Heuristics in learning classifiers: The acquisition of the classifier system and its implications for the nature of lexical acquisition

Classifiers are like nouns in that they classify entities in the world into lexical categories. However, the lexical nature of the classifier system is very different from that of nouns. We discuss how Japanese and Chinese children learn the meanings of classifiers. We focus on two specific questions: How classifier acquisition is different from noun acquisition; and what the prerequisites are for spontaneously extracting the meanings of classifiers. It is shown that children are very conservative in assigning meaning to classifiers. The pace of learning largely depends on semantic complexity, across languages and within each language. Furthermore, we suspect that learning the meanings of classifiers requires a certain cognitive ability – an ability to synthesize pieces of partial knowledge and form them into a cohesive whole. It may be only when children have developed such an ability that they are able to extract the complex semantic rules of classifiers on their own. We conclude that children take very different routes in learning nouns and classifiers: Unlike noun acquisition, classifier acquisition is guided by a slow, bottom-up process.     

STIMULUS FACTORS EFFECTING PEER CONVERSATION AMONG INSTITUTIONALIZED RETARDED WOMEN1

The effect of a series of stimulus changes, including attendant present or absent and agent of token reinforcement in a sorting task, on peer interaction among retarded women was examined. Conversation was not differentially directed toward the agent of reinforcement when that agent was a peer, nor did a peer agent increase the overall rate of peer interaction. Peer interaction did increase when no attendant was present, and during the final phase of the experiment, the high rate of peer interaction was maintained while the attendant was faded back into the situation in a series of discrete steps. The procedure was found to be efficient in terms of staff time and did not adversely affect task performance.     

Acquisition of the Linearization Process in Text Composition in Third to Ninth Graders: Effects of Textual Superstructure and Macrostructural Organization

Two complementary experiments analyzed the acquisition of text content linearization in writing, in French-speaking participants from third to ninth grades. In both experiments, a scrambled text paradigm was used: eleven ideas presented in random order had to be rearranged coherently so as to compose a text. Linearization was analyzed on the basis of the conceptual ordering of ideas and writing fluency. The first experiment focused on the effect of superstructural facilitation (in decreasing order: 1—instructional, 2—narrative, 3—argumentative), while the second experiment studied the effect of prewriting conditions: 1—scrambled presentation, 2—macrostructural facilitation, 3—ideas given in optimal order (control condition). As expected, scores in conceptual ordering and writing fluency improved through the grade levels. Students were most successful with respect to conceptual ordering in the instructional superstructure, followed by the narrative and finally the argumentative superstructures. The prewriting assignment also had the expected effect (control better than macrostructural presentation which, in turn, was better than the random order) but only with the argumentative superstructure. Contrary to conceptual ordering, writing fluency was not affected by the type of superstructure, although we did record an effect of the prewriting condition. The results are discussed in light of Bereiter and Scardamalia’s knowledge transforming strategy (1987) taking into account cognitive development and French language curriculum.     

Searching for the Trace: The Influence of Age, Lexical Activation and Working Memory on Sentence Processing

To investigate the stability of trace reactivation in healthy older adults, 22 older volunteers with no significant neurological history participated in a cross-modal priming task. Whilst both object relative center embedded (ORC) and object relative right branching (ORR) sentences were employed, working memory load was reduced by limiting the number of words separating the antecedent from the gap for both sentence types. Analysis of the results did not reveal any significant trace reactivation for the ORC or ORR sentences. The results did reveal, however, a positive correlation between age and semantic priming at the pre-gap position and a negative correlation between age and semantic priming at the gap position for ORC sentences. In contrast, there was no correlation between age and priming effects for the ORR sentences. These results indicated that trace reactivation may be sensitive to a variety of age related factors, including lexical activation and working memory. The implications of these results for sentence processing in the older population are discussed.     

Derived stimulus relations, semantic priming, and event-related potentials: testing a behavioral theory of semantic networks

Derived equivalence relations, it has been argued, provide a behavioral model of semantic or symbolic meaning in natural language, and thus equivalence relations should possess properties that are typically associated with semantic relations. The present study sought to test this basic postulate using semantic priming. Across three experiments, participants were trained and tested in two 4-member equivalence relations using word-like nonsense words. Participants also were exposed to a single- or two-word lexical decision task, and both direct (Experiment 1) and mediated (Experiments 2 and 3) priming effects for reaction times and event-related potentials were observed within but not across equivalence relations. The findings support the argument that derived equivalence relations provides a useful preliminary model of semantic relations.     

Morphed facial expressions elicited a N400 ERP effect: A domain‐specific semantic module?

