Francesca Peressotti | Università degli Studi di Padova (original) (raw)
Papers by Francesca Peressotti
Picture naming shows a cumulative semantic in-terference effect: Latency for naming a target pict... more Picture naming shows a cumulative semantic in-terference effect: Latency for naming a target picture increases as a function of the number of pictures semanti-cally similar to the target that have previously been named
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00057 What phonological facilitation tells about semantic interference: a... more doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00057 What phonological facilitation tells about semantic interference: a dual-task study
Animals : an Open Access Journal from MDPI, 2021
Simple Summary Intrigued by the ability of climbing peas to detect and grasp structures such as g... more Simple Summary Intrigued by the ability of climbing peas to detect and grasp structures such as garden reeds, we adapted a method classically used to investigate the grasping movement of animals to the study of grasping movements in plants. We used time-lapse photography to document the behavior of pea plants, grown in the vicinity of a support pole. Using this footage, we analyzed the kinematics of tendrils growth and found that their approach and grasp exhibited movement signatures comparable to those characterizing the reach-to-grasp movement of animals. Through our method it may be possible to demonstrate that plants may be more sentient than we give them credit for: namely, they may possess the ability to act intentionally. Abstract In this article we adapt a methodology customarily used to investigate movement in animals to study the movement of plants. The targeted movement is circumnutation, a helical organ movement widespread among plants. It is variable due to a different ...
The efficient use of knowledge requires semantic control processes to retrieve context-relevant i... more The efficient use of knowledge requires semantic control processes to retrieve context-relevant information. So far, it is well established that semantic knowledge, as measured with vocabulary tests, do not decline in aging. Yet, it is still unclear if controlled retrieval -the context-driven retrieval of very specific aspects of semantic knowledge- declines in aging, following the same fate of other forms of cognitive control. Here, we tackled this issue by comparing the performance of younger and older native Italian speakers during a semantic feature verification task. To manipulate the control demands, we parametrically varied the semantic significance, a measure of the salience of the target feature for the cue concept. As compared to their young counterparts, older adults showed a greater performance disruption (in terms of reaction times) as the significance value of the target feature decreased. This result suggests that older people have difficulties in regulating the activ...
It is well attested that people predict forthcoming information during language comprehension. Th... more It is well attested that people predict forthcoming information during language comprehension. The literature presents different proposals on how this ability could be implemented. Here, we tested the hypothesis according to which language production mechanisms have a role in such predictive processing. To this aim, we studied two electroencephalographic correlates of predictability during speech comprehension ‒ pre-target alpha‒beta (8-30 Hz) power decrease and the post-target N400 event-related potential (ERP) effect, ‒ in a population with impaired speech-motor control, i.e., adults who stutter (AWS), compared to typically fluent adults (TFA). Participants listened to sentences that could either constrain towards a target word or not, allowing or not to make predictions. We analyzed time-frequency modulations in a silent interval preceding the target and ERPs at the presentation of the target. Results showed that, compared to TFA, AWS display: i) a widespread and bilateral reduce...
Scientific Reports
Seeing an object is a natural source for learning about the object’s configuration. We show that ... more Seeing an object is a natural source for learning about the object’s configuration. We show that language can also shape our knowledge about visual objects. We investigated sign language that enables deaf individuals to communicate through hand movements with as much expressive power as any other natural language. A few signs represent objects in a specific orientation. Sign-language users (signers) recognized visual objects faster when oriented as in the sign, and this match in orientation elicited specific brain responses in signers, as measured by event-related potentials (ERPs). Further analyses suggested that signers’ responsiveness to object orientation derived from changes in the visual object representations induced by the signs. Our results also show that language facilitates discrimination between objects of the same kind (e.g., different cars), an effect never reported before with spoken languages. By focusing on sign language we could better characterize the impact of la...
