Go/No-Go范式中非反应手状态对Simon效应性质的影响

为了探讨非反应手对标准Simon任务改装的go/no-go任务的影响,被试只对其中一种颜色进行按键反应,通过指导语来操控非反应手的状态,结果发现：(1)实验一中当不提醒非反应手如何放置时,不会产生Simon效应;(2) 实验二中要求非反应手放在固定的桌面位置上,产生了视觉运动Simon效应,其随反应时的增大而减小;(3) 实验三中要求非反应手放在固定的非反应键上,却产生了认知Simon效应,其随反应时的增大而增大。这说明非反应手的状态影响Simon效应的产生及其性质。     

高度模糊靶字下的N400语义启动效应：词汇加工理论的证据

本研究基于不可识别模糊字词仍能诱发N400的词汇加工理论的假设,让被试对模糊字进行同一字延迟判断,利用脑电技术记录不同模糊程度靶字的认知过程,来探讨N400出现的条件,以阐明N400反映的是词汇加工,还是词汇后加工。实验结果表明：与可识别、轻度模糊汉字一样,不可识别、高度模糊汉字仍然可以诱发N400;这种N400语义启动效应反映了词汇加工过程。     

语言产生过程中非目标语言的激活与抑制

运用长时重复启动范式, 探讨熟练和非熟练中－英双语者语言产生过程中非目标语言的激活与抑制。实验1探讨双语被试在学习阶段使用中文进行图片命名任务时, 非目标语言英文概念层面的激活与抑制情况, 结果发现, 两种熟练水平的被试均没有出现重复启动效应; 实验2探讨双语被试在学习阶段使用英文进行图片命名任务时, 非目标语言中文概念层面的激活与抑制情况, 结果发现, 熟练双语被试没有出现重复启动效应, 而非熟练双语被试出现了重复启动效应; 实验3探讨非熟练双语被试在学习阶段使用英文进行图片命名任务时, 非目标语言中文词汇层面的激活与抑制情况, 结果没有出现重复启动效应。综合三个实验的结果可以表明, 熟练中－英双语者语言产生过程中在概念层面上就对非目标语言(不管是一语还是二语)进行了抑制, 而非熟练中－英双语者使用一语时可以在概念层面上抑制非目标语言(二语), 但使用二语时不能在概念层面上抑制非目标语言(一语), 要在词汇层面上才能抑制非目标语言(一语)。     

选择性注意的两种负启动效应研究回顾及比较

通过比较特性负启动和位置负启动两种实验范式．对选择性注意的负启动研究进行回顾与总结：从研究方法、行为及脑成像结果等方面对特性和位置负启动研究进行比较分析;简要介绍负启动机制,并从客体与空间选择性注意的分离、视觉加工神经通道和工作记忆等方面对特性和位置负启动异同的原因进行初步探讨。对特性和位置负启动及其脑机制的差异研究将有利于对负启动效应及其机制的进一步考察．并指出负启动范式在分心抑制等研究方向具有广泛的应用前景。     

Structural priming of adjective-noun structures in hearing and deaf children

We examined priming of adjective-noun structures in Dutch hearing and deaf children. In three experiments, hearing 7- and 8-year-olds, hearing 11- and 12-year-olds, and deaf 11- and 12-year-olds read a prenominal structure (e.g., the blue ball), a relative clause structure (e.g., the ball that is blue), or a main clause (e.g., the ball is blue). After reading each prime structure, children described a target picture in writing. Half of the target pictures contained the same noun as the prime structure and half contained a different noun. Hearing 7- and 8-year-olds and 11- and 12-year-olds, as well as deaf 11- and 12-year-olds, showed priming effects for all three structures in both the same-noun and different-noun conditions. Structural priming was not boosted by lexical repetition in the hearing and deaf 11- and 12-year-olds; a lexical boost effect was observed only in the 7- and 8-year-olds and only in the relative clause structure. The findings suggest that hearing and deaf children possess abstract representations of adjective-noun structures independent of particular lexical items.     

