{"title":"A word or two about nonwords: Frequency, semantic neighborhood density, and orthography-to-semantics consistency effects for nonwords in the lexical decision task.","authors":"Peter Hendrix, Ching Chu Sun","doi":"10.1037/xlm0000819","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1037/xlm0000819","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>For the most part, the effects of lexical-distributional properties of words on visual word recognition are well-established. More uncertainty remains, however, about the influence of these properties on lexical processing for nonwords. The work presented here investigates the mechanisms that guide nonword processing through an analysis of lexical decision latencies for 18,547 words and 27,079 nonwords in the British Lexicon Project (Keuleers, Lacey, Rastle, & Brysbaert, 2012) using piecewise generalized mixed models (pamms; Bender, Groll, & Scheipl, 2018; Bender & Scheipl, 2018; Bender, Scheipl, Hartl, Day, & Küchenhoff, 2018). The pamm analysis of the data revealed 2 novel effects for nonwords in the lexical-decision task. First, whereas previous studies reported effects of base word frequency, the current study is the first to document a true nonword frequency effect. Second, we report effects of semantic neighborhood density and orthography-to-semantics consistency; not only for words, but also for nonwords. The effects of frequency, semantic neighborhood density and orthography-to-semantics consistency are facilitatory for words, but inhibitory for nonwords. The pamm analysis offers insights into the temporal development of the effects of lexical-distributional variables that are not available through more traditional analysis techniques and that shed new light on lexical processing in visual word recognition tasks. The implications of the reported results for models of visual word recognition are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":504300,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition","volume":" ","pages":"157-183"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"37592063","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Children make use of relationships across meanings in word learning.","authors":"Sammy Floyd, Adele E Goldberg","doi":"10.1037/xlm0000821","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1037/xlm0000821","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Many words are associated with more than a single meaning. Words are sometimes \"ambiguous,\" applying to unrelated meanings, but the majority of frequent words are \"polysemous\" in that they apply to multiple <i>related</i> meanings. In a preregistered design that included 2 tasks, we tested adults' and 4.5- to 7-year-old children's ability to learn 4 novel polysemous words or 4 novel ambiguous words. Both children and adults demonstrated a polysemy over ambiguity learning advantage on each task after exposure, showing better learning of novel words with multiple related meanings than novel words with unrelated meanings. Stimuli in the polysemy condition were designed and then normed to guard against learners relying on a simple definition to distinguish the multiple target meanings for each word from foils. We retested available participants after a week-long delay without providing additional exposure and found that adults' performance remained strong in the polysemy condition in 1 task, and children's performance remained strong in the polysemy condition in both tasks. We conclude that participants are adept at learning polysemous words that vary along multiple dimensions. Current results are consistent with the idea that ambiguous meanings of a word compete, but polysemous meanings instead reinforce one another. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":504300,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition","volume":" ","pages":"29-44"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"37683018","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Masked form priming as a function of letter position: An evaluation of current orthographic coding models.","authors":"Stephen J Lupker, Giacomo Spinelli, Colin J Davis","doi":"10.1037/xlm0000799","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1037/xlm0000799","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>A word's exterior letters, particularly its initial letter, appear to have a special status when reading. Therefore, most orthographic coding models incorporate assumptions giving initial letters and, in some cases, final letters, enhanced importance during the orthographic coding process. In the present article, 3 masked priming experiments were carried out, using the conventional lexical-decision task, the sandwich priming lexical-decision task and the masked priming same-different task, in an attempt to examine a number of those models with a specific focus on the implications of the models' assumptions concerning the different letter positions. The related primes and targets were 6-letter strings that differed in 2 letter positions, initial (e.g., <i>jnckey-HOCKEY</i>), middle (e.g., <i>hojney-HOCKEY</i>), or final (<i>hockjn-HOCKEY</i>), with the middle-letters different primes being the primes that maintained both end letters. To the extent possible, the predictions of the models were derived by using easyNet, the simulation program recently developed by Adelman, Gubian, and Davis (2017). In all experiments, the final-letters different primes were the most effective primes with there being no clear distinction between the other 2 prime types, a pattern that none of the models predicted. The lack of an advantage for the middle-letters different primes suggests that the orthographic code driving masked priming is not one that places a special emphasis on the identities of the exterior letters. