Structural priming: Purely syntactic?

In a series of experiments. Bock and colleagues have demonstrated that subjects show a reliable increase in the use of particular syntactic constructions after having heard and repeated that construction in an unrelated sentence. Aspects of the data seem to indicate that it is syntactic constituent structure, independent of meaning, that underlies the facilitation in these situations. In this study we investigate whether more semantic factors might also lead to priming, and specifically whether the assignment of a semantic role to a particular participant in a prime sentence can increase the probability of a target sentence whose structure allows a similar assignment. To test this we replicate Bock's study and include a further set of primes (provide-with primes) which have the syntactic constituent structure of the dative, but share semantic role assignment with the ditransitive. If syntactic priming were triggered by constituent structure alone, primes like this would lead to more dative responses, relative to a ditransitive prime. If semantic involvement were crucial, on the other hand, this prime should elicit more ditransitive responses. In this study we find significantly more ditransitive responses following the provide-with sentence than following a dative prime, and no difference between the provide-with and ditransitive primes, suggesting that semantic factors indeed play a role

Semantic and Associative Relations in Adolescents and Young Adults: Examining a Tenuous Dichotomy

The constructs of semantic and associative relatedness have played a prominent role in research on semantic memory because researchers have historically drawn on the distinction between these two types of relations when formulating theories, creating experimental conditions, and explaining empirical results. We argue that the binary distinction between semantics and association is rooted in a fundamental problem in how the two are defined and contrasted. Whereas semantic relatedness has typically been limited to category coordinates, associative relatedness has most often been operationalized using the word association task. We show that meaningful semantic relations between words/concepts certainly extend beyond category coordinates, that word association is driven primarily by meaningful semantic relations between cue and response words, and that non-meaningful, purely associative relations between words generally are not retained in memory. To illustrate these points, we discuss research on semantic priming, picture naming, and the Deese-Roediger-McDermott false memory paradigm. Furthermore, we describe how research on the development of mnemonic skills in adolescents supports our view. That is, adolescents do not learn arbitrary associations between words, but develop elaborative strategies for linking words by drawing on their rich knowledge of events and situations. In other words, adolescents use existing memories of meaningful relations to ground their memories for novel word pairs, even in an associative learning paradigm

The Role of Trigger-Target Similarity in the Vowel Harmony Process

Proceedings of the Sixteenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society (1990), pp. 140-15

Frequency, Competition and Lexical Representation

An important issue in recent work on lexical representation is whether inflected past tense forms are represented as single units or in morphologically decomposed form, and whether this varies according to the regulartity of the fonns involved. W e investigated this by looking at competitor effects between homophonic past tense forms (paced/paste, made/maid) where we varied the relative frequencies of the past tense form and its homophonic competitor. In particular, if regular forms are represented in morphologicaly decomposed form, as is widely argued, and irregular forms are listed as single units, this should lead to contrasting effects. To investigate this we used two tasks - writing to dictation and cross modal priming to compare frequency effects for regular and irregular forms. The results for both type of experiment were highly consistent, showing parallel effects of frequency for both regular and irregular forms. W e discuss the implications of this for claims about the lexical representation of morphologically complex forms

The Wind Chilled the Spectators, but the Wine Just Chilled: Sense, Structure, and Sentence Comprehension

Anticipation plays a role in language comprehension. In this article, we explore the extent to which verb sense influences expectations about upcoming structure. We focus on change of state verbs like shatter, which have different senses that are expressed in either transitive or intransitive structures, depending on the sense that is used. In two experiments we influence the interpretation of verb sense by manipulating the thematic fit of the grammatical subject as cause or affected entity for the verb, and test whether readers’ expectations for a transitive or intransitive structure change as a result. This sense-biasing context influenced reading times in the postverbal regions. Reading times for transitive sentences were faster following good-cause than good-theme subjects, but the opposite pattern was found for intransitive sentences. We conclude that readers use sense-contingent subcategorization preferences during on-line comprehension

A Connectionist Perspective on Prosodic Structure

Proceedings of the Fifteenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society (1989), pp. 114-12