The present study investigates whether predictions during language comprehension are generated by... more The present study investigates whether predictions during language comprehension are generated by engaging the production system. We recorded EEG from participants performing both a comprehension and a production task in two separate blocks. Participants listened to high and low constraint incomplete sentences and were asked either to name a picture to complete it (production) or to simply listen to the final word (comprehension). We found that in a silent gap before the final stimulus, predictable stimuli elicited alpha (8-10 Hz) and beta (13-30 Hz) desynchronization in both tasks. Source estimation highlighted not only the involvement of the left-lateralized language network, but also of temporo-parietal areas in the right hemisphere. Furthermore, correlations between the desynchronizations in comprehension and production showed spatiotemporal commonalities in language-relevant areas in the left hemisphere, especially in the temporal, lateral inferior and dorsal frontal, and infer...
Cognition
It has been shown that decisions and moral judgments differ when made using native languages comp... more It has been shown that decisions and moral judgments differ when made using native languages compared to foreign languages. Cross-linguistic differences appeared in foreign languages that monolinguals typically acquired in school and used neither routinely nor extensively. We replicated these differences with two populations of proficient, native bilinguals (Italian-Venetian; Italian-Bergamasque). Venetian and Bergamasque are spoken in households and informal circles, unlike Italian, which is also used in more formal contexts. The findings reported in foreign languages for the Asian Disease Problem and the Footbridge Dilemma were reproduced in Venetian and Bergamasque. Our results show that language effects on decision-making and moral judgments are not restricted to foreign languages. The explanation proposed for foreign languages of cross-linguistic differences in emotion responses does not apply to our proficient, native bilinguals, who showed emotion responses of equal intensity in their languages. We propose that the contexts in which bilinguals use a language - either native, regional or foreign - could affect decisions.
Word Structure
Language encodes into morphology part of the information present in the referential world. Some f... more Language encodes into morphology part of the information present in the referential world. Some features are marked in the great majority of languages, such as the numerosity of the referents that is encoded in morphological Number. Other features do not surface as frequently in morphological markings, yet they are pervasive in natural languages. This is the case of animacy, that can ground Gender systems as well as constrain the surfacing of Number. The diffusion of numerosity and animacy could mirror their biological salience at the extra-linguistic cognitive level. Human extra-linguistic numerical abilities are phylogenetically ancient and are observed in non-human animal species, especially when counting salient animate entities such as social companions. Does the saliency of animacy influence the morphological encoding of Number in language processing? We designed an experiment to test the encoding of morphological Number in language processing in relation to animacy. In Italia...
At first glance, plants seem relatively immobile and, unlike animals, unable to interact with the... more At first glance, plants seem relatively immobile and, unlike animals, unable to interact with the surroundings or escape stressful environments. But, although markedly different from those of animals, movement pervades all aspects of plant behaviour. Here, we focused our investigation on the approaching movement of climbing plants, that is the movement they perform to reach-to-climb a support. In particular, we examined whether climbing plants, similarly to humans and other animals, evolved a motor accuracy mechanism as to improve the precision of their movement. For this purpose, by means of three-dimensional kinematical analysis, we investigated whether climbing plants have the ability to correct online their movement by means of secondary submovements, and if their frequency production is influenced by the difficulty of the task. Results showed, not only that plants correct their movement in flight, but also that they strategically increase the production of secondary submovement...
Brain and Language
Power modulations of the EEG activity within the beta-frequency band were investigated across sil... more Power modulations of the EEG activity within the beta-frequency band were investigated across silent-reading and copy-typing tasks featuring emotionally negative and neutral words in order to clarify the interplay between language and motor processing. In reading, a single desynchronization surfaced 200-600 ms after target presentation, with a stronger power-decrease in lower beta frequencies for neutral compared to negative words. The typing task revealed two distinct desynchronizations. A first one surfaced within spatio-temporal coordinates closely resembling those of the desynchronization observed in the reading task, thus pointing towards a common origin at the level of linguistic processing of the input word stimuli. Additionally, a second motor-related desynchronization surfaced during the typed response, from 700 to 2000 ms after stimulus onset. Here, words' emotional connotation affected the higher beta band. The comparison between tasks thus suggests that different beta desynchronizations reflect distinct EEG landmarks for language and motor processing. Further, the effect of emotional connotation on the motor-related desynchronization of the typing task suggests that language processing can propagate its influence onto the stage of motor response execution, pointing against a serial flow of information from language onto motor processing.
