Adult age differences in visual word identification: functional neuroanatomy by positron emission tomography

Adult age differences in the neural systems mediating semantic (context-independent) memory were investigated using positron emission tomography (PET). Younger (20-29 years) and older (62-70 years) participants performed lexical decision (word/nonword discrimination) and nonsemantic (simple visual search) baseline tasks during PET scanning. Within the lexical decision task, display duration and presentation rate were varied across scans. The behavioral data suggested that although an age-related slowing was evident in visual feature and response processing, the retrieval of semantic/lexical information was similar for younger and older adults. For both age groups, lexical-related activation occurred in inferior prefrontal and occipitotemporal regions of the left hemisphere. Differential activation, as a function of age group, was observed in the left occipitotemporal pathway as a result of older adults' maintaining higher levels of neural activity in striate cortex (during visual search) and in inferior temporal cortex (during lexical decision). The prefrontal activation was similar for the two age groups. Thus, although this form of semantic memory retrieval does not undergo significant age-related decline, an age-related change in the associated pattern of neural activation is evident. These findings differ from previous neuroimaging studies of episodic (context-dependent) memory retrieval, which have suggested that age-related compensatory mechanisms are expressed primarily by greater activation of prefrontal regions for older adults than for younger adults.     

Essential and Perceptual Attributes of Words in Reflective and On-line Processing

Access to essential and perceptual attributes of word meanings was investigated in a series of tasks. First, perceptual attributes of a number of natural kind concepts were determined by asking participants to generate the most salient features of those concepts; they were asked to assess the importance of both those features and features that fit criteria for essential attributes. Attributes fitting the criteria for essential attributes were found to be judged more important than perceptual attributes in identifying an object and to have more connections to other attributes of the concept. Semantic priming for both types of features was then investigated. Prime-target pairs consisting of the natural kind concept term and the perceptual or essential attribute were presented for lexical decision (Experiments 1a and 1b) or naming (Experiments 2a and 2b). Interstimulus intervals were either 0 or 200 ms. Both types of features were primed at a 200 ms interstimulus interval but only in the lexical decision task.     

Phonological, semantic, and repetition priming with homophones

The current study investigated semantic, repetition, and phonological priming using heterographic homonyms (homophones) as stimuli in a lexical decision task. As in previous research, reliable semantic priming and repetition effects were found. In addition, the statistical additivity of these two effects was replicated using homophones as stimuli. Using homophones, a reliable phonological priming effect was found when 10-16 intervening trials were used. This effect was also statistically independent of semantic priming indicating the independence of the mechanisms responsible for semantic and phonological priming. The magnitude of the phonological priming effect was also significantly less than the magnitude of the repetition effect. This difference in effect magnitude was taken to indicate that the repetition of phonological information is not a primary contributor to the repetition effect.     

Episodic future thinking

Thinking about the future is an integral component of human cognition – one that has been claimed to distinguish us from other species. Building on the construct of episodic memory, we introduce the concept of ‘episodic future thinking’: a projection of the self into the future to pre-experience an event. We argue that episodic future thinking has explanatory value when considering recent work in many areas of psychology: cognitive, social and personality, developmental, clinical and neuropsychology. Episodic future thinking can serve as a unifying concept, connecting aspects of diverse research findings and identifying key questions requiring further reflection and study.     

Chapter 4. The Intervention Process

Abstract

The qualitative research methods used by the author to study one parent-child activity group are shared. This qualitative research study documented what the participants of a parent-child activity group on a child psychiatric inpatient unit reported about their experiences with each other and how these participants interacted with each other in the group over the course of eight months. The group was studied through     

