Effects of lexical skills and orthographic neighborhood size in word memory.

Two experiments were designed to investigate the relationship between individual lexical skills in young adults and memory performance on words varying by their orthographic neighborhood size. In Experiment 1, a sample of 100 university students were administrated a set of spelling, reading, and vocabulary tests to assess their lexical skills. Then, they had to learn mixed lists of words from high and low neighborhood size and perform free recall and memory recognition tasks. Importantly, high lexical skills were found to enhance free recall and, to a lesser extent, recognition. In addition, a typical mirror effect of neighborhood size was found in recognition as words were better recognized and also produced less false alarms when they had a low neighborhood size. In Experiment 2, pure lists of words were designed and a new sample of 90 university students was assessed. We replicated the effect of lexical skills in free recall and the effect of neighborhood size for hits in recognition. Spelling skills were found to interact with neighborhood size in free recall in that low spelling skills were associated with a facilitatory effect of neighborhood size. In recognition, a relation between reading skills and neighborhood size was found such that the higher the reading skills, the higher was the inhibitory effect of neighborhood size. These results provide new evidence of an influence of lexical skills in word memory performance and underline the role of orthographic neighborhood size in episodic memory tasks.

Inhibition in the emotional Hayling task: can hypnotic suggestion enhance cognitive control on a prepotent negative word?

Recent studies suggest that instrumental hypnosis is a useful experimental tool to investigate emotional and language processing effects. However, the capacity of hypnotic suggestions to intervene during the response inhibition of emotional words remains elusive. This study investigated whether hypnotic suggestion can improve the inhibition of prepotent negative word responses in an emotional Hayling sentence completion task. High-suggestible participants performed a computerised emotional Hayling task. They were first asked to select the appropriate words ending highly predictable sentences among two propositions (initiation part), and then to select the filler words that did not end the sentences correctly (inhibition part). Half of the expected final words had a negative emotional valence, while the other half was neutral. The task was performed in a control condition (without suggestion) and with a hypnotic suggestion to decrease emotional reactivity. The results revealed that hypnotic suggestion (compared to the control condition) hastened response times on negative final words in the inhibition part, showing that hypnotic suggestion can enhance cognitive control over prepotent negative word responses in a sentence completion task. We suggest that this modulation stems from a reduction in the emotional relevance of the final words caused by the hypnotic suggestion.

Hypnotic suggestion modulates visual recognition of negative words depending on word arousal.

This study examined whether and how emotional hypnotic suggestions modulate the visual recognition of negative words. We investigated the influence of hypnotic suggestions aimed at modifying emotional reactivity on the arousal effect in negative words. High and low suggestible individuals performed a go/no-go lexical decision task in three intra-individual conditions: with a suggestion to increase emotional reactivity, with a suggestion to decrease emotional reactivity and without hypnotic suggestion. Results showed that hypnotic suggestions modulated the arousal facilitation effect differently depending on the level of suggestibility of the participants. In high suggestible individuals, response times for low-arousal negative words varied oppositely according to the suggestion administered, while no modulations were retrieved for high-arousal ones. In contrast, no suggestion effects were found for low suggestible participants. Altogether, these findings suggest a higher influence of hypnotic suggestions on emotional words that require longer processing times in high suggestible individuals.

Modulation of attentional bias by hypnotic suggestion: experimental evidence from an emotional Stroop task.

Hypnosis is considered a unique tool capable of modulating cognitive processes. The extent to which hypnotic suggestions intervenes is still under debate. This study was designed to provide a new insight into this issue, by focusing on an unintentional emotional process: attentional bias. In Experiment 1, highly suggestible participants performed three sessions of an emotional Stroop task where hypnotic suggestions aiming to increase and decrease emotional reactivity towards emotional stimuli were administered within an intra-individual design. Compared to a baseline condition (without hypnotic suggestion), a significant increase in attentional bias was found when a hypnotic suggestion to increase emotional reactivity was administered. In contrast, the bias was eliminated when a suggestion to decrease emotional reactivity was administered. Experiment 2 investigated the effect of session repetition on attentional bias across three successive experimental sessions without hypnosis, and showed that the emotional Stroop effect did not vary across sessions. Hence, session repetition could not account for part of the modulation of attentional bias in Experiment 1. Taken together, the results suggest that specific hypnotic suggestions can influence elicitation of unintentional emotional processing. The implications are discussed regarding the locus of intervention of hypnotic suggestion in cognitive and emotional processes.