Cognition
Many of the signs produced across sign languages are iconic, in the sense that they resemble the ... more Many of the signs produced across sign languages are iconic, in the sense that they resemble the concepts they represent. We examined whether location, one of basic sign parameters along with handshape and movement, is systematically used for purposes of iconicity. Our findings revealed a mapping of vertical sign space that is exploited in its entirety for encoding typical locations in natural space. In all of the twenty sign languages we analyzed, signs were more likely to have high locations with concepts typically occurring in high vs. low regions of natural space (e.g., cloud vs. root). Furthermore, the height of signs produced to identify a visual object varied depending on object position (e.g., it was higher for basketball in the basket than basketball on the floor). It thus appears that signing space is permeable to semantic and episodic features, and iconicity plays a crucial role in making signing space so adaptable.
PLOS ONE
The languages developed by deaf communities are unique for using visual signs produced by the han... more The languages developed by deaf communities are unique for using visual signs produced by the hand. In the present study, we explored the cognitive effects of employing the hand as articulator. We focused on the arbitrariness of the form-meaning relationship-a fundamental feature of natural languages-and asked whether sign languages change the processing of arbitrary non-linguistic stimulus-response (S-R) associations involving the hand. This was tested using the Simon effect, which specifically requires such type of associations. Differences between signers and speakers (non-signers) only appeared in the Simon task when hand stimuli were shown. Response-time analyses revealed that the distinctiveness of signers' responses derived from an increased ability to process memory traces of arbitrary S-R pairs related to the hand. These results shed light on the interplay between language and cognition as well as on the effects of sign language acquisition.
Psychological science, 2018
Estes, Verges, and Barsalou (2008) reported that reading a word with a spatial connotation (e.g.,... more Estes, Verges, and Barsalou (2008) reported that reading a word with a spatial connotation (e.g., sky) interfered with the subsequent identification of an unrelated visual stimulus (letter X or O) presented in a semantically related portion of the screen (location-cue congruency, or LCC, effect). In a series of nine experiments, we attempted to obtain this effect but met with no success. Rather, we obtained other expected spatial and semantic effects highlighting the robustness of our procedures. We contend that the LCC effect needs to be taken with great caution. The LCC effect described by Estes et al. has important implications for theories of language processing because it suggests that, according to the embodied view of cognition, the activation of motor and action systems is an essential aspect of language processing (Šetić & Domijan, 2007; Yaxley & Zwaan, 2007; for recent debate, see Barsalou, 2016; Mahon & Hickok, 2016). Although several studies explored the influence of spatial information conveyed by language on subsequent perceptual tasks (for a review, see Louwerse, Hutchinson, Tillman, & Recchia, 2015), Estes et al.’s results (Experiment 3) are particularly relevant for several reasons. The observation of an interference effect is important because it cannot be explained by assuming that both the word and the target activate abstract spatial concepts at a higher semantic level, since if that were the case, facilitatory effects should be predicted (as observed in other studies; e.g., Chasteen, Burdzy, & Pratt, 2010; Meier & Robinson, 2004). Furthermore, interference was observed despite the words being presented in isolation, with no preceding context, no task to be performed on them, and short delays between the cue word and the target stimulus. Therefore, given that the effect was obtained without explicit or implicit reference to the spatial properties of the words, and given that there was no benefit to processing them, the interference effect suggests that spatial information is mandatorily and rapidly activated during language processing. Even though the LCC effect has been reported in other studies (Estes, Verges, & Adelman, 2015; Verges & Duffy, 2009) and by different laboratories (Gozli, Chasteen, & Pratt, 2013; see Table 1), our attempts to obtain the effect repeatedly failed. The initial experiments differed slightly from those reported by Estes et al. (2008). Subsequent experiments moved toward the original experiment, attempting to identify the boundary conditions of the effect. In order to demonstrate the sensitivity of experiments, we measured two spatial effects not related to the cue words but to the position of the targets and the response keys. The feature-integration effect concerns the relation between target features and response on consecutive trials (Hommel, Proctor, & Vu, 2004). Provided that targets have two basic features, (a) spatial location (up or down) and (b) target type (X or O), we expected quicker responses on consecutive stimuli sharing both features (i.e., the same targets appearing in the same location) or in the case of a complete mismatch (i.e., different targets in different locations) compared with 728127 PSSXXX10.1177/0956797617728127Spatial Congruency Effects Exist, Just Not for WordsPetrova et al. research-article2018
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology
The authors regret to state that the list of stimuli published in the Appendix was partly wrong. ... more The authors regret to state that the list of stimuli published in the Appendix was partly wrong. Specifically, the list of short stimuli—base word, transposed letter (TL) nonwords, and replaced letter (RL) nonwords—was included in the Appendix in place of the correct one, which is included below. In consequence, also the summary statistics of the characteristics of the stimuli described in Table 1 were partly wrong and are substituted by Table 1 below.
