Journal of Memory and Language

Volumes 128-132, 2023

Journal of Memory and Language (SSCI一区，2023 IF: 4.3，排名：9/194）2023年第128-132卷共刊文34篇。其中，2023年第128卷共发研究性论文5篇，论文涉及交际效率、句法与非句法的相互作用、非母语对三语产出的干扰等；第129卷共发研究性论文8篇，论文涉及言语记忆跨度、词汇提升、指称期望、言语视觉空间转移等；第130卷共发研究性论文5篇，论文涉及多语能力与反转主导、单词的视觉识别、测试增强新学习效应、空间语言与元音产出、语篇任务中的指称选择等；第131卷共发研究性论文8篇，论文涉及提示间歇效应与暂时情景关系、中文句首句法启动效应、语义习得性、概念化与注意力、性别效应的跨语言差异、前置熟悉度对人脸识别影响、拼音字节识别中的语音感知、儿童成人语用原则对比研究等；第132卷共发研究性论文8篇，论文涉及日语正字法深度理论、利用ERPs分辨词汇预测与错误预测、下义词的习得、言语计划中的神经抑制、范畴化表征的时间节点、语言焦点与对比选择、分布式模型预测儿童词汇习得、习得年龄对复合词表征方式影响等。欢迎转发与扩散！

往期推荐：

刊讯｜SSCI 期刊《记忆与语言》2022年第124-127卷

刊讯｜SSCI 期刊《记忆与语言》2022第123卷

刊讯｜SSCI 期刊 《记忆与语言》2022年第122卷

目录

第128卷

■ Speakers use more redundant references with language learners: Evidence for communicatively-efficient referential choice, by Shira Tal, Eitan Grossman, Hannah Rohde, Inbal Arnon

■ The interplay between syntactic and non-syntactic structure in language production, by Kumiko Fukumura, Shi Zhang

■ Interference between non-native languages during trilingual language production, by Angela de Bruin, Liv J. Hoversten, Clara D. Martin

■ Examining semantic parafoveal-on-foveal effects using a Stroop boundary paradigm, by Chuanli Zang, Zhichao Zhang, Manman Zhang, Federica Degno, Simon P. Liversedge

■ The episodic encoding of talker voice attributes across diverse voices, by William Clapp, Charlotte Vaughn, Meghan Sumner

第129卷

■ On verbal memory span in Chinese speakers: Evidence for employment of an articulation-resistant phonological component, by Alan D. Baddeley, Zhan Xu, Sai Tung Ho, Graham J. Hitch

■ True and false recognition in MINERVA 2: Extension to sentences and metaphors, by J. Nick Reid, Randall K. Jamieson

■ The head or the verb: Is the lexical boost restricted to the head verb? by Leila Kantola, Roger P.G. van Gompel, Laura J. Wakeford

■ Weaker than you might imagine: Determining imageability effects on word recognition, by Agata Dymarska, Louise Connell, Briony Banks

■ Number feature distortion modulates cue-based retrieval in reading, by Himanshu Yadav, Garrett Smith, Sebastian Reich, Shravan Vasishth

■ Does referential expectation guide both linguistic and social constraints on pronoun comprehension? by Valerie J. Langlois, Sandra A. Zerkle, Jennifer E. Arnold

■ Number and syllabification of following consonants influence use of long versus short vowels in English disyllables, by Rebecca Treiman, Brett Kessler, Kayla Hensley

■ Retrieval practice and verbal-visuospatial transfer: From memorization to inductive learning, by Gregory I. Hughes, Ayanna K. Thomas

第130卷

■Inhibitory control of the dominant language: Reversed language dominance is the tip of the iceberg, by Matthew Goldrick, Tamar H. Gollan

■ Morphemes as letter chunks: Linguistic information enhances the learning of visual regularities, by Jarosław R. Lelonkiewicz, Maria Ktori, Davide Crepaldi

■ Evaluating the conceptual strategy change account of test-potentiated new learning in list recall, by Shaun Boustani, Caleb Owens, Hilary J. Don, Chunliang Yang, David R. Shanks

■ Sound-space symbolism: Associating articulatory front and back positions of the tongue with the spatial concepts of forward/front and backward/back, by L. Vainio, M. Kilpeläinen, A. Wikström, M. Vainio

■ A systematic evaluation of factors affecting referring expression choice in passage completion tasks, by Vera Demberg, Ekaterina Kravtchenko, Jia E. Loy

第131卷

■ Do we remember when to better recall what? Repetition benefits are probably not due to explicit temporal context memory, by R. Lane Adams, Peter F. Delaney

■ The head constituent plays a key role in the lexical boost in syntactic priming, by Jian Huang, Xiqin Liu, Meiling Lu, Yingying Sun, ... Martin J. Pickering

■ Pragmatic effects on semantic learnability: Insights from evidentiality, by Dionysia Saratsli, Anna Papafragou

■ Conceptualising acoustic and cognitive contributions to divided-attention listening within a data-limit versus resource-limit framework, by Sarah Knight, Lyndon Rakusen, Sven Mattys

■ Cross-linguistic differences in gender congruency effects: Evidence from meta-analyses, by Audrey Bürki, Emiel van den Hoven, Niels Schiller, Nikolay Dimitrov

■ Haven’t I seen you before? Conceptual but not perceptual prior familiarity enhances face recognition memory, by Melisa Akan, Aaron S. Benjamin

■Perceiving speech during orthographic syllable recognition: Beyond phonemic identity, by Daniel Williams, Adamantios Gafos, Payam Ghaffarvand-Mokari

■ Children and adults use pragmatic principles to interpret non-linguistic symbols, by Alyssa Kampa, Anna Papafragou

第132卷

■ Evidence from a within-language comparison in Japanese for orthographic depth theory: Monte Carlo simulations, corpus-based analyses, neural networks, and human experiment, by Keisuke Inohara, Taiji Ueno

■ Lexical prediction does not rationally adapt to prediction error: ERP evidence from pre-nominal articles, by Elise van Wonderen, Mante S. Nieuwland

■ The acquisition of subordinate nouns as pragmatic inference, by June Choe, Anna Papafragou

■ Neural inhibition during speech planning contributes to contrastive hyperarticulation, by Michael C. Stern, Jason A. Shaw

■ When time shifts the boundaries: Isolating the role of forgetting in children’s changing category representations, by Melina L. Knabe, Christina C. Schonberg, Haley A. Vlach

■ Processing of linguistic focus depends on contrastive alternatives, by Morwenna Hoeks, Maziar Toosarvandani, Amanda Rysling

Using known words to learn more words: A distributional model of child vocabulary acquisition, by Andrew Z. Flores, Jessica L. Montag, Jon A. Willits

■ Are two words recalled or recognised as one? How age-of-acquisition affects memory for compound words, by Mahmoud M. Elsherif, Jonathan C. Catling

