Journal of memory and language最新文献

Readers progressed through a sentence in the Maze task (Forster et al., 2009), deciding at each word between a sensical and a non-sensical continuation. Contexts presented before these sentences manipulated whether words were linguistically focused and whether they were given or new (Experiment 1); focused targets were read more slowly even when they were given, and new targets were read slowly in general. This both replicated earlier results in which slowdowns were found in the reading of focus (Benatar and Clifton, 2014; Birch and Rayner, 1997; Lowder and Gordon, 2015), and demonstrated that focus slowdowns are not reducible to newness. To clarify earlier results in which speed-ups were found on focused words (Birch and Rayner, 2010; Morris and Folk, 1998), contexts manipulated whether contrastive alternatives to focused words were presented with a focus particle (Experiment 2) or in a cleft construction (Experiment 3). Focused targets were read less slowly when a contrastive alternative was present in the context. This effect of contrastive alternatives cannot be reduced to simple semantic associate priming: Contexts also manipulated whether a semantically associated expression was present independently of the presence of a contrastive alternative (Experiment 4). Readers slowed down less when an alternative was present in the context, even when this alternative was not semantically associated to the target. These results indicate that the processing of focus depends on contrastive alternatives, in their interaction with newness, semantic association, and focus construction.

A major strength of computational cognitive models is their capacity to accurately predict empirical data. However, challenges in understanding how complex models work and the risk of overfitting have often been addressed by trading off predictive accuracy with model simplification. Here, we introduce state-of-the-art model analysis techniques to show how a large number of parameters in a cognitive model can be reduced into a smaller set that is simpler to understand and can be used to make more constrained predictions with. As a test case, we created different versions of the Connectionist Dual-Process model (CDP) of reading aloud whose parameters were optimized on seven different databases. The results showed that CDP was not overfit and could predict a large amount of variance across those databases. Indeed, the quantitative performance of CDP was higher than that of previous models in this area. Moreover, sloppy parameter analysis, a mathematical technique used to quantify the effects of different parameters on model performance, revealed that many of the parameters in CDP have very little effect on its performance. This shows that the dynamics of CDP are much simpler than its relatively large number of parameters might suggest. Overall, our study shows that cognitive models with large numbers of parameters do not necessarily overfit the empirical data and that understanding the behavior of complex models is more tractable using appropriate mathematical tools. The same techniques could be applied to many different complex cognitive models whenever appropriate datasets for model optimization exist.

Different speakers often use different names to refer to the same entity (e.g., “woman” vs. “tennis player” for a given woman playing tennis). We study how visual typicality affects variation in naming behavior. We use a novel computational approach to estimate visual typicality from images, and analyze a large dataset containing naming data for realistic images. In contrast to previous work, we take into account the visual properties of both the object and the scene in which it appears; and factor in multiple candidate names. We show that visual typicality mediates competition between candidate names: high competition, induced by the relationship between the visual properties of the object and the visual representations associated to names, predicts higher naming variation. On a methodological level, we demonstrate the potential of using large-scale datasets with realistic images in conjunction with computational methods to shed light on how people name objects.

Cross-linguistically prevalent semantic distinctions are widely assumed to be easier to learn because they reflect natural concepts. Here we propose an alternative, pragmatic perspective that links both the cross-linguistic prevalence and the learnability of semantic distinctions to communicative pressures. We focus on evidentiality (the encoding of the speaker’s information source). Across languages, grammatical evidential systems are more likely to encode indirect sources (especially, reported information) compared to direct sources (e.g., visual perception). On a conceptual account, this seems puzzling, since humans reason naturally about how seeing connects to knowing. On a pragmatic account, however, the predominant encoding of the speaker’s reportative compared to visual information sources can be explained in terms of informativeness (visual access is ubiquitous and potentially more reliable, hence less marked). We tested the pragmatic account in four experiments. Adult English speakers exposed to novel miniature evidential morphological systems consistently showed higher learning rates for systems with a single indirect (reportative) compared to a single direct (visual) evidential morpheme (Experiment 1). This pattern persisted even when participants were given specific cues to the target meanings (Experiment 2) and partly extended to cases where evidential meanings were conveyed through visual, not linguistic, means (Experiment 3). It also persisted when the evidential morphemes had to be learned from different materials (Experiment 4). We conclude that the cross-linguistic bias to mark reportative/indirect over visual/direct sources of information has pragmatic roots that also shape the learnability of evidential semantic distinctions.