Word imageability influences the emotionality effect in episodic memory.

This study examines how and to what extent imageability influences the effect of word emotionality in episodic memory. A total of 52 young adults successively performed a free recall task and a recognition task in which word emotionality and imageability were orthogonally manipulated across six conditions of French words: low-imageability positive words (e.g., éloge [praise]), low-imageability negative words (e.g., viral [viral]), low-imageability neutral words (e.g., global [global]), high-imageability positive words (e.g., ourson [teddy]), high-imageability negative words (e.g., tornade [tornado]), and low-imageability neutral words (e.g., noyau [core]). The results from both the recall and the recognition memory tasks show that word imageability enhances memory performance. Importantly, word imageability interacted with word emotionality in both tasks. Specifically, we found that the advantage of emotional over neutral words in episodic memory performance emerged for high-imageability words only, as did the advantage of positive over negative words. These results highlight the role of imageability in the mechanisms underlying emotional word episodic memory.

Norms of vocabulary, reading, and spelling tests in French university students.

The purpose of the present paper is to provide the norms of widely used tests of vocabulary, reading, and spelling skills for a French population of young adults. Data were collected from 18- to 26-year-old university students during individual sessions. We assessed 771 participants with the Mill Hill part B vocabulary test, 410 with the LexTale-Fr test, 1231 with the Alouette-R test, and 361 with the Pollueur word/pseudoword dictation and text dictation. Stepwise regression analyses showed the need to stratify the reference population according to the level of education and gender for some tests. The Alouette-R and Mill Hill scores increased with educational level. Moreover, for the tests whose performance differed according to gender, women generally performed better than men. The present normative data concerning vocabulary, reading, and spelling skills should provide useful tools for researchers and practitioners alike to rate young individuals within their reference population.

Age-related evaluations of imageability and subjective frequency for 1286 neutral and emotional French words: ratings by young, middle-aged, and older adults.

This study aimed at providing imageability and subjective frequency ratings collected from four adult age groups ranging from 18 to 85 years old (18-25; 26-39; 40-59; and 60 and over) for 1286 neutral and emotional French words available in the EMA database (Gobin et al., 2017). Overall, the older adults rated words as more (subjectively) frequent and more imageable than the younger adults. Furthermore, we examined the relationships between subjective frequency and imageability, as well as those with emotional variables (i.e., valence, arousal) already available for these words, for each age group. For all age groups, more subjective frequent words were more imageable. Emotional words were more imageable and more frequent. Arousal scores were lower for low- and high-imageability words, and higher for more subjective frequent words. The strength of these links between subjective frequency, imageability, and emotional ratings was found to decrease as a function of age. Finally, by using the lexical decision reaction times and accuracy rates of young adults from Megalex (Ferrand et al., 2018), imageability and subjective frequency across age were found to provide an additional contribution to visual word recognition performance as compared to objective lexical variables (i.e., number of letters, syllables, objective frequency, orthographic neighborhood). More importantly, subjective frequency and imageability ratings from the youngest group predicted reaction times and accuracy better than ratings from the oldest group. By providing new age-adapted word characteristics, this norm should be of great use to researchers in the field of cognitive aging who use word materials.

Word imageability and orthographic neighbourhood effects on memory: a study in free recall and recognition.

This study investigated the effects of word imageability and orthographic neighbourhood size, as well as their combined effects, in free recall and recognition memory. A total of 45 young adults performed recall and recognition tasks on the same word materials. Word imageability and orthographic neighbourhood size were orthogonally manipulated across four word conditions: low-imageability words - high N, saveur [flavor], low-imageability words - low N, total [total], high-imageability words - high N, carré [square] and high-imageability - low N, nuage [cloud]. The results show that word imageability facilitates memory performance in both free recall and recognition tasks, while the effect of orthographic neighbourhood size was exhibited only in the recognition task. Finally, the orthographic neighbourhood effect was found to depend on word imageability. The implications of the results are discussed according to semantic and orthographic word characteristics with regard to the memory processes involved in free recall and recognition tasks.

Emotional valence impacts lexical activation and inhibition differently in aging: an emotional Hayling task investigation.

