Ease of predication does not account for imageability effects in performance: a reply to [Jones, 2002]

In this paper we defend our views against [Jones, 2002] claim that the criticism of the ease of predication hypothesis ( [Jones, 1985]) made by [de Mornay Davies and Funnell, 2000] is “fundamentally flawed.” Jones raises five issues concerning the content of the text, the reliability of effects of ease of predication, the generation of predicates, semantic features, and memory retrieval. We address each of these issues in turn and show that either a critical point raised is not made, or the point is mistaken. More importantly we show that our empirical findings, which are entirely overlooked by Jones, unequivocally support the view that ease of predication does not account for imageability effects in performance

Greater priming for previously distracting information in young than older adults when suppression is ruled out

The use of previously distracting information on memory tests with indirect instructions is usually age-equivalent, while young adults typically show greater explicit memory for such information. This could reflect qualitatively distinct initial processing (encoding) of distracting information by younger and older adults, but could also be caused by greater suppression of such information by younger adults on tasks with indirect instructions. In Experiment 1, young and older adults read stories containing distracting words, which they ignored, before studying a list of words containing previously distracting items for a free recall task. Half the participants were informed of the presence of previously distracting items in the study list prior to recall (direct instruction), and half were not (indirect instruction). Recall of previously distracting words was age-equivalent in the indirect condition, but young adults recalled more distracting words in the direct condition. In Experiment 2, participants performed the continuous identification with recognition task, which captures a measure of perceptual priming and recognition on each trial, and is immune to suppression. Priming and recognition of previously distracting words was greater in younger than older adults, suggesting that the young engage in more successful suppression of previously distracting information on tasks in which its relevance is not overtly signaled

Patterns of physical and psychological development in future teenage mothers

Background and objectives: Teenage childbearing may have childhood origins and can be viewed as the outcome of a coherent reproductive strategy associated with early environmental conditions. Life-history theory would predict that where futures are uncertain fitness can be maximized through diverting effort from somatic development into reproduction. Even before the childbearing years, future teenage mothers differ from their peers both physically and psychologically, indicating early calibration to key ecological factors. Cohort data has not been deliberately collected to test life-history hypotheses within Western populations. None the less, existing data sets can be used to pursue relevant patterns using socioeconomic variables as indices of relevant ecologies. Methodology: We examined the physical and psychological development of 599 young women from the National Child Development Study who became mothers before age 20, compared to 599 socioeconomically matched controls. Results: Future young mothers were lighter than controls at birth and shorter at age 7. They had earlier menarche and accelerated breast development, earlier cessation of growth, and shorter adult stature. Future young mothers had poorer emotional and behavioural adjustment than controls at age 7 and especially 11, and by age 16, idealised younger ages for marriage and parenthood than did the controls. Conclusions and implications: The developmental patterns we observed are consistent with the idea that early childbearing is a component of an accelerated reproductive strategy that is induced by early-life conditions. We discuss the implications for the kinds of interventions likely to affect the rate of teenage childbearing

Types of interference and their resolution in monolingual word production

There is growing evidence that speakers recruit inhibitory control in situations of high within-language interference, e.g., when selecting from among competing lexical entries or when tailoring utterances to the communicative needs of the addressee. However, little is known about the types of cognitive control mechanisms that are involved in the speech production process. This study examines the relative contribution of various forms of interference arising at different stages of information processing as well as their control to object naming under conditions of prepotent and underdetermined competition. Eighty-nine unimpaired native English speakers completed three inhibitory control tasks (arrow flanker, Simon arrow and anti-saccade) and two object naming tasks (picture-word interference, PWI, and name agreement, NA). Analyses of mean RT and RT distribution (delta plots) showed that only the flanker effect was a significant predictor of the PWI but not NA effect, while the remaining inhibitory measures made no significant contribution to either the PWI or NA effect. Participants with smaller flanker effects, indicative of better resolution of representational conflict, were faster to name objects in the face of competing stimuli. The pattern of results suggests that delays in production can be an outcome of inefficient resolution of interference traced to intermediate rather than late stages of processing, at least as far as the PWI task is concerned

An event-related potential study of cross-modal morphological and phonological priming

