DMDX: a windows display program with millisecond accuracy

Priming the distractor can eliminate the Stroop interference effect

The Stroop interference effect-the slower response to color in an incongruent Stroop stimulus (e.g., ) relative to a neutral Stroop stimulus (e.g., ) is usually highly robust. The present study investigated the role of selective attention in the Stroop task by priming the distractor word. Replicating previous studies using the verbal (color-naming) task, priming the distractor word produced a substantial speedup of response to the color in a Stroop stimulus in our manual Stroop task. Importantly, priming the distractor completely eliminated the Stroop interference effect (Incongruent = Neutral, e.g., ), and brought about a sizable facilitation effect (Congruent < Neutral, e.g., ) that was absent in the standard (control-primed) Stroop trials. RT distribution analysis showed that the pattern of facilitation and interference effects was changed radically by priming the distractor: In the standard Stroop task, the Stroop interference effect increased across quantiles, and the facilitation effect was absent throughout the quantiles; in contrast, in the distractor-primed Stroop task, the interference effect was eliminated, and the large facilitation effect that emerged remained constant across the quantiles. We interpret these results in terms of a "Trojan horse" account that suggests that in a Stroop stimulus, color and word form are integrated into an object; hence, when object-based attention is deployed to attend to the color, the word form "sneaks in." Priming the distractor breaks this integration, allowing attention to disengage from the irrelevant word dimension and eliminating Stroop interference.

Understanding decision-making in autistic children and adolescents: Insights from deliberative processes and behavioral economic paradigms

Prior research has shown conflicting findings on decision-making differences between autistic and non-autistic individuals. To address this issue, we applied the Ultimatum and Dictator Games to examine explicit measures (probability of endorsing monetary offers) and implicit measures (response times) associated with decision-making behaviors. By analyzing response times, we aimed to determine whether decisions were intuitive (rapid) or deliberative (slower) reasoning processes. In addition, we administered an executive functions questionnaire to explore how cognitive skills correlate with implicit and explicit decision-making behaviors. The study included 24 autistic and 24 non-autistic children and adolescents aged 8-18 years. Results showed that autistic participants were less likely to propose selfish offers in the Dictator Game than their non-autistic peers. Among autistic participants, this lower tendency to propose selfish offers correlated with better executive function skills. Regarding response times, autistic participants exhibited slower responses than non-autistic participants when accepting and proposing selfish offers in both games. These findings reveal differences in selfish offer tendencies and deliberative reasoning among participants, suggesting that slower decision-making in autistic participants reflects a focus on fairness and sociomoral reasoning. Future research can explore how this reasoning style influences social interactions in various scenarios.Lay AbstractAutistic kids and teens often have unique ways of communicating and socializing with others. Making decisions is important in how we behave daily and how we socialize. To study if autistic participants tend to make more cooperative or selfish choices, we used two games where participants had to share money between themselves and another player. Previous results were not consistent and that is why general assumptions could not be established. Also, previous results focused on the final decisions and did not consider the process that leads to making decisions. To fill the gap in what we know, this study dug deeper by evaluating how quickly or slowly participants made decisions and explored executive functions needed for daily decisions. The study found that autistic participants, with better executive functions, made less selfish offers (where they could keep more money than their peers) than non-autistic participants. Also, autistic participants took more time to decide than non-autistic participants, only when they could earn more money than the other player. Interestingly, these results are consistent with studies indicating that autistic children distribute resources without a primary focus on personal gains. These findings reshape how we view social exchanges and recognize that slow, deliberate thinking can lead to less selfish decisions in autistic children and adolescents. Future research could explore how this reasoning style influences social interactions in varied contexts.

The impact of handwriting and typing practice in children's letter and word learning: Implications for literacy development

Recent research has revealed that the substitution of handwriting practice for typing may hinder the initial steps of reading development. Two hypotheses for the detrimental effect of typing are (a) reduced graphomotor activity and (b) reduced variability in the visual letter forms. However, previous studies were mostly limited to letter learning and primarily employed the visual identification of letters as a learning index. The current experiment investigated the impact of graphomotor action and output variability in letter and word learning using a variety of tasks. A total of 50 prereaders learned nine letters and 16 pseudowords made up of these letters across four learning conditions: copying the letters/words by hand, tracing the letters/words, typing the letters/words on a computer with several fonts, and typing with a single font. Posttest tasks included naming, writing, and visual identification of the trained letters and words. Results showed that children in the handwriting groups (i.e., trained through hand-copying or tracing) achieved higher accuracy across all posttest tasks compared with those in the typing groups. These outcomes illustrate the importance of handwriting experience in learning alphabetic and orthographic representations, favoring the graphomotor hypothesis. Thus, educators should be cautious about replacing pencil and paper with digital devices during the period of children's reading acquisition.

Target-distractor correlation does not imply causation of the Stroop effect

In the Stroop task, the identities of the targets (e.g., colours) and distractors (e.g., words) used are often correlated. For example, in a list in which 4 words and 4 colours are combined to form 16 stimuli, each of the 4 congruent stimuli is typically repeated 3 times as often as each of the 12 incongruent stimuli. Some accounts of the Stroop effect suggest that in this type of list, often considered as a baseline because of the matching proportion of congruent and incongruent stimuli (50%), the word dimension actually receives more attention than it does in an uncorrelated list in which words and colours are randomly paired. This increased attention would be an important determinant of the Stroop effect in correlated situations, an idea supported by the observation that higher target-distractor correlation lists are associated with larger Stroop effects. However, because target-distractor correlation tends to be confounded with congruency proportion in common designs, the latter may be the crucial factor, consistent with accounts that propose that attention is adapted to the list's congruency proportion. In four experiments, we examined the idea that target-distractor correlation plays a major role in colour-word Stroop experiments by contrasting an uncorrelated list with a correlated list matched on relevant variables (e.g., congruency proportion). Both null hypothesis significance testing and Bayesian analyses suggested equivalent Stroop effects in the two lists, challenging accounts based on the idea that target-distractor correlations affect how attention is allocated in the colour-word Stroop task.

Distinct components of Stroop interference and facilitation: The role of phonology and response modality

Multi-stage accounts of Stroop effects suggest that Stroop effects result from different conflict and facilitation components. Consistent with these accounts, Augustinova et al. reported evidence for task, semantic, and response components in Stroop effects. They also investigated how vocal and manual responses impacted the magnitude of each of the conflict and facilitation components. However, the role of phonological components in Stroop effects was not investigated in their study. The impact of phonology on Stroop effects has been observed in several studies. However, these studies did not investigate the role of different conflict/facilitation components in Stroop effects. To investigate the impact of phonological components as well as task, semantic, and response components on Stroop effects, a vocal and manual Stroop task was for the first time conducted with Chinese speakers using a design similar to that of Augustinova et al. The data revealed only in the vocal Stroop task phonological conflict and facilitation, whereas semantic and response conflicts were found with vocal and manual responses. Implications of the findings for response modality effects and the measures of facilitation/conflict components are discussed.