第128卷摘要

Speakers use more redundant references with language learners: Evidence for communicatively-efficient referential choice

Shira Tal, Department of Cognitive Sciences, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel; Department of Linguistics and English Language, University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom

Eitan Grossman, Department of Linguistics, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel

Hannah Rohde, Department of Linguistics and English Language, University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom

Inbal Arnon, Department of Psychology, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel

Abstract According to the communicative efficiency hypothesis, speakers should produce more linguistic material when comprehension difficulty increases. Here, we investigate a potential source of comprehension difficulty – listeners’ language proficiency – on speakers’ productions, using referential choice as a case study. Referential choice is influenced by communicative efficiency: pronouns are used less than full noun phrases (NPs) for less predictable referents (Tily & Piantadosi, 2009). However, the extent to which it is influenced by the listener is debated. Here, we compare participants’ descriptions of the same picture book to children, adult L2 learners and adult native speakers. We find that speakers use more full NPs when their interlocutors are learners – child and adult learners alike, illustrating an effect of listeners’ proficiency (regardless of age) on production choices. Importantly, the increased use of full NPs relative to pronouns is found controlling for discourse-related differences (e.g., previous mention), suggesting a direct relation between listeners’ perceived language proficiency and referential choice.

Key words Reference, Efficient communication, Redundancy, Child-directed speech, Foreigner-directed speech

The interplay between syntactic and non-syntactic structure in language production

Kumiko Fukumura, Faculty of Natural Sciences, University of Stirling, UK

Shi Zhang, Faculty of Natural Sciences, University of Stirling, UK

Abstract Speakers frequently reuse earlier encountered structures. A long-standing view in language production research is that this structural priming is driven by the persistence of abstract syntax, independent from unordered, conceptual representations. However, evidence has been building that non-syntactic information can also influence structural choice. Here we examined whether and how the syntactic priming of relative clause structures might interact with the priming of the conceptual category order of adjectives in noun phrase production. Study 1 found that speakers are more likely to produce relative clause structures (spotted bow that’s green) after having heard relative clause structures (striped lock that’s blue) as opposed to an alternative structure (striped blue lock), and they also tended to repeat the conceptual order of the prime, with more pattern-first orders after pattern-first primes than after color-first primes. Critically, we found larger syntactic priming when the conceptual order of the prime persisted more in the target and larger conceptual order priming when the syntactic structure of the prime persisted more in the target. Studies 2 and 3 found that conceptual category order priming can be enhanced by adjective overlap as well as noun overlap between prime and target, whereas syntactic priming can only be enhanced by noun overlap. These results supported the interactive priming account: Although the syntactic structure and the conceptual order are represented at different levels and hence can be activated independently, the link between them is also primed, which enhances priming at both levels.

Key words Structural priming, Syntactic priming, Adjective, Conceptual order, Language production

Interference between non-native languages during trilingual language production

Angela de Bruin, Department of Psychology, University of York, York, UK

Liv J. Hoversten, Department of Psychology, University of California, Santa Cruz, USA

Clara D. Martin, Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language (BCBL), Donostia-San Sebastián, Spain; Ikerbasque, Basque Foundation for Science, Bilbao, Spain

Abstract Most research on multilingual language control has focused on a bilingual’s first (L1) and second (L2) languages. Studies on third language (L3) acquisition suggest that, despite the L1 being more proficient, L3 learners experience more L2 than L1 interference. However, little is known about how a trilingual’s L2 and L3 interact after initial stages of language learning. In the current study (Experiment 1: 30 Spanish-Basque-English trilinguals; Experiment 2: 50 English-French-Spanish trilinguals), participants completed a speeded naming task to assess cross-language intrusions (e.g., using the Spanish “perro” instead of the French “chien”). Both experiments showed more L3 than L1 intrusions during L2 naming. Furthermore, using two different tasks, we assessed if this cross-language interference was related to language inhibition. Both experiments suggested that trilinguals inhibited their L1 more strongly than their L3. Together, this suggests that a trilingual’s non-native language might experience more interference from another non-native language than from their L1, possibly because trilinguals apply more inhibition over their L1.

Key words Trilingualism, Language production, Language interference, Inhibition

Examining semantic parafoveal-on-foveal effects using a Stroop boundary paradigm

Chuanli Zang, School of Psychology and Computer Science, University of Central Lancashire, United Kindom; Key Research Base of Humanities and Social Sciences of the Ministry of Education, Faculty of Psychology, Tianjin Normal University, China

Zhichao Zhang, Key Research Base of Humanities and Social Sciences of the Ministry of Education, Faculty of Psychology, Tianjin Normal University, China

Manman Zhang, Key Research Base of Humanities and Social Sciences of the Ministry of Education, Faculty of Psychology, Tianjin Normal University, China

Federica Degno, Department of Psychology, Bournemouth University, United Kindom

Simon P. Liversedge, School of Psychology and Computer Science, University of Central Lancashire, United Kindom

Abstract The issue of whether lexical processing occurs serially or in parallel has been a central and contentious issue in respect of models of eye movement control in reading for well over a decade. A critical question in this regard concerns whether lexical parafoveal-on-foveal effects exist in reading. Because Chinese is an unspaced and densely packed language, readers may process parafoveal words to a greater extent than they do in spaced alphabetic languages. In two experiments using a novel Stroop boundary paradigm (Rayner, 1975), participants read sentences containing a single-character color-word whose preview was manipulated (identity or pseudocharacter, printed in black [no-color], or in a color congruent or incongruent with the character meaning). Two boundaries were used, one positioned two characters before the target and one immediately to the left of the target. The previews changed from black to color and then back to black as the eyes crossed the first and then the second boundary respectively. In Experiment 1 four color-words (red, green, yellow and blue) were used and in Experiment 2 only red and green color-words were used as targets. Both experiments showed very similar patterns such that reading times were increased for colored compared to no-color previews indicating a parafoveal visual interference effect. Most importantly, however, there were no robust interactive effects. Preview effects were comparable for congruent and incongruent color previews at the pretarget region when the data were combined from both experiments. These results favour serial processing accounts and indicate that even under very favourable experimental conditions, lexical semantic parafoveal-on-foveal effects are minimal.

