Two words as one: A multi-naming investigation of the age-of-acquisition effect in compound-word processing.

Previous research has shown that early-acquired words are produced faster than late-acquired words. Juhasz and colleagues (Juhasz, Lai & Woodcock, Behavior Research Methods, 47 (4), 1004-1019, 2015; Juhasz, The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 1-10, 2018) argue that the Age-of-Acquisition (AoA) loci for complex words, specifically compound words, are found at the lexical/semantic level. In the current study, two experiments were conducted to evaluate this claim and investigate the influence of AoA in reading compound words aloud. In Experiment 1, 48 participants completed a word naming task. Using general linear mixed modelling, we found that the age at which the compound word was learned significantly affected the naming latencies beyond the other psycholinguistic properties measured. The second experiment required 48 participants to name the compound word when the two morphemes were presented with a space in-between (combinatorial naming, e.g. air plane). We found that the age at which the compound word was learned, as well as the AoA of the individual morphemes that formed the compound word, significantly influenced combinatorial naming latency. These findings are discussed in relation to theories of the AoA in language processing.

State anxiety and information processing: A 7.5% carbon dioxide challenge study.

We used the 7.5% carbon dioxide model of anxiety induction to investigate the effects of state anxiety on simple information processing. In both high- and low-anxious states, participants (n = 36) completed an auditory-visual matching task and a visual binary categorization task. The stimuli were either degraded or clear, so as to investigate whether the effects of anxiety are greater when signal clarity is compromised. Accuracy in the matching task was lower during CO2 inhalation and for degraded stimuli. In the categorization task, response times and indecision (measured using mouse trajectories) were greater during CO2 inhalation and for degraded stimuli. For most measures, we found no evidence of Gas × Clarity interactions. These data indicate that state anxiety negatively impacts simple information processing and do not support claims that anxiety may benefit performance in low-cognitively-demanding tasks. These findings have important implications for understanding the impact of state anxiety in real-world situations.

Effects of 7.5% carbon dioxide (CO2) inhalation and ethnicity on face memory.

The ability to accurately verify facial identity has important forensic implications, but this ability is fallible. Research suggests that anxiety at the time of encoding can impair subsequent recall, but no studies have investigated the effects of anxiety at the time of recall in an experimental paradigm. This study addresses this gap using the carbon dioxide (CO2) model of anxiety induction. Thirty participants completed two inhalations: one of 7.5% CO2-enriched air and one of medical air (i.e., placebo). Prior to each inhalation, participants were presented with 16 facial images (50% own-ethnicity, 50% other-ethnicity). During the inhalation they were required to identify which faces had been seen before from a set of 32 images (16 seen-before and 16 novel images). Identification accuracy was lower during CO2 inhalation compared to air (F[1,29]=5.5, p=.026, ηp(2)=.16), and false alarm rate was higher for other-ethnicity faces compared to own-ethnicity faces (F[1,29]=11.3, p=.002, ηp(2)=.28). There was no evidence of gas by ethnicity interactions for accuracy or false alarms (ps>.34). Ratings of decision confidence did not differ by gas condition, suggesting that participants were unaware of differences in performance. These findings suggest that anxiety, at the point of recognition, impairs facial identification accuracy. This has substantial implications for eyewitness memory situations, and suggests that efforts should be made to attenuate the anxiety in these situations in order to improve the validity of identification.