Open-bigrams as orthographic processing units in Arabic: Evidence from the flanking-letters lexical-decision task

Using the "flanking-letters lexical decision" task, Dare and Shillcock The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 66, 487-504, (2013) and Grainger et al. Acta Psychologica, 146, 35-40, (2014) demonstrated that word is facilitated when the flanking bigrams are present in the target word (e.g., RO ROCK CK), regardless of their position (e.g., CK ROCK RO), compared to different flanking bigrams (e.g., DA ROCK SH). This finding aligns with the Open Bigram Model proposed by Grainger and Van Heuven, (2004), which posits that orthographic representations in the Latin script are encoded by an unordered set of ordered letter bigrams. Employing the same task and experimental design, we replicated this key finding in Arabic. We observed a facilitative bigram-relatedness effect in both the repeated and the switched conditions. These results suggest that bigram coding reflects a universal orthographic mechanism, with letter bigrams functioning as representational units in Arabic, similar to their role in Latin scripts. Our findings also suggest that letter-position coding in Arabic may be more flexible than previously thought for Semitic scripts. We evaluate these conclusions within the framework of the Open Bigram Model and contrast them with the PONG model, which assumes absolute position coding.

The keyboards are (still) all right in response time experiments

Response times (RTs) are a ubiquitous variable for assessing cognitive and motor processes. However, variability introduced by keyboards, especially in online experiments, has raised concerns among behavioral researchers. Here, we evaluate the impact of keyboard delays on RT measurements using linear mixed-effects models and grouped data t-tests through a series of simulations. The results showed that the impact of keyboard delays on statistical power is minimal in most cases. Keyboard-induced variability does not inflate type I error rates and has a negligible impact on power, except in rare scenarios of RT distribution shifts or in studies focused on individual differences with low signal-to-noise ratios. Thus, commercially available keyboards remain suitable for most RT experiments, including those conducted online.

Is letter position coding a unique skill for developing and adult readers in early word processing? Evidence from masked priming

Reading words in alphabetic scripts requires encoding the relative order of the letters. This process of letter position coding is known to be flexible. For instance, the masked transposed-letter prime jugde activates the word JUDGE to a greater degree than a replacement-letter prime like jupte, a phenomenon known as the transposed-letter effect. In this study, we investigated whether the transposed-letter effect in masked priming is related to reading skills (as measured by a standardized reading test) in a sample of sixth-grade children. Targets (e.g., RITME: Catalan for rhythm) were preceded by identity primes (ritme), transposed-letter primes (rimte), or replacement-letter primes (risle) in a sandwich priming paradigm. Results showed that transposed-letter primes were more effective than replacement-letter primes but less effective than identity primes. More importantly, while the readers' reading skills modulated overall latency and accuracy, we found no evidence that the participants' reading skill modulated the size of the priming effects. This outcome prompted us to re-analyze analogous conditions in a masked priming mega-study with approximately 1000 adult participants (Adelman et al. Behav Res Methods 46(4):1052-1067, 2014), where we found a near-zero correlation between the size of transposed-letter priming and spelling and vocabulary tests. These findings suggest that if there are individual differences in the first moments of word processing, these are not detectable for neurotypical readers in laboratory tasks.

Perceptual discrimination learning in children with and without autism: The effect of feedback, modality, and progressive-learning

Research suggests autistic children learn and generalize visual family-resemblance categories atypically (e.g., Church, et al., 2010, 2015), particularly when learning incidentally from exposure. This may reflect differences in perceptual learning (Mercado et al., 2020). However, it is unknown whether perceptual discrimination learning is also atypical and if differences extend to other modalities. To address this, autistic children with normal language abilities and IQ and typically developing (TD) matched comparison children completed auditory and visual discrimination tasks, after either incidental exposure to or direct training with stimuli presented in either progressive (easy-to-hard) or random orders of difficulty. In the visual task, both autistic and TD children only performed well after progressive training, suggesting limited perceptual learning from incidental visual exposure. In the auditory task, autistic children showed a progressive learning advantage after both exposure and training, but TD children only showed this advantage after training. They also had significantly better auditory discrimination than TD children after progressive training. These findings suggest typical visual discrimination learning after progressive training and enhanced auditory discrimination learning after progressive training and exposure. This enhanced auditory perceptual learning may help explain why these autistic children are socially impaired while retaining the capacity to learn language.

Transposition and substitution-letter effects in a flanker task: Evidence from children and adults

Several studies have shown that parafoveal processing is essential in reading development. In this study, we explore the effect of transposing and substituting inner and outer letters in a flanker lexical decision task administered to 78 children and 65 adults. The results show a significant interaction between the Group factor and the Flanker factor, suggesting differences in the effects of flankers for children and adults. In the case of adults, transposed and substituted letters generated benefit of the same magnitude in comparison with the unrelated condition, but of lesser magnitude than the Identity condition. In the case of children, the results show facilitation for the transposed conditions of the same magnitude as the Identity condition. However, the substitution conditions failed to generate any benefit in comparison with the unrelated condition. The results for the adults are in line with the predictions of the open bigram model, whereas the results for the children are explained through a developmental perspective of the dual-route architecture and open bigram framework.

Unraveling the small tie problem mystery: Size effects from finger counting to mental strategies in addition

Determining how children solve arithmetic problems when they stop using their fingers is a real challenge. To take it up, the evolution of problem-size effects for tie and non-tie problems was observed when 6-year-olds (N = 65) shift from finger counting to mental strategies. These observations revealed that the problem-size effect remained the same for non-tie problems, whereas it drastically decreased for tie problems. Moreover, the solving strategy for tie problems switched directly from the representation of both operands on fingers to retrieval without transition through the representation of only one operand on fingers. This direct switch could be made possible by the relative ease to commit symmetrical representations to memory (in the case of tie problems) rather than non-symmetrical ones (in the case of non-tie problems). This would explain why, early during development, small tie problems are solved quickly and present null or negligible size effects. All in all, our results and interpretations provide an answer to the long-standing question as to why tie problems have a special cognitive status. Our results also nuance the classical description of the developmental pattern reported in all textbook chapters devoted to numerical cognition according to which a finger strategy where only one operand is represented on fingers constitutes a developmental stage between the representation of two operands on fingers and retrieval. We demonstrate here that it is true only for non-tie problems.

Impact of Japanese L1 Rhythm on English L2 Speech

The study aimed to examine whether L1 speech rhythm affects L2 speech by assessing how the speech rhythm of Japanese L2 English speakers differed from native speakers. We chose Japanese and English because they differ markedly in the phonological properties that likely contribute to speech rhythm. Speech rhythm was measured by the variability of vowel and consonant intervals using rate-normalized rhythm metrics (VarcoV and VarcoC; nPVI-V and nPVI-C) and %V. The study utilized recordings of spoken sentences in English by 10 native Australian English speakers; and in English and also in Japanese by 10 native Japanese speakers (who had limited experience in speaking English). Experiment 1 compared the rhythm of L1 English (by measuring 1,750 vowels and 3,093 consonants from 20 sentences) and L1 Japanese (1,923 vowels and 2,097 consonants from 10 sentences). The results showed that for all measures, Japanese had reduced durational variability in both consonant and vowel intervals compared with English. In Experiment 2, we examined the rhythm characteristics of L1 and L2 English using 40 sentences (including the 20 in Experiment 1). The results showed that vowel and consonant intervals were less variable in L2 (Japanese English) than in L1 (Australian English) speech, mirroring the results of Experiment 1. Overall, the results are consistent with the proposal that L1 (Japanese) speech rhythm influenced L2 (English) speech.