Key words Preview effect, Parafoveal-on-foveal effect, Stroop task, Chinese reading, Eye movements

The episodic encoding of talker voice attributes across diverse voices

William Clapp, Department of Linguistics, Margaret Jacks Hall, Bldg. 460, Stanford, CA 94305-2150, United States

Charlotte Vaughn, Language Science Center, 2130 H.J. Patterson Hall, College Park, MD 20742, United States

Meghan Sumner, Department of Linguistics, Margaret Jacks Hall, Bldg. 460, Stanford, CA 94305-2150, United States

Abstract In this study, we replicated and extended Experiment 1 of Palmeri et al. (1993) in two experiments. Using the continuous recognition memory paradigm, we investigated effects of a demographically heterogeneous set of talkers varying across race, gender, and regional accent (Exp. 1) and effects of two demographically homogeneous sets of talkers (8 identifiably white male or 8 identifiably Black male talkers) across two listener populations (white and Black listeners) (Exp. 2). Words repeated in the same voice were recognized more quickly and accurately than words repeated in a different voice in both experiments, as found in the original study. This pattern is extremely robust. However, we also found differences across talker conditions, number of voices, lag, false alarms, and d’ that differ from the original study (Exp. 1). In addition, we found effects of talker, talker context, and listener population suggesting that social ideologies and experiences greatly influence the encoding of and memory for spoken words (Exp. 2).

Key words Speech perception, Talker-specificity, Recognition memory, Social diversity, Episodic memory

第129卷摘要

On verbal memory span in Chinese speakers: Evidence for employment of an articulation-resistant phonological component

Alan D. Baddeley, Department of Psychology, University of York, UK

Zhan Xu, Faculty of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing, China

Sai Tung Ho, Department of Psychology, University of York, UK

Graham J. Hitch, Department of Psychology, University of York, UK

Abstract A striking feature of speakers of Chinese is the fact that their immediate verbal memory span tends to be substantially greater than is found for other languages. This is not limited to digits, nor is it is it adequately accounted for in terms of spoken duration. We explore two sources of this potential linguistic advantage, one is in terms of supplementary visual coding. We use the visual similarity effect to assess this hypothesis finding little support for its importance. The second approach assesses the role of subvocal articulation, using articulatory suppression which has been shown to remove the impact of phonological similarity on the recall of visually presented verbal sequences. We find that the phonological similarity effect remains in both Mandarin and Cantonese speakers, suggesting that Chinese language speakers may be able to maintain a phonological representation of the material despite concurrent articulation of an irrelevant utterance. We discuss a possible mechanism and its theoretical implications. Finally, we speculate that this enhanced capacity may reflect an adaptation to the demands of learning to map the Chinese writing system onto a complex tonal language.

Key words Short-term memory, Chinese language, Phonological similarity, Subvocal articulation

True and false recognition in MINERVA 2: Extension to sentences and metaphors

J. Nick Reid, University of Manitoba, Canada

Randall K. Jamieson, University of Manitoba, Canada

Abstract Arndt and Hirshman (1998) used MINERVA 2 to simulate true and false recognition in DRM-style lists and found that the model was able to capture many features of the empirical data. Here, we first replicate their simulations, but using empirically structured vectors derived from Latent Semantic Analysis rather than the randomly generated vectors characteristic of MINERVA 2. We report that the model still captures the DRM effect with fewer free parameters. We then extend our analyses to true and false recognition for full sentences and metaphorical expressions. Using a simple bag-of-words representation for sentences, we find that the MINERVA 2 model captures classic sentence false recognition findings from Bransford and Frank (1971) and a more recent finding from Reid and Katz (2018a) that demonstrates false recognition of unstudied sentences that share a metaphorical but not literal theme to studied sentences. These simulations provide evidence that an instance-based memory model, when amalgamated with structured semantic representations from a distributional semantic model, can account for true and false recognition across different types of language experiences.

Key words False recognition, Computational modelling, Metaphor, Distributional semantics

The head or the verb: Is the lexical boost restricted to the head verb?

Leila Kantola, Umeå University, Sweden; University of Dundee, Scotland

Roger P.G. van Gompel, University of Dundee, Scotland

Laura J. Wakeford, University of Dundee, Scotland

Abstract Four structural priming experiments investigated whether the lexical boost is due to the repeated head verb of the primed structure or due to the repetition of any verb, testing structural priming of ditransitive structures (The hotel owner decided to loan the tourist a tent/a tent to the tourist). In Experiments 1–3, we manipulated the repetition of the matrix verb (decided) that is not the syntactic head in the primed structure. The results showed abstract structural priming of the embedded ditransitive structure but the repetition of the matrix verb did not boost the priming. In addition to manipulating the repetition of the matrix verb, we also manipulated the head verb of the primed structure (loan) in Experiment 4. It showed a lexical boost with the repetition of the head verb but no boost with the repetition of the matrix verb. These results are consistent with the residual activation model, which only predicts a boost from the verb that is the head of the primed structure. They do not support models which predict that the repetition of any lexical material in a sentence boosts priming.

Key words Language production, Structural priming, Lexical boost, Syntactic head

Weaker than you might imagine: Determining imageability effects on word recognition

Agata Dymarska, Department of Psychology, Lancaster University, UK

Louise Connell, Department of Psychology, Lancaster University, UK; Department of Psychology, Maynooth University, Ireland

Briony Banks, Department of Psychology, Lancaster University, UK

Abstract Imageability – the ease of generating a mental image for a word – has been commonly used as a predictor of word recognition but its effects are highly variable across the literature, raising questions about the robustness and stability of the construct. We compared six existing imageability norms in their ability to predict RT and accuracy in lexical decision and word naming across thousands of words. Results showed that, when lexical and sensorimotor sources of variance were partialled out, imageability predicted little unique variance in word recognition performance and effect sizes varied greatly between norms. Further analysis suggested that such heterogenous effect sizes are likely due to inconsistent strategies in how participants interpret and rate imageability in norming studies, despite consistent instructions. Our findings suggest that the ease of generating a mental image for a word does not reliably facilitate word recognition and that imageability ratings should be used with caution in such research.

Key words Imageability, Sensorimotor information, Word recognition, Situated simulation

Number feature distortion modulates cue-based retrieval in reading

Himanshu Yadav, Department of Linguistics, University of Potsdam, Germany

Garrett Smith, Department of Linguistics, University of Potsdam, Germany

Sebastian Reich, Institute for Mathematics, University of Potsdam, Germany

Shravan Vasishth, Department of Linguistics, University of Potsdam, Germany

Abstract In sentence comprehension, what are the cognitive constraints that determine number agreement computation? Two broad classes of theoretical proposals are: (i) Representation distortion accounts, which assume that the number feature on the subject noun gets overwritten probabilistically by the number feature on a non-subject noun, leading to a non-veridical memory trace of the subject noun; and (ii) The cue-based retrieval account, a general account of dependency completion processes which assumes that the features on the subject noun remain intact, and that processing difficulty is only a function of the memory constraints on dependency completion. However, both these classes of model fail to account for the full spectrum of number agreement patterns observed in published studies. Using 17 benchmark datasets on number agreement from four languages, we implement seven computational models: three variants of representation distortion, two cue-based retrieval models, and two hybrid models that assume both representation-distortion and retrieval. Quantitative model comparison shows that the best fit is achieved by a hybrid model that assumes both feature distortion (specifically, feature percolation) and cue-based retrieval; numerically, the second-best quantitative fit was achieved by a distortion-based model of number attraction that assumes grammaticality bias during reading. More broadly, the work furnishes comprehensive evidence to support the idea that cue-based retrieval theory, which aims to be a general account of dependency completion, needs to incorporate a feature distortion process.

