Publications

Abstract

As the popularity of sending messages electronically increases, so does the necessity of conveying messages more efficiently. One way of increasing efficiency is to abbreviate words and expressions by combining letters with numbers such as gr8 for “great,” using acronyms, such as lol for “laughing out loud,” or clippings such as msg for “message.” The present study compares the processing of shortcuts to the processing of closely matched pseudo-shortcuts. ERPs were recorded while participants were performing a lexical decision task. Response times showed that shortcuts were categorized more slowly as nonwords than pseudo-shortcuts. The ERP results showed no differences between shortcuts and pseudo-shortcuts at time windows 50–150 ms and 150–270 ms, but there were significant differences between 270 and 500 ms. These results suggest that at early stages of word recognition, the orthographic and phonological processing is similar for shortcuts and pseudo-shortcuts. However, at the time of lexical access, shortcuts diverge from pseudo-shortcuts, suggesting that shortcuts activate stored lexical representations.

Abstract

For efficiency reasons, words in electronic messages are sometimes formed by combining letters with numbers, as in gr8 for “great.” The aim of this study was to investigate whether a digit incorporated into a letter—digit shortcut would retain its numerosity. A priming paradigm was used with letter—digit shortcuts (e.g., gr8) and matched pseudoshortcuts (e.g., qr8) as primes. The primes were presented simultaneously with sets of dots (targets) for which even/odd decisions were required, or they appeared 250 msec before target onset. When pseudoshortcuts were presented, decision latencies were shorter when the target and the digit in the prime were matched in parity than when they were mismatched. This main effect of match was not significant for shortcuts. The results suggest that the number concepts of digits combined with letters become activated but are quickly suppressed or deactivated when the digit is part of an existing shortcut.

Abstract

The goal of the study was to examine whether speakers naming pairs of objects would retrieve the names of the objects in parallel or in equence. To this end, we recorded the speakers’ eye movements and determined whether the difficulty of retrieving the name of the 2nd object affected the duration of the gazes to the 1st object. Two experiments, which differed in the spatial arrangement of the objects, showed that the speakers looked longer at the 1st object when the name of the 2nd object was easy than when it was more difficult to retrieve. Thus, the easy 2nd-object names interfered more with the processing of the 1st object than the more difficult 2nd-object names. In the 3rd experiment, the processing of the 1st object was rendered more difficult by presenting it upside down. No effect of 2nd-object difficulty on the gaze duration for the 1st object was found. These results suggest that speakers can retrieve the names of a foveated and an extrafoveal object in parallel, provided that the processing of the foveated object is not too demanding

Abstract

Visual evoked responses were monitored while participants searched for a target (e.g., bird) in a four-object display that could include a semantically related distractor (e.g., fish). The occurrence of both the target and the semantically related distractor modulated the N2pc response to the search display: The N2pc amplitude was more pronounced when the target and the distractor appeared in the same visual field, and it was less pronounced when the target and the distractor were in opposite fields, relative to when the distractor was absent. Earlier components (P1, N1) did not show any differences in activity across the different distractor conditions. The data suggest that semantic distractors influence early stages of selecting stimuli in multielement displays.

Abstract

When young adults carry out visual search, distractors that are semantically related, rather than unrelated, to targets can disrupt target selection (see [Belke et al., 2008] and [Moores et al., 2003]). This effect is apparent on the first eye movements in search, suggesting that attention is sometimes captured by related distractors. Here we assessed effects of semantically related distractors on search in patients with frontal-lobe lesions and compared them to the effects in age-matched controls. Compared with the controls, the patients were less likely to make a first saccade to the target and they were more likely to saccade to distractors (whether related or unrelated to the target). This suggests a deficit in a first stage of selecting a potential target for attention. In addition, the patients made more errors by responding to semantically related distractors on target-absent trials. This indicates a problem at a second stage of target verification, after items have been attended. The data suggest that frontal lobe damage disrupts both the ability to use peripheral information to guide attention, and the ability to keep separate the target of search from the related items, on occasions when related items achieve selection.

Abstract

We compared the performance of young (college-aged) and older (50+years) speakers in a single object and a multiple object naming task and assessed their susceptibility to semantic and phonological context effects when producing words amidst semantically or phonologically similar or dissimilar words. In single object naming, there were no performance differences between the age groups. In multiple object naming, we observed significant age-related slowing, expressed in longer gazes to the objects and slower speech. In addition, the direction of the phonological context effects differed for the two groups. The results of a supplementary experiment showed that young speakers, when adopting a slow speech rate, coordinated their eye movements and speech differently from the older speakers. Our results imply that age-related slowing in connected speech is not a direct consequence of a slowing of lexical retrieval processes. Instead, older speakers might allocate more processing capacity to speech monitoring processes, which would slow down their concurrent speech planning processes

Abstract

The use of language is a fundamental component of much of our day-to-day life. Language often co-occurs with other activities with which it must be coordinated. This raises the question of whether the cognitive processes involved in planning spoken utterances and in understanding them are autonomous or whether they are affected by, and perhaps affect, non-linguistic cognitive processes, with which they might share processing resources. This question is the central concern of Automaticity and Control in Language Processing. The chapters address key issues concerning the relationship between linguistic and non-linguistic processes, including: * How can the degree of automaticity of a component be defined? * Which linguistic processes are truly automatic, and which require processing capacity? * Through which mechanisms can control processes affect linguistic performance? How might these mechanisms be represented in the brain? * How do limitations in working memory and executive control capacity affect linguistic performance and language re-learning in persons with brain damage? This important collection from leading international researchers will be of great interest to researchers and students in the area.