Automatic and strategic components of bilingual lexical alignment

Second-language speakers are more likely to strategically reuse the words of their conversation partners (Zhang & Nicol, 2022). This study investigates if this is also the case for lower-proficiency bilinguals from a bilingual community, who use language more implicitly, and if there is more alignment with lower than with higher proficiency, provided the words to be aligned to are all highly familiar. In two experiments, Spanish-English bilinguals took turns with a confederate to name and match pictures in Spanish. The confederate named critical pictures with a dispreferred but acceptable name (e.g., agua [Sp. water] for a picture of rain). In Experiment 1, bilinguals were more likely to name critical pictures with dispreferred names after hearing these names from the confederate than after the confederate named an unrelated picture instead (i.e., an alignment effect). In support of our hypothesis, there was more alignment in lower-proficiency speakers. In Experiment 2, designed to reduce the possibility for strategic alignment, only confederates but not participants performed the matching task, which precluded participants from linking the dispreferred names with a referent, and removed the incentive to pay attention to the confederate's names. As a result, alignment was reduced (though still present). Of most interest, the reduction was greater for lower-proficiency speakers, supporting the hypothesis that strategic lexical-referential alignment is more likely with lower proficiency even for bilinguals from a bilingual community. The study also isolates measurable strategic and automatic components of lexical-referential alignment.

Talker-variability in visual feedback articulatory training: Transfer to words, long-term maintenance, and generalization

An important challenge in second language acquisition is learning how to produce novel sounds. Visual-acoustic feedback training has been shown to improve second language production, but it is still unclear whether training on isolated sounds transfers to words and is maintained over time. Forty-six Spanish speakers were trained to produce unfamiliar French vowels /e/-/ɛ/ through exposure to either single- or multiple-talker stimuli. On each trial, they heard a vowel, produced it, and received feedback showing the position of their vowel and the target in the acoustic space. Both groups showed improvements in vowel production, which transferred to words and were maintained 12 days later. However, better generalization-more accurate production when repeating vowels after an unfamiliar speaker-was maintained only in the multiple-talker group. This study shows that visual-acoustic feedback training is an effective method for improving second language production as the gains of such training demonstrate three key features for pedagogical practice: transfer, generalization, and maintenance.

Phonological neighbourhood effects in Italian speech production: Evidence from healthy and neurologically impaired populations

In two speech production studies conducted in Italian, we investigated the impact of phonological neighbourhood properties such as the neighbourhood density and the mean frequency of the neighbours on speech processing. Two populations of healthy (Study 1) and neurologically impaired (Study 2) individuals were tested. We employed multi-regression methods to analyse naming latencies in Study 1 and accuracy rates in Study 2 while controlling for various psycholinguistic predictors. In Study 1, pictures with words from high-density neighbourhoods were named faster than those from low-density neighbourhoods. Additionally, words with high-frequency neighbours were named faster in Study 1 and yielded higher accuracy rates in Study 2. The results suggest facilitatory effects of both the phonological neighbourhood density and frequency neighbourhood variables. Furthermore, we observed interactions between these two phonological neighbourhood variables and name agreement and repetition. Specifically, the facilitation effect was more pronounced for pictures with lower name agreement and during the initial presentation of the pictures. These findings are discussed in the context of previous literature and within the framework of interactive models of speech production.

Individual differences in associative/semantic priming: Spreading of activation in semantic memory and epistemically unwarranted beliefs

Starting from the enhanced spreading of activation through semantic memory (one of the explanatory mechanisms attempting to explain some manifestations observed in schizophrenia) and the psychosis continuum (a dimensional approach to psychotic disorders, where 'normality' and 'psychopathology' are not qualitatively different in nature but placed on varying levels of the same continuum), the main aim of the present research was to explore whether there are individual differences in associative/semantic priming in people with different levels of epistemically unwarranted beliefs (EUB). Participants varying in paranormal, pseudoscientific and conspiracy endorsement completed a primed lexical decision task containing related prime-target words (e.g., bulb-light) and unrelated prime-target words (e.g., sock-light). Bayesian linear mixed-effects models over response times (RTs) revealed a main direct priming effect (faster RTs in related pairs than in unrelated ones), a main facilitatory effect for some EUB scores (i.e., the higher the value for EUB score, the faster RTs), and an interactive effect between the experimental manipulation and some EUB scores (the higher the EUB score, the smaller the direct priming effect). These results are consistent with predictions made from the enhanced spreading of activation explanatory mechanism, but other alternative accounts are also discussed.

On the interaction between implicit statistical learning and the alternation advantage: Evidence from manual and oculomotor serial reaction time tasks

In this study, we examine how implicit statistical learning (ISL) interacts with the cognitive bias of the alternation advantage in serial reaction time (SRT) tasks. Our aim was to disentangle perceptual from motor aspects of learning, as well as to shed light on the cognitive sources of this alternation effect. We developed a manual (Study 1) and an oculomotor (Study 2) two-choice SRT task, with visual stimuli following the regularities of two binary artificial grammars (Fibonacci and its modification Skip). While these grammars share some deterministic transitional regularities, they differ in their probabilistic transitional regularities and distributional properties. The pattern of manual RTs in Study 1 provide evidence for ISL, showing that subjects learned the deterministic and probabilistic transitions in the two grammars. We also found a bias toward alternation (vs. repetition) in correspondence to non-deterministic points, regardless of their statistical properties in the grammars. Study 2 provides further evidence for both ISL and the alternation advantage, in terms of shorter manual RTs and higher accuracy rates of anticipatory eye movements. Saccadic responses preceding stimulus onset allow us to argue for the perceptual nature of ISL: participants detected regularities in the string by forming S-S associations based on the sequence of the perceived stimuli. Moreover, we propose that shifts in visuospatial attention preceding oculomotor programming play a role in the occurrence of the alternation advantage, and that such an effect is driven by the spatial location of the stimulus. These findings are also discussed with respect to the presence of two (possibly interacting) parsing strategies: statistical generalizations on the string vs. local hierarchical reconstruction.

Dissociating language switching from executive control in bilinguals with MCI

Bilingual language control is a dynamic cognitive system that enables individuals to effectively manage language use and prevent interference when switching between languages. Research indicates that certain neurodegenerative conditions may influence language-switching abilities or hinder the suppression of cross-language interference. However, it remains uncertain whether neurodegeneration primarily affecting mesial temporal structures, such as Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI), impacts lexical retrieval in dual-language naming conditions. To investigate this, we assessed early and highly proficient Catalan-Spanish bilinguals with MCI (n = 28) and age-matched older adults without MCI (n = 40) in a language-switching task. Additionally, to explore the domain specificity of language control deficits, participants completed four executive control (EC) tasks: task switching, n-back, Spatial Stroop, and flanker task. Results indicated that MCI patients exhibited larger switch costs (switch minus repeat trials) compared to older adults while showing similar mixing costs (repeat minus single trials). In the non-linguistic control domain, MCI patients performed significantly worse than older adults only in the n-back task and displayed slower performance in the task-switching task. However, the regression analysis model incorporating the performance of non-linguistic tasks as predictors of language switching performance did not yield statistically significant results. These findings suggest that reactive control, which involves bottom-up, transient, and stimulus-driven processes, might be independently affected from proactive control, defined as a top-down and sustained control process. Nonetheless, the presence of language control deficits is not necessarily linked to deficits in EC, indicating that these two control domains may not entirely overlap.

