Naming a picture (e.g., "duck") in the context of semantically related pictures (e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn
July 2024
Adaptive models of word production hold that lexical processing is shaped by recent production episodes. In particular, the models proposed by Howard et al. (2006) and Oppenheim et al.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis study traced different types of distractor effects in the picture-word interference (PWI) task across repeated naming. Starting point was a PWI study by Kurtz et al. (2018).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThere remains some debate about whether beta power effects observed during sentence comprehension reflect ongoing syntactic unification operations (beta-syntax hypothesis), or instead reflect maintenance or updating of the sentence-level representation (beta-maintenance hypothesis). In this study, we used magnetoencephalography to investigate beta power neural dynamics while participants read relative clause sentences that were initially ambiguous between a subject- or an object-relative reading. An additional condition included a grammatical violation at the disambiguation point in the relative clause sentences.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn
May 2022
The aim of this study was twofold: first, to develop an experimental technique as a tool to investigate learning outcomes of spontaneous, naturalistic second language (L2) learning under controlled laboratory conditions; and second, to explore how this technique can be used to understand the basic conditions and limits of this learning. Two variants of a dialogue game were tested in which corrective L2 input was provided to the learners, but the learning aspect was camouflaged. Participants were German learners of Dutch who are known to display persistent grammatical gender errors in Dutch owing to incorrect first language (L1)-L2 transfer.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFQ J Exp Psychol (Hove)
March 2022
Humans not only process and compare magnitude information such as size, duration, and number perceptually, but they also communicate about these properties using language. In this respect, a relevant class of lexical items are so-called like "big," "long," "loud," and so on which refer to magnitude information. It has been proposed that humans use an amodal and abstract representation format shared by different dimensions, called (GMS).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe possibility to combine smaller units of meaning (e.g., words) to create new and more complex meanings (e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn
October 2020
In 3 ERP experiments, we investigated how experienced L2 speakers process natural and correct syntactic input that deviates from their own, sometimes incorrect, syntactic representations. Our previous study (Lemhöfer, Schriefers, & Indefrey, 2014) had shown that L2 speakers do engage in native-like syntactic processing of gender agreement but base this processing on their own idiosyncratic (and sometimes incorrect) grammars. However, as in other standard ERP studies, but different from realistic L2 input, the materials in that study contained a large proportion of incorrect sentences.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform
October 2018
Picture naming studies have shown that alternative picture names become phonologically coactivated even when they are eventually not produced (e.g., dog when poodle is produced and vice versa).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFReinstatement of memory-related neural activity measured with high temporal precision potentially provides a useful index for real-time monitoring of the timing of activation of memory content during cognitive processing. The utility of such an index extends to any situation where one is interested in the (relative) timing of activation of different sources of information in memory, a paradigm case of which is tracking lexical activation during language processing. Essential for this approach is that memory reinstatement effects are robust, so that their absence (in the average) definitively indicates that no lexical activation is present.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAllocation and use of central processing capacity have been associated with the P3 event-related brain potential amplitude in a large variety of non-linguistic tasks. However, little is known about the P3 in spoken language production. Moreover, the few studies that are available report opposing P3 effects when task complexity is manipulated.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAccumulating evidence suggests that spoken word production requires different amounts of top-down control depending on the prevailing circumstances. For example, during Stroop-like tasks, the interference in response time (RT) is typically larger following congruent trials than following incongruent trials. This effect is called the Gratton effect, and has been taken to reflect top-down control adjustments based on the previous trial type.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform
June 2017
There is compelling evidence that context strongly influences our choice of words (e.g., whether we refer to a particular animal with the basic-level name "bird" or the subordinate-level name "duck").
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe colour-word Stroop task and the picture-word interference task (PWI) have been used extensively to study the functional processes underlying spoken word production. One of the consistent behavioural effects in both tasks is the Stroop-like effect: The reaction time (RT) is longer on incongruent trials than on congruent trials. The effect in the Stroop task is usually linked to word planning, whereas the effect in the PWI task is associated with either word planning or perceptual encoding.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFor native speakers, many studies suggest a link between oscillatory neural activity in the beta frequency range and syntactic processing. For late second language (L2) learners on the other hand, the extent to which the neural architecture supporting syntactic processing is similar to or different from that of native speakers is still unclear. In a series of four experiments, we used electroencephalography to investigate the link between beta oscillatory activity and the processing of grammatical gender agreement in Dutch determiner-noun pairs, for Dutch native speakers, and for German L2 learners of Dutch.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFOscillatory neural dynamics have been steadily receiving more attention as a robust and temporally precise signature of network activity related to language processing. We have recently proposed that oscillatory dynamics in the beta and gamma frequency ranges measured during sentence-level comprehension might be best explained from a predictive coding perspective. Under our proposal we related beta oscillations to both the maintenance/change of the neural network configuration responsible for the construction and representation of sentence-level meaning, and to top-down predictions about upcoming linguistic input based on that sentence-level meaning.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEvidence from dual-task performance indicates that speakers prefer not to select simultaneous responses in picture naming and another unrelated task, suggesting a response selection bottleneck in naming. In particular, when participants respond to tones with a manual response and name pictures with superimposed semantically related or unrelated distractor words, semantic interference in naming tends to be constant across stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) between the tone stimulus and the picture-word stimulus. In the present study, we examine whether semantic interference in picture naming depends on SOA in case of a task choice (naming the picture vs reading the word of a picture-word stimulus) based on tones.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn this functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) long-lag priming study, we investigated the processing of Dutch semantically transparent, derived prefix verbs. In such words, the meaning of the word as a whole can be deduced from the meanings of its parts, e.g.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFLearning the syntax of a second language (L2) often represents a big challenge to L2 learners. Previous research on syntactic processing in L2 has mainly focused on how L2 speakers respond to "objective" syntactic violations, that is, phrases that are incorrect by native standards. In this study, we investigate how L2 learners, in particular those of less than near-native proficiency, process phrases that deviate from their own, "subjective," and often incorrect syntactic representations, that is, whether they use these subjective and idiosyncratic representations during sentence comprehension.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe involvement of neural motor and sensory systems in the processing of language has so far mainly been studied in native (L1) speakers. In an fMRI experiment, we investigated whether non-native (L2) semantic representations are rich enough to allow for activation in motor and somatosensory brain areas. German learners of Dutch and a control group of Dutch native speakers made lexical decisions about visually presented Dutch motor and non-motor verbs.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn two ERP experiments, we investigate the on-line interplay of lexical tone, intonation and semantic context during spoken word recognition in Cantonese Chinese. Experiment 1 shows that lexical tone and intonation interact immediately. Words with a low lexical tone at the end of questions (with a rising question intonation) lead to a processing conflict.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis ERP study investigates whether a superfluous prosodic break (i.e., a prosodic break that does not coincide with a syntactic break) has more severe processing consequences during auditory sentence comprehension than a missing prosodic break (i.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn
January 2014
Disagreement exists regarding the functional locus of semantic interference of distractor words in picture naming. This effect is a cornerstone of modern psycholinguistic models of word production, which assume that it arises in lexical response-selection. However, recent evidence from studies of dual-task performance suggests a locus in perceptual or conceptual processing, prior to lexical response-selection.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFRecently, Meyer, Belke, Telling and Humphreys (2007) reported that competitor objects with homophonous names (e.g., boy) interfere with identifying a target object (e.
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