Key words Agreement attraction, Encoding interference, Cue-based retrieval, Lossy memory representations, Feature percolation, Subject–verb number agreement

Does referential expectation guide both linguistic and social constraints on pronoun comprehension?

Valerie J. Langlois, Institute of Cognitive Science and Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA

Sandra A. Zerkle, Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, USA

Jennifer E. Arnold, Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, USA

Abstract Current models suggest that pronoun comprehension is guided by expectations about who or what will be mentioned (Arnold, 1998; Kehler & Rohde, 2013; Hartshorne et al., 2015; Brocher et al., 2018), which we call referential predictability. Yet there is disagreement about whether these expectations explain all types of discourse biases, and in particular some scholars suggest that the subject bias is unrelated to referential predictability (Kehler & Rohde, 2013; Fukumura & van Gompel, 2015). Moreover, the role of expectation has not been broadly tested against the numerous constraints known to affect pronoun comprehension, and no study has tested whether expectation is related to social constraints like gaze and pointing. In eight experiments we systematically test how both pronoun comprehension and prediction judgments are influenced by four constraints: (1) the subject bias in joint-action predicates like Ana went hiking with Liz; (2) both the goal and subject biases in transfer predicates (Ana threw the ball to Liz or Ana got the ball from Liz); (3) pointing while gazing, and (4) gazing. We replicate and extend the known effects of these constraints on pronoun comprehension. Critically, we find that most of these constraints also affect prediction judgments, but the subject bias is inconsistent across verb types. Results support models in which referential expectation affects pronoun comprehension.

Key words Predictability, Pronoun comprehension, Pointing, Gazing, Verb bias

Number and syllabification of following consonants influence use of long versus short vowels in English disyllables

Rebecca Treiman, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Washington University in St. Louis, United States

Brett Kessler, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Washington University in St. Louis, United States

Kayla Hensley, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Washington University in St. Louis, United States

Abstract Spelling-to-sound translation in English is particularly complex for vowels. For example, the pronunciations of ‹a› include the long vowel of ‹paper› and ‹sacred› and the short vowel of ‹cactus› and ‹happy›. We examined the factors that are associated with use of long versus short vowels by conducting analyses of English disyllabic words with single medial consonants and consonant sequences and three behavioral studies in which a total of 119 university students pronounced nonwords with these structures. The vocabulary analyses show that both the number of medial consonants and their syllabification influence vowel length. Participants were influenced by these aspects of context, some of which are not explicitly taught as a part of reading instruction. Although these results point to implicit statistical learning, participants produced fewer long vowels before single medial consonants than anticipated based on our vocabulary statistics for spelling-to-sound correspondences in disyllabic words. Participants also produced more long vowels before two identical consonant letters than anticipated given these statistics. We consider the reasons for these outcomes, and we also use the behavioral data to test two models of spelling-to-sound translation.

Key words Spelling-to-sound translation, Vowel length, Consonantal context, Syllabification, Statistical learning, Models of reading

Retrieval practice and verbal-visuospatial transfer: From memorization to inductive learning

Gregory I. Hughes, Tufts University, Medford, MA, United States

Ayanna K. Thomas, Tufts University, Medford, MA, United States

Abstract Retrieval practice, the act of recalling information on a practice test, leads to better long-term memory than non-testing study activities (the testing effect). This effect occurs even when the contexts of the practice and final test differ, suggesting that retrieval practice fosters transferable learning. For example, practice tests involving the recall of targets (A-?) not only enhance performance on final tests of the targets (A-?), but this effect can also extend to tests of the non-recalled cues (?-B). Simple memory tests can also facilitate the inference of underlying rules or principles that can be used to answer completely new questions or problems. However, these transfer effects have been overwhelmingly demonstrated with verbal materials. Further, research suggests that transfer effects diminish as the type of information tested during the practice and final tests diverge. In the present study, we explored the influence of retrieval practice on paired associates consisting of the names and visuospatial diagrams of molecules. In two experiments using a standard paired-associate learning paradigm, practice tests of name targets (?-diagram) or diagram targets (name-?) did not enhance performance on final tests of their respective cues. In a final experiment using a category induction paradigm, we found a benefit of retrieval practice on the memorization of cues and the induction of underlying rules simultaneously.

Key words Categorization, Retrieval practice, Transfer, Testing effect, Induction

第130卷摘要

Inhibitory control of the dominant language: Reversed language dominance is the tip of the iceberg

Matthew Goldrick, Department of Linguistics, Northwestern University

Tamar H. Gollan, Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Diego

Abstract Theories of speech production have proposed that in contexts where multiple languages are produced, bilinguals inhibit the dominant language with the goal of making both languages equally accessible. This process often overshoots this goal, leading to a surprising pattern: better performance in the nondominant vs dominant language, or reversed language dominance effects. However, the reliability of this effect in single word production studies with cued language switches has been challenged by a recent meta-analysis. Correcting for errors in this analysis, we find that dominance effects are reliably reduced and reversed during language mixing. Reversed dominance has also consistently been reported in the production of connected speech elicited by reading aloud of mixed language paragraphs. When switching, bilinguals produced translation-equivalent intrusion errors (e.g., saying pero instead of but) more often when intending to produce words in the dominant language. We show this dominant language vulnerability is not exclusive to switching out of the nondominant language and extends to non-switch words, linking connected speech results to patterns first reported in single-picture naming studies. Reversed language dominance is a robust phenomenon that reflects the tip of the iceberg of inhibitory control of the dominant language in bilingual language production.

Key words Bilingualism, Language production, Reversed dominance, Inhibition

Morphemes as letter chunks: Linguistic information enhances the learning of visual regularities

Jarosław R. Lelonkiewicz, Maria Ktori, Davide Crepaldi, Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati (SISSA), Trieste, Italy

Abstract We have previously shown that readers use co-occurrence statistics to learn about the presence and position of affix-like chunks in strings of pseudo-letters (Lelonkiewicz, Ktori & Crepaldi, 2020). These findings were taken as evidence that visual statistical learning might be implicated in morphological processing during visual word recognition. The present study seeks to specify this claim by (a) establishing the visual, language-agnostic nature of the underlying learning mechanism and (b) examining it in the presence of higher-order linguistic information. In Experiments 1a and 1b, readers were familiarized with strings of abstract shapes that involved affix-like chunks of frequently co-occurring shapes. We found that readers were sensitive to the presence and position of chunks. Further experiments revealed that presence and position effects were stronger when readers were exposed to letter strings which allowed access to orthographic and phonological representations (Experiments 2a and 2b), and were enhanced by access to semantics (Experiment 3). Our study demonstrates that the learning of visual regularities supports chunk identification both in purely visual and language-like materials, and that the availability of linguistic information enhances this learning.