The renewal reducing effect of unpaired unconditional stimuli presented during extinction is not specific to the unconditional stimulus used during acquisition

Presenting unpaired unconditional stimuli (US) during extinction training reduces the renewal of conditional fear due to context change. The present study investigated whether this reduced return of fear is specific to the aversive US presented during acquisition or can also be observed after extinction with unpaired presentations of another aversive or of a non-aversive US. Using an ABA renewal paradigm that trained extinction in a context different from that of the acquisition, renewal and re-acquisition test phases, participants received five unpaired presentations of either the aversive US used during acquisition (Group Aversive-Same), an aversive US not presented during acquisition (Group Aversive-Different) or a non-aversive US (Group Non-aversive) during extinction training. Renewal of electrodermal conditional responses was observed in group Non-aversive, but not in groups Aversive-Same or Aversive-Different. Re-acquisition did not differ across the groups. These results are consistent with a valenced arousal account to explain the effects of unpaired presentations of the US during extinction training which would suggest that extinction learning is enhanced under conditions of increased aversive arousal.

Transposed-character effects during learning to read: When does letter and non-letter strings processing become different?

Efficient reading requires the association of different letter identities with their positions in the written word. This leads to the development of a specialized mechanism for encoding flexible location-invariant letter positions through learning to read. In this study, we investigated not only the emergence and development of this position coding mechanism but also whether this mechanism is a consequence of the orthographic code (i.e., letter specific) or inherent to generic visual object recognition. To do so, the same-different matching task was used with children from Grade 1 to Grade 5 (Experiment 1) and with adults (Experiment 2). In both experiments, reference and target stimuli were composed of four-character strings (consonants, digits, and geometrical forms) and could be identical or different by transposing or substituting two internal characters. Analyses of response times, error rates, and discriminability indices revealed a transposed-character effect regardless of the type of characters in Grades 1 and 2, whereas transposed-character effects were greater for letter strings than for familiar non-letter strings in Grade 3, lasting up to Grade 5 as well as in adults. These results provided evidence in favor of a flexible position coding mechanism that is specific to letter strings, which emerges with reading experience as a consequence of parallel processing of letters within words.

Thinking about thinking: A longitudinal investigation linking developments in metacognition, inhibitory control, and theory of mind

This longitudinal study tracked the developmental relations linking metacognition, theory of mind, and inhibitory control in 52 children across a 1.5-year interval, beginning at 3 or 4 years of age. Metacognition and inhibitory control emerged before theory of mind and predicted subsequent theory of mind competence. Moreover, there was evidence of developmental mediation, whereby metacognition predicted inhibitory control, which predicted theory of mind. We suggest that metacognitive self-reflection may provide the "developmental enrichment" necessary to think about thinking, and when inhibitory control is sufficiently developed this thinking can be extended to complex reasoning about own and other minds.

Exploration of stress reactivity and fear conditioning on intrusive memory frequency in a conditioned-intrusion paradigm

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES

The conditioned-intrusion paradigm was designed to provide insight into the relationship between fear conditioning and intrusive memory formation, which is relevant to understanding posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms and treatment. However, boundary conditions of this new paradigm have not been explored and it is currently not known whether findings from this work are valid in a clinical context.

METHODS

In the current study, we explored the relationship between stress reactivity to trauma film clips, usual exposure to violent media, renewal of fear conditioning using skin conductance as well as subjective ratings, and the effect of shock versus film clip during conditioning on the frequency of intrusive memories. An adapted fear conditioning paradigm using trauma clips as unconditional stimuli was used, and participants subsequently reported intrusive memories of the trauma clips.

RESULTS

Skin conductance responses to conditioned stimuli paired with shocks and film clips were significantly higher than conditioned stimuli paired with film clips alone. Subjective stress reactivity, previous exposure to violent media, and film valence rating were associated with the frequency of intrusive memories. No aspects of fear conditioning were associated with intrusive memories, and factor analysis suggested the fear conditioning and stress related to film clip viewing were mostly separate constructs. Similarly, content and triggers of intrusive memories were usually film-clip related rather than conditional stimulus related.

LIMITATIONS

We did not observe strong conditioning effects of the unconditional stimuli to conditional stimuli, which were shapes rather than high frequency stimuli such as faces.

CONCLUSIONS

These findings provide potential boundary conditions for this paradigm and suggest multiple ways in which the validity of the paradigm can be tested in the future.

Is adaptation involved in bilingual language production? A fresh look at the assumptions motivating potential bilingual-monolingual differences in adaptive control

One of the hottest debates in psychology-whether bilingual-monolingual differences exist in cognitive control-is at a stalemate. Here we propose that the stalemate could be broken by shifting the research focus from whether those differences emerge to why they should. We offer an example of this approach by testing the assumption of current theories of language-control associations that adaptive control is involved in bilingualism, specifically language production. Unbalanced Italian-English bilinguals living in the Milan area completed a Stroop task in their L1 and a picture-naming task in their L2. Both tasks involved a manipulation of the proportion of the type of stimuli that are assumed to require control, i.e., incongruent stimuli in the Stroop task (e.g., the word RED written in blue) and pictures with noncognate names in the picture-naming task (e.g., the picture of a horse, whose Italian name, "cavallo," has a very different pronunciation). Both confirmatory and exploratory analyses showed a clear dissociation between the two tasks, with the Stroop task producing an interactive pattern indicative of adaptive-control involvement and the picture-naming task failing to produce a similar one. These results suggest that adaptive control may not be involved in bilingual language production and, therefore, may not produce bilingual-monolingual differences in cognitive control. It is hoped that this research will inspire a change in the study of language-control associations, pushing future research efforts towards grounding the assumptions for those associations in empirical evidence.

Signalling unpaired unconditional stimuli during extinction does not impair their effect to reduce renewal of conditional fear

Presenting unpaired unconditional stimuli (US) during extinction training reduces the renewal of conditional fear due to context change and slows re-acquisition. The present study investigated whether this reduced return of fear is mediated by Pavlovian inhibitory conditioning to the conditional stimulus paired with the US during acquisition (CS+) that is acquired when this stimulus is presented without the US in an excitatory extinction context. Using an ABA renewal paradigm that trained extinction in a context different from acquisition and renewal test, participants either received no USs (Standard), five unsignalled US presentations (Unsignalled) or five presentations of the US preceded by a novel, third CS (Signalled) during extinction training. Extinction was followed by tests for renewal and re-acquisition. Replicating previous results, renewal of electrodermal conditional responses was observed in group Standard, but not in group Unsignalled. Signalling the additional USs, and thus reducing context conditioning and the potential for inhibitory conditioning, did not reduce their effect in that renewal was absent in group Signalled. These results are inconsistent with an inhibitory conditioning account of the effects of unpaired US presentations during extinction. A trial sequence learning account or an arousal account may explain the effects of unpaired presentations of the US during extinction.

Visual search of illusory contours: The role of illusory contour clarity

Illusory contours demonstrate an important function of the visual system-object inference from incomplete boundaries, which can arise from factors such as low luminance, camouflage, or occlusion. Illusory contours can be perceived with varying degrees of clarity depending on the features of their inducers. The present study aimed to evaluate whether illusory contour clarity influences visual search efficiency. Experiment 1 compared visual search performance for Kanizsa illusory stimuli and nonillusory inducer stimuli when manipulating inducer size as a clarity factor. Experiment 2 examined the effects of illusory contour clarity on visual search by manipulating the number of rings with missing arcs (i.e., line ends) comprising the inducers, for both illusory and nonillusory stimuli. To investigate whether surface alterations had an impact on visual search in Experiment 1, Experiment 3 examined search performance for Kanizsa-like stimuli formed from "smoothed" inducers compared with standard Kanizsa figures. The results of Experiments 1 and 2 indicated that while Kanizsa produced inefficient search, this was not contingent on the clarity of the illusory contours. Experiment 3 suggested that surface alterations of Kanizsa figures did impact visual search performance. Together, the results indicated that illusory contour clarity did not have much bearing on search performance. In certain conditions, Kanizsa figures even facilitated search compared with nonillusory stimuli, suggesting that rather than contour inference, surface features might have greater relevance in guiding visual attention.