BACKGROUND: Aging is characterized by cognitive changes such as a potential inhibition deficit. However, growing evidence shows that positive valence stimuli enhance performances in older adults to a greater degree than in younger adults. The aim of the present study was to investigate the effect of the emotional valence of words on lexical activation and inhibition in aging by using a new Emotional Hayling Task. METHODS: Thirty-eight younger adults (mean age = 20.11 years) and 38 older adults (mean age = 66.47 years) performed a computerized Emotional Hayling task. Participants had to choose the correct (initiation part) or incorrect (inhibition part) final words of highly predictable incomplete sentences. Final words had a negative or positive emotional valence and were paired for reaction time comparison with neutral words. RESULTS: Response times were faster in younger adults than in older adults in both the initiation and the inhibition parts. In addition, response times indicated that older adults initiated more slowly negative than neutral words while no differences emerged in inhibition. No differences were obtained between negative and neutral words in younger adults. Response times showed faster initiation and inhibition for positive than for neutral words in both age groups. CONCLUSION: These data are consistent with previous findings suggesting a disengagement from the processing of negative versus neutral words in older adults when compared with younger adults. A possible explanation is that activation of negative words in the mental lexicon is weaker in older than in younger adults. Conversely, the positive valence of words seems to enhance both activation and inhibition processes in both young and older adults. These findings suggest that positive stimuli can improve performance.

The effect of orthographic and emotional neighbourhood in a colour categorization task.

This study investigated whether and how the strength of reading interference in a colour categorization task can be influenced by lexical competition and the emotional characteristics of words not directly presented. Previous findings showed inhibitory effects of high-frequency orthographic and emotional neighbourhood in the lexical decision task. Here, we examined the effect of orthographic neighbour frequency according to the emotional valence of the higher-frequency neighbour in an emotional orthographic Stroop paradigm. Stimuli were coloured neutral words that had either (1) no orthographic neighbour (e.g. PISTIL [pistil]), (2) one neutral higher-frequency neighbour (e.g. tirade [tirade]/TIRAGE [draw]) or (3) one negative higher-frequency neighbour (e.g. idiome [idiom]/IDIOTE [idiotic]). The results showed that colour categorization times were longer for words with no orthographic neighbour than for words with one neutral neighbour of higher frequency and even longer when the higher-frequency neighbour was neutral rather than negative. Thus, it appears not only that the orthographic neighbourhood of the coloured stimulus words intervenes in a colour categorization task, but also that the emotional content of the neighbour contributes to response times. These findings are discussed in terms of lexical competition between the stimulus word and non-presented orthographic neighbours, which in turn would modify the strength of reading interference on colour categorization times.

Subjective Lexical Characteristics: Comparing Ratings of Members of the Target Population and Doctors for Words Stemming from a Medical Context.

The present study investigated the subjective lexical characteristics of words stemming from a medical context by comparing estimations of the target population (age range = 46-89) and of doctors. A total of 58 members of the target population and 22 oncologists completed measures of subjective frequency and emotional valence for words previously collected in interviews of announcement of cancer diagnosis. The members of the target population also completed tests of word definitions, without and within context. As expected, most of the words were rated less familiar, more negative and as generating more intense emotions to the target population than to the doctors. Moreover, only a few words were correctly defined by the target population. Adding a context helped the participants to define most of the words correctly. Importantly, we identified words that were rated familiar by the patients although they did not know their exact meaning. Overall, these results highlight the importance of taking into account the subjective lexical characteristics of words used in specific contexts.

The effect of orthographic neighborhood in the reading span task.

This study aimed at examining whether and to what extent orthographic neighborhood of words influences performance in a working memory span task. Twenty-five participants performed a reading span task in which final words to be memorized had either no higher frequency orthographic neighbor or at least one. In both neighborhood conditions, each participant completed three series of two, three, four, or five sentences. Results indicated an interaction between orthographic neighborhood and list length. In particular, an inhibitory effect of orthographic neighborhood on recall appeared in list length 5. A view is presented suggesting that words with higher frequency neighbors require more resources to be memorized than words with no such neighbors. The implications of the results are discussed with regard to memory processes and current models of visual word recognition.

French Norms for a Shortened Online Adaptation of the Harvard Group Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility, Form A.

This study presents the norms and psychometric properties for a shortened online adaptation of a French version of the Harvard Group Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility, Form A (HGSHS:A). Assessment of involuntariness and subjective intensity was added to the traditional scoring. A total of 373 individuals completed an online hypnotizability screening test on their own computer. Participants received the HGSHS:A script through an audio recording lasting about 30 minutes. The results showed that the item difficulty and reliability of the short online HGSHS:A were consistent with the offline version of the scale and with the reference samples. Involuntariness and subjective intensity corrections improved significantly the accuracy in the measurement of the scale and helped to dissociate between different phenomenologies in hypnotic responding. These findings indicate that the short online HGSHS:A is a reliable tool for measuring hypnotizability. Moreover, we suggest that using complementary measures of involuntariness and subjective intensity helps to shed more light on hypnotizability as part of a multi-componential approach to hypnotic response.

