Relating Tabooness to Humor and Arousal Ratings in American English: What the F*** Is so Funny?

Emotion can have a profound effect on language processing, and taboo words have been increasingly used in research as highly emotional, negatively valenced stimuli. However, because taboo words as a lexical category are socially constructed and semantically idiosyncratic, they may also have complex emotional characteristics. This complexity may not be fully considered by researchers using taboo words as research stimuli. This study gathered tabooness, humor, and arousal ratings to provide a resource for researchers to better understand the sources and characteristics of the strong emotions generated by taboo words. A total of 411 participants aged 18-83 were recruited via online platforms, and all participants rated the same 264 words on tabooness, humor, and arousal. Analyses indicated that tabooness and humor ratings were positively related to each other, and both were predicted by arousal ratings. The set of ratings included here provides a tool for researchers using taboo stimuli, and our findings highlight methodological considerations while broadening our understanding of the cognitive and linguistic nature of highly emotional language.

Older adults' name-face association learning is facilitated for names with high-frequency first syllables.

Older adults have even greater difficulty learning name-face associations than young adults, although many variables reflecting properties of the names have been shown to affect young and older adults' name learning similarly. Older adults' name-face association learning was compared for names with high-frequency (HF) first syllables versus names with low-frequency (LF) first syllables. Twenty-eight adults ages 65 to 80 learned five names with HF first syllables and five names with LF first syllables in association with 10 new faces over repeated testing rounds with feedback. Participants learned more name-face associations when the names had HF first syllables than LF first syllables. Findings indicate that older adults benefit from increased frequency of phonological segments within a word on a task other than word retrieval and are consistent with a theoretical framework that accounts for learning new name-face associations, the effects of linguistic properties of the names, and ageing.

A stress mindset manipulation can affect speakers' articulation rate.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: Mindsets about stress can be altered so that people interpret stress as either a positive or negative force. We exposed participants to a stress mindset intervention to test its effects on a challenging speech production task. DESIGN AND METHOD: Participants (N = 60) were randomly assigned to a stress mindset condition. In the stress-is-enhancing (SIE) condition, they viewed a brief video that characterized stress as a positive force that benefits performance. In the stress-is-debilitating (SID) condition, the video characterized stress as a negative force that should be avoided. Each participant completed a self-report measure of stress mindset, performed a psychological stressor task, and then repeatedly produced tongue twisters aloud. Speech errors and articulation time were scored for the production task. RESULTS: The manipulation check confirmed that stress mindsets were altered after viewing the videos. Participants in the SIE condition articulated the phrases more quickly than those in the SID condition without an accompanying increase in errors. CONCLUSIONS: A stress mindset manipulation affected speech production. This finding indicates that one way to mitigate the negative effects of stress on speech production is to instantiate beliefs that stress is a positive force that can enhance performance.

High-frequency first syllables facilitate name-face association learning.

It is harder to learn a proper name than a common noun in association with a new face, and low-frequency (LF) or rare surnames are harder to learn than high-frequency (HF) or common surnames. A separate body of research has shown that words containing HF phonological components can be easier to retrieve and produce than words with LF phonological components. This study tested for a "downstream" benefit of increased syllable frequency (independent of name frequency) on name-face association learning: surnames with HF first syllables were predicted to be learned more easily than those with LF first syllables. Participants were tasked with learning 5 names with HF first syllables and 5 names with LF first syllables in association with 10 unfamiliar faces over repeated testing rounds with feedback. People learned more names containing HF than LF first syllables, demonstrating a benefit of increased phonological frequency to name learning. Findings support an interactive activation model that accounts for name-face association learning as well as phonological frequency effects on production, along with many other aspects of memory and language.

Incidental learning of proper names and "earwitness" recall.

This study tested recall of proper names versus other details of a crime in incidental learning conditions designed to parallel recall when an "earwitness" reports what he or she overheard from someone discussing a crime. Participants heard an audio recording of someone discussing details of a crime he had committed, and they then completed filler tasks designed to mislead them as to the study's true purpose. After this short delay, participants had particularly poor recall for names in association with roles in the crime compared to other details about the crime. Their name errors sometimes implicated innocent people, a disturbing finding given the potential ramifications for people incriminated by witnesses reporting hearsay. Somewhat reassuringly, participants frequently did not provide a guess for the name when they were uncertain about who did what, and they reported reduced confidence in their name recall, with particularly low confidence when they recalled incorrect name information. Findings establish the pronounced difficulty of proper name learning in incidental learning conditions, and results suggest that earwitness testimony involving name recall should be treated with particular caution.

