Writing direction and language activation affect how Arabic-English bilingual speakers map time onto space.

We investigated whether writing direction and language activation influence how bilingual speakers map time onto space. More specifically, we investigated how Arabic-English bilingual speakers conceived where (e.g.

Carport and carpet: Effects of compound and pseudocompound word structures on typing.

Typing slows at the middle of the word. The exact nature of the slowdown is still disputed. Research on attentional and motoric effects in typing suggests that the slowdown is purely a function of chunking of letters in creating the motor output; this approach posits no further influence of linguistic information during output.

Influence of the constituent morpheme boundary on compound word access.

Embedded morphemes are thought to become available during the processing of multi-morphemic words, and impact access to the whole word. According to the edge-aligned embedded word activation theory Grainger & Beyersmann, (2017), embedded morphemes receive activation when the whole word can be decomposed into constituent morphemes. Thus, interfering with morphological decomposition also interferes with access to the embedded morphemes.

LaDEP: A large database of English pseudo-compounds.

The Large Database of English Pseudo-compounds (LaDEP) contains nearly 7500 English words which mimic, but do not truly possess, a compound morphemic structure. These pseudo-compounds can be parsed into two free morpheme constituents (e.g.

Constituent processing in compound and pseudocompound words.

Theories of multimorphemic word recognition generally posit that constituent representations are involved in accessing the whole multimorphemic word. Gagné et al. (2018) found that pseudoconstituents and constituents become available when processing pseudocompound and compound masked primes (e.

Flute birds and creamy skies: The metaphor interference effect in modifier-noun phrases.

People take longer to determine that metaphoric sentences (e.g., some birds are flutes) are literally false compared to anomalous sentences (e.

The interplay between inhibitory control and metaphor conventionality.

When a metaphor is first encountered (lawyers are sharks), several meanings are activated, but the literal ones (lawyers have fins) need to be inhibited to successfully compute the figurative meaning (lawyers are aggressive). With repeated exposure that metaphor becomes conventionalized, and its figurative meaning may be easily accessible without the need to inhibit the corresponding literal meaning. Thus, a central question in the field, and the objective of the current project, relates to how metaphor conventionality and inhibitory control contribute to metaphor comprehension.

LADEC: The Large Database of English Compounds.

The Large Database of English Compounds (LADEC) consists of over 8,000 English words that can be parsed into two constituents that are free morphemes, making it the largest existing database specifically for use in research on compound words. Both monomorphemic (e.g.

If Birds Have Sesamoid Bones, Do Blackbirds Have Sesamoid Bones? The Modification Effect With Known Compound Words.

Three experiments investigate how people infer properties of compound words from the unmodified head. Concepts license inference of properties true of the concept to instances or sub-types of that concept: Knowing that birds generally fly, one infers that a new type of bird flies. However, different names are also believed to reflect real underlying differences.

Detecting spelling errors in compound and pseudocompound words.

Three experiments using a spelling error detection task investigated the extent to which morphemes and pseudomorphemes affect word processing. We compared the processing of transparent compound words (e.g.

Conceptual relations compete during auditory and visual compound word recognition.

Previous research has shown that compound word recognition involves selecting a relational meaning (e.g., 'box for letters' for ) out of a set of competing relational meanings for the same compound.

Language experience shapes relational knowledge of compound words.

Prior studies of noun-noun compound word processing have provided insight into the human capacity for conceptual combination (Gagné and Shoben Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 23(1), 71 1997; Spalding, Gagné, Mullaly & Ji Linguistische Berichte Sonderheft, 17, 283-315 2010). These studies conclude that relational interpretations of compound words are proposed and appraised by the language system during online word recognition. However, little is known about how the capacity for creating new meanings from existing conceptual units develops within an individual mind.

Compounding as Abstract Operation in Semantic Space: Investigating relational effects through a large-scale, data-driven computational model.

In many languages, compounding is a fundamental process for the generation of novel words. When this process is productive (as, e.g.

Effects of morphology and semantic transparency on typing latencies in english compound and pseudocompound words.

We used a typing task to measure the written production of compounds, pseudocompounds, and monomorphemic words on a letter-by-letter basis to determine whether written production (as measured by interletter typing speed) was affected by morphemic structure and semantic transparency of the constituents. Semantic transparency was analyzed using a dichotomous classification (opaque vs. transparent) as well as participant ratings.

Competition between conceptual relations affects compound recognition: the role of entropy.

Previous research has suggested that the conceptual representation of a compound is based on a relational structure linking the compound's constituents. Existing accounts of the visual recognition of modifier-head or noun-noun compounds posit that the process involves the selection of a relational structure out of a set of competing relational structures associated with the same compound. In this article, we employ the information-theoretic metric of entropy to gauge relational competition and investigate its effect on the visual identification of established English compounds.

Property attribution in combined concepts.

Recent research shows that the judged likelihood of properties of modified nouns (baby ducks have webbed feet) is reduced relative to judgments for unmodified nouns (ducks have webbed feet). This modification effect has been taken as evidence both for and against the idea that combined concepts automatically inherit properties from their constituent concepts. Experiments 1 and 2 replicate this effect and demonstrate a reversed modification effect with false properties.

Relation priming in established compounds: facilitation?

Gagné and Spalding (Brain and Language, 90, 478-486, 2004, Journal of Memory and Language, 60, 20-35, 2009) have shown that the difficulty of interpreting an established compound (e.g., snowball) can be influenced by recent exposure to a compound with the same modifier and that this influence depends on the relation linking the constituents of the compound.

The change-of-standard effect: distorted standards and adjusted impressions.

Previous accounts of the memory distortion known as the change-of-standard effect hypothesize that participants form a relative impression of a target at encoding and later use that impression with the average of all items to recall the target (Higgins & Lurie, 1983). In three experiments, we investigated the standard and the integration of the standard with the relative impression. Experiments 1 and 2 show that participants' subjective average at recall is distorted toward recent stimuli: It is computed when required and is therefore affected by the items' accessibility at that time.

CARIN theory reanalysis reanalyzed: a comment on Maguire, Devereux, Costello, and Cater (2007).

P. Maguire, B. Devereux, F.

Relation availability was not confounded with familiarity or plausibility in Gagné and Shoben (1997): Comment on Wisniewski and Murphy (2005).

C. L. Gagné and E.

Sentential context and the interpretation of familiar open-compounds and novel modifier-noun phrases.

Two experiments investigated the influence of sentential context on the relative ease of deriving a particular meaning for novel and familiar compounds. Experiment 1 determined which of two possible meanings was preferred for a set of novel phrases. Experiment 2 used both novel (e.

Infants can rapidly form new categorical representations.

Young infants learn common categorical distinctions, such as animals versus vehicles. But can they, like adults, rapidly form new categories, such as black-and-white animals? To answer this question, 6-, 10-, and 13-month-old infants were familiarized with four land animals that were black and white in coloring (e.g.

Effect of relation availability on the interpretation and access of familiar noun-noun compounds.

Two experiments investigate whether relations that link the constituents of compounds during compound formation (e.g., teapot is formed by combining tea and pot using the relation head noun FOR modifier) also influence the processing of familiar compounds.