Polysemy Advantage with Abstract But Not Concrete Words.

It is a robust finding that ambiguous words are recognized faster than unambiguous words. More recent studies (e.g., Rodd et al. in J Mem Lang 46:245-266, 2002) now indicate that this ambiguity advantage may in reality be a polysemy advantage: caused by related senses (polysemy) rather than unrelated meanings (homonymy). We report two lexical decision studies that investigated the effects of polysemy with new word sets. In both studies, polysemy was factorially manipulated while homonymy was controlled for. In Experiment 1, where the stimulus set consisted solely of concrete nouns, there was no effect of polysemy. However, in Experiment 2, where the stimulus set consisted of a mix of abstract nouns, verbs, and adjectives, there was a significant polysemy advantage. Together, these two studies strongly suggest that polysemy affects abstract but not concrete nouns. In addition, they rule out several alternative explanations for these polysemy effects, e.g., sense dominance, age-of-acquisition, familiarity, and semantic diversity.

Non-symbolic numerosities do not automatically activate spatial-numerical associations: Evidence from the SNARC effect.

The SNARC (spatial-numerical association of response codes) effect is the finding that people are generally faster to respond to smaller numbers with left-sided responses and larger numbers with right-sided responses. The SNARC effect has been widely reported for responses to symbolic representations of number such as digits. However, there is mixed evidence as to whether it occurs for non-symbolic representations of number, particularly when magnitude is irrelevant to the task. Mitchell et al. reported a SNARC effect when participants were asked to make orientation decisions to arrays of one-to-nine triangles (pointing upwards vs. pointing downwards) and concluded that SNARC effects occur for non-symbolic, non-canonical representations of number. They additionally reported that this effect was stronger in the subitising range. However, here we report four experiments that do not replicate either of these findings. Participants made upwards/inverted decisions to one-to-nine triangles where total surface area was either controlled across numerosities (Experiments 1, 2, and 4) or increased congruently with numerosity (Experiment 3). There was no evidence of a SNARC effect either across the full range or within the subset of the subitising range. The results of Experiment 4 (in which we presented the original stimuli of Mitchell et al.) suggested that visual properties of non-symbolic displays can prompt SNARC-like effects driven by visual cues rather than numerosity. Taken in the context of other recent findings, we argue that non-symbolic representations of number do not offer a direct and automatic route to numerical-spatial associations.

Automaticity of access to numerical magnitude and its spatial associations: The role of task and number representation.

Generally, people respond faster to small numbers with left-sided responses and large numbers with right-sided responses, a pattern known as the SNARC (spatial numerical association of response codes) effect. The SNARC effect is interpreted as evidence for amodal automatic access of magnitude and its spatial associations, because it occurs in settings where number is task-irrelevant and for different number formats. We report five studies designed to establish the degree to which activation of magnitude and its spatial associations is truly automatic and amodal. Based on the notion of autonomous automaticity, we hypothesized that the mere presence of a number form (to which participants made a color decision) would be sufficient to elicit the SNARC effect. However, we found no evidence of a SNARC effect for simple color decisions to Arabic digits (Experiment 1). There was a SNARC effect for color decision to digits when participants recognized the stimulus as a digit before responding (Experiment 2), participants viewed the digit for sufficient time before color onset (Experiments 3 and 5), or there was temporal uncertainty regarding color onset (Experiment 3). There was no SNARC effect for color decision to arrays of circles (Experiment 4), regardless of viewing time or temporal uncertainty. Overall, our results suggest that, while access to magnitude and its spatial associations is not automatic in an "all-or-none" sense, it is certainly at the strong end of automaticity, and that this automatic activation is modality dependent. Our findings are most supportive of conceptual coding accounts of the SNARC effect. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

The nature of phoneme representation in spoken word recognition.

Four experiments used the psychological refractory period logic to examine whether integration of multiple sources of phonemic information has a decisional locus. All experiments made use of a dual-task paradigm in which participants made forced-choice color categorization (Task 1) and phoneme categorization (Task 2) decisions at varying stimulus onset asynchronies. In Experiment 1, Task 2 difficulty was manipulated using words containing matching or mismatching coarticulatory cues to the final consonant. The results showed that difficulty and onset asynchrony combined in an underadditive way, suggesting that the phonemic mismatch was resolved prior to a central decisional bottleneck. Similar results were found in Experiment 2 using nonwords. In Experiment 3, the manipulation of task difficulty involved lexical status, which once again revealed an underadditive pattern of response times. Finally, Experiment 4 compared this prebottleneck variable with a decisional variable: response key bias. The latter showed an additive pattern of responses. The experiments show that resolution of phonemic ambiguity can take advantage of cognitive slack time at short asynchronies, indicating that phonemic integration takes place at a relatively early stage of spoken word recognition.

