Recognition of Inflected Words in a Morphologically Limited Language: Frequency Effects in Monolinguals and Bilinguals

The effect of word frequency on the processing of monomorphemic vs. inflected words was investigated in a morphologically relatively limited language, Swedish, with two participant groups: early Finnish–Swedish bilinguals and Swedish monolinguals. The visual lexical decision results of the monolinguals suggest morphological decomposition with low-frequency inflected nouns, while with medium- and high-frequency inflections, full-form processing was apparently employed. The bilinguals demonstrated a similar pattern. The results suggest that morpheme-based recognition is employed even in a morphologically limited language when the inflectional forms occur rarely. With more frequent inflectional forms, full-form representations have developed for both mono- and bilingual speakers. In a comparable study employing a morphologically rich language, Finnish, Lehtonen and Laine (2003, Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 6, 213–225) observed full-form access only at the high-frequency range and only for monolinguals. These differences suggest that besides word frequency and language background, the morphological richness of a language affects the processing mode employed with polymorphemic wordsThis study was financially supported by a grant (#20010) from the Joint Committee of the Nordic Social Science Research Councils (NOS-S). We are grateful for Jonna Kortelahti- Brunnsteiner for recruitment and testing of part of the bilingual participants     

Processing correlates of lexical semantic complexity

This paper explores how verb meanings that differ in semantic complexity are processed and represented. In particular, we compare eventive verbs, which denote causally structured events, with stative verbs, which denote facts without causal structure. We predicted that the conceptually more complex eventive verbs should take longer to process than stative verbs. Two experiments, a lexical decision task and a self-paced reading study, confirmed this prediction. The findings suggest that (a) semantic complexity is reflected in processing time, (b) processing verb meanings involves activating properties of the event structure beyond participants' roles, and (c) more generally, lexical event structures, which subsume thematic roles, may mediate between syntactic knowledge and semantic interpretation.     

Judgments of Grammaticality of Japanese Sentences Violating the Principle of Full Interpretation

Two experiments investigated the linguistic intuition of Japanese speakers in which they judged the grammaticality of sentences violating Chomsky's principle of Full Interpretation. Experiment 1 used bitransitive sentences, which included an extra argument that assumed a role of either subjective, dative, or objective on the one hand and that specified semantically a preceding argument or stood in par with it on the other. Findings showed that the speakers judged ungrammatical sentences involving a dative or an objective extra argument as more grammatical than those involving a subjective extra argument. Ungrammatical sentences with an extra specified argument were judged more grammatical than those with an extra par argument when the extra argument was objective. Experiment 2 used sentences that included a verbal noun (VN) comprising a noun followed by a verb, shita (did). Ungrammatical VN sentences contained two arguments given the same objective marker. These sentences were judged to be highly grammatical despite the violation of the principle. Findings suggest that speakers' actual knowledge of language is not fully consistent with the knowledge they are alleged by Chomsky to possess, including the principle of Full Interpretation.     

Rhyming words and onset-rime constituents: an inquiry into structural breaking points and emergent boundaries in the syllable

Geudens and Sandra, in their 2003 study, investigated the special role of onsets and rimes in Dutch-speaking children's explicit phonological awareness. In the current study, we tapped implicit phonological knowledge using forced-choice similarity judgment (Experiment 1) and recall of syllable lists (Experiment 2). In Experiment 1, Dutch-speaking prereaders judged rime-sharing pseudowords (/fas/-/mas/) to sound more similar than pseudowords sharing an equally sized nonrime unit (/fas/-/fak/). However, in a syllable recall task (/tepsilonf/, /ris/, /nal/), Dutch-speaking prereaders were as likely to produce recombination errors that broke up the rime (/tepsilons/) as to produce errors that retained the rime (/repsilonf/). Thus, a rime effect was obtained in a task that highlighted the phonological similarity between items sharing their rimes, but this effect disappeared in tasks without repetition of rime units. We conclude that children's sensitivity to rimes depends on similarity relations and might not reflect a fixed perceived structure of spoken syllables.     

