Nature and facts about natural and artifactual categories: Sex differences in the semantic priming paradigm

There is abundant evidence from behavioral and neurophysiological experiments for the distinction of natural versus artifactual categories and a gender-specific difference: women’s performances in cognitive tasks increase when natural categories are used, whereas men’s performances increase with artifactual categories. Here, we used the semantic priming paradigm to study retrieval processes by presenting category labels as primes and exemplars as targets. Overall, in two experiments we found larger priming effects for natural than for artifactual categories. In addition, females showed positive priming effects for natural but negative effects for artifactual categories, whereas males showed positive priming effects for both categories. This pattern matches with that from other tasks and can be interpreted as evidence that the findings from these other tasks are, at least partially, indeed due to different representations or processing modes for males and females and not (exclusively) due to—for example—different familiarity with a category. In a further experiment, we showed that the found pattern for females can be manipulated by focusing on perceptual vs. functional features. The results can be interpreted as first evidence that there are (eventually in addition to different “crystallized” semantic structures) specific default processing modes that differ for males and females.     

干扰条件与情绪启动关系的实验研究

在线索提示范式下,设置无干扰条件和干扰条件的阈上和阈下情绪启动,以此考察干扰条件与情绪启动的关系.研究发现:在无干扰条件与干扰条件下均存在显著的阈上情绪启动和阈下情绪启动,并且干扰条件下阈上情绪启动程度明显降低而阈下情绪启动程度不受影响.文章从情绪启动与注意关系的角度讨论了干扰条件与情绪启动的这种表现对于理解情绪启动加工属性及意识与无意识分离现象的意义.     

启动实验中收集基线反应时的必要性问题

启动实验的有效条件之一是,控制组和实验组的目标词在基线反应时上相同,但在实际操作中,不少研究没有收集基线反应时,只是确保了两组目标词在频率上相同.本研究实验结果显示:对于母语而言,如果词频很高,相同频率的词得到相同反应时的机率很大;相反,机率就比较低;对于外语而言,这种机率相对更低.实验说明,相同词频的词不一定能得到相同的反应时,因此收集基线反应时是启动实验不可或缺的步骤.     

多值逻辑与语义赋值博弈

文章在扩展博弈上,给出了多值逻辑的语义赋值博弈的一般框架,避免了博弈者在多值逻辑的语义博弈中声明无穷对象的问题;然后通过Eloise赢的策略定义博弈的语义概念——赋值,证明了多值逻辑的博弈语义与Tarski语义是等价的;最后,根据语义赋值博弈框架对经典逻辑进行了博弈化。     

The tonal function of a task-irrelevant chord modulates speed of visual processing

Harmonic priming studies have provided evidence that musical expectations influence sung phoneme monitoring, with facilitated processing for phonemes sung on tonally related (expected) chords in comparison to less-related (less-expected) chords [Bigand, Tillmann, Poulin, D’Adamo, and Madurell (2001). The effect of harmonic context on phoneme monitoring in vocal music. Cognition, 81, B11–B20]. This tonal relatedness effect has suggested two interpretations: (a) processing of music and language interact at some level of processing; and (b) tonal functions of chords influence task performance via listeners’ attention. Our study investigated these hypotheses by exploring whether the effect of tonal relatedness extends to the processing of visually presented syllables (Experiments 1 and 2) and geometric forms (Experiments 3 and 4). For Experiments 1–4, visual target identification was faster when the musical background fulfilled listeners’ expectations (i.e., a related chord was played simultaneously). In Experiment 4, the addition of a baseline condition (i.e., without an established tonal center) further showed that the observed difference was due to a facilitation linked to the related chord and not to an inhibition or disruption caused by the less-related chord. This outcome suggests the influence of musical structures on attentional mechanisms and that these mechanisms are shared between auditory and visual modalities. The implications for research investigating neural correlates shared by music and language processing are discussed.     

The masked onset priming effect in picture naming

Reading aloud is faster when targets (e.g., PAIR) are preceded by visually masked primes sharing just the onset (e.g., pole) compared to all different primes (e.g., take). This effect is known as the masked onset priming effect (MOPE). One crucial feature of this effect is its presumed non-lexical basis. This aspect of the MOPE is tested in the current study. Dutch participants named pictures having bisyllabic names, which were preceded by visually masked primes. Picture naming was facilitated by first-segment but not last-segment primes, and by first-syllable as well as last-syllable primes. Whole-word primes with first or last segment overlap slowed down picture naming latencies significantly. The first-segment priming effect (i.e., MOPE) cannot be accounted for by non-lexical response competition since pictures cannot be named via the non-lexical route. Instead, the effects obtained in this study can be accommodated by a speech-planning account of the MOPE.     