Key words Visual word identification, Morphology, Chunking, Statistical learning

Evaluating the conceptual strategy change account of test-potentiated new learning in list recall

Shaun Boustani, University College London, United Kingdom

Caleb Owens, University of Sydney, Australia

Hilary J. Don, University College London, United Kingdom

Chunliang Yang, Beijing Normal University, China

David R. Shanks, University College London, United Kingdom

Abstract Prior testing potentiates new learning, an effect known as test-potentiated new learning (TPNL). Research using lists of related words has established that testing, by free recall, also increases semantic clustering of later recall output. It has been suggested that this is evidence that testing induces a strategy change in encoding and retrieval towards greater conceptual organisation. The current research evaluated whether this conceptual strategy change explains TPNL in three experiments. We found a) that a retrieval task that did not increase semantic clustering (list discrimination) consistently produced TPNL, and b) that factors (word-relatedness and list structure) that influenced the amount of semantic clustering had no effect on the magnitude of TPNL. These results suggest that conceptual strategy change is neither necessary nor sufficient for TPNL and is more likely to be an effect of testing, rather than a cause of TPNL.

Key words Test-potentiated new learning, Forward testing effect, Interpolated retrieval, Testing effect, Retrieval practice

Sound-space symbolism: Associating articulatory front and back positions of the tongue with the spatial concepts of forward/front and backward/back

L. Vainio, M. Kilpeläinen, erception, Action & Cognition Research Group, Department of Psychology and Logopedics, Faculty of Medicine, University of Helsinki, Haartmaninkatu 3, Helsinki, Finland

A. Wikström, M. Vainio, Phonetics and Speech Synthesis Research Group, Department of Digital Humanities, University of Helsinki, Unioninkatu 38, Helsinki, Finland

Abstract The study investigated whether the concepts of forward/front and backward/back are associated with the vocalizations requiring the front/back position of the tongue. In Experiment 1, the participants were visually presented with a forward or backward-directed movement. They were asked to vocalize the front ([i]) or back ([o]) vowel based on whether the stimulus moved forwards or backwards. Vocal responses were produced faster when the required response was hypothetically congruent with the movement direction (e.g., [i] – forward-directed movement) in comparison to incongruent conditions. In Experiment 2, the same effect was observed when these vocal responses were performed based on whether the target object was at the front of or back of the reference object. These observations present a novel sound-space symbolism phenomenon, which associates spatial concepts of forward/front and backward/back with particular speech sounds. We propose that this finding might contribute to an understanding of cognitive mechanisms in sound–space associations and more generally in sound symbolism.

Key words Spatial language, Sound symbolism, Speech, Vowel production

A systematic evaluation of factors affecting referring expression choice in passage completion tasks

Vera Demberg, Ekaterina Kravtchenko, Jia E. Loy, Department of Language Science and Technology / Department of Computer Science, Saarland University, Campus C7.2, 66123 Saarbrücken, Germany

Abstract 

There is a long-standing controversy around the question of whether referent predictability affects pronominalization: while there are good theoretical reasons for this prediction (e.g., Arnold, 2008), the experimental evidence has been rather mixed.

We here report on three highly powered studies that manipulate a range of factors that have differed between previous studies, in order to determine more exactly under which conditions a predictability effect on pronominalization can be found.

We use a constrained as well as a free reference task, and manipulate verb type, antecedent ambiguity, length of NP and whether the stimuli are presented within a story context or not. Our results find the story context to be the single important factor that allows to elicit an effect of predictability on pronoun choice, in line with (Rosa and Arnold, 2017; Weatherford and Arnold, 2021). We also propose a parametrization for a rational speech act model, that reconciles the findings between many of the experiments in the literature.

Key words Predictability, Pronominalization, Expectancy Hypothesis, Uniform Information Density, RSA model

第131卷摘要

Do we remember when to better recall what? Repetition benefits are probably not due to explicit temporal context memory

R. Lane Adams, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Kitasato University, Tokyo, Japan

Peter F. Delaney, Zempukuji, Suginami-ku, Division of Psychology and Communication, School of Arts and Sciences, Tokyo Woman’s Christian University, Tokyo, Japan

Abstract A number of temporal context-based theories of the spacing effect assume that temporal context is retrieved during repetitions, allowing better memory on a later test. Since associations in memory are often bidirectional, if we can use temporal context to recall an item, perhaps we can also use the item to explicitly recall its temporal context. If so, explicit memory-for-when during study would be a good predictor of later recall for repeated items. Experiment 1 appeared to be consistent with our predictions; items with memory-for-when during List 2 showed superior recall accuracy on a final free recall test. However, the effect was primarily driven by better memory-for-when in the primacy region. Experiment 2 used an incidental learning procedure during List 1 to reduce this confound since the primacy region is greatly attenuated in incidental learning. While the benefits of having memory-for-when persisted in Experiment 2, they were again attributable solely to the first few items on the list. The results suggest that explicit temporal context information is unlikely to underlie the benefits of spaced repetition. Either temporal context information is strengthened implicitly, our measures of context failed to capture the type of context used in spacing, or other mechanisms entirely produce the benefits of repetition.

Key words Reminding, Spacing effect, Spacing, Temporal context, Free recall

The head constituent plays a key role in the lexical boost in syntactic priming

Abstract Accounts of language production make different predictions about the conditions under which structural priming should be enhanced by lexical repetition (the lexical boost). Repetition of the head verb strongly enhances structural priming of a sentence, but studies of English have found contradictory results regarding the effects of noun repetition. In two experiments, Mandarin participants read a prime sentence aloud and then produced a target picture description of a dative event. In Experiment 1, the verb was printed on the target picture, and we found that repetition of the verb enhanced priming (vs. no repetition) but repetition of the agent, theme, or recipient argument did not. In Experiment 2, both the agent noun and the verb were printed on the picture, and we found that verb repetition enhanced priming but agent repetition did not. These results indicate that the lexical boost is restricted to the head verb in Mandarin and therefore support lemma-based residual activation accounts of language production in which activation of a head leads to activation of its associated grammatical construction.