Adults of all ages experience increased tip-of-the-tongue states under ostensible evaluative observation.

In previous research, young adults who were told they were being observed and evaluated reported more tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) instances than those who were not. We first tested whether the same effect is obtained for older adult participants, and then compared the effects of ostensible evaluative observation on word retrieval for adults across the lifespan. Participants in the observed condition were told they were being evaluated throughout the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) procedure and a word retrieval task, whereas participants in the unobserved condition performed similar tasks with no mention of observation or evaluation. In Experiment 1, older adult participants in the observed condition experienced more TOTs than those in the unobserved condition. In Experiment 2, observation increased TOTs to a similar extent for adults ages 18-80, replicating earlier findings with young adults and Experiment 1. Observation can impair cognitive performance similarly for adults of a wide range of ages.

Specific effects of the Trier Social Stress Test on speech fluency in young and older adults.

The notion that speech becomes less fluent during stressful speaking conditions has received little empirical test, and no research has tested this relationship in older adult participants. We analyzed speeches produced during the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) or during a less stressful placebo (pTSST) version of the task. We measured young and older adults' speech fillers (e.g., um), unfilled pauses (at least 1 s in duration), and other disfluencies (e.g., repetitions, repairs). Neither young nor older adult participants rated themselves as having greater stress in the TSST than pTSST condition, but behavioral effects were obtained. Participants in the TSST condition produced more mid-phrase speech fillers and unfilled pauses than participants in the pTSST condition. Young adults produced more unfilled pauses than older adults overall, and older adults produced more mid-phrase fillers than young adults. Critically, age group interacted with experimental condition, such that older speakers produced disproportionately more mid-phrase fillers than young adults in the TSST compared to the pTSST condition. In sum, the negative effects of the TSST on fluency were generally similar across age, but this specific age-related increase in mid-phrase fillers indicates that older adults' word retrieval may have been particularly negatively affected. Findings are generally consistent with previous research and add to understanding of how factors internal to the speaker (i.e., demographic, personality, and cognitive variables) and factors external to the speaker (i.e., variables regarding the situation, context, or content of speech) combine to affect speech fluency.

Age-related changes in word retrieval vary by self-reported anxiety but not depression symptoms.

Tip-of-the-tongue states (TOTs) are known to increase in frequency across adulthood, but there is wide variability in older adults' TOT rates, suggesting that individual difference factors contribute to TOT incidence. We investigated the role of affect by examining the relationship between self-reported anxiety and depression symptoms and the frequency of TOTs during a laboratory task. Participants were young, middle-aged and older adults in a population-based sample of adults aged 18-87. Increased anxiety was associated with fewer TOTs for the middle-aged group but more TOTs for the older adult group. There was no relationship between anxiety and TOTs for younger adults and no relationships between depression symptoms and TOT incidence for any age group. We discuss our results in terms of attentional control theory, which provides an explanation of how age may affect the relationship between anxiety and TOTs.

How scenes containing visual errors affect speech fluency in young and older adults.

We compared young and older adults' speech during an error detection task, with some pictures containing visual errors and anomalies and other pictures error-free. We analyzed three disfluency types: mid-phrase speech fillers (e.g., It's a little, um, girl), repetitions (e.g., He's trying to catch the- the birds), and repairs (e.g., She- you can see her legs). Older adults produced more mid-phrase fillers than young adults only when describing pictures containing errors. These often reflect word retrieval problems and represent clear disruptions to fluency, so this interaction indicates that the need to form and maintain representations of novel information can specifically compromise older adults' speech fluency. Overall, older adults produced more repetitions and repairs than young adults, regardless of picture type, indicating general age-related increases in these disfluencies. The obtained patterns are discussed in the context of the Transmission Deficit Hypothesis and other approaches to age-related changes in speech fluency.

Tip of the Tongue States Increase Under Evaluative Observation.

We tested the frequent assumption that the difficulty of word retrieval increases when a speaker is being observed and evaluated. We modified the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) so that participants believed that its evaluative observation components continued throughout the duration of a subsequent word retrieval task, and measured participants' reported tip of the tongue (TOT) states. Participants in this TSST condition experienced more TOTs than participants in a comparable, placebo TSST condition in which there was no suggestion of evaluative observation. This experiment provides initial evidence confirming the assumption that evaluative observation by a third party can be disruptive to word retrieval. We interpret our findings by proposing an extension to a well-supported theoretical model of TOTs.

