Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology-Revue Canadienne De Psychologie Experimentale最新文献

Past research demonstrated enhanced memory for information encoded with relevance to a survival scenario compared to a control scenario, an effect referred to as the survival processing effect in memory. This effect has been explained by a proximate mechanism hypothesis (i.e., survival processing enables deep elaborative processing that promotes memory). In support of this hypothesis, past research found that, during encoding, the survival processing effect was largely intact under a perceptual or low-load secondary task condition but eliminated under a high-load secondary task condition. To test semantic encoding as a possible proximate mechanism, the current study assesses the impact of high-load and low-load divided attention tasks that require semantic processing of digits on the survival processing effect. Seventy-two young adults rated words for their relevance to two survival scenarios (i.e., grassland and mountain) and one non-survival control scenario (i.e., cruise), while completing a concurrent high-load or low-load semantic digit-monitoring task. No survival processing effect was found in either condition. The results suggest that semantic encoding probably serves as a proximate mechanism for the survival processing effect in memory. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Objective: There is a strong relationship between reading and articulation (Lervåg & Hulme, 2009; Pan et al., 2011). Given the tight coupling of these processes, innovative approaches are needed to understand the intricacies associated with print-speech connections. Here we ran a series of tightly controlled experiments to examine the impact of mouth perturbations on silent reading.

Method: We altered the mouth, via somatosensory feedback, in several ways: (a) a large lollipop in the mouth (E1), (b) a candy stick (bite bar) held horizontally between the teeth (E2), and (c) lidocaine that served to numb the mouth (E3). Three tasks were completed: (a) picture categorization, (b) "spell" lexical decision (Spell-LDT; "does the letter string spell a real word, yes or no?"), and (c) "sound" lexical decision (Sound-LDT; "does the letter string sound like a real word, yes or no?"). Participants (N = 97; E1 = 27; E2 = 32; E3 = 38) completed each of the tasks two times: once with a somatosensory perturbation (lollipop, bite bar, or lidocaine) and once without.

Results: For each experiment, a linear mixed effects analysis was run. Overall, we found that the lollipop (E1) and lidocaine (E3) had some specific effects on word recognition (e.g., for "no" responses), particularly in the Spell-LDT, whereas the bite bar (E2) had no effect on word recognition. The picture categorization task was not impacted by any perturbations.

Conclusion: These findings provide evidence that sensorimotor information is connected to reading. We discuss how these findings advance our understanding of a print-to-speech framework. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Computational models of semantic memory have been successful in accounting for a wide range of cognitive phenomena, including word categorization, semantic priming, and release from proactive interference. Conventionally, the texts input to these models have been curated to represent the average individual's language experience. While this approach has proven successful for making predictions that generalize across individuals, it prevents consideration of situations in which individuals have divergent semantic representations. The use of a representative corpus prevents the generation of predictions specific to the language experience of an individual. While this limitation has been discussed in the literature, previous investigations have not yet validated such corpus-specific predictions. I present an approach to generate corpus-specific semantic representations using internet news sites as corpora. I then validate the semantic representations against subjects that read specific news sites. Results demonstrate that similarities between news sites are specific to the words under consideration and that news site-specific representations successfully predict differential priming effects in lexical decision as a function of news readership. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

The self is a crucial component of the psychic life and plays a central role for the adaptation to the environment. In daily life, this adaptative function is ensured, inter alia, by numerous biases filtering information and favoring those which are self-related. After succinctly reviewing the most documented among them which are affective and mnesic biases, the current paper provides a critical review of literature about a bias which is supposed to be perceptive, the self-prioritization effect (SPE). That has been revealed by Sui et al. (2012, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 38(5), 1105) with an astute matching task and consists in the fact that arbitrarily tagging shapes to a word referring to the participant (e.g., you-square) leads to faster and more accurate responses as compared to shapes tagged to a word referring to another identity (e.g., strange-circle). The methodological variations of this task and the SPE's both extension and putative origins will be presented, as well as the restrictions which border it, related to the individuals, to the experimental situation and to some more general properties of the self. Finally, some avenues for future research will be proposed, drawing some promising paths: beyond being a robust and intriguing phenomenon, SPE can indeed be considered as a convenient tool to assess some mechanisms underlying social cognition, in various fields using an experimental approach such as developmental psychology and social psychology. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

In backward immediate serial recall, participants recall lists of items immediately after their presentation by beginning with the last presented item and ending with the first presented one. Despite the similarities with forward recall in which participants recall the items from the first to the last presented, benchmark memory phenomena reliably found in forward recall are not constantly observed in backward recall. Here, we proposed a new framework called the encoding-retrieval matching (ERM) hypothesis to account for backward recall. The ERM retains the main features of the visuospatial hypothesis and the item-order trade-off hypothesis, the two dominant accounts of backward recall. According to the ERM, output modality and foreknowledge of recall direction influence the availability of visuospatial representations and the weight devoted to item and order processing. We tested the ERM with irrelevant speech, a well-known working memory factor disrupting forward recall. In two experiments, we manipulated recall direction (forward vs. backward), irrelevant speech (control vs. irrelevant speech), and response modality (manual vs. oral). As predicted by the ERM, when recall direction was unpredictable in Experiment 1, the magnitude of the irrelevant speech effect was larger in backward manual recall than in backward oral recall. In Experiment 2, recall direction was predictable. As predicted by the ERM, in backward recall, the irrelevant speech effect was reduced with a manual response and absent with an oral response. We concluded that ERM effectively accounts for the complex interplay between response modality, foreknowledge of recall direction, and benchmark memory effects in backward recall. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