Previous studies have revealed that decoding of facial expressions is a specific component of face comprehension and that semantic information might be processed separately from the basic stage of face perception. In order to explore event-related potentials (ERPs) related to recognition of facial expressions and the effect of the semantic content of the stimulus, we analyzed 20 normal subjects. Faces with three prototypical emotional expressions (fear, happiness, and sadness) and with three morphed expressions were presented in random order. The neutral stimuli represented the control condition. Whereas ERP profiles were similar with respect to an early negative ERP (N170), differences in peak amplitude were observed later between incongruous (morphed) expressions and congruous (prototypical) ones. In fact, the results demonstrated that the emotional morphed faces elicited a negative peak at about 360 ms, mainly distributed over the posterior site. The electrophysiological activity observed may represent a specific cognitive process underlying decoding of facial expressions in case of semantic anomaly detection. The evidence is in favor of the similarity of this negative deflection with the N400 ERP effect elicited in linguistic tasks. A domain-specific semantic module is proposed to explain these results.     

How do valence and meaning interact? The contribution of semantic control

The hub-and-spoke model of semantic cognition proposes that conceptual representations in a heteromodal ‘hub’ interact with and emerge from modality-specific features or ‘spokes’, including valence (whether a concept is positive or negative), along with visual and auditory features. As a result, valence congruency might facilitate our ability to link words conceptually. Semantic relatedness may similarly affect explicit judgements about valence. Moreover, conflict between meaning and valence may recruit semantic control processes. Here we tested these predictions using two-alternative forced-choice tasks, in which participants matched a probe word to one of two possible target words, based on either global meaning or valence. Experiment 1 examined timed responses in healthy young adults, while Experiment 2 examined decision accuracy in semantic aphasia patients with impaired controlled semantic retrieval following left hemisphere stroke. Across both experiments, semantically related targets facilitated valence matching, while related distractors impaired performance. Valence congruency was also found to facilitate semantic decision-making. People with semantic aphasia showed impaired valence matching and had particular difficulty when semantically related distractors were presented, suggesting that the selective retrieval of valence information relies on semantic control processes. Taken together, the results are consistent with the hypothesis that automatic access to the global meaning of written words affects the processing of valence, and that the valence of words is also retrieved even when this feature is task-irrelevant, affecting the efficiency of global semantic judgements.     

语音与词义激活的相对时间进程:来自儿童发展的证据

本研究从儿童语言发展的角度．在已有研究基础上．进一步考察了汉语视觉字词加工中语音与词义激活的相对时间进程。运用启动命名技术,比较了三年级和六年级儿童在语音和语义启动中的表现。结果发现,三年级和六年级儿童都有语音和语义启动效应,且六年级儿童更为显著。但语义启动和同音启动的促进效应之间没有差异,而同音不同声调启动则可能产生抑制作用。文章探讨了这些发现对汉语视觉字词加工中词义信息提取不同观点的含义。     

Semantic distance and single cue use in category search

Perceptual classification may be based either on the physical features of target and background items or on the semantic attributes of the presented items. In this paper we used enumeration tasks to study the role of semantic features in a categorial classification task. This means that subjects were asked to count the number of target words in a display belonging to one semantic category among a number of background items of other categories. Our goal was to study the decision logic in category search by manipulating target background conditions and the semantic distance between target and background classes. In the first experiment we found that the larger the semantic distance between targets and background words, the easier it was to find the targets. In the second experiment we found a "pop-out" effect, in which subjects could use and benefit from a single distinctive semantic feature, "part-likeness", in categorial classification. The results of the two experiments imply that the categorization decision logic is basically the same in physical and semantic perceptual classification.     

Formal reasoning in late adulthood: The role of semantic content and metacognitive strategy

Two experiments explored the availability of deductive or formal reasoning in late adulthood. In Experiment 1, fifty young (M=19.0 years) and 50 elderly adults (M=81.0 years) were assessed using adaptations of Wason's selection task and rated task content for familiarity, affect, and agreement. In Experiment 2, 100 young (M=21.0 years) and 100 elderly adults (M=81.0 years) were similarly assessed, with half of the subjects in each age group receiving a metacognitive strategy to facilitate reasoning. Results from Experiment 1 indicated equivalent reasoning among the groups on problems employed in earlier developmental research. In contrast, problems constructed to entail affect resulted in poorer performance by older adults. In Experiment 2, both young and older adults who used the metacognitive strategy reasoned equally acrossall problems. In both experiments, familiarity and agreement did not play a role in deductive reasoning performance, but affect seemed to be an interfering factor. Results are discussed in terms of competence-procedure and stability-decrement models of adult cognitive development.