Interaction between phonemic abilities and syllable congruency effect in young readers.

This study investigated whether and to what extent phonemic abilities of young readers (Grade 5) influence syllabic effects in reading. More precisely, the syllable congruency effect was tested in the lexical decision task combined with masked priming in eleven-year-old children. Target words were preceded by a pseudo-word prime sharing the first three letters that either corresponded to the syllable (congruent condition) or not (incongruent condition). The data showed that the syllable priming effect interacted with the score of phonemic abilities. In children with good phonemic skills, word recognition was delayed in the congruent condition compared to the incongruent condition, while it was speeded up in children with weaker phonemic skills. These findings are discussed in a lexical access model including syllable units.

Is the approach avoidance compatibility effect moderated by word imageability?

The approach/avoidance (AA) compatibility effect refers to the fact that individuals respond faster by an approach movement to positive than to negative stimuli, whereas they respond faster by an avoidance movement to negative than to positive stimuli. Although this effect has been observed in many studies, the underlying mechanisms remain still unclear. On the basis of recent studies suggesting a key role of sensorimotor information in the emergence of the AA compatibility effect, the present study aimed to investigate the specific role of visual information, operationalised through word imageability, in the production of the AA compatibility effect. We orthogonally manipulated the emotional valence (positive/negative) and the imageability (low/high) of words in an incidental online-AA task (i.e., in the absence of valence processing goals) using a stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) of 300 ms. In line with previous studies, Experiment 1 revealed an AA compatibility effect in the absence of valence processing goals. However, this effect was not moderated by word imageability. In Experiment 2, we examined whether the absence of influence of word imageability could be due to the short SOA (300 ms) used in this experiment. We used the same design as in Experiment 1 and manipulated the SOA (400 vs 600 ms). We again observed an AA compatibility effect which was not moderated by word imageability, whatever the SOA used. The results of both experiments suggest the absence of any influence of sensorimotor information in the AA compatibility effect, at least when provided by the to-be-approached/avoided stimulus.

Interference effect of food and emotional stimuli in Stroop-like tasks for children and adults with Prader-Willi Syndrome.

Interference effect of food and emotional stimuli in Stroop-like tasks for children and adults with Prader-Willi Syndrome. The aim of this work was to study the way items related to food or emotion are processed by a population known to have difficulties with dietary restriction, namely individuals with Prader-Willi Syndrome (PWS). Given the presence of intellectual disability (ID) in PWS, our experiments were designed to examine whether these difficulties were specific to PWS or linked with their ID. Two modified Stroop tasks (i.e., a food version and an emotional version) were administered to seventy-four children (aged between 6 and 16 years old) divided into three groups (one with PWS, one with ID matched on age and Intellectual Quotient (IQ), and one healthy group matched on age) and to eighty-four adults (aged between 18 and 48 years old) distributed in the same three groups. For both tasks, a picture version was used for the children and a word version for the adults. For the food Stroop task, (Experiment 1), materials were composed of low or high-caloric food items and stimuli not related to food. The results show a food Stroop effect for children and adults with PWS that was absent in the group of healthy participants. Moreover, a food Stroop effect was also significant for adults with ID. For the emotional Stroop task (Experiment 2), materials were composed of negative, positive and neutral stimuli. The emotional Stroop effect was also obtained for children and adults with PWS as well as for the healthy group, but not for the age- and IQ-matched group. For the PWS groups, results show a preservation to process positive pictures for children and difficulties to process negative stimuli for both age-groups. These results suggest that people with PWS have difficulties in disengaging their attention when food stimuli are present in their environment and poorer abilities to process negative ones. These difficulties endure in adulthood.

The effect of prime duration in masked orthographic priming depends on neighborhood distribution.