Key words Syntactic priming, Lexical boost, Head constituent, Mandarin

Dionysia Saratsli, Department of Linguistics and Cognitive Science, University of Delaware, United States

Anna Papafragou, Department of Linguistics, University of Pennsylvania, United States

Abstract Cross-linguistically prevalent semantic distinctions are widely assumed to be easier to learn because they reflect natural concepts. Here we propose an alternative, pragmatic perspective that links both the cross-linguistic prevalence and the learnability of semantic distinctions to communicative pressures. We focus on evidentiality (the encoding of the speaker’s information source). Across languages, grammatical evidential systems are more likely to encode indirect sources (especially, reported information) compared to direct sources (e.g., visual perception). On a conceptual account, this seems puzzling, since humans reason naturally about how seeing connects to knowing. On a pragmatic account, however, the predominant encoding of the speaker’s reportative compared to visual information sources can be explained in terms of informativeness (visual access is ubiquitous and potentially more reliable, hence less marked). We tested the pragmatic account in four experiments. Adult English speakers exposed to novel miniature evidential morphological systems consistently showed higher learning rates for systems with a single indirect (reportative) compared to a single direct (visual) evidential morpheme (Experiment 1). This pattern persisted even when participants were given specific cues to the target meanings (Experiment 2) and partly extended to cases where evidential meanings were conveyed through visual, not linguistic, means (Experiment 3). It also persisted when the evidential morphemes had to be learned from different materials (Experiment 4). We conclude that the cross-linguistic bias to mark reportative/indirect over visual/direct sources of information has pragmatic roots that also shape the learnability of evidential semantic distinctions.

Key words Pragmatics, Evidentiality, Semantics, Learnability, Informativeness, Artificial language learning

Sarah Knight, Department of Psychology, University of York, York YO10 5DD, UK.

Lyndon Rakusen, Department of Psychology, University of York, UK

Sven Mattys, Department of Psychology, University of York, York YO10 5DD, UK.

Abstract An understanding of how listeners divide their attention between two simultaneous talkers requires modelling the interaction between acoustic factors (energetic masking) and cognitive processes (control of auditory attention). The impact of spatial separation between the two talkers on this interaction is unclear, since separation is likely to create both acoustic benefits (release from energetic masking) and cognitive costs (increased demands on spatial attentional control). To explore this question, we manipulated the degree of energetic masking (high vs. low) and spatial separation (collocated to dichotic) between two simultaneous talkers. When energetic masking was high (Experiment 1, unmanipulated talker voices), transcription performance improved monotonically from collocated to dichotic, owing to a gradual release from energetic masking. When energetic masking was low (Experiment 2, bandpass-filtered talker voices), the benefit of spatial separation disappeared; performance even worsened in the dichotic condition. Additionally, across both experiments, individual differences in working memory best predicted transcription performance in conditions where energetic masking was low. These results suggest that energetic masking is the dominant challenge during divided-attention listening, but that the contribution of cognitive control and working memory can be observed when energetic masking is reduced, at least in the context of the current paradigm. The findings are discussed in light of Norman and Bobrow’s (1975) concept of data-limited vs. resource-limited tasks, which we propose is a promising framework for reinterpreting existing results from speech-in-noise perception research.

Key words Speech-in-noise, Masking, Divided attention, Working, memory, Individual differences, Cognitive listening

Abstract It has been proposed that the order in which words are prepared for production depends on the speaker’s language. When producing the translation equivalent of the small cat, speakers of German or Dutch select the gender-marked determiner at a relatively early stage of production. Speakers of French or Italian postpone the encoding of a determiner or adjective until the phonological form of the noun is available. Hence, even though the words are produced in the same order (e.g., die kleine Katze in German, le petit chat in French), they are not planned in the same order and might require different amounts of advanced planning prior to production onset. This distinction between early and late selection languages was proposed to account for the observation that speakers of Germanic and Slavic languages, but not of Romance languages, are slower to name pictures in the context of a distractor word of a different gender. Meta-analyses are conducted to provide the first direct test of this cross-linguistic difference and to test a prediction of the late selection hypothesis. They confirm the existence of the gender congruency effect in German/Slavic languages and its absence in Romance languages when target and distractor words are presented simultaneously. They do not allow confirming the hypothesis that in the latter languages, a similar effect emerges when the presentation of the distractor is delayed. Overall, these analyses confirm the cross-linguistic difference but show that the evidence available to date is not sufficient to confirm or reject the late selection hypothesis as an explanation of this difference. We highlight specific directions for future research.

Key words Cross-linguistic differences, Determiner selection, Gender congruency, Meta-analysis

Haven’t I seen you before? Conceptual but not perceptual prior familiarity enhances face recognition memory

Aaron S. Benjamin, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Massachusetts Amherst

Abstract Prior familiarity with a face seems to substantively change the way we encode and recognize later instances of that face. We report five experiments that examine the effects of varying levels of prior familiarity and conceptual knowledge on face recognition memory. All experiments employed a 3-phase procedure, in which faces were familiarized in varying ways and to varying extents prior to study and test. Across experiments, increased prior familiarity led to a simultaneous increase in both correct and false identification rates, either when familiarity was gained through passive exposures or conceptual processing. Discriminability, on the other hand, was enhanced by prior familiarity only when the level of familiarity was high and when it involved conceptual processing (Experiments 1–3). Familiarity engendered by passive exposure affected response bias equivalently to more active orienting tasks, but it reduced discriminability in a standard Old/New recognition test (Experiment 4) and did not lead to an enhancement in discriminability in a lineup identification task (Experiment 5). Familiarity engendered by trait evaluations (Experiments 1–3) or name learning (Experiments 2–5) increased discriminability and yielded a more liberal response bias. These results suggest that the benefits of prior familiarity on discriminability in recognition memory are determined by the presence of prior conceptual knowledge. The implications of this work for eyewitness identification situations in which the suspect is known or familiar to the witness are discussed.

Key words Face recognition, Discriminability, Familiarity, Eyewitness memory

Children and adults use pragmatic principles to interpret non-linguistic symbols

DAlyssa Kampa, Department of Linguistics and Cognitive Science, University of Delaware, 125, E Main St, Newark, DE 19716, USA

Abstract A foundational principle of communication is that speakers should offer as much information as required during conversation. Thus, if a speaker offers a statement with limited information (e.g., “I like the candle” when asked about a gift containing a candle and a sweater), the listener often takes the speaker to imply that a more informative statement (“I like the candle and the sweater”) does not hold. Classic theories of communication have proposed that the principle of informativeness extends to purposeful exchanges beyond linguistic interactions, but relevant evidence so far is limited. In a set of studies, we adopt a simple visual-world paradigm to investigate whether 4- and 5-year-old children and adults expect drawings, like utterances, to be informative in accordance with the creator’s knowledge. We find that 5-year-olds and adults (but not 4-year-olds) apply the principle of informativeness to non-linguistic symbols; furthermore, the 5-year-olds’ success in this task depends on features of the symbols. We discuss the implications of these findings for debates over the mechanisms underlying pragmatic inference, as well as for children’s developing understanding of the symbolic function of drawings.