Visual letter similarity effects in Korean word recognition: The role of distinctive strokes

While the impact of visual letter similarity on word recognition in the Latin script has been extensively documented using masked priming techniques, research into non-Latin scripts such as Hangul remains limited. Hangul letters are systematically formed by adding one or two strokes to the base form, creating a pool of visually similar letters in the inventory. This study investigated the role of added distinctive strokes in word recognition by employing two experimental tasks: a lexical decision task (Experiment 1) and a same-different word matching task (Experiment 2). The results of Experiment 1 revealed a visual similarity effect only for primes without distinctive strokes, indicating an asymmetry in the priming effects. Conversely, Experiment 2 showed that visually similar primes facilitated target word processing regardless of the presence of the distinctive stroke, indicating no asymmetric priming effect. These findings suggest initial uncertainty of letter identity during Korean word processing and the processing of distinctive strokes in differentiating visually similar words.

The Relationship Between Auditory and Cognitive Processing Abilities in Children With Specific Learning Disorders

PURPOSE

Specific learning disorder (SLD) refers to a pattern of learning difficulties characterized by problems with reading, writing, or mathematics that are not solely due to intellectual disabilities, sensory deficits, or other neurological or medical conditions. It is a neurodevelopmental disorder that affects the processing and organizing of information. Auditory and cognitive processing is affected in most children with SLD, although to a varying degree. However, it is still unclear whether there exists any relationship between auditory and cognitive processing disorders in children with SLD.

METHOD

We tested 1,259 children, of whom 77 were diagnosed as SLD and 30 age- and gender-matched typically developing (TD) children were selected. Auditory processing abilities were assessed for auditory discrimination, pattern perception, closure, temporal processing, binaural integration, and separation using standardized tests and procedures. Cognitive processing was measured using working memory, short-term memory, and attention tasks.

RESULTS

The test data of the TD children were taken as the norm. Based on the normative range, children with SLD were divided into those with auditory processing disorder (APD; n = 31) and those without APD (n = 46). A regression model highlighted a robust positive relationship between APD and cognitive processing, particularly pronounced in SLD with APD children. The results are discussed, supporting the information-processing theory of learning disability and highlighting a complex loop between auditory and cognitive deficits in children with SLD.

CONCLUSIONS

The findings underscore the critical role of both auditory and cognitive abilities in children with SLD. Tailoring the intervention to break the loop is recommended, which may improve learning abilities more effectively.

Are subjective language complaints in memory clinic patients informative?

To diagnose mild cognitive impairment, it is crucial to understand whether subjective cognitive complaints reflect objective cognitive deficits. This question has mostly been investigated in the memory domain, with mixed results. Our study was one of the first to address it for language. Participants were 55-to-93-year-old memory clinic patients (n = 163). They filled in a questionnaire about subjective language and memory complaints and performed two language tasks (naming-by-definition and sentence comprehension). Greater language complaints were associated with two language measures, thus showing a moderate value in predicting language performance. Greater relative severity of language versus memory complaints was a better predictor, associated with three language performance measures. Surprisingly, greater memory complaints were associated with better naming, probably due to anosognosia in further disease progression or personality-related factors. Our findings highlight the importance of relative complaint severity across domains and, clinically, call for developing self-assessment questionnaires asking specific questions about multiple cognitive functions.

Mind the suffix: Pseudoword processing in children and adults

Previous evidence has shown that pseudowords made up of real morphemes take more time to process and generate more errors than pseudowords without morphemes in a lexical decision task. The explanation for these results is controversial because two possible arguments may be posited; the first is related to the morphological composition of the stimuli, and the second is related to the larger semantic interpretability of pseudowords with morphemes in comparison with pseudowords without morphemes (a semantic-based explanation). To disentangle this issue, we conducted an experiment with 92 children and 42 adults. For this purpose, a lexical decision task was implemented, controlling for semantic interpretability while manipulating the morphological status of pseudowords. The results show that the morphological composition of pseudowords generates larger latencies and more errors than pseudowords without morphemes, thereby corroborating that morphemes are activated during pseudoword processing even in the case of young readers.

Contrasting one's share of the shared life space: Comparing the roles of metacognition and inhibitory control in the development of theory of mind among Scottish and Japanese children

Cultural comparisons suggest that an understanding of other minds may develop sooner in independent versus interdependent settings, and vice versa for inhibitory control. From a western lens, this pattern might be considered paradoxical, since there is a robust positive relationship between theory of mind (ToM) and inhibitory control in western samples. In independent cultures, an emphasis on one's own mind offers a clear route to 'simulate' other minds, and inhibitory control may be required to set aside one's own perspective to represent the perspective of others. However, in interdependent cultures, social norms are considered the key catalyst for behaviour, and metacognitive reflection and/or suppression of one's own perspective may not be necessary. The cross-cultural generalizability of the western developmental route to ToM is therefore questionable. The current study used an age-matched cross-sectional sample to contrast 56 Japanese and 56 Scottish 3-6-year-old's metacognition, ToM and inhibitory control skills. We replicated the expected cultural patterns for ToM (Scotland > Japan) and inhibitory control (Japan > Scotland). Supporting western developmental enrichment theories, we find that inhibitory control and metacognition predict theory of mind competence in Scotland. However, these variables cannot be used to predict Japanese ToM. This confirms that individualistic mechanisms do not capture the developmental mechanism underlying ToM in Japan, highlighting a bias in our understanding of ToM development. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: We replicate an independent cultural advantage for theory of mind (Scotland > Japan) and interdependent advantage for inhibitory control (Japan > Scotland). From a western lens, this pattern might be considered paradoxical, since there is a robust positive relationship between theory of mind and inhibitory control. Supporting western developmental enrichment theories, we find that the development of inhibitory control mediates the link between metacognition and theory of mind in Scotland. However, this model does not predict Japanese theory of mind, highlighting an individualistic bias in our mechanistic understanding of theory of mind development.

A Cantonese Audio-Visual Emotional Speech (CAVES) dataset

We present a Cantonese emotional speech dataset that is suitable for use in research investigating the auditory and visual expression of emotion in tonal languages. This unique dataset consists of auditory and visual recordings of ten native speakers of Cantonese uttering 50 sentences each in the six basic emotions plus neutral (angry, happy, sad, surprise, fear, and disgust). The visual recordings have a full HD resolution of 1920 × 1080 pixels and were recorded at 50 fps. The important features of the dataset are outlined along with the factors considered when compiling the dataset. A validation study of the recorded emotion expressions was conducted in which 15 native Cantonese perceivers completed a forced-choice emotion identification task. The variability of the speakers and the sentences was examined by testing the degree of concordance between the intended and the perceived emotion. We compared these results with those of other emotion perception and evaluation studies that have tested spoken emotions in languages other than Cantonese. The dataset is freely available for research purposes.

