Regular versus randomized sentences, nouns versus prepositions, and assimilation in salience

Utilização e compreensão de preposições por crianças com distúrbio específico de linguagem

TEMA: habilidade de crianças com Distúrbio Específico de Linguagem (DEL) em produzir e compreender palavras de classe fechada. OBJETIVO: tendo em vista a crescente busca pela caracterização do desempenho lingüístico desta população em diversas línguas, e os achados da literatura internacional que indicam a dificuldade destas crianças em utilizar as palavras de classe fechada, o objetivo deste estudo foi analisar a performance de crianças com DEL em provas de produção e compreensão de preposições. Também foi intuito deste trabalho comparar o desempenho destas crianças com o de crianças com desenvolvimento típico de linguagem quanto ao índice de acertos gerais e ao tipo de erros freqüentemente cometidos por ambos os grupos. MÉTODO: foi elaborado um teste objetivo a fim de analisar a produção e a compreensão de quatro tipos de preposições que estabelecem as seguintes relações semânticas: com (relação de companhia); de (relação de meio); na ou no (relação de lugar/posição); e para (relação de destino). Este teste foi aplicado a 19 crianças com DEL e a 29 crianças com desenvolvimento típico de linguagem grupo controle (GC), com idade inferior em um ano. RESULTADOS: as crianças com DEL apresentaram resultados equiparáveis, embora atrasados, aos do GC na prova de compreensão de preposições. Na tarefa de produção de preposições, entretanto, as crianças com DEL demonstraram um desempenho quantitativa e qualitativamente inferior ao do GC, caracterizado, principalmente, pela omissão das preposições. CONCLUSÃO: os resultados confirmam as dificuldades relacionadas ao domínio das preposições pelas crianças com DEL, e evidenciam o maior prejuízo expressivo nesta patologia.

Grouping and Assimilation in Perception, Memory, and Conditioning

A group-assimilation theory hypothesizes that a Gestalt-like group is associated with assimilation among the parts of the group. Assimilation is an increase in the perceived or sensed similarity of 1 part to a 2nd part. Assimilation occurs for traditional parts such as color but also occurs for salience. The theory accounts for key outcomes in perception, memory, and conditioning. An important hypothesis is that traditional assimilation and salience assimilation tend to have opposing effects on identification. The traditional assimilation of a target to a 2nd part frequently impairs the target's identification. In contrast, the assimilation of a less salient target to a more salient 2nd part increases the salience of the target and thus improves the target's identification. The corresponding hypothesis that 2 groups are associated with contrast between those parts that belong to different groups is also considered.

The Weber fraction versus perceived similarity

The Weber fraction type of discrimination outcome means that stimuli of high magnitude are difficult to discriminate. Simultaneous and successive discriminations between two long (high magnitude) lines and also between two short (low magnitude) lines were carried out. Over-all performance on the successive discrimination between the two long lines was much poorer than on the three other discriminations. This discrimination also produced the poorest performance on different stimuli relative to same stimuli. The latter result should indicate that the two successive long lines were perceived as most similar. These and additional results support the conclusion that over-all discrimination performance and perceived similarity were consistently associated even though they were not consistently associated with length and time of occurrence (simultaneous versus successive). Nevertheless, the association of discrimination with perceived similarity has received minimal attention in the psychophysics area.

Sentences and rehearsals increase rated similarity: support for assimilation-in-salience theory

The present study concerns how organization produces good retention. Exp. 1 indicated that college students rated two words in sentences as more similar than the same two words alone. In Exp. 2 they rated the two words of old presumably rehearsed pairs as more similar than the two words of new pairs. A sentence is a type of organization, and words that are rehearsed together are frequently subjectively organized. Therefore, the two experiments suggest that organized stimuli also assimilate among themselves (and evidence in the literature concurs). Organized stimuli also produce a highly salient (activated) single memorial group (unit) such as the meaning that a simple sentence comes to have according to evidence in the literature. So, the two experiments support the hypothesis that organized stimuli produce good retention, assimilation among themselves, and a highly salient group. Consequently, organized stimuli may also assimilate to the highly salient group and thereby increase in salience, with this increase enabling the good retention. This assimilation-in-salience theory of how organization produces good retention accords with perceptual evidence suggesting that a target increases in salience through its assimilation to a more salient simultaneously present context.