during reading comprehension. Using sentences biasing homographs toward their dominant and subordinate meanings, two experiments evaluated context effects across three naming-cue delays: immediate, baseline, baseline+600 ms all at a 0-ms interstimulus interval. When participants named a target immediately as it was presented, results converged with previous findings demonstrating initial context-sensitive meaning activation. The delayed naming conditions revealed little post-access influences for dominant contexts. Subordinate contexts, however, provided the strongest evidence of continued (or sustained) processing. It was concluded that context has immediate and automatic effects on initial meaning activation, after which, strategies are invoked for fine-tuning an interpretation of a sentence and integrating it with new information.     

Unilateral brain damage effects on processing homonymous and polysemous words

Using an auditory semantic priming paradigm, the present study investigated the abilities of left-hemisphere-damaged (LHD) non-fluent aphasic, right-hemisphere-damaged (RHD) and normal control individuals to access, out of context, the multiple meanings of three types of ambiguous words, namely homonyms (e.g., "punch"), metonymies (e.g., "rabbit"), and metaphors (e.g., "star"). In addition, the study tested certain predictions of the "suppression deficit" and "coarse semantic coding" hypotheses that have been proposed to account for the linguistic deficits typically observed after RH damage. Homonymous, metonymous, and metaphorical words were used as primes followed after a short (100 ms) or a long (1000 ms) inter-stimulus interval (ISI) by dominant-meaning-related, subordinate-meaning-related or unrelated target words. No significant group effects were found, and for both ISIs, dominant- and subordinate-related targets were facilitated relative to unrelated control targets for the homonymy and metonymy conditions. In contrast, for the metaphor condition, only targets related to the dominant meaning were facilitated. These findings provide only partial support for the "suppression deficit" hypothesis and no support for the "coarse semantic coding" hypothesis (as interpreted herein) indicating that patients with focal LH or RH damage can access the multiple meanings of ambiguous words and exhibit processing abilities comparable to those of older normal control subjects, at least at the single-word level.     

The Effect of Phonemic Repetition on Syntactic Ambiguity Resolution: Implications for Models of Working Memory

Two reading experiments investigated the extent to which the presence of phonemic repetition in sentences influenced processing difficulty during syntactic ambiguity resolution. In both experiments, participants read sentences silently as reading time was measured. Reading time on sentences containing a temporary syntactic ambiguity was compared to reading time on unambiguous control sentences. Sentences either did or did not contain repeated phonemes. The results showed that reading time was longer for sentences containing a syntactic ambiguity than for unambiguous control sentences. Reading time was also longer on sentences containing repeated phonemes than on sentences that did not contain repeated phonemes. Phonemic repetition did not increase the time taken for syntactic ambiguity resolution; rather, the effects of syntactic ambiguity and phonemic repetition were temporally distinct, with the effect of phonemic repetition following the effect of syntactic ambiguity. Implications for theories of working memory are discussed.     

工作记忆中句法歧义加工的双重表征研究

本实验研究考察了高广度的中国中英文阅读者在对具有句法歧义结构的中英文句子是否在工作记忆中产生双重表征,以及任务难度对这种双重表征的保持会的影响。实验结果表明：（１）中文高广度阅读者能对汉语并列歧义产生双重表征;（２）中国的英文高广度阅读者能够对英语Ｖｅｄ歧义产生双重表征;（３）在回答提问的任务难度有所增加时,这种双重表征得以保持,其强度没有立即随之降低。     

汉语偏正/述宾歧义短语加工初探

操纵短语续接方向及歧义性,采用移动窗口范式,考察了均衡型、偏正型和述宾型三类歧义短语的加工,结果发现,偏正型歧义短语按述宾结构续接以及述宾型歧义短语按偏正结构续按时,在解歧区２上都有明显的加工困难,说明实验所采用的方法是敏感的。实验还发现,均衡型歧义短语按述宾结构续接时,在解歧区２上仍有加工上的困难,述宾型歧义短语按偏正结构续按时,在解歧区３上仍能看到加工上的困难,这表明歧义消解具有相对分散的特点。更重要的是,实验发现,均衡型歧义短语按述宾结构续接时,在解歧区１上就出现了加工困难,表明被试实际上按偏正结构来分析这种短语。该文从句法分析原则、语言分布知识的使用以及动词论题结构与语义完整性等角度对这一发现进行了讨论。