The relationship between numerical magnitude processing and math anxiety, and their joint effect on adult math performance, varied by indicators of numerical tasks

According to the hypothesis of Maloney et al. (Cognition 114(2):293-297, 2010. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2009.09.013), math anxiety is related to deficits in numerical magnitude processing, which in turn compromises the development of advanced math skills. Because previous studies on this topic are contradictory, which may be due to methodological differences in the measurement of numerical magnitude processing, we tested Maloney et al.'s hypothesis using different tasks and their indicators: numerical magnitude processing (symbolic and non-symbolic comparison tasks: accuracy, reaction time, numerical ratio, distance and size effects, and Weber fraction; number line estimation task: estimation error), math anxiety (combined scores of learning, testing, math problem solving, and general math anxiety), and math performance. The results of our study conducted on 119 young adults mostly support the hypothesis proposed by Maloney et al. that deficiency in symbolic magnitude processing is related to math anxiety, but the relationship between non-symbolic processes and math anxiety was opposite to the assumptions. Moreover, the results indicate that estimation processes (but not comparison processes) and math anxiety are related to math performance in adults. Finally, high math anxiety moderated the relationship between reaction time in the symbolic comparison task, reaction time in the non-symbolic comparison task, numerical ratio effect in the symbolic comparison task, and math performance. Because the results of the joint effect of numerical magnitude processing and math anxiety on math performance were inconsistent, this part of the hypothesis is called into question.

Attention shifts in the spatial cueing paradigm reflect direct influences of experience and not top-down goals

The spatial cueing effect (SCE) that is elicited by informative spatial cues serves as an empirical marker of attention shifts in the spatial cueing paradigm, and it has been widely interpreted to reflect a relatively pure form of top-down attention control. Contrary to this interpretation, the present study examined the extent to which the magnitude of the SCE could be due to learned associations between specific cues and shifts of attention to the corresponding location, while attempting to track potential changes in participants' task goals across the experiment. This was accomplished by using a novel two-choice, spatial cueing paradigm in which participants chose between two spatial validity contexts. One spatial validity context always involved a 25%-valid (uninformative) arrow cue - called the "test" context; whereas the alternate context - called the "inducing" context - was varied between groups. In particular, associations between specific cues and shifts of attention to the corresponding cued location were perfectly predictable in the "strong inducing" context (100%-valid arrow cues) and imperfectly predictable in the "weak inducing" context (70%-valid arrow cues). Consistent with the experience-dependent account, the results showed that the magnitude of the SCE observed in the test context increased as an individual's experience with the strong inducing context increased. Furthermore, these context effects were observed using both overlearned (arrow) and arbitrary (number) cues, as well as when eye movements were controlled. Altogether, these findings suggest that the magnitude of the SCE can be influenced directly by experience, and not by the top-down goals of the individual.

Finding a City Name in a Traffic Sign: Effects of Word Case and Visual Motion

OBJECTIVES

To investigate the word recognition effects of the use of all-uppercase (e.g., VALENCIA) or titled-case (e.g., Valencia) for city names in traffic signs, controlling for word size, and comparing stationary and dynamic viewing situations.

BACKGROUND

Prior studies provide mixed evidence regarding the effects of word case on the recognition of city names in traffic signs. Moreover, the evidence on the potential impact of visual motion on these effects is scarce.

METHOD

We carried out an experimental study using simulated traffic signs. The task was to indicate, for each sign, whether it contained a given city name or not (word search task, 50% positive trials). Visual motion of signs was manipulated as a between-participants factor: stationary (the sign was still) versus dynamic (the sign expanded as if the participant was approaching to it). Word case was manipulated as a within-participants factor: all-uppercase versus two titled-case conditions varying in font size: width-matched titled-case and point size-matched titled-case.

RESULTS

In both the stationary and dynamic conditions, all-uppercase resulted in more incorrect responses and slower latencies than width-matched titled-case. When compared to point size-matched titled-case, all-uppercase produced slower correct responses in the stationary condition, whereas faster in the dynamic condition.

CONCLUSION

Other factors being equal, all-uppercase city names will be recognized worse than their titled-case versions in traffic signs, both in stationary and dynamic situations.

APPLICATION

Results in the current experimental study would be of interest in the design of traffic signs and other circumstances in which text is presented in motion.

Automatic phonological access among bilinguals with cross-script languages

This study investigated the hypothesis of nonselective access to phonological representations in an integrated lexicon across logographic and alphabetic writing systems among Chinese L1 (first language)-English L2 (second language) bilinguals. We employed three experiments to test this hypothesis, including a lexical decision task (LDT) and a word naming task in Experiments 1 and 2 using the masked priming paradigm, and a self-paced sentence reading task in Experiment 3. Results from the LDT and the word naming task showed a significant homophone priming effect from L1 to L2, but not from L2 to L1. In the sentence reading task, we compared processing time between homophone error words and control words in the critical and spill-over regions. A slower processing effect in the homophone condition was observed in the spill-over region. Overall, these findings suggest that phonological priming occurs across a logographic and an alphabetic script in different tasks, whether reading isolated words or sentences. Bilingual reading involves an integrated bilingual lexicon that is independent of script similarity.

Facial mimicry interference reduces working memory accuracy for facial emotion expressions

Facial mimicry, the tendency to imitate facial expressions of other individuals, has been shown to play a critical role in the processing of emotion expressions. At the same time, there is evidence suggesting that its role might change when the cognitive demands of the situation increase. In such situations, understanding another person is dependent on working memory. However, whether facial mimicry influences working memory representations for facial emotion expressions is not fully understood. In the present study, we experimentally interfered with facial mimicry by using established behavioral procedures, and investigated how this interference influenced working memory recall for facial emotion expressions. Healthy, young adults (N = 36) performed an emotion expression n-back paradigm with two levels of working memory load, low (1-back) and high (2-back), and three levels of mimicry interference: high, low, and no interference. Results showed that, after controlling for block order and individual differences in the perceived valence and arousal of the stimuli, the high level of mimicry interference impaired accuracy when working memory load was low (1-back) but, unexpectedly, not when load was high (2-back). Working memory load had a detrimental effect on performance in all three mimicry conditions. We conclude that facial mimicry might support working memory for emotion expressions when task load is low, but that the supporting effect possibly is reduced when the task becomes more cognitively challenging.

Motor imagery drives the effects of combined action observation and motor imagery on corticospinal excitability for coordinative lower-limb actions

Combined action observation and motor imagery (AOMI) facilitates corticospinal excitability (CSE) and may potentially induce plastic-like changes in the brain in a similar manner to physical practice. This study used transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to explore changes in CSE for AOMI of coordinative lower-limb actions. Twenty-four healthy adults completed two baseline (BLH, BLNH) and three AOMI conditions, where they observed a knee extension while simultaneously imagining the same action (AOMICONG), plantarflexion (AOMICOOR-FUNC), or dorsiflexion (AOMICOOR-MOVE). Motor evoked potential (MEP) amplitudes were recorded as a marker of CSE for all conditions from two knee extensor, one dorsi flexor, and two plantar flexor muscles following TMS to the right leg representation of the left primary motor cortex. A main effect for experimental condition was reported for all three muscle groups. MEP amplitudes were significantly greater in the AOMICONG condition compared to the BLNH condition (p = .04) for the knee extensors, AOMICOOR-FUNC condition compared to the BLH condition (p = .03) for the plantar flexors, and AOMICOOR-MOVE condition compared to the two baseline conditions for the dorsi flexors (ps ≤ .01). The study findings support the notion that changes in CSE are driven by the imagined actions during coordinative AOMI.