Special Problems in Civil Procedure - Complex Litigation

Organization and Presentation of a Complex Case lecture given by Francis H. Hare Jr., a partner in the law firm of Hare, Wynn, Newell & Newton, in Birmingham, Alabama. Judicial Management of Complex Cases lecture given by the Honorable Robert M. Parker, Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. Complex Litigation in the Public Sector lecture given by Gerald A. Connell, a member of the firm of Baker & Hostetler, in Washington, D.C. The Future of Complex Litigation lecture given by Mary Kay Kane, academic dean and Professor of Law at Hastings College of Law, University of California

Using Wearable Technology to Quantify Physical Activity Recovery: Secondary Report From the AFTER (App-Facilitated Tele-Rehabilitation) Program for COVID-19 Survivors Randomized Study

Background: Knowledge on physical activity recovery after COVID-19 survival is limited. The AFTER (App-Facilitated Tele-Rehabilitation) program for COVID-19 survivors randomized participants, following hospital discharge, to either education and unstructured physical activity or a telerehabilitation program. Step count data were collected as a secondary outcome, and we found no significant differences in total step count trajectories between groups at 6 weeks. Further step count data were not analyzed. Objective: The purpose of this analysis was to examine step count trajectories and correlates among all participants (combined into a single group) across the 12-week study period. Methods: Linear mixed models with random effects were used to model daily steps over the number of study days. Models with 0, 1, and 2 inflection points were considered, and the final model was selected based on the highest log-likelihood value. Results: Participants included 44 adults (41 with available Fitbit [Fitbit LLC] data). Initially, step counts increased by an average of 930 (95% CI 547-1312; PPPP Conclusions: Participants showed a marked improvement in daily step counts during the first 3 weeks of the study, followed by more gradual improvement in the remaining 9 weeks. Physical activity data and step count recovery trajectories may be considered surrogates for physiological recovery, although further research is needed to examine this relationship

The Effects of Acute High-Intensity Interval Exercise and Hyperinsulinemic-Euglycemic Clamp on Osteoglycin Levels in Young and Middle-Aged Men

Osteoglycin (OGN) is a leucine-rich proteoglycan that has been implicated in the regulation of glucose in animal models. However, its relationship with glucose control in humans is unclear. We examined the effect of high-intensity interval exercise (HIIE) and hyperinsulinemic-euglycemic clamp on circulating levels of OGN as well as whether circulating OGN levels are associated with markers of glycemic control and cardio-metabolic health. Serum was analyzed for OGN (ELISA) levels from 9 middle-aged obese men (58.1 ± 2.2 years, body mass index [BMI] = 33.1 ± 1.4 kg∙m−2, mean ± SEM) and 9 young men (27.8 ± 1.6 years, BMI = 24.4 ± 0.08 kg∙m−2) who previously completed a study involving a euglycemic-hyperinsulinemic clamp at rest and after HIIE (4x4 minutes cycling at approximately 95% peak heart rate (HRpeak), interspersed with 2 minutes of active recovery). Blood pressure, body composition (dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry), and insulin sensitivity (hyperinsulinemic-euglycemic clamp) were assessed. Serum OGN was higher in the young cohort compared with the middle-aged cohort (65.2 ± 10.1 ng/mL versus 36.5 ± 4. 5 ng/mL, p ≤ 0.05). Serum OGN was unaffected by acute HIIE but decreased after the insulin clamp compared with baseline (~−27%, p = 0.01), post-exercise (~−35%, p = 0.01), and pre-clamp (~−32%, p = 0.02) time points, irrespective of age. At baseline, lower circulating OGN levels were associated with increased age, BMI, and fat mass, whereas higher OGN levels were related to lower fasting glucose. Higher OGN levels were associated with a higher glucose infusion rate. Exercise had a limited effect on circulating OGN. The mechanisms by which OGN affects glucose regulation should be explored in the future. © 2022 The Authors. JBMR Plus published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of American Society for Bone and Mineral Research