A foundational principle of communication is that speakers should offer as much information as required during conversation. Thus, if a speaker offers a statement with limited information (e.g., “I like the candle” when asked about a gift containing a candle and a sweater), the listener often takes the speaker to imply that a more informative statement (“I like the candle and the sweater”) does not hold. Classic theories of communication have proposed that the principle of informativeness extends to purposeful exchanges beyond linguistic interactions, but relevant evidence so far is limited. In a set of studies, we adopt a simple visual-world paradigm to investigate whether 4- and 5-year-old children and adults expect drawings, like utterances, to be informative in accordance with the creator’s knowledge. We find that 5-year-olds and adults (but not 4-year-olds) apply the principle of informativeness to non-linguistic symbols; furthermore, the 5-year-olds’ success in this task depends on features of the symbols. We discuss the implications of these findings for debates over the mechanisms underlying pragmatic inference, as well as for children’s developing understanding of the symbolic function of drawings.

An understanding of how listeners divide their attention between two simultaneous talkers requires modelling the interaction between acoustic factors (energetic masking) and cognitive processes (control of auditory attention). The impact of spatial separation between the two talkers on this interaction is unclear, since separation is likely to create both acoustic benefits (release from energetic masking) and cognitive costs (increased demands on spatial attentional control). To explore this question, we manipulated the degree of energetic masking (high vs. low) and spatial separation (collocated to dichotic) between two simultaneous talkers. When energetic masking was high (Experiment 1, unmanipulated talker voices), transcription performance improved monotonically from collocated to dichotic, owing to a gradual release from energetic masking. When energetic masking was low (Experiment 2, bandpass-filtered talker voices), the benefit of spatial separation disappeared; performance even worsened in the dichotic condition. Additionally, across both experiments, individual differences in working memory best predicted transcription performance in conditions where energetic masking was low. These results suggest that energetic masking is the dominant challenge during divided-attention listening, but that the contribution of cognitive control and working memory can be observed when energetic masking is reduced, at least in the context of the current paradigm. The findings are discussed in light of Norman and Bobrow’s (1975) concept of data-limited vs. resource-limited tasks, which we propose is a promising framework for reinterpreting existing results from speech-in-noise perception research.

Accounts of language production make different predictions about the conditions under which structural priming should be enhanced by lexical repetition (the lexical boost). Repetition of the head verb strongly enhances structural priming of a sentence, but studies of English have found contradictory results regarding the effects of noun repetition. In two experiments, Mandarin participants read a prime sentence aloud and then produced a target picture description of a dative event. In Experiment 1, the verb was printed on the target picture, and we found that repetition of the verb enhanced priming (vs. no repetition) but repetition of the agent, theme, or recipient argument did not. In Experiment 2, both the agent noun and the verb were printed on the picture, and we found that verb repetition enhanced priming but agent repetition did not. These results indicate that the lexical boost is restricted to the head verb in Mandarin and therefore support lemma-based residual activation accounts of language production in which activation of a head leads to activation of its associated grammatical construction.

Prior familiarity with a face seems to substantively change the way we encode and recognize later instances of that face. We report five experiments that examine the effects of varying levels of prior familiarity and conceptual knowledge on face recognition memory. All experiments employed a 3-phase procedure, in which faces were familiarized in varying ways and to varying extents prior to study and test. Across experiments, increased prior familiarity led to a simultaneous increase in both correct and false identification rates, either when familiarity was gained through passive exposures or conceptual processing. Discriminability, on the other hand, was enhanced by prior familiarity only when the level of familiarity was high and when it involved conceptual processing (Experiments 1–3). Familiarity engendered by passive exposure affected response bias equivalently to more active orienting tasks, but it reduced discriminability in a standard Old/New recognition test (Experiment 4) and did not lead to an enhancement in discriminability in a lineup identification task (Experiment 5). Familiarity engendered by trait evaluations (Experiments 1–3) or name learning (Experiments 2–5) increased discriminability and yielded a more liberal response bias. These results suggest that the benefits of prior familiarity on discriminability in recognition memory are determined by the presence of prior conceptual knowledge. The implications of this work for eyewitness identification situations in which the suspect is known or familiar to the witness are discussed.

In the cue-distractor paradigm, individuals observe a spoken distractor syllable while responding to a visual cue referring to a syllable. When the task is to utter the cued syllable, distractors sharing fewer subphonemic properties with the cued syllable (below the level of phonemes) lead to slower reaction times (RTs), indicating representations involved in speech perception and production are closely linked. The present study investigated whether a subphonemic level of representation is involved when the task was to manually indicate (but not produce) an orthographically cued syllable. Results revealed RT modulations closely mirroring those reported previously for uttered responses. In an additional experiment, phonetic variants of phonologically identical distractors were presented, but RT modulations were unaffected by this manipulation. The present findings indicate that perceiving speech accesses a relatively detailed phonological level of representation which is closely aligned with representations pertinent in orthographic syllable recognition and in speech production.