In the present study, twenty schizophrenic patients and twenty healthy controls were tested in a new priming paradigm that allows a clear distinction to be made between automatic, perceptual priming effects and effects related to decision bias. Participants had to identify briefly presented masked target words preceded by clearly visible primes that were semantically related to the target or not. Target presentation duration corresponded to a pre-determined perceptual threshold for each participant, and a two-alternative forced-choice methodology was used. Equivalent amounts of semantic priming were found in schizophrenic patients compared with healthy controls. However, for the schizophrenic patients, a positive correlation was found between the size of automatic perceptual priming effects and formal thought disorders, as measured by Andreasen's Thought, Language and Communication (TLC) scale. The new paradigm tested in the present study overcomes some of the limitations of prior research on semantic priming in schizophrenia, and provides further evidence suggesting that an increased spreading of activation in the semantic network could partly underlie formal thought disorders in schizophrenia.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.schres.2005.07.020 | DOI Listing |
Atten Percept Psychophys
January 2025
Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Delaware, Newark, DE, 19716-2577, USA.
J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn
December 2024
Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language.
The present study uses event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate lexicosemantic prediction in native speakers (L1) of English and advanced second language (L2) learners of English with Swedish as their L1. The main goal of the study was to examine whether learners recruit predictive mechanisms to the same extent as L1 speakers when a change in the linguistic environment renders prediction a useful strategy to pursue. The study, which uses a relatedness proportion paradigm adapted from Lau et al.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform
January 2025
Department of Psychology, Saarland University.
Task-irrelevant sounds that are semantically congruent with the target can facilitate performance in visual search tasks, resulting in faster search times. In three experiments, we tested the underlying processes of this effect. Participants were presented with auditory primes that were semantically congruent, neutral, or incongruent to the visual search target, and importantly, we varied the set size of the search displays.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFront Psychol
December 2024
Department of Developmental Psychology and Socialization, University of Padova, Padua, Italy.
Background: The present study investigated whether semantic processing of word and object primes can bias visual attention using top-down influences, even within an exogenous cueing framework. We hypothesized that real words and familiar objects would more effectively bias attentional engagement and target detection than pseudowords or pseudo-objects, as they can trigger prior knowledge to influence attention orienting and target detection.
Methods: To examine this, we conducted two web-based eye-tracking experiments that ensured participants maintained central fixation on the screen during remote data collection.
Atten Percept Psychophys
December 2024
Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Delaware, Newark, DE, 19716-2577, USA.
In the attentional blink paradigm, participants attempt to identify two targets appearing in a rapidly presented stream of distractors. Report accuracy is typically high for the first target (T1) while identification of the second target (T2) is impaired when it follows within about 200-400 ms of T1. An important question is whether T2 is processed to a semantic level even when participants are unaware of its identity.
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