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 2017
The study describes the developmental trend of transposed letters (TL) effects in a lexical decis... more The study describes the developmental trend of transposed letters (TL) effects in a lexical decision task. The TL effect refers to the fact that nonwords derived from words by transposing two middle letters (e.g., talbe from table) are responded to more slowly than control nonwords in which two letters are replaced (RL [replaced letters]; e.g., tafde). We measured this effect in three groups of children (second, third, and fifth graders) and a group of adults. Length was manipulated with short letter strings (four or five letters) and long letter strings (seven or eight letters). In long letter strings, position of letter transposition/replacement was also manipulated; half of the stimuli contained the TL/RL toward the beginning of the string and half toward the end of the string. The results showed that the size of the TL effect increased with age and that this developmental pattern was more marked for transpositions involving the final part of the word. The results suggest that with the increase in reading ability, the reading system relies more strongly on a coarse orthographic representation in which letter position is not precisely coded. Furthermore, the effect of position suggests that a serial mechanism is used to scan the letter string. This determines the extent to which nonwords activate the base words, modulating the influence of lexical effects in nonword decisions. The nature of this effect is discussed.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 2016
When speakers name multiple semantically related items, opposing effects can be found. Semantic f... more When speakers name multiple semantically related items, opposing effects can be found. Semantic facilitation is found when naming 2 semantically related items in a row. In contrast, semantic interference is found when speakers name semantically related items separated by 1 or more intervening unrelated items. This latter form of interference is cumulative, as it increases as a function of the number of related items that have been named beforehand. Semantic facilitation has therefore been envisaged as a product of transient and fast-decaying activation of related representations, whereas semantic interference has been linked to longer-lasting changes in the connections between semantic and lexical representations. In this work we attempted to explore and compare the 2 phenomena jointly, by means of contrasting naming sequences with noncontiguous semantically related items and sequences with contiguous semantically related items. Results provide evidence that mechanisms responsible for semantic facilitation and interference may jointly occur in parallel, producing opposing influences on behavior. Importantly, semantic facilitation may exhibit cumulative features too, though these are immediately disrupted when unrelated items intervene. (PsycINFO Database Record
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 2016
In this study, we investigated how activation unfolds in sign production, examining whether signs... more In this study, we investigated how activation unfolds in sign production, examining whether signs that are not produced have their representations activated by semantics (cascading of activation). Deaf signers were tested in the picture-picture interference task. Presented with a pair of overlapping pictures, participants named the green picture (target) and ignored the red picture (distractor). In Experiment 1 we varied whether target and distractor pictures had similar signs. Signs were produced faster with sign-related compared to unrelated picture pairs. The facilitation observed with sign-related pairs replicates the one obtained in speaking with sound-related pairs (e.g., bed-bell), a finding cited in support of cascading of activation. In Experiment 2 we focused on sign iconicity anticipating that cascading of activation would lead to a facilitatory effect of iconicity. Consistent with this prediction, distractor pictures with iconic signs induced faster responses. Altogether, our results reveal that cascading of activation is a fundamental aspect of language processing at play not only in speaking, but also in signing.