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":504300,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition","volume":" ","pages":"2349-2366"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2020-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"37450880","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Forget framing might involve the assumption of mastery, but probably does not activate the notion of forgetting.","authors":"Michael J Serra, Benjamin D England","doi":"10.1037/xlm0000804","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1037/xlm0000804","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Soliciting predictions about hypothetical memory performance (without having participants engage in a related memory task) is a simple way for researchers to examine people's metacognitive beliefs about how memory functions. Using this methodology, researchers can vary what information is provided as part of the scenario or how the memory prediction is framed to examine how such factors alter people's memory predictions. For example, Koriat, Bjork, Sheffer, and Bar (2004) found that participants would factor expected retention intervals into their memory predictions (worse performance over longer intervals) when they were asked to predict future forgetting, but not when they were asked to predict future remembering. In the present experiments, we examined the effects of forget framing on memory predictions and whether we indicated that the hypothetical learners had mastered the information before the retention interval began. Although we hypothesized that stating initial mastery might similarly activate participants' knowledge that memory should decline with longer retention intervals, in our experiments, neither the forget frame nor mastery information seemed to consistently trigger participants' beliefs about forgetting. Furthermore, participants' remember-framed predictions were higher when we indicated mastery than when we did not, but forget-framed predictions were not affected by the mastery information. Taken together, the present results suggest that the forget frame might involve the assumption of an initially high level of mastery but probably does not activate a \"notion of forgetting\" that alerts participants to the fact that memory declines over increasing retention intervals. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":504300,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition","volume":" ","pages":"2384-2396"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2020-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"37450881","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Yaling Hsiao, Megan Bird, Helen Norris, Ascensión Pagán, Kate Nation
{"title":"The influence of item-level contextual history on lexical and semantic judgments by children and adults.","authors":"Yaling Hsiao, Megan Bird, Helen Norris, Ascensión Pagán, Kate Nation","doi":"10.1037/xlm0000795","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1037/xlm0000795","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Semantic diversity quantifies the similarity in the content of contexts a word has been experienced in. Four experiments investigated its effect on lexical and semantic judgments in 9- to 10-year-olds and adults. In Experiment 1, a cross-modal semantic judgment task, participants decided whether a visually presented word matched an audio definition. Both groups were slower to respond to words high in semantic diversity, and this effect was modulated by task demands. Experiment 2 used the same items but in a lexical-decision task. Children were faster to respond to words high in diversity but there was no effect in adults, failing to replicate previous work. Experiment 3 examined possible reasons for this, and Experiment 4 tested the effect of semantic diversity on lexical decision via secondary analysis of 2 large megastudies. Overall, the facilitative effect of semantic diversity on lexical decision was robust. Our findings show that contextual experience influences subsequent lexical processing, consistent with context inducing semantic representations that reflect continuities and gradations in meaning. These gradations are captured by semantic diversity, and in turn, this interacts with task demands to influence behavioral performance. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":504300,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition","volume":" ","pages":"2367-2383"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2020-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"37450879","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Shraddha Kaur, Dennis G Norris, Susan E Gathercole
{"title":"The time course of updating in running span.","authors":"Shraddha Kaur, Dennis G Norris, Susan E Gathercole","doi":"10.1037/xlm0000800","DOIUrl":"10.1037/xlm0000800","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Running span can be performed by either passively listening to memory items or actively updating the target set. Previous research suggests that the active updating process is demanding and time consuming and is favored at slow rates of presentation while the passive strategy is employed at fast rates. Two experiments examined the time course of recruitment of resources during task performance and its sensitivity to presentation rate. In Experiment 1, participants performed 1 of 3 serial recall tasks: running span, simple span, and modified span. The tasks were completed at the same time as a choice reaction time (RT; CRT) task and the RTs were used to index the resource demands of the memory task. Running span generated higher RT costs than simple span. The costs were present only for positions at and beyond the point in the sequence when the target memory set was changed, indicating a shift to a more cognitively demanding mode of updating. At these positions there was a generalized increase in RT costs that peaked 1,000 ms following item presentation. In Experiment 2 the resource demands of running span varied with presentation rate and a peak demand at 1,000 ms was again evident, but only with a slow presentation rate. In conjunction with strategy reports, these data establish that the process of active updating in running span is slow and cognitively demanding, making it difficult to use when presentation rates are fast. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":504300,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition","volume":" ","pages":"2397-2409"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7790168/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"37472983","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Context facilitation in text reading: A study of children's eye movements.","authors":"Simon P Tiffin-Richards, Sascha Schroeder","doi":"10.1037/xlm0000834","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1037/xlm0000834","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Words are seldom read in isolation. Predicting or anticipating upcoming words in a text, based on the context in which they are read, is an important aspect of efficient language processing. In sentence reading, words with congruent preceding context have been shown to be processed faster than words read in neutral or incongruous contexts. The onset of contextual facilitation effects is found very early in the first-pass-reading eye-movement and electroencephalogram (EEG) measures of skilled adult readers. However, the effect of contextual facilitation on children's eye movements during reading remains largely unexplored. To fill this gap, we tracked children's and adults' eye movements while reading stories with embedded words that were either strongly or weakly related to a clear narrative theme. Our central finding is that children showed late contextual facilitation effects during text reading as opposed to both early and late facilitation effects found in skilled adult readers. Contextual constraint had a similar effect on children's and adults' initiation of regressive saccades, whereas children invested more time in rereading relative to adults after encountering weakly contextually constrained words. Quantile regression analyses revealed that contextual facilitation effects had an early onset in adults' first-pass reading, whereas they only had a late onset in children's gaze durations. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":504300,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition","volume":" ","pages":"1701-1713"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2020-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"37729218","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Disambiguating the ambiguity disadvantage effect: Behavioral and electrophysiological evidence for semantic competition.","authors":"Greg Maciejewski, Ekaterini Klepousniotou","doi":"10.1037/xlm0000842","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1037/xlm0000842","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Semantic ambiguity has been shown to slow comprehension, although it is unclear whether this ambiguity disadvantage is attributable to competition in semantic activation or difficulties in response selection. We tested the two accounts by examining semantic relatedness decisions to homonyms, or words with multiple unrelated meanings (e.g., <i>football/electric fan</i>). Our behavioral results showed that the ambiguity disadvantage arises only when the different meanings of words are of comparable frequency, and are thus activated in parallel. Critically, this effect was observed regardless of response-selection difficulties, both when the different meanings triggered inconsistent responses on related trials (e.g., <i>fan-breeze)</i> and consistent responses on unrelated trials (e.g., <i>fan-snake</i>). Our electrophysiological results confirmed that this effect arises during semantic activation of the ambiguous word, indexed by the N400, not during response selection. Overall, the findings show that ambiguity resolution involves semantic competition and delineate why and when this competition arises. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":504300,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition","volume":" ","pages":"1682-1700"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2020-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"37818977","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The yellow light: Predictability enhances background processing during behaviorally relevant events.","authors":"Caitlin A Sisk, Yuhong V Jiang","doi":"10.1037/xlm0000838","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1037/xlm0000838","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The attentional boost effect refers to the observation that when simultaneously performing a scene memory task and a target detection task, participants better remember scenes that appear at the same time as the detection target than scenes that coincide with distractors. The attentional boost effect is thought to result from a transient increase in attention during an acute behaviorally relevant event, resulting from a temporal orienting response. But can endogenous orienting to predictable targets trigger this response in the same manner as exogenous orienting to unpredictable targets? Until now, the attentional boost effect has only been tested under conditions in which the target's appearance was unpredictable. Because of the distinction between exogenous and endogenous orienting, target predictability could attenuate the attentional boost effect, or it could increase temporal orienting efficiency and enhance the effect. To test the attentional boost effect under predictable conditions, participants memorized scenes while responding to a target digit, 0, among a stream of digits appearing in the center of those scenes. In some blocks, the 0 predictably followed the digit sequence 3-2-1. In these predictable blocks, participants showed a robust attentional boost effect. This shows that both endogenous orienting to temporally predictable targets and exogenous orienting to unpredictable targets enhance concurrent task processing. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":504300,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition","volume":" ","pages":"1645-1658"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2020-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"37818976","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Deanna C Friesen, Olivia Ward, Jessica Bohnet, Pierre Cormier, Debra Jared
{"title":"Early activation of cross-language meaning from phonology during sentence processing.","authors":"Deanna C Friesen, Olivia Ward, Jessica Bohnet, Pierre Cormier, Debra Jared","doi":"10.1037/xlm0000849","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1037/xlm0000849","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The current study investigated whether shared phonology across languages activates cross-language meaning when reading in context. Eighty-five bilinguals read English sentences while their eye movements were tracked. Critical sentences contained English members of English-French interlingual homophone pairs (e.g., <i>mow</i>; French homophone mate <i>mot</i> means \"word\") or they contained spelling control words (e.g., <i>mop</i>). Only the meaning of the unseen French homophone mate fit the context (e.g., Hannah wrote another <i>mow/mop</i> on the blackboard for the spelling test). Differences in fixation durations between homophone errors and spelling control errors provided evidence for cross-language activation that extended to semantic representations. When the unseen French homophone was of high frequency, shorter first fixations and gaze durations were observed on English interlingual homophones than on English control words, providing evidence that the French meaning associated with the shared phonology was activated during early stage word identification. Individual differences analyses showed that these effects were larger when bilinguals were using the nontarget language (i.e., French) more regularly in daily life. Results provide evidence that cross-language activation of phonology can be sufficiently strong to activate corresponding semantic representations during single language sentence processing. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":504300,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition","volume":" ","pages":"1754-1767"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2020-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"37909759","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}