A lexical decision task was used with a masked priming procedure to investigate whether and to what extent neighborhood distribution influences the effect of prime duration in masked orthographic priming. French word targets had two higher frequency neighbors that were either distributed over two letter positions (e.g., LOBE/robe-loge) or concentrated on a single letter position (e.g., FARD/tard-lard). Word targets were preceded by their highest frequency neighbor or by a control prime. Four prime durations were compared (27, 39, 53, and 67 ms). Results showed that the inhibitory priming effect found for words with distributed neighbors at a 67-ms stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) was canceled when prime duration decreased. In contrast, no priming effect was found in any of the four prime durations for words with concentrated neighbors. Simulations run on the word materials revealed that the interactive activation model (McClelland & Rumelhart, 1981) captured the increasing inhibitory priming effect in the distributed neighbor condition but failed to capture the loss of priming in the concentrated neighbor condition.

The Influence of Negative Orthographic Neighborhood in the Lexical Decision Task: Valence and Arousal Contributions.

This study investigated whether the visual recognition of neutral words might be influenced by the emotional dimensions (i.e., valence and arousal) of orthographically similar lexical representations, and whether this might also depend on emotional-related traits of participants (i.e., alexithymia). To this end, 108 participants performed a lexical decision task with 80 neutral words with a higher frequency orthographic neighbor that varied in valence (from neutral to negative) and arousal (from low to high). The main finding was the expected interaction effect between the valence and arousal of the neighbor on the lexical decision times of neutral stimulus words. Longer reaction times were found when the valence score of the neighbor decreased from neutral to negative for words with a low-arousal orthographic neighbor while this emotional neighbor effect was reversed for words with a high-arousal negative neighbor. This combined influence of the valence and arousal of the neighbor was interpreted in terms of increased lexical competition processes and direct influence of the affective system on the participant's response. Moreover, this interaction effect was smaller when the level of alexithymia of the participants increased, suggesting that people with a higher level of alexithymia are less sensitive to the emotional content of the neighbor. The results are discussed within an interactive activation model of visual word recognition incorporating an affective system with valence and arousal dimensions, with regard to the role of the alexithymia level of participants.

Age-related positivity effect: Distinct mechanisms for lexical access and episodic memory of emotional words.

The age-related positivity effect is the tendency of older adults to preferentially process positive information over negative information when compared to younger adults (e.g., Reed & Carstensen, 2012). The aim of the study was to determine whether common and/or distinct mechanisms underlie the age-related positivity effect in lexical access and episodic memory. Fifty young and 50 older adults successively performed a progressive demasking task incorporating memory instructions, an immediate free recall task, a memory recognition task, and delayed free recalls at 20 min and 7 days. The materials included 60 words that varied in emotional valence (positive, neutral, negative) and arousal (low, high). The results revealed that distinct processes underlie the age-related positivity effect in lexical access and episodic memory. In progressive demasking, this effect emerged for both low- and high-arousal words, suggesting that it depends on automatic processes. In immediate and delayed free recall and recognition, this effect emerged for low-arousal words only, suggesting that it depends on more controlled processes. Moreover, in older adults, positivity scores correlated with well-being scores for episodic memory. These results are discussed in relation to affective aging theories. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

The age-related positivity effect: forgetting the negative and/or remembering the positive? An inter-task study.

A growing number of studies have shown that when compared to younger adults, older adults are better at recalling positive information than negative information. However, it is not yet clear whether this age-related positivity effect relies on a greater ability to recall positive information or on a decreased ability to recall negative information. We therefore aimed to study the specific mechanisms underlying the age-related positivity effect using different memory tasks. We used an emotional word memory paradigm including immediate free recall, recognition, and delayed free recall tasks. Forty-five young adults (m = 20.0 years) and 45 older adults (m = 69.2 years) participated, all of whom were native French speakers. Thirty-six French low-arousal words (12 positve, 12, negative, 12 neutral) were selected from an emotional lexical database (Gobin et al. 2017) and divided into three equal groups of positive, neutral and negative terms. For the recognition task, 36 new words were selected. The results show that the age-related positivity effect specifically depended on a decrease in negativity preference (i.e., the comparison between negative and neutral words) in older adults, in comparison with younger adults, both in the immediate and delayed free recall tasks. In these tasks, younger adults recalled more negative than neutral words, whereas there was no difference in older adults. During the recognition task, no age-related positivity effect was observed. The results also show that, for the immediate recall task, the greater the memory ability of older adults, the lower their negativity preference. This correlation was not significant in the delayed recall task. These results suggest that, when compared with younger adults, older adults disengage from processing negative words that require costly cognitive processes. A low negativity preference indicates that memory abilities are well-maintained. The results are discussed within the framework of socio-emotional selectivity theory.