scholarly journals Semantic relations and compound transparency: A regression study in CARIN theory

Psihologija ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 46 (4) ◽  
pp. 455-478 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hien Pham ◽  
Harald Baayen

According to the CARIN theory of Gagn? and Shoben (1997), conceptual relations play an important role in compound interpretation. This study develops three measures gauging the role of conceptual relations, and pits these measures against measures based on latent semantic analysis (Landauer & Dumais, 1997). The CARIN measures successfully predict response latencies in a familiarity categorization task, in a semantic transparency task, and in visual lexical decision. Of the measures based on latent semantic analysis, only a measure orthogonal to the conceptual relations, which instead gauges the extent to which the concepts for the compound?s head and the compound itself are discriminated, also reached significance. Results further indicate that in tasks requiring careful assessment of the meaning of the compound, general knowledge of conceptual relations plays a central role, whereas in the lexical decision task, attention shifts to co-activated meanings and the specifics of the conceptual relations realized in the compound?s modifier family.

2012 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 471-479 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juan Pablo Barreyro ◽  
Jazmín Cevasco ◽  
Débora Burín ◽  
Carlos Molinari Marotto

This study investigated the role of working memory capacity on the making of reinstatement and causal elaborative inferences during the reading of natural texts. In order to determine participants' working memory capacity, they were asked to take the reading span task before they took part in the study. Those participants that were identified as high or low working memory capacity readers were asked to perform a lexical decision task in two conditions: pre-inference and inference. In the pre-inference condition, target words representing reinstatement or causal elaborative inferences were presented immediately before the sentences that were predicted to prompt them. In the inference condition, the target words were presented immediately after the sentences that were predicted to prompt the inferences. Results indicated that, for the high working memory capacity readers, lexical decision times were faster at the inference compared to the pre-inference locations for both types of inferences. In the case of low working capacity readers, lexical decision times were faster at the inference compared to the pre-inference locations only for reinstatement inferences. These findings suggest that working memory capacity plays a role in the making of causal inferences during the comprehension of natural texts.


Psihologija ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-116 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jelena Havelka ◽  
Clive Frankish

Case mixing is a technique that is used to investigate the perceptual processes involved in visual word recognition. Two experiments examined the effect of case mixing on lexical decision latencies. The aim of these experiments was to establish whether different case mixing patterns would interact with the process of appropriate visual segmentation and phonological assembly in word reading. In the first experiment, case mixing had a greater effect on response times to words when it led to visual disruption of the multi-letter graphemes (MLGs) as well as the overall word shape (e.g. pLeAd), compared to when it disrupted overall word shape only (e.g. plEAd). A second experiment replicated this finding with words in which MLGs represent either the vowel (e.g. bOaST vs. bOAst) or the consonant sound (e.g. sNaCK vs. sNAcK). These results confirm that case mixing can have different effect depending on the type of orthographic unit that is broken up by the manipulation. They demonstrate that graphemes are units that play an important role in visual word recognition, and that manipulation of their presentation by case mixing will have a significant effect on response latencies to words in a lexical decision task. As such these findings need to be taken into account by the models of visual word recognition.


Author(s):  
Athanasios Tsiamas ◽  
Gonia Jarema ◽  
Eva Kehayia ◽  
Gevorg Chilingaryan

AbstractTheoretical accounts of Greek compounds argue for a close relation between their stress properties and their underlying structure. Compounds that preserve and receive stress at the same position as their second constituent are analyzed as stem-word constructions, while those that receive antepenultimate stress are viewed as belonging to the stem-stem category. Using an auditory lexical decision task, we examine the effect of stress change on the processing of compounds in the light of existing theoretical linguistic accounts. Although our experimental results do not reach statistical significance, we believe that they are informative of the cognitive status and role of stress in compound processing. Finally, they relate to existing theories of compounding in Greek and reflect the complex interaction of the psycholinguistic effects of stress and the structural properties of these constructions.


2013 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia Lockwood ◽  
Abigail Millings ◽  
Erica Hepper ◽  
Angela C. Rowe

Crying is a powerful solicitation of caregiving, yet little is known about the cognitive processes underpinning caring responses to crying others. This study examined (1) whether crying (compared to sad and happy) faces differentially elicited semantic activation of caregiving, and (2) whether individual differences in cognitive and emotional empathy moderated this activation. Ninety participants completed a lexical decision task in which caregiving, neutral, and nonwords were presented after subliminal exposure (24 ms) to crying, sad, and happy faces. Individuals low in cognitive empathy had slower reaction times to caregiving (vs. neutral) words after exposure to crying faces, but not after sad or happy faces. Results are discussed with respect to the role of empathy in response to crying others.


2003 ◽  
Vol 56 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara J. Unsworth ◽  
Penny M. Pexman

There has been much debate about the role of phonology in reading. This debate has been fuelled, in part, by mixed findings for phonological effects in lexical decision tasks. In the present research we investigated the impact of reader skill on three phonological effects (homophone, homograph, and regularity effects) in a lexical decision task and in a phonological lexical decision task. In both tasks, the more skilled readers showed different patterns of phonological effects from those of the less skilled readers; in particular, less skilled readers showed regularity effects in both tasks whereas more skilled readers did not. We concluded that more skilled readers activate phonology in these tasks but do so more efficiently, with less spurious phonological activation.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Etienne P. LeBel

This study examined whether early effects of semantics could occur in the context of the PRP paradigm. Based on Reynolds and Besner (2004), it was predicted that early effects of semantics would possibly be observed. The study found that the difference in reaction times for the related and unrelated primes for the secondary lexical decision task were constant at the varying SOAs. This additive effect, using the locus-of-slack logic, means that semantic information occurs at or after the central processing bottleneck. Thus, the results did not lend support for our prediction, as semantic information did not feedback to letter representations. The results of this study thus contradict Reynolds and Besner’s (2004) position that the letter level receives information from the semantic and lexical levels. Johnston, McCann, and Remington’s (1995) position, on the other hand, is completely in line with the current data of this study. Their theory that words and semantic occur at or after central processing accounts for the additive effects observed in this study. The current study found that the faster related prime trials in the secondary lexical decision task remained as fast in the short SOA as compared to the long SOA. Thus, the additive effect found lends support that semantic analysis occurs at or after the central attention bottleneck. Although early effects of semantics were not found in the current investigation, one can only imagine that one day researchers may be able to show semantic processing occurring simultaneously with other cognitive tasks.


Psihologija ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jelena Lisac ◽  
Petar Milin

Since the study of Meyer and Schvaneveldt (1971), a large number of researches have shown facilitation effect in cognitive processing of a given word when it is preceded by a semantically (i.e. associatively) related word. In this study, we examined influence of association strength between context and target on visual word processing in Serbian language. Primary goal was to test cognitive relevance of the t-value and mutual information (MI) as measures of the association strength. The results showed that the mutual information affects response latencies in the visual lexical decision task: the higher the mutual information for two words (bigram), the shorter the reaction time. Contrariwise, cognitive relevance of the t-value as a measure of the words' association strength was not confirmed.


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