工作记忆和长时记忆共享信息表征的ERP证据

工作记忆和长时记忆共享记忆系统的信息表征网络, 关系密切。实验采用事件相关电位技术记录长时记忆信息对工作记忆的长时语义启动和工作记忆对相关长时记忆信息的长时语义启动。结果显示：与新项目相比, 学习项(即长时记忆信息)对工作记忆的目标信息产生了明显的行为启动效应, N2潜伏期、波幅和P3潜伏期也表现出明显的神经启动效应, 即, 学习项比新项目的反应时更短、N2和P3的潜伏期更短、N2更正, 但学习对非记忆项的影响不大; 工作记忆对相关的长时记忆信息也产生了神经启动, 表现在类别比较任务中记忆类信息比其他信息(即, 与工作记忆任务中的信息无关的内容)的N400更正。而且, 这种神经启动也会因刺激重复次数的增多而降低：与新项目相比, 学习项会使与之语义类似信息的N400更负。上述两种长时语义启动的存在及其ERPs的神经启动均为长时记忆和工作记忆使用共同信息表征的观点提供了证据支持。证据还表明, 在工作记忆和长时记忆的相互作用中注意是关键的调节因素。     

对充分条件句语义关系的概念理解与逻辑理解的相关与分离

实验用大学生被试考察了充分条件句语义关系表达形式（逻辑形式和概念形式）和条件句类型（五种条件句）对充分条件句语义关系理解的影响。实验结果发现,语义关系表达形式影响被试对条件句中必要性的语义关系理解,而不影响被试对条件句中充分性的语义关系理解,在对条件句前后件之间语义关系的逻辑理解成绩和概念理解成绩之间既有相关又有分离：对是否充分的语义关系的两种理解成绩之间存在相关一致,而对是否必要的语义关系的两种理解成绩之间存在分离;五种条件句在对后件对前件的必要性的知觉难易程度受条件句意义内容的影响而存在明显差异,这种差异导致被试对许可句和定义句的后件必要性理解成绩高于对偶然句、义务句和因果句的后件必要性理解成绩。     

Tracing the size,reach, impact,and breadth of positive psychology

This study quantitatively assessed the size, disciplinary reach, impact, and topic breadth of positive psychology (PP), in order to provide a comprehensive evaluation of the growth and significance of the field. Over 1.7?million documents in 700 PsycINFO ^® journals covering the fields of psychology, psychiatry, neuroscience, management, business, public health, and sport science were analyzed using semantic and bibliographic methods. Results indicate that PP covers many different research topics from a diverse range of disciplines, and that PP literature has been growing rapidly in significance. Over 18,000 documents were identified as belonging to PP, with 2300 published in 2011. These documents represent over 4% of PsycINFO ^® documents within the data-set published that year, and make PP close to the median size of all disciplines listed in the Thomson Reuters Journal Citation Reports ^®, Social Sciences Edition. The aggregate impact factor for PP in 2011 was 2.64.     

Processing of syllables during handwriting: Effects of graphomotor constraints

The processing of syllables during the writing of isolated words has been shown to occur either before or during the writing of the word containing them. To demonstrate that this difference is related to graphomotor constraints, participants copied bi- and trisyllabic words three times, in four conditions where graphomotor constraints were gradually increased. As expected, latencies were only affected by syllable number in the low-constraint condition. In all four conditions, interletter intervals at syllable boundaries were longer than intrasyllabic interletter intervals. The difference between inter- and intrasyllabic intervals increased with the level of graphomotor constraint. Taken together, these findings indicate that under low graphomotor-constraint conditions, all the syllable processing takes place prior to the writing of a word, whereas under higher graphomotor-constraint conditions, syllable processing is more sequential, each syllable being processed just before it is written.     

The role of textual semantic constraints in knowledge-based inference generation during reading comprehension: A computational approach

The present research adopted a computational approach to explore the extent to which the semantic content of texts constrains the activation of knowledge-based inferences. Specifically, we examined whether textual semantic constraints (TSC) can explain (1) the activation of predictive inferences, (2) the activation of bridging inferences and (3) the higher prevalence of the activation of bridging inferences compared to predictive inferences. To examine these hypotheses, we computed the strength of semantic associations between texts and probe items as presented to human readers in previous behavioural studies, using the Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) algorithm. We tested whether stronger semantic associations are observed for inferred items compared to control items. Our results show that in 15 out of 17 planned comparisons, the computed strength of semantic associations successfully simulated the activation of inferences. These findings suggest that TSC play a central role in the activation of knowledge-based inferences.