Syntactic alignment and participant role in dialogue.

We report three experiments that investigated whether the linguistic behavior of participants in a dialogue is affected by their role within that interaction. All experiments were concerned with the way in which speakers choose between syntactic forms with very similar meanings. Theories of dialogue assume that speakers address their contributions directly to their addressees, but also indirectly to side participants. In Experiments 1 and 2, speakers produced picture descriptions that had the same syntactic structure as a previous speaker's descriptions which had been addressed to a third person. This indicated that syntactic alignment is not limited to speaker-addressee dyads. However, the prior participant role of the current speaker affected alignment: prior addressees aligned more than prior side-participants. In contrast, Experiments 2 and 3 demonstrated that alignment was unaffected by the prior participant role of the current addressee. We interpret these findings in terms of depth of processing during encoding.

Frequency effects in spoken and visual word recognition: evidence from dual-task methodologies.

The authors report 3 dual-task experiments concerning the locus of frequency effects in word recognition. In all experiments, Task 1 entailed a simple perceptual choice and Task 2 involved lexical decision. In Experiment 1, an underadditive effect of word frequency arose for spoken words. Experiment 2 also showed underadditivity for visual lexical decision. It was concluded that word frequency exerts an influence prior to any dual-task bottleneck. A related finding in similar dual-task experiments is Task 2 response postponement at short stimulus onset asynchronies. This was explored in Experiment 3, and it was shown that response postponement was equivalent for both spoken and visual word recognition. These results imply that frequency-sensitive processes operate early and automatically.

The role of numerical and non-numerical cues in nonsymbolic number processing: Evidence from the line bisection task.

In line bisection tasks, adults and children bisect towards the numerically larger of two nonsymbolic numerosities [de Hevia, M. D., & Spelke, E. S. ( 2009 ). Spontaneous mapping of number and space in adults and young children. Cognition, 110, 198-207. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2008.11.003]. However, it is not clear whether this effect is driven by number itself or rather by visual cues such as subtended area [Gebuis, T., & Gevers, W. ( 2011 ). Numbers and space: Indeed a cognitive illusion! A reply to de Hevia and Spelke ( 2009 ). Cognition, 121, 248-252. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2010.09.008]. Furthermore, this effect has only been demonstrated with flanking displays of two and nine items. Here, we report three studies that examined whether this "spatial bias" effect occurs across a range of absolute and ratio numerosity differences; in particular, we examined whether the bias would occur when both flankers were outside the subitizing range. Additionally, we manipulated the subtended area of the stimulus and the aggregate surface area to assess the influence of visual cues. We found that the spatial bias effect occurred for a range of flanking numerosities and for ratios of 3:5 and 5:6 when subtended area was not controlled (Experiment 1). However, when subtended area and aggregate surface area were held constant, the biasing effect was reversed such that participants bisected towards the flanker with fewer items (Experiment 2). Moreover, when flankers were identical, participants bisected towards the flanker with larger subtended area or larger aggregate surface area (Experiments 2 and 3). On the basis of these studies, we conclude that the spatial bias effect for nonsymbolic numerosities is primarily driven by visual cues.

Familiarity breeds dissent: Reliability analyses for British-English idioms on measures of familiarity, meaning, literality, and decomposability.

To date, there have been several attempts made to build a database of normative data for English idiomatic expressions (e.g., Libben & Titone, 2008; Titone & Connine, 1994), however, there has been some discussion in the literature as to the validity and reliability of the data obtained, particularly for decomposability ratings. Our work aimed to address these issues by looking at ratings from native and non-native speakers and to extend the deeper investigation and analysis of decomposability to other aspects of idiomatic expressions, namely familiarly, meaning and literality. Poor reliability was observed on all types of ratings, suggesting that rather than decomposability being a special case, individual variability plays a large role in how participants rate idiomatic phrases in general. Ratings from native and non-native speakers were positively correlated and an analysis of covariance found that once familiarity with an idiom was accounted for, most of the differences between native and non-native ratings were not significant. Overall, the results suggest that individual experience with idioms plays an important role in how they are perceived and this should be taken into account when selecting stimuli for experimental studies. Furthermore, the results are suggestive of the inability of speakers to inhibit the figurative meanings for idioms that they are highly familiar with.