Key words Pragmatics, Non-linguistic communication, Drawings, Scalar implicature, Language acquisition, Informativeness

Perceiving speech during orthographic syllable recognition: Beyond phonemic identity

Daniel Williams, Linguistics Department, University of Potsdam, Haus 14, Karl-Liebknecht-Straße, 24-25, 14476 Potsdam, Germany

Adamantios Gafos, Haskins Laboratories, New Haven, CT 06520, USA

Payam Ghaffarvand-Mokari, School of Humanities, University of Eastern Finland, Yliopistokatu 4, 80101 Joensuu, Finland

Abstract In the cue-distractor paradigm, individuals observe a spoken distractor syllable while responding to a visual cue referring to a syllable. When the task is to utter the cued syllable, distractors sharing fewer subphonemic properties with the cued syllable (below the level of phonemes) lead to slower reaction times (RTs), indicating representations involved in speech perception and production are closely linked. The present study investigated whether a subphonemic level of representation is involved when the task was to manually indicate (but not produce) an orthographically cued syllable. Results revealed RT modulations closely mirroring those reported previously for uttered responses. In an additional experiment, phonetic variants of phonologically identical distractors were presented, but RT modulations were unaffected by this manipulation. The present findings indicate that perceiving speech accesses a relatively detailed phonological level of representation which is closely aligned with representations pertinent in orthographic syllable recognition and in speech production.

Key words Speech perception, Phonological processing, Subphonemic representation, Reaction times

第132卷摘要

Evidence from a within-language comparison in Japanese for orthographic depth theory: Monte Carlo simulations, corpus-based analyses, neural networks, and human experiment

Keisuke Inohara, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Kitasato University, Tokyo, Japan

Taiji Ueno, 2-6-1, Zempukuji, Suginami-ku, Division of Psychology and Communication, School of Arts and Sciences, Tokyo Woman’s Christian University, Tokyo, Japan

Abstract The orthographic depth theory assumes that reading “deep” orthographies relies on lexical semantics more than “shallow” orthographies. Although Japanese kanji is a representative “deep” case, some scholars argue that kanji reading does not particularly recruit more lexical semantics than kana (the system of syllabic writing used for Japanese consisting of two forms). To reconcile this inconsistency, we ran a Monte Carlo simulation and found that orthographic neighbors in kanji had higher semantic similarities than those in kana. We further conducted a semantic space analysis (‘Word2Vec’) and showed that there was significant radical-level orthographic-semantic consistency in kanji characters. Furthermore, we demonstrated that this consistency had a positive effect on language performance in models (in terms of next-character prediction) and humans (in terms of semantic plausibility judgment). These findings suggest that radicals in kanji may help children to efficiently learn to use the vast number of characters present in Japanese.

Key words Orthography, Word2Vec, Monte-Carlo simulation, Neural network, Depth theory, Radica

Lexical prediction does not rationally adapt to prediction error: ERP evidence from pre-nominal articles

Elise van Wonderen, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen; Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Mante S. Nieuwland, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen; Donders Institute for Cognition, Brain and Behaviour, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Abstract People sometimes predict upcoming words during language comprehension, but debate remains on when and to what extent such predictions indeed occur. The rational adaptation hypothesis holds that predictions develop with expected utility: people predict more strongly when predictions are frequently confirmed (low prediction error) rather than disconfirmed. However, supporting evidence is mixed thus far and has only involved measuring responses to supposedly predicted nouns, not to preceding articles that may also be predicted. The current, large-sample (N = 200) ERP study on written discourse comprehension in Dutch therefore employs the well-known ‘pre-nominal prediction effect’: enhanced N400-like ERPs for articles that are unexpected given a likely upcoming noun’s gender (i.e., the neuter gender article ‘het’ when people expect the common gender noun phrase ‘de krant’, the newspaper) compared to expected articles. We investigated whether the pre-nominal prediction effect is larger when most of the presented stories contain predictable article-noun combinations (75% predictable, 25% unpredictable) compared to when most stories contain unpredictable combinations (25% predictable, 75% unpredictable). Our results show the pre-nominal prediction effect in both contexts, with little evidence to suggest that this effect depended on the percentage of predictable combinations. Moreover, the little evidence suggesting such a dependence was primarily observed for unexpected, neuter-gender articles (‘het’), which is inconsistent with the rational adaptation hypothesis. In line with recent demonstrations (Nieuwland, 2021a,b), our results suggest that linguistic prediction is less ‘rational’ or Bayes optimal than is often suggested.

Key words Predictive validity, Cue validity, Discourse comprehension, N400 Rational adaptation, Expectation adaptation, Bayesian optimality, Pre-nominal prediction effect, Gender mismatch, Belief updating

The acquisition of subordinate nouns as pragmatic inference

Abstract Word learning is characterized by a bias for mapping meanings at the “basic” level (‘dog’), as opposed to a subordinate level (‘poodle’; Markman, 1986, 1990; Clark, 1987; Waxman et al., 1991, 1997). The fact that learners nevertheless acquire subordinate nouns has been attributed to properties of the referential world across multiple labelling events (e.g., Xu & Tanenbaum, 2007b; Spencer et al., 2011). Here we propose that the acquisition of subordinate-level meanings requires pragmatic reasoning that allows learners to take informative relevant alternatives into consideration. In support of this hypothesis, in a series of experiments we find that adult learners exploit information about semantic alternatives to generalize word meanings beyond the basic level. In Experiment 1, the introduction of a labelled alternative at the subordinate level eliminated the basic-level bias. In Experiment 2, this effect was found to be specific to labelled but not unlabeled alternatives. In Experiment 3, the availability of alternatives affected conjectures about subordinate-level word meanings even when these alternatives were presented well after the initial moment of ostensive labeling. Lastly, Experiment 4 replicated the semantic contrast effect using exclusively novel language input, highlighting the general communicative nature of these inferences. We conclude that the acquisition of subordinate nouns relies on pragmatic inferences about the informativity of labels as intentional linguistic-pragmatic acts, as opposed to simple word-to-world co-occurrences.

Key words Subordinate level meaning, Word learning, Semantic contrast, Pragmatics, Informativeness

Abstract Previous work has demonstrated that words are hyperarticulated on dimensions of speech that differentiate them from a minimal pair competitor. This phenomenon has been termed contrastive hyperarticulation (CH). We present a dynamic neural field (DNF) model of voice onset time (VOT) planning that derives CH from an inhibitory influence of the minimal pair competitor during planning. We test some predictions of the model with a novel experiment investigating CH of voiceless stop consonant VOT in pseudowords. The results demonstrate a CH effect in pseudowords, consistent with a basis for the effect in the real-time planning and production of speech. The scope and magnitude of CH in pseudowords was reduced compared to CH in real words, consistent with a role for interactive activation between lexical and phonological levels of planning. We discuss the potential of our model to unify an apparently disparate set of phenomena, from CH to phonological neighborhood effects to phonetic trace effects in speech errors.

