Response Selection modulates Visual Search Within and Across Dimensions.

In feature search tasks, uncertainty about the dimension on which targets differ from the nontargets hampers search performance relative to a situation in which this dimension is known in advance. Typically, these cross-dimensional costs are associated with less efficient guidance of attention to the target. In the present study, participants either had to perform a feature search task or had to perform a nonsearch task, that is, respond to a target presented without nontargets. The target varied either in one dimension or across dimensions. The results showed similar effects both in search and nonsearch conditions: Preknowledge of the target dimension gave shorter response times than when the dimension was unknown. Similar results were found using a trial-by-trial cueing. It is concluded that effects that typically have been attributed to early top-down modulation of attentional guidance may represent effects that occur later in processing. Copyright 2005 by the American Psychological Association

Phonological facilitation of grammatical gender retrieval.

In Dutch, the gender of nouns is marked by the definite articles de (common gender) and het (neuter gender). Most models of language production assume that gender information is retrieved via the noun's syntactic representation (or lemma). The authors test Caramazza's (1997) alternative proposal, according to which gender information is retrieved via the noun's phonological word form (or lexeme). In three picture-word experiments, which differed in the tasks to be performed (noun production, article+noun production, article production, and gender decision), clear phonological effects were obtained in tasks involving the retrieval of the noun's gender information. It is argued that traditional models of language production have difficulty in accounting for the occurrence and/or the size of these effects whereas they follow quite naturally from Caramazza's (1997) Independent Network model. © 2004 Psychology Press Ltd

Response Selection in Visual Search: The Influence of Response Compatibility of Nontargets.

this article should be addressed to Peter A. Starreveld, Department of Cognitive Psychology, Vrije Universiteit, Van der Boechorststraat 1, 1081 BT Amsterdam, the Netherlands. E-mail: [email protected] Journal of Experimental Psychology: Copyright 2004 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. Human Perception and Performance 2004, Vol. 30, No. 1, 56 --78 0096-1523/04/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/0096-1523.30.1.56 56 As discussed previously, flat slopes of search functions are interpreted as evidence showing that distractor elements in the corresponding experiments were only preattentively processed. Because identification of a display element involves attentive processing, two-stage theories of visual search predict that the identities of distractors should not affect the search time for a target in any search task in which flat search slopes are obtained. In the present study, this prediction was put to the tes

A Connectionist Model for Context Effects in the Picture-Word Interference Task

In the picture-word interference task, two context effects can be distinguished: the semantic interference effect and the orthographic facilitation effect. A theory is described to explain these effects. This theory was implemented in a connectionist model. The model is able to simulate the time courses of the two context effects and their interaction. 1. Introduction In the long history of research on Stroop-like effects in naming tasks, the task of naming a picture Figure 1. Experimental data. The words are examples of words which were presented with the picture of a CAT in the relevant conditions of the experiment. while ignoring an accompanying word is probably the most widely used. This task can also be used to study the time courses of the observed effects, by varying the time between the presentation of the picture and the presentation of the word (called the Stimulus Onset Asynchrony, SOA). Two effects stand out in the literature. First, naming times are increased when the ..

In defense of the lexical-competition account of picture-word interference: A comment on Finkbeiner and Caramazza (2006)

On the basis of two empirical observations, Finkbeiner and Caramazza (2006) take issue with the generally accepted interpretation of semantic interference in the picture-word interference task in terms of lexical competition. As an alternative, they propose a response-selection account, in which semantic interference is attributed to the time needed to remove the inappropriate (word-reading) response from an output buffer. In this comment we argue that the empirical work discussed provides an interesting challenge for current models of language production, but that the authors' alternative account is at variance with at least three robust empirical findings in the language production literature

Structural complexity is not the (big) issue: A reply to Roelofs (2007)

In the last two decades, La Heij and colleagues have presented accounts of a number of context effects in Stroop-like word-production tasks. Roelofs (2007 this issue) criticises various aspects of our proposals, ranging from the number of processing stages assumed to details of simulation results. In this reply we first argue that we do not challenge spoken-word production models developed in the psycholinguistic tradition for being ‘too complex', as Roelofs asserts. Next we discuss Roelofs' detailed criticisms on our proposed solutions. Finally, in response to Roelofs' argument that increasing the structural complexity of our model would render it similar to its main competitor, WEAVER++, we discuss the crucial differences that would still remain

Implementation of Optimization Networks in Synchronous Massively Parallel Hardware

In this paper, implementation possibilities of a synchronous binary neural model for solving optimization problems in massively parallel hardware are studied. It is argued that synchronous, as opposed to asynchronous models are best suited to the general characteristics of massively parallel architectures. In this study the massively parallel target device is the BSP400 (Brain Style Processor with 400 nodes). The updating of the nodes in the BSP400 is synchronous and the nodes can only process local data (i.e., activations). The synchronous models studied were introduced by Takefuji [7] and make use of both local and global operators. The functionality of these operators with regard to the quality of the solutions was examined through software simulations. Fully digital neurocomputers such as the BSP400 offer sufficient flexibility for programming local operations on node level. The possibilities of translating the function of global operators into local operations were also studied. T..