Early dynamics of the semantic priming shift (original) (raw)
Related papers
Rapid Activation of the Lexicon: A Further Investigation with Behavioral and Computational Results
Brain and Language, 2002
Priming effects were observed in a categorization task for both prime-target synonym pairs (e.g., boat-ship) and first-associate pairs (e.g., boat-sea). However, the amount and onset of priming were different for synonyms and associated pairs. The effect appeared sooner for synonyms (at prime duration of 43 ms) than for associated words (57 ms onset) but was present for both these relationships at 71 ms of prime presentation. A prime visibility pretest was conducted with the same participants in order to determine the rate of recognition of our prime words. Last, a French matrix of the HAL model was built, which showed that synonyms pairs were semantically closer than associated pairs. These results are in accordance with our previous study (Frenck-Mestre & Bueno, 1999) and are discussed in relation with semantic models, such as Plaut's (1995) distributed model.
Morphological priming in the German mental lexicon
Cognition, 1999
We present results from cross-modal priming experiments on German participles and noun plurals. The experiments produced parallel results for both in¯ectional systems. Regular in¯ection exhibits full priming whereas irregularly in¯ected word forms show only partial priming: after hearing regularly in¯ected words (-t participles and -s plurals), lexical decision times on morphologically related word forms (presented visually) were similar to reaction times for a base-line condition in which prime and target were identical, but signi®cantly shorter than in a control condition where prime and target were unrelated. In contrast, prior presentation of irregular words (-n participles and -er plurals) led to signi®cantly longer response times on morphologically related word forms than the prior presentation of the target itself. Hence, there are clear priming differences between regularly and irregularly in¯ected German words. We compare the ®ndings on German with experimental results on regular and irregular in¯ection in English and Italian, and discuss theoretical implications for single versus dual-mechanism models of in¯ection. q 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
2013
Au cours des deux dernières décennies des psychologues et des linguistes informaticiens ont essayé de modéliser l'accès lexical en construisant des simulations ou des ressources. Cependant, parmi ces chercheurs, pratiquement personne n'a vraiment cherché à améliorer la navigation dans des 'dictionnaires électroniques destinés aux producteurs de langue'. Pourtant, beaucoup de travaux ont été consacrés à l'étude du phénomène du mot sur le bout de la langue et à la construction de réseaux lexicaux. Par ailleurs, vu les progrès réalisés en neurosciences et dans le domaine des réseaux complexes, on pourrait être tenté de construire un simulacre du dictionnaire mental, ou, à défaut une ressource destinée aux producteurs de langue (écrivains, conférenciers). Nous sommes restreints en construisant un réseau de co-occurrences à partir des résumés de Wikipedia, le but étant de vérifier jusqu'où l'on pouvait pousser une telle ressource pour trouver un mot, sachant q...
Dynamics of the semantic priming shift: behavioral experiments and cortical network model
Cognitive Neurodynamics, 2012
Multiple semantic priming processes between several related and/or unrelated words are at work during the processing of sequences of words. Multiple priming generates rich dynamics of effects depending on the relationship between the target word and the first and/or second prime previously presented. The experimental literature suggests that during the on-line processing of the primes, the activation can shift from associates to the first prime to associates to the second prime. Though the semantic priming shift is central to the on-line and rapid updating of word meanings in the working memory, its precise dynamics are still poorly understood and it is still a challenge to model how it functions in the cerebral cortex. Four multiple priming experiments are proposed that crossmanipulate delays and association strength between the primes and the target. Results show for the first time that association strength determines complex dynamics of the semantic priming shift, ranging from an absence of a shift to a complete shift. A cortical network model of spike frequency adaptive neuron populations is proposed to account for the non-continuous evolution of the priming shift over time. It allows linking the dynamics of the priming shift assessed at the behavioral level to the nonlinear dynamics of the firing rates of neurons populations.
Contrasting mechanistic accounts of the lexical boost
Memory & Cognition
While many recent studies focused on abstract syntactic priming effects have implicated an error-based learning mechanism, there is little consensus on the most likely mechanism underlying the lexical boost. The current study aimed at refining understanding of the mechanism that leads to this priming effect. In two eye-tracking during reading experiments, the nature of the lexical boost was investigated by comparing predictions from competing accounts in terms of decay and the requirement of structural overlap between primes and targets. Experiment 1 revealed facilitation of target structure processing for shorter relative to longer primes, when there were fewer intervening words between prime and target verbs. In Experiment 2, significant lexically boosted priming effects were observed, but only when the target structure also appeared in the prime, and not when the prime had a different structure but a high degree of lexical overlap with the target. Overall, these results are most consistent with a shortlived mechanistic account rather than an error-based learning account of the lexical boost. Furthermore, these results align with dual-mechanism accounts of syntactic priming whereby different mechanisms are claimed to produce abstract syntactic priming effects and the lexical boost.
