The Development of Object Function and Manipulation Knowledge: Evidence from a Semantic Priming Study.

Object semantics include object function and manipulation knowledge. Function knowledge refers to the goal attainable by using an object (e.g.

Co-occurrence frequency evaluated with large language corpora boosts semantic priming effects.

In recent decades, many computational techniques have been developed to analyse the contextual usage of words in large language corpora. The present study examined whether the co-occurrence frequency obtained from large language corpora might boost purely semantic priming effects. Two experiments were conducted: one with conscious semantic priming, the other with subliminal semantic priming.

The mutual roles of action representations and spatial deictics in French language.

Many aspects of language associated with an object's noun inform about the location of the object the noun refers to, in relation to the action system. In the present study, we tested whether the determiners la (the) and cette (that) in French language carry embodied spatial information. In Experiment 1, participants performed a reachability judgement task after having evaluated the correct spelling of both a determiner (la or cette) and an object-noun (balle-ball, tasse-cup, or pomme-apple).

The role of semantic features in verb processing.

The present study examined the general hypothesis that, as for nouns, stable representations of semantic knowledge relative to situations expressed by verbs are available and accessible in long term memory in normal people. Regular associations between verbs and past tenses in French adults allowed to abstract two superordinate semantic features in the representation of verb meaning: durativity and resultativity. A pilot study was designed to select appropriate items according to these features: durative, non-resultative verbs and non-durative, resultative verbs.