Does effort increase or decrease reward valuation? Considerations from cognitive dissonance theory

The present research tested the effect of manipulated perceived control (over obtaining the outcomes) and effort on reward valuation using the event-related potential known as the Reward Positivity (RewP). This test was conducted in an attempt to integrate two research literatures with opposite findings: Effort justification occurs when high effort leads to high reward valuation, whereas effort discounting occurs when high effort leads to low reward valuation. Based on an examination of past methods used in these literatures, we predicted that perceived control and effort would interactively influence RewP. Consistent with the effort justification literature (cognitive dissonance theory), when individuals have high perceived control, high effort should lead to more reward valuation than low effort should. Consistent with the effort discounting literature, when individuals have low perceived control, low effort should lead to more reward valuation than high effort should. Results supported these interactive and integrative predictions.

Representational level matters for tone-word recognition: Evidence from form priming

In a form priming experiment with a lexical decision task, we investigated whether the representational structure of lexical tone in lexical memory impacts spoken-word recognition in Mandarin. Target monosyllabic words were preceded by five types of primes: (1) the same real words (/lun4/-/lun4/), (2) real words with only tone contrasts (/lun2/-/lun4/), (3) unrelated real words (/pie3/-/lun4/), (4) pseudowords with only tone contrasts (*/lun3/-/lun4/), and (5) unrelated pseudowords (*/tai3/-/lun4/). We found a facilitation effect in target words with pseudoword primes that share the segmental syllable but contrast in tones (*/lun3/-/lun4/). Moreover, no evident form priming effect was observed in target words primed by real words with only tone contrasts (/lun2/-/lun4/). These results suggest that the recognition of a tone word is influenced by the representational level of tone accessed by the prime word. The distinctive priming patterns between real-word and pseudoword primes are best explained by the connectionist models of tone-word recognition, which assume a hierarchical representation of lexical tone.

Does rotation eliminate masked priming effects for Japanese kanji words?

A key issue in recent visual word recognition literature is whether text rotation disrupts the early stages of orthographic processing. Previous research found no masked repetition priming effect when primes were rotated ≥90° in alphabetic languages. The present study investigated the impact of text rotation using logographic (two-character Japanese kanji) words. In Experiment 1, we conducted a masked repetition priming lexical decision experiment with upright and 180° rotated primes. The rotated primes produced a significant priming effect, although the effect was smaller than the upright primes. In Experiment 2, we further examined the effectiveness of 180° rotated primes in two different conditions: the whole words were rotated vs. each constituent character was rotated at their own positions. Both prime types produced significant priming effects of similar magnitudes. These findings suggest that orthographic processing is more robust against text rotation in logographic languages than in alphabetic languages.

Between-word processing and text-level skills contributing to fluent reading of (non)word lists and text

Recent studies have shown that fluent reading of word lists requires additional skills beyond efficient recognition of individual words. This study examined the specific contribution of between-word processing (sequential processing efficiency, indexed by serial digit RAN) and subskills related to text-level processing (vocabulary and syntactic skills) to a wide range of reading fluency tasks, while accounting for within-word processes (i.e., those involved in phonological recoding, orthographic decoding, and sight word reading). The sample included 139 intermediate-level (Grade 3, n = 78) and more advanced (Grade 5, n = 61) readers of Dutch. Fluency measures included simple and complex lists of words and nonwords, and a complex text. Data were analyzed through hierarchical regressions and commonality analyses. The findings confirm the importance of between-word processing for fluent reading and extend evidence from simple word lists and texts to complex word lists and texts, and simple and complex lists of nonwords. The findings hold for both intermediate-level and more advanced readers and, as expected, the contribution of between-word processing increased with reading-skill level. Effects of vocabulary were generally absent, aside from a small effect on text reading fluency in Grade 3. No effects of syntactic skills were found, even in more advanced readers. The results support the idea that once efficient individual word recognition is in place, further fluency development is driven by more efficient between-word processing. The findings also confirm that vocabulary may be less prominent in processing mechanisms underlying fluent word identification in transparent orthographies, across reading levels.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11145-024-10533-8.

When unpleasantness meets feminines: a behavioural study on gender agreement and emotionality

The emotional connotation of words is known to affect word and sentence processing. However, the when and how of the interaction between emotion and grammar are still up for debate. In this behavioural experiment, 35 female university students read noun phrases (NPs) composed by a determiner and a noun in their L1 (Spanish), and were asked to indicate if the NPs were grammatically correct (elmasc camareromasc) or not (*lafem tornillomasc; i.e. a gender agreement task). The type of gender (arbitrary/natural), the emotionality (unpleasant/neutral), and the gender class (feminine/masculine) of the nouns were manipulated. We found an overall grammaticality effect, responses being faster in grammatically correct trials than in incorrect ones. However, the effects of emotionality and gender class varied depending on gender type. For arbitrary gender, the grammaticality effect was greater in feminine nouns than in masculine nouns and independent of emotionality. For natural gender, the grammaticality effect interacted with gender class and emotionality, this effect only emerging in unpleasant stimuli for feminine nouns. Our results reveal that it is possible to find emotional effects at the behavioural level in an intrinsically grammatical task. Yet, these effects depend on gender properties like the type of gender and the gender class.

Comparing word recognition in simplified and traditional Chinese: A megastudy approach

Although it is well established that the visual complexity of a written word can influence processing, it is far less clear from a cross-script perspective, whether the overall visual complexity of the entire written lexicon also affects word recognition. This question can be answered with the data in megastudy of lexical decision in Chinese (MELD-CH), which was developed with over 800 participants responding to 12,587 simplified and traditional Chinese words. The results showed that lexical decision was slower but more accurate in simplified Chinese, which has about 22.5% less strokes, than traditional Chinese. This pattern could not be explained by a speed-accuracy trade-off. Moderate correlations were found in response times and error rates between the two scripts, indicating considerable overlap in processing despite the script difference. In addition, (generalised) linear mixed-effects modelling was used to examine whether the simplified and traditional Chinese groups differed in sensitivity towards linguistic variables. The results showed that the effects of word frequency, word length, and number of strokes were stronger in recognising simplified Chinese words, whereas the effects of number of words formed and number of meanings of the constituent characters were stronger in traditional Chinese. These results suggested that the visual-perceptual processing demands of simplified Chinese might force readers to focus more on local properties of the words, making them less sensitive to global properties that are defined over the entire lexicon. Finally, limitations and alternative explanations of the results were discussed.

Sand, Sandpaper, and Sandwiches: Evidence From a Masked Compound Priming Task in L1 and L2 Speakers of English

This study follows the footsteps of Jonathan Grainger and colleagues by investigating compound processing in English monolinguals and Chinese-English bilinguals using the masked primed lexical decision paradigm. First language (L1) and second language (L2) speakers responded to a semantically transparent compound (e.g., snowball-SNOW), a semantically opaque compound (honeymoon-HONEY), and an orthographic control condition (e.g., sandwich-SAND). Results revealed significantly larger L1 priming effects in transparent and opaque compared to the control condition (Experiment 1A), whereas no significant differences across conditions were observed in L2 speakers (Experiment 1B). We argue that L1 populations are sensitive to morphological structure during the early stages of compound processing, whereas L2 speakers, in particular those with lower levels of language proficiency, employ a form-based type of analysis. Findings are interpreted within the framework of recent monolingual and bilingual models of complex word recognition.