It is a widely held view that the determination of eye gaze direction is "automatic" in various senses (e.g., innate; informationally encapsulated; triggered without intent). The determination of arrow direction is also held to be automatic (following a certain amount of learning) despite not being innate. The present experiments evaluate the automaticity assumption of both eyes and arrows in terms of an interference criterion. The results of 10 experiments support the inference that explicit judgements of eye gaze direction, when participants respond with a lateralized key press, are (a) neither automatic in the strong sense (they are interfered with by an uninformative, incongruent arrow in the display) and (b) nor are they are automatic in a weaker sense (uninformative, incongruent arrows interfere more strongly with the determination of eye gaze direction than uninformative, incongruent eyes interfere with the arrow direction task). However, the determination of arrow direction is also not strongly automatic, given that it is interfered with by irrelevant eyes. At least with respect to an interference criterion, the determination of eye gaze direction appears less prepotent than the determination of arrow direction, which itself is only weakly automatic. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

One of Katz's significant contributions to the study of figurative language is his work highlighting the importance of familiarity in metaphor processing. In this study, we examined how metaphor and simile comprehension change as a function of familiarity. The Categorization model (Glucksberg, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2003, 7, 92) proposes that metaphor comprehension relies on an automatic process (categorization) regardless of familiarity. By contrast, the Career of Metaphor model (Bowdle & Gentner, Psychological Review, 2005, 112, 193) proposes that as conventionality or familiarity declines, comprehension shifts from categorization to comparison, a controlled, effortful process. Both models assume that similes, regardless of familiarity, are understood through controlled, comparison processes. The present study used a resource depletion manipulation to investigate the processes recruited in metaphor and simile comprehension. Because resource depletion negatively impacts controlled, effortful processes but does not affect automatic processes (Schmeichel et al., Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2003, 85, 33), comparing the effects of resource depletion on comprehension of familiar and unfamiliar metaphors and similes may shed light on the comprehension processes (controlled or automatic) being used. Across two experiments, we induced resource depletion using a Stroop task and tested the impact of depletion on metaphor and simile comprehension. Metaphor stimuli were drawn from Katz et al. (Metaphor and Symbolic Activity, 1988, 3, 191) normed database; similes were constructed by adding the word like to each metaphor (e.g., love is (like) a flower). For both tropes, resource depletion slowed comprehension of unfamiliar expressions but had no little-or-no impact on highly familiar expressions. Our results suggest that comprehension of both similes and metaphors shifts from automatic to controlled processing as familiarity decreases. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

People take longer to determine that metaphoric sentences (e.g., some birds are flutes) are literally false compared to anomalous sentences (e.g., some birds are pickles). This metaphor interference effect (MIE) shows that metaphorical interpretations are automatically computed even in contexts and tasks that only require literal interpretations. Although a well-replicated finding, the MIE has only been investigated in sentence stimuli in which the metaphoric composition is explicitly stated (such that birds are asserted to be flutes). This raises questions about the generalizability of the MIE because (a) A is B metaphors are rare in discourse and (b) other metaphor variants, such as flute bird, are unspecified in their metaphoric composition (i.e., do not specifically assert which concept, if any, is metaphorical). In this experiment, we investigated whether metaphoric modifier-noun phrases such as flute bird and creamy sky produce a MIE. In addition, we explored if word-level semantic variables (semantic neighborhood density and concreteness) play a role in the MIE. We asked participants to determine if modifier-noun phrases refer to things that literally exist or not. We found a MIE in which metaphoric phrases (e.g., flute bird, creamy sky) took longer to judge as literally false relative to scrambled counterparts (e.g., flute sky, creamy bird). Moreover, we found that word-level semantic variables affect the magnitude of the MIE only for adjective-noun phrases. Therefore, metaphoric meaning can be automatically extracted from metaphoric compounds, suggesting that the MIE is more robust than previously demonstrated. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Throughout his 45-year career, Professor Albert Katz (Department of Psychology, Western University) has tackled challeng ing aspects of human communication in a way that creatively merges the theoretical insights and empirical rigor of cognitive linguistics, psycholinguistics, and cognitive neuroscience. In this personal reflection, Professor Katz writes a short biographical piece on the life journey that led to his research programs. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

We investigated a cue that readers may use in determining whether a remark such as "You are so helpful!" is intended as a compliment or as an ironic insult. The cue was the age of the speaker. Remarks were preceded by a sentence that either invited a literal or ironic interpretation of the remark. Data were collected on the familiarity of the remark as an ironic statement, and the incongruity of the remark with the prior context. In Experiment 1, participants were asked to rate the intent of the speaker as to how ironic, mocking, polite, and funny they intended their remark to be. In Experiment 2, participants read the scenarios as their eye movements were tracked. The results showed that age of the speaker had an impact on first pass reading times when statements were not familiar as ironic statements. Our younger adult participants did not appear to immediately activate a nonliteral interpretation of an ambiguous remark made by an older adult unless they had evidence from past experience that the remark is often used as an insult. However, ratings of the ironic intent of the statements were unaffected by speaker age; the age of the speaker affects the ease of interpretation but not the final outcome. The results are consistent with constraint-based theories of sentence comprehension. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).