Picture naming shows a cumulative semantic in-terference effect: Latency for naming a target pict... more Picture naming shows a cumulative semantic in-terference effect: Latency for naming a target picture increases as a function of the number of pictures semanti-cally similar to the target that have previously been named
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00057 What phonological facilitation tells about semantic interference: a... more doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00057 What phonological facilitation tells about semantic interference: a dual-task study
Animals : an Open Access Journal from MDPI, 2021
Simple Summary Intrigued by the ability of climbing peas to detect and grasp structures such as g... more Simple Summary Intrigued by the ability of climbing peas to detect and grasp structures such as garden reeds, we adapted a method classically used to investigate the grasping movement of animals to the study of grasping movements in plants. We used time-lapse photography to document the behavior of pea plants, grown in the vicinity of a support pole. Using this footage, we analyzed the kinematics of tendrils growth and found that their approach and grasp exhibited movement signatures comparable to those characterizing the reach-to-grasp movement of animals. Through our method it may be possible to demonstrate that plants may be more sentient than we give them credit for: namely, they may possess the ability to act intentionally. Abstract In this article we adapt a methodology customarily used to investigate movement in animals to study the movement of plants. The targeted movement is circumnutation, a helical organ movement widespread among plants. It is variable due to a different ...
The efficient use of knowledge requires semantic control processes to retrieve context-relevant i... more The efficient use of knowledge requires semantic control processes to retrieve context-relevant information. So far, it is well established that semantic knowledge, as measured with vocabulary tests, do not decline in aging. Yet, it is still unclear if controlled retrieval -the context-driven retrieval of very specific aspects of semantic knowledge- declines in aging, following the same fate of other forms of cognitive control. Here, we tackled this issue by comparing the performance of younger and older native Italian speakers during a semantic feature verification task. To manipulate the control demands, we parametrically varied the semantic significance, a measure of the salience of the target feature for the cue concept. As compared to their young counterparts, older adults showed a greater performance disruption (in terms of reaction times) as the significance value of the target feature decreased. This result suggests that older people have difficulties in regulating the activ...
It is well attested that people predict forthcoming information during language comprehension. Th... more It is well attested that people predict forthcoming information during language comprehension. The literature presents different proposals on how this ability could be implemented. Here, we tested the hypothesis according to which language production mechanisms have a role in such predictive processing. To this aim, we studied two electroencephalographic correlates of predictability during speech comprehension ‒ pre-target alpha‒beta (8-30 Hz) power decrease and the post-target N400 event-related potential (ERP) effect, ‒ in a population with impaired speech-motor control, i.e., adults who stutter (AWS), compared to typically fluent adults (TFA). Participants listened to sentences that could either constrain towards a target word or not, allowing or not to make predictions. We analyzed time-frequency modulations in a silent interval preceding the target and ERPs at the presentation of the target. Results showed that, compared to TFA, AWS display: i) a widespread and bilateral reduce...
Scientific Reports
Seeing an object is a natural source for learning about the object’s configuration. We show that ... more Seeing an object is a natural source for learning about the object’s configuration. We show that language can also shape our knowledge about visual objects. We investigated sign language that enables deaf individuals to communicate through hand movements with as much expressive power as any other natural language. A few signs represent objects in a specific orientation. Sign-language users (signers) recognized visual objects faster when oriented as in the sign, and this match in orientation elicited specific brain responses in signers, as measured by event-related potentials (ERPs). Further analyses suggested that signers’ responsiveness to object orientation derived from changes in the visual object representations induced by the signs. Our results also show that language facilitates discrimination between objects of the same kind (e.g., different cars), an effect never reported before with spoken languages. By focusing on sign language we could better characterize the impact of la...