An expanded childhood anxiety sensitivity index: its factor structure, reliability, and validity in a non-clinical adolescent sample

Anxiety sensitivity refers to the fear of anxiety-related bodily sensations that are interpreted as having potentially harmful somatic, psychological, or social consequences. The current study examined the factor analytic structure of anxiety sensitivity in a large sample of normal adolescents (N=518) using the revised childhood anxiety sensitivity index (CASI-R). Confirmatory factor analysis indicated that anxiety sensitivity as measured by the CASI-R can best be conceptualised as a hierarchical construct with four lower-order factors loading on a single higher-order factor. The lower-order factors were 'fear of cardiovascular symptoms', 'fear of publicly observable anxiety reactions', 'fear of cognitive dyscontrol', and 'fear of respiratory symptoms'. An additional aim of the present study was to investigate the psychometric properties of the CASI-R. Results showed the CASI-R to be a reliable scale in terms of internal consistency. Furthermore, CASI-R scores were substantially related to levels of anxiety sensitivity as measured by the original index, trait anxiety, symptoms of anxiety disorders, in particular 'panic disorder and agoraphobia', and depression. Finally, some evidence was found for the validity of the CASI-R factor scores. That is, all factors convincingly loaded on symptoms of 'panic disorder and agoraphobia', whereas the factor 'fear of publicly observable anxiety reactions' was also strongly associated with symptoms of 'social phobia'.     

Probability judgment in hierarchical learning: a conflict between predictiveness and coherence

Why are people's judgments incoherent under probability formats? Research in an associative learning paradigm suggests that after structured learning participants give judgments based on predictiveness rather than normative probability. This is because people's learning mechanisms attune to statistical contingencies in the environment, and they use these learned associations as a basis for subsequent probability judgments. We introduced a hierarchical structure into a simulated medical diagnosis task, setting up a conflict between predictiveness and coherence. Thus, a target symptom was more predictive of a subordinate disease than of its superordinate category, even though the latter included the former. Under a probability format participants tended to violate coherence and make ratings in line with predictiveness; under a frequency format they were more normative. These results are difficult to explain within a unitary model of inference, whether associative or frequency-based. In the light of this, and other findings in the judgment and learning literature, a dual-component model is proposed.     

The effect of polygamous marital structure on behavioral,emotional, and academic adjustment in children: a comprehensive review of the literature

Polygamy represents expanded family structures that are based on marriages involving a husband with 2 or more wives. Interestingly, polygamy is legally and widely practiced in 850 societies across the globe. In the last 2 decades, polygamy has been the focus of a significant growth in public, political, and academic awareness. Indeed, several quantitative and qualitative research articles and theoretical papers have emerged during this period, particularly concerning the effects of this form of marital structure on behavioral, emotional, and academic adjustment of children. However, to date, no researcher has provided a summary of the extant literature. Thus, the purpose of this comprehensive literature review is to summarize findings and to discuss implications of empirical studies that have examined whether polygamous marital structures are beneficial or harmful to children in comparison with children raised in monogamous marital structures. This review includes a summary of the findings from all quantitative and qualitative studies in the extant literature that have examined the effect of polygamy on children's outcomes.     

The vulnerable C-domain

The purpose of this article is to document the existence of a group of natural language speakers who display non-target-like production of the syntax at the highest structural level, the C-domain, but produce the syntax of lower structural levels in a target-like way. This group consists of very early L1 learners, children with Specific Language Impairment, adult L2 learners, and patients with Broca's aphasia. The group is established on the basis of data from Swedish and German, but can presumably be discerned for any language. The assumption that the non-target-like production of C-domain syntax is related to Broca's area is discussed, as are some consequences for modern syntactic theory.     

Understanding the relation between the need and ability to achieve closure: A single paper meta-analysis assessing subscale correlations

The need for closure and the ability to achieve closure are generally thought to be independent from one another. However, previous researchers have found inconsistent relations between these two variables, possibly due to measurement scale modifications that slightly shifted how the underlying constructs were assessed. The present research attempted to address some of these methodological issues with previous research by conducting a single-paper meta-analysis on the correlations between the ability to achieve closure scale and the full need for closure scale and each of its five subscales. Across six university student samples (N = 1983), the full need for closure scale and most of its subscales were significantly negatively correlated with the ability to achieve closure. This finding suggests that the ability to achieve closure affects the costs and benefits of closure and therefore, consistent with lay epistemic theory, the ability to achieve closure predicts individual differences in the need for closure.