Key words Contrastive hyperarticulation, Inhibition, Dynamic field theory, Phonological neighborhoods, Voice onset time

Abstract In studies of children’s categorization, researchers have typically studied how encoding characteristics of exemplars contribute to children’s generalization. However, it is unclear whether children’s internal cognitive processes alone, independent of new information, may also influence their generalization. Thus, we examined the role that one cognitive process, forgetting, plays in shaping children’s category representations by conducting three experiments. In the first two experiments, participants (NExp1 = 37, Mage = 4.02 years; NExp2 = 32, Mage = 4.48 years) saw a novel object labeled by the experimenter and then saw five new objects with between one and five features changed from the learned exemplar. The experimenter asked whether each object was a member of the same category as the exemplar; children saw the five new objects either immediately or after a 5-minute delay. Children endorsed category membership at higher rates at immediate test than at delayed test, suggesting that children’s category representations became narrower over time. In Experiment 3, we investigated forgetting as a key mechanism underlying the narrowing found in Experiments 1 and 2. We showed participants (NExp3 = 34, Mage = 4.20 years) the same exemplars used in Experiments 1 and 2; then, either immediately or after a 5-minute delay, we showed children seven individual object features and asked if each one had been part of the exemplar. Children’s accuracy was lower after the delay, showing that they did indeed forget individual features. Taken together, these results show that forgetting plays an important role in changing children’s newly-learned categories over time.

Key words Categorization, Forgetting, Memory, Generalization, Cognitive development

Processing of linguistic focus depends on contrastive alternatives

Morwenna Hoeks, University of California Santa Cruz, 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, 95064, CA, United States

Maziar Toosarvandani, University of California Santa Cruz, 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, 95064, CA, United States

Amanda Rysling, University of California Santa Cruz, 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, 95064, CA, United States

Abstract Readers progressed through a sentence in the Maze task (Forster et al., 2009), deciding at each word between a sensical and a non-sensical continuation. Contexts presented before these sentences manipulated whether words were linguistically focused and whether they were given or new (Experiment 1); focused targets were read more slowly even when they were given, and new targets were read slowly in general. This both replicated earlier results in which slowdowns were found in the reading of focus (Benatar and Clifton, 2014; Birch and Rayner, 1997; Lowder and Gordon, 2015), and demonstrated that focus slowdowns are not reducible to newness. To clarify earlier results in which speed-ups were found on focused words (Birch and Rayner, 2010; Morris and Folk, 1998), contexts manipulated whether contrastive alternatives to focused words were presented with a focus particle (Experiment 2) or in a cleft construction (Experiment 3). Focused targets were read less slowly when a contrastive alternative was present in the context. This effect of contrastive alternatives cannot be reduced to simple semantic associate priming: Contexts also manipulated whether a semantically associated expression was present independently of the presence of a contrastive alternative (Experiment 4). Readers slowed down less when an alternative was present in the context, even when this alternative was not semantically associated to the target. These results indicate that the processing of focus depends on contrastive alternatives, in their interaction with newness, semantic association, and focus construction.

Key words Linguistic focus, Contrastive alternatives, Newness/givenness, Maze task, Reading

Andrew Z. Flores, Department of Psychology, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, USA

Jessica L. Montag, Department of Psychology, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, USA

Jon A. Willits, Department of Psychology, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, USA

Abstract Why do children learn some words before others? A large body of behavioral research has identified properties of the language environment that facilitate word learning, emphasizing the importance of particularly informative language contexts that build on children’s prior knowledge. However, these findings have not informed research that uses distributional properties of words to predict vocabulary composition. In the current work, we introduce a predictor of word learning that emphasizes the role of prior knowledge. We investigate item-based variability in vocabulary development using lexical properties of distributional statistics derived from a large corpus of child-directed speech. Unlike previous analyses, we predicted word trajectories cross-sectionally across child age, shedding light on trends in vocabulary development that may not have been evident at a single time point. We also show that regardless of a word’s grammatical class, the best distributional predictor of whether a child knows a word is the number of other known words with which that word tends to co-occur.

Key words Vocabulary, Age of acquisition, Distributional learning, Prior knowledge, Bootstrapping

Are two words recalled or recognised as one? How age-of-acquisition affects memory for compound words

Mahmoud M. Elsherif, School of Psychology, University of Birmingham, 52 Pritchatts Road, Birmingham B15 2TT; Department of Vision Sciences, University of Leicester, University Road, Leicester LE1 7RHA, United Kingdom.

Jonathan C. Catling, School of Psychology, University of Birmingham, United Kingdom

Abstract The age at which a person acquires knowledge of an item is a strong predictor of item retrieval, hereon defined as the Age of Acquisition (AoA) effect. This effect is such that early-acquired words are processed more quickly and accurately than late-acquired items. One account to explain this effect is the integrated account, where the AoA effect occurs in the early processes of lexical retrieval and hence should increase in tasks necessitating greater semantic processing. Importantly, this account has been applied to lexical processing, but not, to date, memory tasks. The current study aimed to assess whether the integrated account could explain memory tasks, using compound words, which differ from monomorphemic words regarding ease of mapping and semantic processes. Four-hundred-and-eighty participants were split into four groups of 120 participants for each of four experiments. Participants were required to recall unspaced and spaced compound words (Experiments 1 and 2, respectively) or make a recognition decision for unspaced and spaced compound words (Experiments 3 and 4, respectively). This approach allowed us to establish how semantic processing was involved in recalling and recognising the items. We found that (AoA) was related to all tasks such that irrespective of space, early-acquired compound words were recalled more accurately than late-acquired compound words in free recall. In recognition memory, late-acquired compound words were recognised more accurately than early-acquired compound words. However, the slope for the AoA was semantic processing influenced free recall to a greater extent than the recognition memory, with the AoA effect being larger in free recall than recognition memory. In addition, the AoA effect for the compound word was larger in spaced compound words than unspaced compound words. This demonstrates that the AoA effect in memory has multiple sources.

Key words Age of acquisition, Free recall, Recognition, Compound word, Memory, Semantics, Morphology

期刊简介

Articles in the Journal of Memory and Language contribute to the formulation of scientific issues and theories in the broad areas of memory and language (learning, comprehension and production). The journal's focus is on describing the mental processes that underpin these capacities. Special emphasis is given to research articles that provide new theoretical insights based on a carefully laid empirical foundation. The journal generally favors articles that provide multiple experiments. In addition, significant theoretical or computational papers without new experimental findings may be published.

《记忆与语言》上的文章致力于研究记忆和语言的广泛领域(学习、理解和生产)的科学问题和理论。该杂志聚焦于描述语言加工能力的心理过程。本刊重点收录了能够具有前沿理论见解的实证研究文章，特别是倾向于提供多个实验的文章。另外，研究重要理论或与计算机结合的研究，即使没有新的实验性发现也可能会被本刊接收。

The Journal of Memory and Language is a valuable tool for cognitive scientists, including psychologists, linguists, and others interested in memory and learning, language, reading, and speech.

本刊是认知语言学研究人员的有力工具，包括心理学、语言学和其他对记忆、学习、语言、阅读以及口语感兴趣的研究人员。

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