Age-Related Increases in Verbal Knowledge Are Not Associated With Word Finding Problems in the Cam-CAN Cohort: What You Know Won't Hurt You.

OBJECTIVE: We tested the claim that age-related increases in knowledge interfere with word retrieval, leading to word finding failures. We did this by relating a measure of crystallized intelligence to tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) states and picture naming accuracy. METHOD: Participants were from a large (N = 708), cross-sectional (aged 18-88 years), population-based sample from the Cambridge Centre for Ageing and Neuroscience cohort (Cam-CAN; www.cam-can.com). They completed (a) the Spot-the-Word Test (STW), a measure of crystallized intelligence in which participants circled the real word in word/nonword pairs, (b) a TOT-inducing task, and (c) a picture naming task. RESULTS: Age and STW independently predicted TOTs, with higher TOTs for older adults and for participants with lower STW scores. Tests of a moderator model examining interactions between STW and age indicated that STW was a significant negative predictor of TOTs in younger adults, but with increasing age, the effect size gradually approached zero. Results using picture naming accuracy replicated these findings. DISCUSSION: These results do not support the hypothesis that lifelong knowledge acquisition leads to interference that causes an age-related increase in TOTs. Instead, crystallized intelligence supports successful word retrieval, although this relationship weakens across adulthood.

Repetition blindness and homophone blindness in young and older adults.

We tested age effects on repetition blindness (RB), defined as the reduced probability of reporting a target word following presentation of the same word in a rapidly presented list. We also tested age effects on homophone blindness (HB), in which the first word is a homophone of the target word rather than a repeated word. Thirty young and 28 older adults viewed rapidly presented lists of words containing repeated, homophone, or unrepeated word pairs and reported all of the words immediately after each list. Older adults exhibited a greater degree of RB and HB than young adults using a conditional scoring method that provides certainty that blindness has occurred. The existence of RB and HB for both age groups, and increased blindness for older compared to young adults, supports predictions of a binding theory that has successfully accounted for a wide range of phenomena in cognitive aging.

Trauma Coping Self-Efficacy: A Context-Specific Self-Efficacy Measure for Traumatic Stress.

OBJECTIVE: The psychometric properties of a Trauma Coping Self-Efficacy (CSE-T) scale that assesses general trauma-related coping self-efficacy perceptions were assessed. METHOD: Measurement equivalence was assessed using several different samples: hospitalized trauma patients (n1 = 74, n2 = 69, n3 = 60), 3 samples of disaster survivors (n1 = 273, n2 = 227, n3 = 138), and trauma-exposed college students (N = 242). This is the first multisample evaluation of the psychometric properties for a general trauma-related CSE measure. RESULTS: Results showed that a brief and parsimonious 9-item version of the CSE performed well across the samples with a robust factor structure; factor structure and factor loadings were similar across study samples. DISCUSSION: The 9-item scale CSE-T demonstrated measurement equivalence across samples indicating that the underlying concept of general posttraumatic CSE is organized in a similar manner in the different trauma-exposed groups. These results offer strong support for cross-event construct validity of the CSE-T scale. Associations of the CSE-T with important expected covariates showed significant evidence for convergent validity. Finally, discriminant validity was also supported. Replication of the factor structure, internal reliability, and other evidence for construct validity is a critical next step for future research. (PsycINFO Database Record

Differences between young and older adults' spoken language production in descriptions of negative versus neutral pictures.

Young and older participants produced oral picture descriptions that were analyzed to determine the impact of negative emotional content on spoken language production. An interaction was found for speech disfluencies: young adults' disfluencies did not vary, whereas older adults' disfluencies increased, for negative compared to neutral pictures. Young adults adopted a faster speech rate while describing negative compared to neutral pictures, but older adults did not. Reference errors were uncommon for both age groups, but occurred more during descriptions of negative than neutral pictures. Our findings indicate that negative content can be differentially disruptive to older adults' spoken language production, and add to the literature on aging, emotion, and cognition by exploring effects within the domain of language production.

Semantically- and Phonologically-Related Primes Improve Name Retrieval in Young and Older Adults.

Word and name retrieval failures increase with age, and this study investigated how priming impacts young and older adults' ability to produce proper names. The transmission deficit hypothesis predicts facilitation from related prime names, whereas the blocking and inhibition deficit hypotheses predict interference from related names, especially for older adults. On half of our experimental trials, we exposed participants to a prime name that is phonologically- and semantically-related to a target name. Related names facilitated production of targets overall, with older adults' naming ability improved at least as much as young adults'. Results are contrary to predictions of the blocking and inhibitory deficit hypotheses, and suggest that an activation-based model of memory and language better accounts for retrieval and production of well-known names.