Persistence of emphasis in language production: A cross-linguistic approach

This study investigates the way in which speakers determine which aspects of an utterance to emphasize and how this affects the form of utterances. To do this, we ask whether the binding between emphasis and thematic roles persists between utterances. In one within-language (Dutch-Dutch) and three cross-linguistic (Dutch-English) structural priming experiments, we measured persistence effects for four different Dutch transitives (actives, PP-initial passives, PP-medial passives, and PP-final passives). Whereas English allows only one passive (PP-final passive), Dutch allows three different variants with the same functional assignment, but different constituent structures. Additionally, the degree of emphasis on the agent differs significantly between the PP-initial passive and the other passives (Experiment 1). Experiment 2 showed persistence of actives, PP-medial, and PP-final passives in Dutch, but no priming between passives with different constituent structures. Experiments 3 and 4, however, showed that both PP-medial and PP-final passives prime the use of English passives. Experiment 5 confirmed that the emphasis on thematic roles persists: the proportion of passives in the PP-initial passive condition fell midway between the proportions produced in the active and PP-medial passive condition.     

Morphological priming by itself: A study of Portuguese conjugations

Does the language processing system make use of abstract grammatical categories and representations that are not directly visible from the surface form of a linguistic expression? This study examines stem-formation processes and conjugation classes, a case of ‘pure’ morphology that provides insight into the role of grammatical structure in language processing. We report results from a cross-modal priming experiment examining 1st and 3rd conjugation verb forms in Portuguese. Although items were closely matched with respect to a range of non-morphological factors, distinct priming patterns were found for 1st and 3rd conjugation stems. We attribute the observed priming patterns to different representations of conjugational stems, combinatorial morphologically structured ones for 1st conjugation and unanalyzed morphologically unstructured ones for 3rd conjugation stems. Our findings underline the importance of morphology for language comprehension indicating that morphological analysis goes beyond the identification of grammatical morphemes.     

Psychophysiological evidence of response conflict and strategic control of responses in affective priming

This experiment investigated the role of conflict in the response and evaluative categorization systems in the affective congruency effect using event-related brain potentials (ERPs). Participants completed a primed evaluative decision task in which the proportion of congruent to incongruent trials was manipulated. The size of the affective congruency effect increased along with the proportion of congruent trials. ERP data identified the locus of this effect in the response system: the lateralized readiness potential (LRP) showed that preferential response activation occurred in motor cortex following prime onset, and the fronto-central N2 (conflict monitoring) component indicated that conflict occurred when the response activated by the prime differed from the target response, irrespective of the affective congruency of the prime and target. The extent of this conflict covaried with strategic processing of primes, as participants directed less attention to primes that were likely to elicit conflict. These data support a response conflict account of affective congruency effects in the evaluative decision task and indicate that strategic control of attention is important in determining the extent to which conflict occurs.     

Conceptual and physical object qualities contribute differently to motor affordances

Priming studies have demonstrated that an object’s intrinsic and extrinsic qualities (size, orientation) influence subsequent motor behavior thus suggesting that these object qualities ‘afford’ actions that are congruent with the prime. We present four experiments that aim to evaluate the relative effect of conceptual and physical object qualities on action priming. In Experiment 1 equally graspable known and unknown tools are presented as primes. In Experiment 2 the primes depict high versus low graspable unfamiliar tools, and in Experiments 3 and 4 we present simple graspable shapes versus high graspable unfamiliar or familiar tools respectively. In all experiments the (unrelated) task consists of a timed motor response to the direction of a centrally placed arrow that is superimposed on the prime. Whereas tool familiarity reveals no significant difference on reaction time (Exp 1), responses to high graspable unfamiliar tools (Exp 2) and simple graspable shapes (Exps 3 and 4) are significantly faster. We conclude that motor affordances are most readily determined by object qualities that depend on the object’s physical appearance provided by visual information. Conceptual information about the stimuli, such as semantic category or stored knowledge about its function and associated movements, does not appear to produce detectable effects of action priming in this paradigm.     

Electrophysiological evidence for size invariance in masked picture repetition priming

This experiment examined invariance in object representations through measuring event-related potentials (ERPs) to pictures in a masked repetition priming paradigm. Pairs of pictures were presented where the prime was either the same size or half the size of the target object and the target was either presented in a normal orientation or was a normal sized mirror reflection of the prime object. Previous masked repetition priming studies have found a cascade of priming effect sensitive to perceptual (N190/P190) and semantic (N400) properties of the stimulus. This experiment found that both early (N190/P190 effects) and later effects (N400) were invariant to size, whereas only the N190/P190 effect was invariant to mirror reflection. The combination of a small prime and a mirror reflected target led to no significant priming effects. Taken together, the results of this set of experiments suggests that object recognition, more specifically, activating an object representation, occurs in a hierarchical fashion where overlapping perceptual information between the prime and target is necessary, although not always sufficient, to activate a higher level semantic representation.