How does the language comprehension system identify and interpret word constituents-or morphemes-during sentence reading? We investigated this question by employing words containing semantically ambiguous roots (e.g., bark, with meanings related to both "dog" and "tree") which are disambiguated when affixed by -ing (e.g., barking; related to "dog" only). We aimed to understand whether higher-level access to the meaning of the root bark would be constrained by lower-level morphological affixation. In Experiment 1, using eye-tracking, participants read sentences containing words with semantically ambiguous roots, such as barking (a prime), combined with targets that were either related to two meanings of the root (dog, tree) or they were cloze and unrelated controls. All five eye-tracking measures we employed (first fixation duration, gaze duration, go-past time, total reading time, and regressions to target) showed no difference between the two root-related targets, which were slower than cloze, but faster than unrelated. Results show that even in cases where a meaning is inconsistent with the full word form (barking-tree), both meanings of the ambiguous root are activated. These results were supported by Experiment 2, employing a maze task in which the time to select the cloze (night) continuation for the sentence He heard loud barking during the … was disrupted by the presence of distractors related to both meanings of bark. We discuss the implications of these findings for the nature of morphological parsing and lexical ambiguity resolution in sentence contexts. We suggest that word recognition and lexical access processes involve separating roots from affixes, yielding independent and exhaustive access to root meanings-even when they are ruled out by affixation and context. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).
Perceivers typically exhibit better recognition memory for same-race faces than for cross-race faces, a phenomenon known as the cross-race effect (CRE). Despite its ubiquity, it is yet unclear whether people are metacognitively aware of the CRE. This research thoroughly investigates perceivers' metacognitive awareness of the CRE across five experiments. Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrated that both prospective (judgments of learning) and retrospective (confidence) metamemory judgments are sensitive to variations in the racial category and prototypicality of faces. Experiment 3 showed that participants' item-level prospective judgments are informed by beliefs about the impact of face race on memory performance. Experiment 4 revealed that global predictions are influenced by face race in the absence of direct stimulus experience, emphasizing the role of preexisting beliefs. Experiment 5 extended these findings by showing large crossover interactions between face race and participant race in both global predictions and item-level prospective judgments, indicating that both White and Black participants have higher metamemory estimates for ingroup faces. This experiment further showed that preexisting beliefs intensify the impact of face race on metamemory judgments yet do not fully account for it. Collectively, these experiments provide robust evidence of good metamemory accuracy for faces varying in racial categories and prototypicality among White participants and demonstrate that beliefs underlie the effect of face race on metamemory judgments among both White and Black participants, though this may not be the only mechanism involved. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).
What can false memories tell us about the structure of mental representations of arithmetic word problems? The semantic congruence model describes the central role of world semantics in the encoding, recoding, and solving of these problems. We propose to use memory tasks to evaluate key predictions of the semantic congruence model regarding the representations constructed when solving arithmetic word problems. We designed isomorphic word problems differing only by the world semantics imbued in their problem statement. Half the problems featured quantities (durations, heights, elevator floors) promoting an ordinal encoding, and the other half used quantities (weights, prices, collections) promoting a cardinal encoding. Across three experiments, in French and in English, we used surprise memory tasks to investigate adults' mental representations when solving the problems. After the first solving task, the participants were given an unexpected task: either to recall the problems (Experiments 1 and 2) or to identify, from memory, the experimenter-induced changes in target problem sentences (Experiment 3). Crucially, all problems included a specific mathematical relationship that was not explicit in the problem statement and that could only be inferred from an ordinal encoding. We used the presence or absence of this relationship in the participants' responses to infer the structure of their representations. Converging results from all three experiments bring new evidence of the role of semantic congruence in arithmetic reasoning, new insights into the relevance of the cardinal-ordinal distinction in numerical cognition, and a new perspective on the use of memory tasks to investigate variations in the representations of mathematical word problems. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).
Past work has shown that eye movements are affected by long-term memory across different tasks and instructional manipulations. In the current study, we tested whether these memory-based eye movements persist when memory retrieval is under intentional control. Participants encoded multiple scenes with six objects (three faces; three tools). Next, they completed a memory regulation and visual search task, while undergoing eye tracking. Here, scene cues were presented and participants either retrieved the encoded associate, suppressed it, or substituted it with a specific object from the other encoded category. Following a delay, a search display consisting of six dots intermixed with the six encoded objects was presented. Participants' task was to fixate one remaining dot after five had disappeared. Incidental viewing of the objects was of interest. Results revealed that performance in a final recognition phase was impaired for suppressed pairs, but only when the associate was a tool. During the search task, incidental associate viewing was lower when participants attempted to control retrieval, whereas one object from the nonassociate category was most viewed in the substitute condition. Additionally, viewing patterns in the search phase were related to final recognition performance, but the direction of this association differed between conditions. Overall, these results suggest that eye movements are attracted to information retrieved from long-term memory and held active (the associate in the retrieve condition, or an object from the other category in the substitute condition). Furthermore, the level of viewing may index the strength of the representation of retrieved information. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).
