Interactive Effects of Age-of-Acquisition and Repetition Priming in the Lexical Decision Task

Repetition priming with no antipriming in picture identification

Previous studies have shown that the processing of a stimulus is facilitated when that stimulus is repeated compared to when it appears the first time, and this phenomenon is called repetition priming (RP). One explanation for RP is that initial processing of a stimulus strengthens connections within the visual representation, enabling subsequent processing of the same stimulus to be more efficient. More recently, it has been reported that presenting an object with features that overlap with those in a subsequent stimulus impairs the latter's processing, and this cost is termed antipriming (AP). AP is said to be the natural antithesis of RP, and it manifests when two objects share component features, thereby having overlapping representations. In two experiments, we investigated RP and AP in a picture naming task. Following previous research, we used a 4-phase paradigm, in which RP and AP were measured, respectively, by an increase or a decrease in performance for repeated or novel stimuli in Phase 4 compared with the baseline performance in Phase 2. We used a fully randomized design in Experiment 1, and a pseudo-randomized design in stimulus selection but a randomized design in presentation location in Experiment 2. We found robust RP in both experiments, but neither experiment showed any evidence of AP. Our results indicate that RP and AP do not always manifest within the same experiment, and that the relationship between these two effects may be more complex than previously understood.

Ratings of age of acquisition of 299 words across 25 languages: Is there a cross-linguistic order of words?

We present a new set of subjective age-of-acquisition (AoA) ratings for 299 words (158 nouns, 141 verbs) in 25 languages from five language families (Afro-Asiatic: Semitic languages; Altaic: one Turkic language: Indo-European: Baltic, Celtic, Germanic, Hellenic, Slavic, and Romance languages; Niger-Congo: one Bantu language; Uralic: Finnic and Ugric languages). Adult native speakers reported the age at which they had learned each word. We present a comparison of the AoA ratings across all languages by contrasting them in pairs. This comparison shows a consistency in the orders of ratings across the 25 languages. The data were then analyzed (1) to ascertain how the demographic characteristics of the participants influenced AoA estimations and (2) to assess differences caused by the exact form of the target question (when did you learn vs. when do children learn this word); (3) to compare the ratings obtained in our study to those of previous studies; and (4) to assess the validity of our study by comparison with quasi-objective AoA norms derived from the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (MB-CDI). All 299 words were judged as being acquired early (mostly before the age of 6 years). AoA ratings were associated with the raters' social or language status, but not with the raters' age or education. Parents reported words as being learned earlier, and bilinguals reported learning them later. Estimations of the age at which children learn the words revealed significantly lower ratings of AoA. Finally, comparisons with previous AoA and MB-CDI norms support the validity of the present estimations. Our AoA ratings are available for research or other purposes.

Not all identification tasks are born equal: testing the involvement of production processes in perceptual identification and lexical decision

The distinction between identification and production processes suggests that implicit memory should require more attention resources when there is a competition between alternative solutions during the test phase. The present two experiments assessed this hypothesis by examining the effects of divided attention (DA) at encoding on the high- and low-response-competition versions of perceptual identification (Experiment 1) and lexical decision (Experiment 2). In both experiments, words presented in the high-response-competition condition had many orthographic neighbours and at least one higher-frequency neighbour, whereas words presented in the low-response-competition condition had few orthographic neighbours and no higher-frequency neighbour. Consistent with the predictions of the identification/production distinction, Experiment 1 showed that DA reduced repetition priming in the high-, but not in the low-response-competition version of perceptual identification; in contrast, DA had comparable effects in the two versions of lexical decision (Experiments 2). These findings provide the first experimental evidence in support of the hypothesis that perceptual identification, a task nominally based on identification processes, might involve a substantive production component.

Is conceptual implicit memory impaired in schizophrenia? Evidence from lexical decision and category verification

INTRODUCTION

Implicit memory tasks differ along two orthogonal dimensions, tapping the relative involvement of perceptual/conceptual and identification/production processes. Previous studies have documented a dissociation between perceptual (spared) and conceptual (impaired) implicit memory, using in the latter case a production task (category exemplar generation), in which there is high response competition during the retrieval phase. The present study sought to determine whether the perceptual/conceptual dissociation held when comparing two identification tasks, in which there is no response competition at retrieval.

METHODS

In two experiments, repetition priming was assessed in 44 schizophrenic patients and 46 healthy controls in lexical decision (a test based on perceptual identification processes) and category verification (a test based on conceptual identification processes).

RESULTS

Schizophrenic patients achieved a priming as high as that of controls in the lexical decision task. In contrast, only controls exhibited significant priming in the category verification task.

CONCLUSIONS

It is concluded that schizophrenia is associated with a specific deficit in conceptual implicit memory, irrespective of the degree of response competition in the test phase.