The present study investigates whether predictions during language comprehension are generated by... more The present study investigates whether predictions during language comprehension are generated by engaging the production system. We recorded EEG from participants performing both a comprehension and a production task in two separate blocks. Participants listened to high and low constraint incomplete sentences and were asked either to name a picture to complete it (production) or to simply listen to the final word (comprehension). We found that in a silent gap before the final stimulus, predictable stimuli elicited alpha (8-10 Hz) and beta (13-30 Hz) desynchronization in both tasks. Source estimation highlighted not only the involvement of the left-lateralized language network, but also of temporo-parietal areas in the right hemisphere. Furthermore, correlations between the desynchronizations in comprehension and production showed spatiotemporal commonalities in language-relevant areas in the left hemisphere, especially in the temporal, lateral inferior and dorsal frontal, and infer...
Cognition
It has been shown that decisions and moral judgments differ when made using native languages comp... more It has been shown that decisions and moral judgments differ when made using native languages compared to foreign languages. Cross-linguistic differences appeared in foreign languages that monolinguals typically acquired in school and used neither routinely nor extensively. We replicated these differences with two populations of proficient, native bilinguals (Italian-Venetian; Italian-Bergamasque). Venetian and Bergamasque are spoken in households and informal circles, unlike Italian, which is also used in more formal contexts. The findings reported in foreign languages for the Asian Disease Problem and the Footbridge Dilemma were reproduced in Venetian and Bergamasque. Our results show that language effects on decision-making and moral judgments are not restricted to foreign languages. The explanation proposed for foreign languages of cross-linguistic differences in emotion responses does not apply to our proficient, native bilinguals, who showed emotion responses of equal intensity in their languages. We propose that the contexts in which bilinguals use a language - either native, regional or foreign - could affect decisions.
Word Structure
Language encodes into morphology part of the information present in the referential world. Some f... more Language encodes into morphology part of the information present in the referential world. Some features are marked in the great majority of languages, such as the numerosity of the referents that is encoded in morphological Number. Other features do not surface as frequently in morphological markings, yet they are pervasive in natural languages. This is the case of animacy, that can ground Gender systems as well as constrain the surfacing of Number. The diffusion of numerosity and animacy could mirror their biological salience at the extra-linguistic cognitive level. Human extra-linguistic numerical abilities are phylogenetically ancient and are observed in non-human animal species, especially when counting salient animate entities such as social companions. Does the saliency of animacy influence the morphological encoding of Number in language processing? We designed an experiment to test the encoding of morphological Number in language processing in relation to animacy. In Italia...
At first glance, plants seem relatively immobile and, unlike animals, unable to interact with the... more At first glance, plants seem relatively immobile and, unlike animals, unable to interact with the surroundings or escape stressful environments. But, although markedly different from those of animals, movement pervades all aspects of plant behaviour. Here, we focused our investigation on the approaching movement of climbing plants, that is the movement they perform to reach-to-climb a support. In particular, we examined whether climbing plants, similarly to humans and other animals, evolved a motor accuracy mechanism as to improve the precision of their movement. For this purpose, by means of three-dimensional kinematical analysis, we investigated whether climbing plants have the ability to correct online their movement by means of secondary submovements, and if their frequency production is influenced by the difficulty of the task. Results showed, not only that plants correct their movement in flight, but also that they strategically increase the production of secondary submovement...
Brain and Language
Power modulations of the EEG activity within the beta-frequency band were investigated across sil... more Power modulations of the EEG activity within the beta-frequency band were investigated across silent-reading and copy-typing tasks featuring emotionally negative and neutral words in order to clarify the interplay between language and motor processing. In reading, a single desynchronization surfaced 200-600 ms after target presentation, with a stronger power-decrease in lower beta frequencies for neutral compared to negative words. The typing task revealed two distinct desynchronizations. A first one surfaced within spatio-temporal coordinates closely resembling those of the desynchronization observed in the reading task, thus pointing towards a common origin at the level of linguistic processing of the input word stimuli. Additionally, a second motor-related desynchronization surfaced during the typed response, from 700 to 2000 ms after stimulus onset. Here, words' emotional connotation affected the higher beta band. The comparison between tasks thus suggests that different beta desynchronizations reflect distinct EEG landmarks for language and motor processing. Further, the effect of emotional connotation on the motor-related desynchronization of the typing task suggests that language processing can propagate its influence onto the stage of motor response execution, pointing against a serial flow of information from language onto motor processing.
