Word association task responses prime associations in subsequent trials.

The word association task has been used extensively in psychological and linguistic research as a way of measuring connections between words in the mental lexicon. Interpretation of word association data has assumed that responses represent the strongest association between cue word and response, but there is evidence that participant behaviour can be affected by task instructions and design. This study investigated whether word association responses can be primed by the participants' own response to the preceding cue-that is, whether the order in which cues are presented alters the responses that are generated.

Personality traits and stress perception as predictors of students' online engagement during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic coupled with increasing student numbers means online learning will remain a prevalent feature of the university experience, therefore it is vital that we understand how personality can influence student online engagement. The current study examined whether students' personality traits and stress perception predicted their online engagement with their studies during the COVID-19 pandemic. A sample of 301 first year psychology students completed the Big Five Inventory, Challenge and Hindrance Stress Scales, and the Online Student Engagement Scale, which measured students': engagement skills, emotional engagement, participation and performance.

How to get by with half a loop - An investigation of visual and auditory codes in a case of impaired phonological short-term memory (pSTM).

In the field of cognitive neuropsychology of phonological short-term memory (pSTM), a key debate surrounds the issue of how impairment on tasks deemed to tap this system imply a dissociable phonological input and output buffer system, with the implication that impairments can be fractionated across disruption to separate functional components (Nickels, Howard & Best, 1997). This study presents CT, a conduction aphasic who showed no impairment on basic auditory discrimination tasks, but had very poor nonword repetition. Clear-cut examples of such cases are very rare (see Jacquemot, Dupoux & Bachoud-Levi, 2007), and we interpret the case with reference to a pSTM model that includes input and output buffers.

Reading and visual word recognition ability in semantic dementia is not predicted by semantic performance.

This paper describes longitudinal testing of two Semantic Dementia (SD) cases. It is common for patients with SD to present with deficits in reading aloud irregular words (i.e.

Examining theories of cognitive ageing using the false memory paradigm.

Changes in memory performance with advancing age have been well documented, even in the absence of brain injury or dementia. The mechanisms underlying cognitive ageing are still a matter of debate. This article describes a comparison between young (18-25 years old) and older (60+ years) adults using the Deese-Roediger-McDermott false memory paradigm and manipulating the number of words included in the memory lists.

Declining object recognition performance in semantic dementia: A case for stored visual object representations.

The role of the semantic system in recognizing objects is a matter of debate. Connectionist theories argue that it is impossible for a participant to determine that an object is familiar to them without recourse to a semantic hub; localist theories state that accessing a stored representation of the visual features of the object is sufficient for recognition. We examine this issue through the longitudinal study of two cases of semantic dementia, a neurodegenerative disorder characterized by a progressive degradation of the semantic system.

Spelling-to-sound correspondences affect acronym recognition processes.

A large body of research has examined the factors that affect the speed with which words are recognized in lexical decision tasks. Nothing has yet been reported concerning the important factors in differentiating acronyms (e.g.

Are acronyms really irregular? Preserved acronym reading in a case of semantic dementia.

This paper describes the progressive performance of JD, a patient with semantic dementia, on acronym categorisation, recognition and reading aloud over a period of 18 months. Most acronyms have orthographic and phonological configurations that are different from English words (BBC, DVD, HIV). While some acronyms, the majority, are regularly pronounced letter by letter, others are pronounced in a more holistic, and irregular, way (NASA, AWOL).

Imageability, age of acquisition, and frequency factors in acronym comprehension.

In spite of their unusual orthographic and phonological form, acronyms (e.g., BBC, HIV, NATO) can become familiar to the reader, and their meaning can be accessed well enough that they are understood.

A normative study of acronyms and acronym naming.

Acronyms are an idiosyncratic part of our everyday vocabulary. Research in word processing has used acronyms as a tool to answer fundamental questions such as the nature of the word superiority effect (WSE) or which is the best way to account for word-reading processes. In this study, acronym naming was assessed by looking at the influence that a number of variables known to affect mainstream word processing has had in acronym naming.