A dataset of behavioral measures on Chinese word production in picture naming

Most studies of language production have been conducted with speakers of alphabetic languages, but relatively little research has examined languages with non-alphabetic scripts, such as Chinese. Moreover, most work on language word production has investigated phonological output processing (i.e., speaking), whereas comparatively little research has focused on orthographic output, such as writing and typing. Work on non-alphabetic languages and/or written production is particularly promising, given that it speaks to universalities vs. specificity in terms of architectures and mechanisms underlying language processing across all world languages and modalities. The current article reports a dataset of word production in Chinese with spoken and written responses, which includes reaction times of 193,851 trials of naming 403 pictures obtained from 667 participants across 23 Chinese word production experiments. All data were collected in the same experimental environment and from participants with relatively homogenous characteristics, using the same protocols and parameters. The dataset enables researchers to explore how Chinese speakers produce spoken and/or written words, and to identify language-specific features underlying word production.

Lexically-specific syntactic restrictions in second-language speakers

In two structural priming experiments, we investigated the representations of lexically-specific syntactic restrictions of English verbs for highly proficient and immersed second language (L2) speakers of English. We considered the interplay of two possible mechanisms: generalization from the first language (L1) and statistical learning within the L2 (both of abstract structure and of lexically-specific information). In both experiments, L2 speakers with either Germanic or Romance languages as L1 were primed to produce dispreferred double-object structures involving non-alternating dative verbs. Priming occurred from ungrammatical double-object primes involving different non-alternating verbs (Experiment 1) and from grammatical primes involving alternating verbs (Experiment 2), supporting abstract statistical learning within the L2. However, we found no differences between L1-Germanic speakers (who have the double object structure in their L1) and L1-Romance speakers (who do not), inconsistent with the prediction for between-group differences of the L1-generalization account. Additionally, L2 speakers in Experiment 2 showed a lexical boost: There was stronger priming after (dispreferred) non-alternating same-verb double object primes than after (grammatical) alternating different-verb primes. Such lexically-driven persistence was also shown by L1 English speakers (Ivanova et al., 2012a) and may underlie statistical learning of lexically-dependent structural regularities. We conclude that lexically-specific syntactic restrictions in highly proficient and immersed L2 speakers are shaped by statistical learning (both abstract and lexically-specific) within the L2, but not by generalization from the L1.

Fast habituation to semantic interference generated by taboo connotation in reading aloud

The recognition of taboo words - i.e. socially inappropriate words - has been repeatedly associated to semantic interference phenomena, with detrimental effects on the performance in the ongoing task. In the present study, we investigated taboo interference in the context of reading aloud, a task configuration which prompts the overt violation of conventional sociolinguistic norms by requiring the explicit utterance of taboo items. We assessed whether this form of semantic interference is handled by habituative or cognitive control processes. In addition to the reading aloud task, participants performed a vocal Stroop task featuring different conditions to dissociate semantic, task, and response conflict. Taboo words were read slower than non-taboo words, but this effect was subject to a quick habituation, with a decreasing interference over the course of trials, which allowed participants to selectively attend to goal-relevant information. In the Stroop task, only semantic conflict was significantly reduced by habituation. These findings suggest that semantic properties can be quickly and flexibly weighed on the basis of contextual appropriateness, thus characterising semantic processing as a flexible and goal-directed component of reading aloud.

Hemispheric lateralization of language processing: insights from network-based symptom mapping and patient subgroups

The hemispheric laterality of language processing has become a hot topic in modern neuroscience. Although most previous studies have reported left-lateralized language processing, other studies found it to be bilateral. A previous neurocomputational model has proposed a unified framework to explain that the above discrepancy might be from healthy and patient individuals. This model posits an initial symmetry but imbalanced capacity in language processing for healthy individuals, with this imbalance contributing to language recovery disparities following different hemispheric injuries. The present study investigated this model by analyzing the lateralization patterns of language subnetworks across multiple attributes with a group of 99 patients (compared to nonlanguage processing) and examining the lateralization patterns of language subnetworks in subgroups with damage to different hemispheres. Subnetworks were identified using a whole-brain network-based lesion-symptom mapping method, and the lateralization index was quantitatively measured. We found that all the subnetworks in language processing were left-lateralized, while subnetworks in nonlanguage processing had different lateralization patterns. Moreover, diverse hemisphere-injury subgroups exhibited distinct language recovery effects. These findings provide robust support for the proposed neurocomputational model of language processing.

Unraveling the social hierarchy: Exploring behavioral and neural dynamics in shaping inhibitory control

Inhibitory control is crucial for regulating emotions, suppressing biases, and inhibiting inappropriate responses in social interactions. Social rank, or perceived position in the hierarchy, can influence inhibitory control, with high-rank individuals requiring it to regulate dominant behavior and low-rank individuals requiring it to regulate emotional reactions or avoid submissive behaviors. Furthermore, research suggests that social status can affect the neural mechanisms underlying inhibitory control, leading to differences in abilities and strategies based on perceived rank. In this study, we investigated the effects of social rank on inhibitory control using a dot estimation task to prime social hierarchy. Subsequently, we assessed the inhibitory control of the participants using a Go/Nogo task with photos of individuals in different social ranks. The study recruited a total of 43 students (22 males and 21 females), with a mean age of 26.8 years (SD=4.08). We measured both behavioral (reaction time and response accuracy) and electrophysiological (N200 and P300 event-related potentials) responses to investigate the neural correlates of inhibitory control. Results showed that participants responded slower to lower-rank individuals but had higher accuracy when inhibiting their response to them. The N200 amplitude was greater when presented with higher ranks stimuli in Go trials, indicating greater conflict monitoring, while the P300 amplitude was significantly higher in Nogo trials compared to Go trials. These findings suggest that social rank can influence inhibitory control and highlight the importance of considering the impact of social hierarchy in social interactions.

On the rapid use of verb-control information in sentence processing

A central topic in psycholinguistics is the study of how and when the parser assigns an antecedent to referentially-dependent elements. One such referentially-dependent element is the null subject of non-finite clauses. The aim of the present study was to examine the role of verb control information in the assignment of an antecedent to such a null subject. The results so far are inconclusive. Some authors argue that verb control information has a late influence, whereas others argue that such verb-specific information has a very rapid influence. We report a self-paced reading study in Spanish in which verb type (subject vs. object control) and grammaticality (grammatical vs. ungrammatical) were manipulated. The grammaticality manipulation was carried out by introducing a person anomaly at the infinitive itself, and not at a later word (e.g., "Te prometí/aconsejé adelgazarme/adelgazarte cinco quilos en un mes." Literal translation, "I to you promised/advised to losemyself/yourself five kilos in a month"). With such a manipulation we can examine whether at the first possible point (i.e., the infinitive) verb control information was used to assign the correct antecedent (i.e., the subject in sentences with a subject-control verb, and the object in sentences with an object-control verb) to PRO. The results showed that at the infinitive there was a main effect of grammaticality, meaning that the correct antecedent has already been assigned to PRO. The present findings are consistent with models that assume that verb-specific information plays an important role in the initial stages of sentence processing.