Time course of priming for associate and inference words in a discourse context
Memory & Cognition, 1988
The construction of word meanings in a discourse context was conceptualized as a process of sense activation, sense selection, and sense elaboration. In three experiments, subjects read texts presented by a rapid serial visual procedure and performed a lexical decision on visually presented targets that followed ambiguous prime words. When the target was a word, it was either an associate of the prime word, a probable inference suggested by the discourse, or an unrelated word. For associates, lexical decisions that related to either the appropriate or the inappropriate sense of the ambiguous word were generally facilitated at short (200-400 msec) prime-target stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs). At longer SOAs, responses were faster to appropriate than to inappropriate associates. For the thematic inferences, there was no difference between these (appropriate) inferences and (inappropriate) control words at short SOAs. At long SOAs (1,000 and 1,500 msec), however, inference words were facilitated. The results are interpreted as consistent with a model of lexical processing in which sense activation functions independently of context. Discourse context effects, whether on sense selection (suppression of inappropriate associates) or on sense elaboration (creation of inferences), are seen as postlexical. Consider the following sentence pairs. How do we know what mint or interest means? The townspeople were amazed to find that all the buildings had collapsed except the mint. Thinking of the amount of garlic in his dinner, the guest asked for a mint. The husband was afraid that his jealous wife would discover his new interest. The millionare jumped from the window when he heard about the new rate of interest. Surely more is involved than simply the activation oflexical nodes for mint and interest, although that must be part of it. Somehow, from whatever information is available in those lexical nodes, full contextual meanings of mint and interest must be constructed, taking into account the discourse context. In the present study, we explored the time course of these processes of word identification and meaning construction. Our principal goal was to inves
The Ample Semantic Scope of Minute Language Computations : An Erp Study of Words in Portuguese
2014
The semantic relationship between two separate words in the same semantic realm, e.g. vegetables, is often viewed as merely associative. Thus, if matched by frequency in a priming paradigm, a prime such as potato should help the activation of a target such as carrot, the same way that carrot may trigger the activation of potato. Direction is not expected to count here. Contrastingly, with words in a sentence there is hierarchical structure to which direction does count: Joan kissed Billy is different from Billy kissed Joan. This study aims at testing the hypothesis that the semantic relationship in a priming paradigm might be mediated by an unstated syntactic structure that pops up spontaneously during priming, making separate words behave very similarly to words in a phrase. Five conditions of word pairs were tested including two in which the words were identical, but prime and target were presented in opposite directions. If the hypothesis about syntactic mediation were right, the...
Lexical representation: a multi-disciplinary …, 2011
With word meanings and word forms paired up like books in their jackets, the human lexicon is a vast and complex library. From its sparse beginnings in infancy, the lexicon incorporates thousands of words and concepts into an efficient processing system. Relationships between words provide an interconnected cross-referencing system, allowing the mature language user to slip between the shelves with ease. For decades, the technique of ‘priming’ has been used to probe organisational characteristics of the adult semantic system. In the priming method, semantic context is systematically manipulated to influence on-line language processing. When sequential activation of particular items alters task performance, inferences can be made about the psychological reality of the relationship between the items – and thereby, inferences about the nature of the system. Both visual and auditory primes are known to influence the speed of lexical access (Antos, 1979; Meyer & Schvaneveldt, 1971; Radeau, 1983) and ambiguity resolution (Swinney, 1979). Various types of semantic relationship have been demonstrated using the priming method, including word association (Moss, Ostrin, Tyler, & Marslen-Wilson, 1995; Nation & Snowling, 1999), taxonomy (Meyer & Schvaneveldt, 1971), shared semantic features (McRae, Cree, Seidenberg, & McNorgan, 2005; Moss, McCormick, & Tyler, 1997), and instrumental relationships (Moss et al., 1995). Thus, facilitation in priming tasks can be understood as a spread of activation between related items in a semantic network (Anderson, 1983; Collins & Loftus, 1975; Meyer & Schvaneveldt, 1976). Yet little is known about the development of the semantic system from first words and concepts, to this complex adult system. Is a system encoding relationships between concepts in place from the early stages of word learning? Or does it arise after extensive experience? Are early relationships adult-like? Or does reorganisation occur? The goal of this chapter is to review recent evidence for adult-like relationships between words in the second year using a recently developed method for investigating the organisational properties of the infant lexicon. Citation: Suzy Styles & Kim Plunkett (2011) 'Early links in the early lexicon: Semantically related word-pairs prime picture looking in the second year.' In G. Gaskell & P. Zwitzerlood (eds) Lexical representation: a multi-disciplinary approach. Mouton de Gruyter: Berlin. Pp.51-–88.