Language-experience facilitates discrimination of /d-th/ in monolingual and bilingual acquisition of English

To trace how age and language experience shape the discrimination of native and non-native phonetic contrasts, we compared 4-year-olds learning either English or French or both and simultaneous bilingual adults on their ability to discriminate the English /d-th/ contrast. Findings show that the ability to discriminate the native English contrast improved with age. However, in the absence of experience with this contrast, discrimination of French children and adults remained unchanged during development. Furthermore, although simultaneous bilingual and monolingual English adults were comparable, children exposed to both English and French were poorer at discriminating this contrast when compared to monolingual English-learning 4-year-olds. Thus, language experience facilitates perception of the English /d-th/ contrast and this facilitation occurs later in development when English and French are acquired simultaneously. The difference between bilingual and monolingual acquisition has implications for language organization in children with simultaneous exposure.     

Meaning Selection and the Subcortex: Evidence of Reduced Lexical Ambiguity Repetition Effects Following Subcortical Lesions

Recent research indicates that individuals with nonthalamic subcortical (NS) lesions can experience difficulties processing lexical ambiguities in a variety of contexts. This study examined how prior processing of a lexical ambiguity influences subsequent meaning activation in 10 individuals with NS lesions and 10 matched healthy controls. Subjects made speeded lexical decisions on related or unrelated targets following homophone primes. Homophones were repeated with different targets biasing the same or different meanings on the second presentation. The effects of prime-target relatedness, interstimulus interval (200 or 1250 ms), and same vs. different meaning repetition were examined. Both the patient and control groups showed priming when the same homophone meaning was biased on repetition. When a different meaning was biased on the second presentation, no priming was evident in the controls, while facilitation remained present for the NS group, consistent with aberrant meaning selection and deactivation processes. These findings are discussed in terms of age and task-related repetition effects and current conceptions of frontal–subcortical involvement in cognition.David Copland is supported by the Australian Research Council     

Novel metaphors appear anomalous at least momentarily: evidence from N400

This study addresses a central question in perception of novel figurative language: whether it is interpreted intelligently and figuratively immediately, or only after a literal interpretation fails. Eighty sentence frames that could plausibly end with a literal, truly anomalous, or figurative word were created. After validation for meaningfulness and figurativeness, the 240 sentences were presented to 11 subjects for event related potential (ERP) recording. ERP's first 200 ms is believed to reflect the structuring of the input; the prominence of a dip at around 400 ms (N400) is said to relate inversely to how expected a word is. Results showed no difference between anomalous and metaphoric ERPs in the early window, metaphoric and literal ERPs converging 300-500 ms after the ending, and significant N400s only for anomalous endings. A follow-up study showed that the metaphoric endings were less frequent (in standardized word norms) than were the anomalous and literal endings and that there were significant differences in cloze probabilities (determined from 24 new subjects) among the three ending types: literal > metaphoric > anomalous. It is possible that the low frequency of the metaphoric element and lower cloze probability of the anomalous one contributed to the processes reflected in the early window, while the incongruity and near-zero cloze probability of the anomalous endings produced an N400 effect in them alone. The structure or parse derived for metaphor during the early window appears to yield a preliminary interpretation suggesting anomaly, while semantic analysis reflected in the later window renders a plausible figurative interpretation.     

Loose but normal: a semantic association study

An abnormal facilitation of the spreading activation within semantic networks is thought to under-lie schizophrenics' remote associations and referential ideas. In normal subjects, elevated magical ideation (MI) has also been associated with a style of thinking similar to that of schizotypal subjects. We thus wondered whether normal subjects with a higher MI score would judge "loose associations" as being more closely related than do subjects with a lower MI score. In two experiments, we investigated whether judgments of the semantic distance between stimulus words varied as a function of MI. In the first experiment, random word pairs of two word classes, animals and fruits, were presented. Subjects had to judge the semantic distance between word pairs. In the second experiment, sets of three words were presented, consisting of a pair of indirectly related, or unrelated nouns plus a third noun. Subjects had to judge the semantic distance of the third noun to the word pair The results of both experiments showed that higher MI subjects considered unrelated words as more closely associated than did lower MI subjects. We conjecture that for normal subjects high on MI "loose associations" may not be loose after all. We also note that the tendency to link uncommon, nonobvious, percepts may not only be the basis of paranormal and paranoid ideas of reference, but also a prerequisite of creative thinking.     

左前额叶参与非相关词对的语义编码过程──来自光学成像的佐证

通过研究左前额叶在非相关同对的语义编码过程中的作用,探讨近红外光学成像技术用于脑高级认知活动检测的可行性。被试在两种实验条件下分别学习视觉呈现的20个汉字非相关词对,要求被试或将词对组成一个有意义的句子(深加工),或判断两个词是否具有相同的结构组合(浅加工)。光学成像器即时记录连续光透过额骨及前额皮层后760nm和850nm的漫射光强变化,以此推测相应脑组织的血容量变化。结果表明,与浅加工相比,左下前额叶在深加工时的血容量增多,尤其是背外侧部分。     

FOK与情节记忆、语义记忆和内隐记忆关系的研究

实验采用R/K判断和PDP测量技术,研究了FOK判断与情节记忆、语义记忆和内隐记忆关系及其监测强度.实验结果表明FOK判断的准确性程度为R判断＞K判断,即对情节记忆监测的准确性要大于对语义记忆监测的准确性.FOK对于自动加工的预测准确性差异不显著,说明FOK监测对内隐记忆的作用是微弱的,由此推测无记忆是意识最高层面的活动.对记忆监测水平强度是由意识--无意识逐渐减弱的.FOK判断对意识性水平较高的记忆活动监测的准确性较强.     

忽视性阅读障碍的研究概况

首先介绍了忽视性阅读障碍(neglect dyslexia, ND)的概念,随后描述了ND病人在阅读过程中的表现,即衰减效应、词汇效应、词内区分效应、对称效应和词长效应以及保留的语义通达能力。尽管忽视症和ND可以分离,但两者之间有一定联系。文章最后对汉语ND的研究进行了分析和展望,认为其关键问题是阐明汉语ND在多大程度上与拼音文字ND具有可比性。     

情绪形容词词义的模糊赋值

353名大学生被试用模糊赋值方法对表示喜、怒、哀、惧四种基本情绪的48个形容词的强度和复杂度作语义经验赋值。结果表明：①强度和复杂度是两个不同的情绪评定维度,两者间的情绪形容词模糊语义赋值结果没有必然联系。②在强度和复杂度赋值上,各词的取值基本符合人们日常对这些词所表达情绪体验的理解,性别的量表值存在较大一致性。③男、女生在赋值上的差异主要表现在各词位次和把握度的不同,这种差异可能与性别差异的情绪经验及个体差异有关。④大学生情绪形容词模糊语义赋值的把握度总体上都较高,各词的语义在两个维度上都存在一定的模糊性。⑤根据各词强度赋值隶属度数据计算的模糊距离测度和Phi方关联测度得到了四类形容词相似的聚类分析结果。     

Working harder with the out-group: The impact of social category diversity on motivation gains

This paper examines the influence that social category diversity (i.e., working with an in-group or out-group member) has on individual levels of motivation. The results of two experiments provide evidence that individuals increase their effort more when being outperformed by an out-group instead of an in-group member (Experiment 1), but only when the potential for social comparison is present (Experiment 2). We discuss the implications of this research for understanding how and why social category diversity may impact individual levels of motivation.