Cat got your tongue? Using the tip-of-the-tongue state to investigate fixed expressions.

Despite the fact that they play a prominent role in everyday speech, the representation and processing of fixed expressions during language production is poorly understood. Here, we report a study investigating the processes underlying fixed expression production. "Tip-of-the-tongue" (TOT) states were elicited for well-known idioms (e.g., hit the nail on the head) and participants were asked to report any information they could regarding the content of the phrase. Participants were able to correctly report individual words for idioms that they could not produce. In addition, participants produced both figurative (e.g., pretty for easy on the eye) and literal errors (e.g., hammer for hit the nail on the head) when in a TOT state, suggesting that both figurative and literal meanings are active during production. There was no effect of semantic decomposability on overall TOT incidence; however, participants recalled a greater proportion of words for decomposable rather than non-decomposable idioms. This finding suggests there may be differences in how decomposable and non-decomposable idioms are retrieved during production.

Sex differences in the spatial representation of number.

There is a large body of accumulated evidence from behavioral and neuroimaging studies regarding how and where in the brain we represent basic numerical information. A number of these studies have considered how numerical representations may differ between individuals according to their age or level of mathematical ability, but one issue rarely considered is whether the representational acuity or automaticity of using numerical representations differs between the sexes. We report 4 studies that suggest that male participants show a stronger influence of the spatial representation of number as revealed through the spatial numerical association of response codes (SNARC) effect, through the numerical distance effect (NDE), and through number-line estimations. Evidence for a sex difference in processing number was present for parity decisions (Experiment 1), color decisions (Experiment 2), number-line estimations (Experiment 3), and magnitude decisions (Experiment 4). We argue that this pattern of results reflects a sex difference in either the acuity of representation or reliance upon spatial representations of number, and that this difference may arise due to differences in the parietal lobes of men and women.

Implicit response-irrelevant number information triggers the SNARC effect: evidence using a neural overlap paradigm.

There is evidence from the SNARC (spatial-numerical association of response codes) effect and NDE (numerical distance effect) that number activates spatial representations. Most of this evidence comes from tasks with explicit reference to number, whether through presentation of Arabic digits (SNARC) or through magnitude decisions to nonsymbolic representations (NDE). Here, we report four studies that use the neural overlap paradigm developed by Fias, Lauwereyns, and Lammertyn (2001) to examine whether the presentation of implicit and task-irrelevant numerosity information (nonsymbolic arrays and auditory numbers) is enough to activate a spatial representation of number. Participants were presented with either numerosity arrays (1-9 circles or triangles) to which they made colour (experiment 1) or orientation (experiment 2) judgements, or auditory numbers coupled with an on-screen stimulus to which they made a colour (experiment 3) or orientation (experiment 4) judgement. SNARC effects were observed only for the orientation tasks. Following the logic of Fias et al., we argue that this SNARC effect occurs as a result of overlap in parietal processing for number and orientation judgements irrespective of modality. Furthermore, we found stronger SNARC effects in the small number range (1-4) than in the larger number range (6-9) for both nonsymbolic displays and auditory numbers. These results suggest that quantity is extracted (and interferes with responses in the orientation task) but this is not exact for the entire number range. We discuss a number of alternative models and mechanisms of numerical processing that may account for such effects.

The influence of sentential position on noun phrase structure priming.

This article explores the interaction between global sentence context and local syntactic decision making. Specifically, four noun phrase (NP) structural priming experiments investigated whether the position of an NP within a sentence increased speakers' tendency to repeat primed structure. We crossed the position of the NP with the structure of the NP, such that NPs could be sentence initial or final in prime sentences. We further manipulated whether the to-be-modified target NP was sentence initial or final. Structural persistence effects were consistently observed, but there was no influence of parallel position. Rather, sentence-initial NP primes had a stronger influence on subsequent syntactic decisions than sentence-final primes, suggesting a primacy effect. Sentence-initial target NPs contributed to this primacy effect, while sentence-final target NPs did not. We argue that this primacy effect arises as the result of greater processing demands and resources for early than for late sentence constituents as well as deeper encoding and more focused attention when processing the beginnings of sentences.