Collocations are understood to be integral building blocks of language processing, alongside individual words, but thus far evidence for the psychological reality of collocations has tended to be confined to English. In contrast to English, Turkish is an agglutinating language, utilizing productive morphology to convey complex meanings using a single word. Given this, we expected Turkish speakers to be less sensitive to phrasal frequencies than English speakers. In Study 1, we conducted a corpus analysis of translation-equivalent adjective-noun collocations (e.g., front door) and found differences between the two languages in frequency counts. In Study 2, we conducted a reaction time experiment to determine the sensitivity of native speakers of English and Turkish to the frequency of adjectives, nouns, and whole collocations. Turkish speakers were less sensitive to whole-phrase frequencies, as predicted, indicating that collocations are processed less holistically in Turkish than English. Both groups demonstrated that processing collocations involves combining information about individual words and phrases. Taken together, we show that speakers are sensitive to frequency information at multiple grain sizes that are attuned to the typology of different languages. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).
Our mental representation of the infinite has received little research attention in cognitive psychology. In countably infinite sets, the infinity symbol (∞) is presumed to be perceived as larger than any finite natural number. The present study sought to explore if the infinity symbol is processed as "larger than" natural numbers, and, if so, whether it is associated with the special status of "the largest." In a series of four experiments (N = 40, 20, 20, and 40, respectively), participants performed numerical and physical comparisons of the infinity symbol against single- and multidigit numbers. Overall, numerical comparisons yielded slower responses for comparisons between infinity and a number than for comparisons between two numbers. Furthermore, distance-like effects were obtained for comparisons to infinity, suggesting the infinity symbol was treated as larger than all numbers presented. Importantly, however, physical comparisons revealed a normal size congruity effect for comparisons of infinity and single digits, but a reversed effect for comparisons of infinity and multidigit numbers, suggesting that the infinity symbol was automatically processed as smaller than multidigit numbers. These novel findings reveal limitations in abstracting the meanings of infinity from its symbol, indicating that the infinity symbol is not perceived as "the largest" and can be misconceived as a "number" mapped onto the numerical magnitude system. More generally, the results seem to reflect a crude, automatic evaluation of numerical magnitude based on the physical magnitude of the stimuli, namely, their overall length and the number of symbols of which they are comprised. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).
There is growing recognition that working memory and selective attention are highly related. However, a key function of selective attention-ignoring distractors-is much less understood in the domain of working memory. In the attention domain, it is now clear that distractors' task relevance and stimulation of multiple senses at a time (i.e., being multisensory), affect how much such information can distract from the main task, and that load modulates these effects. Here, we examined the effects of the task relevance and multisensory nature of distractors on working memory performance under high and low memory load, aiming to clarify whether distracting information similarly affects selective attention performance and working memory performance. We proposed a multiexperiment research plan involving up to three consecutive experiments, based on an initial online study (Experiment 0) with fully task-irrelevant distractors. There, we found conclusive evidence against a difference in how unisensory and multisensory distractors affected working memory performance. The next study, Experiment 1, replicated these results. However, when distractors were made partly task relevant in the subsequent Experiment 2d, multisensory distractors disrupted working memory performance more than unisensory distractors on average. However, closer nonpreregistered inspection revealed that multisensory distractors were actually only more disruptive than auditory distractors, and similarly as disruptive as visual distractors. Thus, overall, there was no strong evidence for multisensory distractors being more disruptive to working memory performance than unisensory distractors. Taken together, these experiments constitute a novel and detailed investigation of the impact of distracting information on working memory performance. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).
Research on first language (L1) reading has long since established the link between the proficiency of the reader and their efficiency in oculomotor control. More proficient readers make longer saccades and land closer to the word's center, which is a word's optimal viewing position, and make fewer refixations. Eye-tracking studies of second language (L2) reading have so far provided little evidence in this regard. This study analyzes spatial oculomotor measures in the Multilingual Eye-movement Corpus, which contains data on English text reading and its component skills from 543 participants representing 12 different L1s. Our analyses establish a strong role of proficiency in English, both for L1 and L2 readers of English. While most effects replicated ones observed in L1 reading, we also found that more proficient readers of English were less accurate in targeting optimal viewing positions. We link this finding to Fitts' law of motor control for aimed movements. This article discusses the theoretical implications of the novel findings for reading research. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).
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