The current work investigated whether differences in phonological overlap between the past- and present-tense forms of regular and irregular verbs can account for the graded neurophysiological effects of verb regularity observed in past-tense priming designs. Event-related potentials were recorded from 16 healthy participants who performed a lexical-decision task in which past-tense primes immediately preceded present-tense targets. To minimize intra-modal phonological priming effects, cross-modal presentation between auditory primes and visual targets was employed, and results were compared to a companion intra-modal auditory study (Justus, T., Larsen, J., de Mornay Davies, P., Swick, D. (2008). Interpreting dissociations between regular and irregular past-tense morphology: evidence from event-related potentials. Cognitive, Affective, Behavioral Neuroscience, 8, 178–194.). For both regular and irregular verbs, faster response times and reduced N400 components were observed for present-tense forms when primed by the corresponding past-tense forms. Although behavioral facilitation was observed with a pseudopast phonological control condition, neither this condition nor an orthographic-phonological control produced significant N400 priming effects. Instead, these two types of priming were associated with a post-lexical anterior negativity (PLAN). Results are discussed with regard to dual- and single-system theories of inflectional morphology, as well as intra- and cross-modal prelexical priming

Automatic semantic priming: the contribution of lexical and semantic level processes

It has recently been argued that the facilitation between associated prime-target pairs observed in automatic semantic priming tasks is due to low level lexical effects. Any "pure" semantic priming is thought to be the result of strategic effects and does not therefore reflect automatic access to lexical semantic representations (e.g. Shelton & Martin, 1992). Not only are such claims based on a narrow definition of semantic relatedness as category co-membership, but it is argued that the methodology employed by Shelton & Martin and other advocates of the intra-lexical priming hypothesis who have attempted to dissociate semantic and associative effects by devising non-associated semantic prime-target pairs is fundamentally flawed. Instead, an experiment is reported in which purely lexical-level primes are directly compared with semantic-level primes for the same target items in a sequential lexical decision task. Both types of prime produce facilitation, but only that from the semantic-level primes is significant. It is argued that contrary to the intra-lexical priming hypothesis, semantic information is required for automatic semantic priming. If it were not, the lexical-level priming in this experiment would have been greater than the semantic level. As it is, the reverse pattern is reported, providing support for the notion of a semantic contribution to the facilitation observed between associated prime-target pairs

Semantic representation and ease of predication

Jones'(1985) Ease of Predication hypothesis, which states that underlying differences in the semantic representation of concrete and abstract words can be explained in terms of disproportionate numbers of semantic predicates, is explored in two experiments. The results suggest that (1) the advantage shown by concrete words in terms of greater number of predicates is only apparent for words of low frequency, and (2) Jones' ease of predication variable does not accurately reflect predicate distributions, or differences in imageability. Rather, it appears to represent differences in concreteness. As such, the validity of this concept as the basis of theories of semantic representation is questioned. Models based on the assumption of a “richer” semantic representation for concrete words are therefore not supported

JBR: a reassessment of concept familiarity and a category-specific disorder for living things

JBR, a classic case of a category-specific disorder for living things reported by Warrington and Shallice (Brain 1984; 107: 829-54), was reassessed to establish whether differences in concept familiarity could account for his dlsorder. JBR’s ability to name and define living and non-living things deteriorated with decreasing levels of familiarity, but was significantly more impaired for living things in the low familiarity range; no category-specific effect was apparent for highly familiar items. Possible confounding effects arising from the greater visual complexlty and visual similarity of living things could not account for the findings. Further investigations showed that JBR’s disorder for living things could not be explained in terms of a specific loss of visual feature knowledge. Normal controls also showed a disparity between their naming of living and non-living things rated equivalently for familiarity, indicating that JBR’s category disorder was not necessarily pathological in nature. It is suggested that concept familiarity remains the best predictor of performance, but that present measures, which rate only the frequency of experience, appear to be relatively insensitive to differences in the familiarity of less common living and non-living things. In future, familiarity ratings which include the quality of experience might provide a more sensitive measure

The semantic representation of concrete and abstract words

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Music of language, language of music

This article reports on a series of seminars exploring the relationship between the two main human communication systems: language and music. The seminars are sponsored by the British Psychological Society and will address specific aspects in separate meetings. This article is dedicated to the first seminar, in which two specific topics were debated: (1) developmental aspects, and (2) questions concerning evolution. An international group of sixty scholars contributed to a very successful interdisciplinary exchange involving psychologists, musicians, linguists, anthropologists, neuroscientists and AI researchers