Categorical priming of famous person recognition: a hitherto overlooked methodological factor can resolve a long-standing debate

The Burton, Bruce and Johnston [Burton, A. M., Bruce, V., & Johnston, R. A. (1990). Understanding face recognition with an interactive activation model. British Journal of Psychology, 81, 361-380] model of person recognition proposes that representations of known persons are connected by shared semantic attributes. This predicts that priming should be observed between persons from the same category, e.g. famous persons with the same occupation. Empirical investigations to date have produced mixed results, and comparison of methods suggests that priming based on shared occupation may have been suppressed by the presence of prime-target pairs representing a stronger relationship of close association. In the present experiment, 72 participants performed a familiarity decision to famous names preceded by close associates or members of the same occupational category. As predicted, categorical priming was observed in the group of participants for whom the same occupation prime-target pairs were presented before the close-associate pairs, but not in the group for whom the two types of relationship were intermixed. Associate priming was significant in both groups. These results are attributed to differing levels of processing of the primes, invoked by participants' observation of the most salient prime-target relationship.     

The conjunction fallacy and the many meanings of and

According to the conjunction rule, the probability of A and B cannot exceed the probability of either single event. This rule reads and in terms of the logical operator wedge, interpreting A and B as an intersection of two events. As linguists have long argued, in natural language "and" can convey a wide range of relationships between conjuncts such as temporal order ("I went to the store and bought some whisky"), causal relationships ("Smile and the world smiles with you"), and can indicate a collection of sets rather than their intersection (as in "He invited friends and colleagues to the party"). When "and" is used in word problems researching the conjunction fallacy, the conjunction rule, which assumes the logical operator wedge, therefore cannot be mechanically invoked as a norm. Across several studies, we used different methods of probing people's understanding of and-conjunctions, and found evidence that many of those respondents who violated the conjunction rule in their probability or frequency judgments inferred a meaning of and that differs from the logical operator wedge. We argue that these findings have implications for whether judgments involving ambiguous and-conjunctions that violate the conjunction rule should be considered manifestations of fallacious reasoning or of reasonable pragmatic and semantic inferences.     

Unconscious cognition isn't that smart: modulation of masked repetition priming effect in the word naming task

Masked repetition primes produce greater facilitation in naming in a block containing a high, rather than low proportion of repetition trials. [Bodner, G. E., & Masson, M. E. J. (2004). Beyond binary judgments: Prime-validity modulates masked repetition priming in the naming task. Memory & Cognition, 32, 1-11] suggested this phenomenon reflects a strategic shift in the use of masked prime as a function of its validity. We propose an alternative explanation based on the Adaptation to the statistics of the environment (ASE) framework, which suggests the proportion effect reflects adaptation of response-initiation processes to recent trial difficulty. Consistent with ASE's prediction, (1) stimuli that produce the proportion effect also produced an "asymmetric blocking effect", showing a smaller fall in response latencies of hard items than the rise of easy items when the two item types were intermixed relative to pure blocks comprised of only one item type, and (2) manipulation of prime validity was neither necessary nor sufficient to modulate the size of masked-priming effect.     

On the role of regular phonological variation in lexical access: evidence from voice assimilation in French

The present study investigated whether lexical access is affected by a regular phonological variation in connected speech: voice assimilation in French. Two associative priming experiments were conducted to determine whether strongly assimilated, potentially ambiguous word forms activate the conceptual representation of the underlying word. Would the ambiguous word form [sud] (either assimilated soute 'hold' or soude 'soda') facilitate "bagage" 'luggage', which is semantically related to soute but not to soude? In Experiment 1, words in either canonical or strongly assimilated form were presented as primes. Both forms primed their related target to the same extent. Potential lexical ambiguity did not modulate priming effects. In Experiment 2, the primes such as assimilated soute pronounced [sud] used in Experiment 1 were replaced with primes such as soude canonically pronounced [sud]. No semantic priming effect was obtained with these primes. Therefore, the effect observed for assimilated forms in Experiment 1 cannot be due to overall phonological proximity between canonical and assimilated forms. We propose that listeners must recover the intended words behind the assimilated forms through the exploitation of the remaining traces of the underlying form, however subtle these traces may be.