Subjective organization, verbal learning, and forgetting across the life span: from 5 to 89.

UNLABELLED: BACKGROUND/STUDY CONTEXT: Previous tests of the relationship between subjective organization during encoding, aging, and recall have produced inconsistent findings. The present study investigates subjective organization and the acquisition and recall of verbal material across the life span (from 5 to 89 years of age) using two measures, the intertrial repetition paired frequency (PF) measure and the unidirectional subjective organization (SO) measure. METHODS: Participants (N = 2656) were administered a version of the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test, including a delayed recall trial. Analyses of variance (ANOVAs) were performed to examine the relationship between age and subjective organization and between age and recall. Mediation and growth curve analyses were performed to further examine the relationship between age, verbal acquisition, and subjective organization. RESULTS: Subjective organization was not predictive of verbal forgetting. Deficits in verbal acquisition and subjective organization were detected among children and elderly adults. Mediational analyses showed that age affected the number of words recalled as well as subjective organization, and that subjective organization affected the number of words recalled in children, young adults and elderly. Latent growth curve modeling suggests that increases in subjective organization over time are related to increases in recall over time for each age group. CONCLUSION: Subjective organization is predictive of recall, and both subjective organization and recall are lowest among children and elderly individuals. Age has direct effects on recall but this effect is partially mediated by subjective organization. Brain imaging studies showing increased prefrontal cortex activation during encoding of remembered words bolster our findings that age affects the relationship between verbal learning and organization of material during encoding.

Compensating for Language Deficits in Amnesia I: H.M.'s Spared Retrieval Categories.

Three studies examined amnesic H.M.'s use of words, phrases, and propositions on the Test of Language Competence (TLC). In Study 1, H.M. used 19 lexical categories (e.g., common nouns, verbs) and one syntactic category (noun phrases) with the same relative frequency as memory-normal controls, he used no lexical or syntactic category with less-than-normal frequency, and he used proper names (e.g., Melanie) and coordinative conjunctions (e.g., and) with reliably greater-than-normal frequency. In Study 2, H.M. overused proper names relative to controls when answering episodic memory questions about childhood experiences in speech and writing, replicating and extending Study 1 results for proper names. Based on detailed analyses of the use (and misuse) of coordinating conjunctions on the TLC, Study 3 developed a syntax-level "compensation hypothesis" for explaining why H.M. overused coordinating conjunctions relative to controls in Study 1. Present results suggested that (a) frontal mechanisms for retrieving word-, phrase-, and propositional-categories are intact in H.M., unlike in category-specific aphasia, (b) using his intact retrieval mechanisms, H.M. has developed a never-previously-observed proposition-level free association strategy to compensate for the hippocampal region damage that has impaired his mechanisms for encoding novel linguistic structures, and (c) H.M.'s overuse of proper names warrants further research.

Searching for interference effects in learning new face-name associations.

In three experiments we attempted to increase interference using experimental manipulations in a face-name learning paradigm. All experiments included young and older adult participants because ageing is associated with increases in both susceptibility to interference and difficulty in learning face-name associations. None of the experiments produced interference for either age group: The inclusion of confusable (i.e., ambiguous) names and occupations, having to learn an additional piece of information in association with each face, and requiring participants to guess when uncertain all failed to negatively impact name learning. Interference does not appear to be the critical mechanism underlying the difficulty of learning proper names, and it cannot account for older adults' disproportionate decline in name-learning ability.

My Disaster Recovery: a pilot randomized controlled trial of an Internet intervention.

This pilot study tested the efficacy of the My Disaster Recovery (MDR) website to decrease negative affect and increase coping self-efficacy. Fifty-six survivors of Hurricane Ike were recruited from a larger study being conducted at the University of Texas Medical Branch at the first anniversary of the storm. Restricted randomization was used to assign participants to the MDR website, an information-only website, or a usual care condition. Group×time interactions indicated that MDR reduced participant worry more than the other conditions. A similar trend was also identified for depression. Both websites were accessed a small to moderate amount and participants reported mixed satisfaction for both websites. Although the effect sizes for worry and depression were in the moderate to large range, small sample size and timing of the intervention qualify the findings. These preliminary findings encourage further evaluation of MDR with a larger, demographically diverse sample and indicate that the MDR website might be helpful in reducing worry and depression.