Cognition
Many of the signs produced across sign languages are iconic, in the sense that they resemble the ... more Many of the signs produced across sign languages are iconic, in the sense that they resemble the concepts they represent. We examined whether location, one of basic sign parameters along with handshape and movement, is systematically used for purposes of iconicity. Our findings revealed a mapping of vertical sign space that is exploited in its entirety for encoding typical locations in natural space. In all of the twenty sign languages we analyzed, signs were more likely to have high locations with concepts typically occurring in high vs. low regions of natural space (e.g., cloud vs. root). Furthermore, the height of signs produced to identify a visual object varied depending on object position (e.g., it was higher for basketball in the basket than basketball on the floor). It thus appears that signing space is permeable to semantic and episodic features, and iconicity plays a crucial role in making signing space so adaptable.
PLOS ONE
The languages developed by deaf communities are unique for using visual signs produced by the han... more The languages developed by deaf communities are unique for using visual signs produced by the hand. In the present study, we explored the cognitive effects of employing the hand as articulator. We focused on the arbitrariness of the form-meaning relationship-a fundamental feature of natural languages-and asked whether sign languages change the processing of arbitrary non-linguistic stimulus-response (S-R) associations involving the hand. This was tested using the Simon effect, which specifically requires such type of associations. Differences between signers and speakers (non-signers) only appeared in the Simon task when hand stimuli were shown. Response-time analyses revealed that the distinctiveness of signers' responses derived from an increased ability to process memory traces of arbitrary S-R pairs related to the hand. These results shed light on the interplay between language and cognition as well as on the effects of sign language acquisition.
Psychological science, 2018
Estes, Verges, and Barsalou (2008) reported that reading a word with a spatial connotation (e.g.,... more Estes, Verges, and Barsalou (2008) reported that reading a word with a spatial connotation (e.g., sky) interfered with the subsequent identification of an unrelated visual stimulus (letter X or O) presented in a semantically related portion of the screen (location-cue congruency, or LCC, effect). In a series of nine experiments, we attempted to obtain this effect but met with no success. Rather, we obtained other expected spatial and semantic effects highlighting the robustness of our procedures. We contend that the LCC effect needs to be taken with great caution. The LCC effect described by Estes et al. has important implications for theories of language processing because it suggests that, according to the embodied view of cognition, the activation of motor and action systems is an essential aspect of language processing (Šetić & Domijan, 2007; Yaxley & Zwaan, 2007; for recent debate, see Barsalou, 2016; Mahon & Hickok, 2016). Although several studies explored the influence of spatial information conveyed by language on subsequent perceptual tasks (for a review, see Louwerse, Hutchinson, Tillman, & Recchia, 2015), Estes et al.’s results (Experiment 3) are particularly relevant for several reasons. The observation of an interference effect is important because it cannot be explained by assuming that both the word and the target activate abstract spatial concepts at a higher semantic level, since if that were the case, facilitatory effects should be predicted (as observed in other studies; e.g., Chasteen, Burdzy, & Pratt, 2010; Meier & Robinson, 2004). Furthermore, interference was observed despite the words being presented in isolation, with no preceding context, no task to be performed on them, and short delays between the cue word and the target stimulus. Therefore, given that the effect was obtained without explicit or implicit reference to the spatial properties of the words, and given that there was no benefit to processing them, the interference effect suggests that spatial information is mandatorily and rapidly activated during language processing. Even though the LCC effect has been reported in other studies (Estes, Verges, & Adelman, 2015; Verges & Duffy, 2009) and by different laboratories (Gozli, Chasteen, & Pratt, 2013; see Table 1), our attempts to obtain the effect repeatedly failed. The initial experiments differed slightly from those reported by Estes et al. (2008). Subsequent experiments moved toward the original experiment, attempting to identify the boundary conditions of the effect. In order to demonstrate the sensitivity of experiments, we measured two spatial effects not related to the cue words but to the position of the targets and the response keys. The feature-integration effect concerns the relation between target features and response on consecutive trials (Hommel, Proctor, & Vu, 2004). Provided that targets have two basic features, (a) spatial location (up or down) and (b) target type (X or O), we expected quicker responses on consecutive stimuli sharing both features (i.e., the same targets appearing in the same location) or in the case of a complete mismatch (i.e., different targets in different locations) compared with 728127 PSSXXX10.1177/0956797617728127Spatial Congruency Effects Exist, Just Not for WordsPetrova et al. research-article2018
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology
The authors regret to state that the list of stimuli published in the Appendix was partly wrong. ... more The authors regret to state that the list of stimuli published in the Appendix was partly wrong. Specifically, the list of short stimuli—base word, transposed letter (TL) nonwords, and replaced letter (RL) nonwords—was included in the Appendix in place of the correct one, which is included below. In consequence, also the summary statistics of the characteristics of the stimuli described in Table 1 were partly wrong and are substituted by Table 1 below.