Abstract

In four experiments, participants named target pictures that were accompanied by distractor pictures with phonologically related or unrelated names. Across experiments, the type of phonological relationship between the targets and the related distractors was varied: They were homophones (e.g., bat [animal/baseball]), or they shared word-initial segments (e.g., dog-doll) or word-final segments (e.g., ball-wall). The participants either named the objects after an extensive familiarization and practice phase or without any familiarization or practice. In all of the experiments, the mean target-naming latency was shorter in the related than in the unrelated condition, demonstrating that the phonological form of the name of the distractor picture became activated. These results are best explained within a cascaded model of lexical access—that is, under the assumption that the recognition of an object leads to the activation of its name.

Abstract

In a visual search experiment, participants had to decide whether or not a target object was present in a four-object search array. One of these objects could be a semantically related competitor (e.g., shirt for the target trousers) or a conceptually unrelated object with the same name as the target-for example, bat (baseball) for the target bat (animal). In the control condition, the related competitor was replaced by an unrelated object. The participants' response latencies and eye movements demonstrated that the two types of related competitors had similar effects: Competitors attracted the participants' visual attention and thereby delayed positive and negative decisions. The results imply that semantic and name information associated with the objects becomes rapidly available and affects the allocation of visual attention.

Abstract

Griffin [Griffin, Z. M. (2003). A reversed length effect in coordinating the preparation and articulation of words in speaking. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 10, 603-609.] found that speakers naming object pairs spent more time before utterance onset looking at the second object when the first object name was short than when it was long. She proposed that this reversed length effect arose because the speakers' decision when to initiate an utterance was based, in part, on their estimate of the spoken duration of the first object name and the time available during its articulation to plan the second object name. In Experiment I of the present study, participants named object pairs. They spent more time looking at the first object when its name was monosyllabic than when it was trisyllabic, and, as in Griffin's study, the average gaze-speech lag (the time between the end of the gaze to the first object and onset of its name, which corresponds closely to the pre-speech inspection time for the second object) showed a reversed length effect. Experiments 2 and 3 showed that this effect was not due to a trade-off between the time speakers spent looking at the first and second object before speech onset. Experiment 4 yielded a reversed length effect when the second object was replaced by a symbol (x or +), which the participants had to categorise. We propose a novel account of the reversed length effect, which links it to the incremental nature of phonological encoding and articulatory planning rather than the speaker's estimate of the length of the first object name.

Abstract

Speech errors follow the phonotactics of the language being spoken. For example, in English, if [n] is mispronounced as [n] the [n] will always appear in a syllable coda. The authors created an analogue to this phenomenon by having participants recite lists of consonant-vowel-consonant syllables in 4 sessions on different days. In the first 2 experiments, some consonants were always onsets, some were always codas, and some could be both. In a third experiment, the set of possible onsets and codas depended on vowel identity. In all 3 studies, the production errors that occurred respected the "phonotactics" of the experiment. The results illustrate the implicit learning of the sequential constraints present in the stimuli and show that the language production system adapts to recent experience.

Abstract

It is quite normal for us to produce one or two million word tokens every year. Speaking is a dear occupation and producing words is at the core of it. Still, producing even a single word is a highly complex affair. Recently, Levelt, Roelofs, and Meyer (1999) reviewed their theory of lexical access in speech production, which dissects the word-producing mechanism as a staged application of various dedicated operations. The present paper begins by presenting a bird eye's view of this mechanism. We then square the complexity by asking how speakers control multiple access in generating simple utterances such as a table and a chair. In particular, we address two issues. The first one concerns dependency: Do temporally contiguous access procedures interact in any way, or do they run in modular fashion? The second issue concerns temporal alignment: How much temporal overlap of processing does the system tolerate in accessing multiple content words, such as table and chair? Results from picture-word interference and eye tracking experiments provide evidence for restricted cases of dependency as well as for constraints on the temporal alignment of access procedures.

Abstract

A comparison of Merge, a model of comprehension, and WEAVER, a model of production, raises five issues: (1) merging models of comprehension and production necessarily creates feedback; (2) neither model is a comprehensive account of word processing; (3) the models are incomplete in different ways; (4) the models differ in their handling of competition; (5) as opposed to WEAVER, Merge is a model of metalinguistic behavior.