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 2017
The study describes the developmental trend of transposed letters (TL) effects in a lexical decis... more The study describes the developmental trend of transposed letters (TL) effects in a lexical decision task. The TL effect refers to the fact that nonwords derived from words by transposing two middle letters (e.g., talbe from table) are responded to more slowly than control nonwords in which two letters are replaced (RL [replaced letters]; e.g., tafde). We measured this effect in three groups of children (second, third, and fifth graders) and a group of adults. Length was manipulated with short letter strings (four or five letters) and long letter strings (seven or eight letters). In long letter strings, position of letter transposition/replacement was also manipulated; half of the stimuli contained the TL/RL toward the beginning of the string and half toward the end of the string. The results showed that the size of the TL effect increased with age and that this developmental pattern was more marked for transpositions involving the final part of the word. The results suggest that with the increase in reading ability, the reading system relies more strongly on a coarse orthographic representation in which letter position is not precisely coded. Furthermore, the effect of position suggests that a serial mechanism is used to scan the letter string. This determines the extent to which nonwords activate the base words, modulating the influence of lexical effects in nonword decisions. The nature of this effect is discussed.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 2016
When speakers name multiple semantically related items, opposing effects can be found. Semantic f... more When speakers name multiple semantically related items, opposing effects can be found. Semantic facilitation is found when naming 2 semantically related items in a row. In contrast, semantic interference is found when speakers name semantically related items separated by 1 or more intervening unrelated items. This latter form of interference is cumulative, as it increases as a function of the number of related items that have been named beforehand. Semantic facilitation has therefore been envisaged as a product of transient and fast-decaying activation of related representations, whereas semantic interference has been linked to longer-lasting changes in the connections between semantic and lexical representations. In this work we attempted to explore and compare the 2 phenomena jointly, by means of contrasting naming sequences with noncontiguous semantically related items and sequences with contiguous semantically related items. Results provide evidence that mechanisms responsible for semantic facilitation and interference may jointly occur in parallel, producing opposing influences on behavior. Importantly, semantic facilitation may exhibit cumulative features too, though these are immediately disrupted when unrelated items intervene. (PsycINFO Database Record
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 2016
In this study, we investigated how activation unfolds in sign production, examining whether signs... more In this study, we investigated how activation unfolds in sign production, examining whether signs that are not produced have their representations activated by semantics (cascading of activation). Deaf signers were tested in the picture-picture interference task. Presented with a pair of overlapping pictures, participants named the green picture (target) and ignored the red picture (distractor). In Experiment 1 we varied whether target and distractor pictures had similar signs. Signs were produced faster with sign-related compared to unrelated picture pairs. The facilitation observed with sign-related pairs replicates the one obtained in speaking with sound-related pairs (e.g., bed-bell), a finding cited in support of cascading of activation. In Experiment 2 we focused on sign iconicity anticipating that cascading of activation would lead to a facilitatory effect of iconicity. Consistent with this prediction, distractor pictures with iconic signs induced faster responses. Altogether, our results reveal that cascading of activation is a fundamental aspect of language processing at play not only in speaking, but also in signing.