Christopher R. Sears

Evidence for the activation of sensorimotor information during visual word recognition: The body–object interaction effect

We examined the effects of sensorimotor experience in two visual word recognition tasks. Body-object interaction (BOI) ratings were collected for a large set of words. These ratings assess perceptions of the ease with which a human body can physically interact with a words referent. A set of high BOI words (e.g., mask) and a set of low BOI words (e.g., ship) were created, matched on imageability and concreteness. Facilitatory BOI effects were observed in lexical decision and phonological lexical decision tasks: responses were faster for high BOI words than for low BOI words. We discuss how our findings may be accounted for by (a) semantic feedback within the visual word recognition system, and (b) an embodied view of cognition (e.g., Barsalous perceptual symbol systems theory), which proposes that semantic knowledge is grounded in sensorimotor interactions with the environment.

Attentional biases in dysphoria: An eye-tracking study of the allocation and disengagement of attention

This study looked for evidence of biases in the allocation and disengagement of attention in dysphoric individuals. Participants studied images for a recognition memory test while their eye fixations were tracked and recorded. Four image types were presented (depression-related, anxiety-related, positive, neutral) in each of two study conditions. For the simultaneous study condition, four images (one of each type) were presented simultaneously for 10 seconds, and the number of fixations and the total fixation time to each image was measured, similar to the procedure used by Eizenman et al. (2003) and Kellough, Beevers, Ellis, and Wells (2008). For the sequential study condition, four images (one of each type) were presented consecutively, each for 4 seconds; to measure disengagement of attention an endogenous cuing procedure was used (Posner, 1980). Dysphoric individuals spent significantly less time attending to positive images than non-dysphoric individuals, but there were no group differences in attention to depression-related images. There was also no evidence of a dysphoria-related bias in initial shifts of attention. With respect to the disengagement of attention, dysphoric individuals were slower to disengage their attention from depression-related images. The recognition memory data showed that dysphoric individuals had poorer memory for emotional images, but there was no evidence of a conventional mood-congruent memory bias. Differences in the attentional and memory biases observed in depressed and dysphoric individuals are discussed.

The Benefits of Sensorimotor Knowledge: Body-Object Interaction Facilitates Semantic Processing

This article examined the effects of body-object interaction (BOI) on semantic processing. BOI measures perceptions of the ease with which a human body can physically interact with a words referent. In Experiment 1, BOI effects were examined in 2 semantic categorization tasks (SCT) in which participants decided if words are easily imageable. Responses were faster and more accurate for high BOI words (e.g., mask) than for low BOI words (e.g., ship). In Experiment 2, BOI effects were examined in a semantic lexical decision task (SLDT), which taps both semantic feedback and semantic processing. The BOI effect was larger in the SLDT than in the SCT, suggesting that BOI facilitates both semantic feedback and semantic processing. The findings are consistent with the embodied cognition perspective (e.g., Barsalous, 1999, Perceptual Symbols Theory), which proposes that sensorimotor interactions with the environment are incorporated in semantic knowledge.

Cultural Influences on Categorization Processes

Chiu (1972) reported that in a categorization task, Chinese children were more likely to categorize objects based on shared relationships, whereas American children were more likely to categorize objects based on similarity. This research examines whether such findings generalize to adults and whether cultural differences would also be observed in the activation of semantic concepts. In Experiment 1, Chinese adults were equally likely to categorize based on relationships and similarity, whereas Western adults were more likely to categorize based on similarity. Analogous differences in response latencies were observed in a timed task that reflected semantic processing in Experiment 2, and to some extent in a slightly different task in Experiment 3, although differences between the two experiments suggest that the nature of the categorization task determines the extent to which cultural differences are observed. Overall, results suggest that differences in categorization styles are associated with differences in semantic activation.

The effect of depressed mood on the interpretation of ambiguity, with and without negative mood induction

Is there an effect of depressed mood on the interpretation of ambiguity? Are depressed individuals biased to interpret ambiguous information in a negative manner? We used a cross-modal semantic priming task to look for evidence of a negative interpretative bias. Participants listened to ambiguous prime sentences (e.g., Joan was stunned by her final exam mark) and made lexical decisions to target words presented immediately after the sentence offset or after a delay of 1000 ms or 2000 ms. For the semantically related targets, the target was negatively related (distress), positively related (success), or neutrally related (grades) to the ambiguous prime. The experiment was conducted with and without a negative mood induction. The expectation was that depressed participants would be more likely to consider the negative interpretations of the ambiguous primes and would therefore experience larger priming effects for negatively related targets. Although there were large priming effects for all semantically related targets, there was no evidence of a negative interpretative bias.

Orthographic neighborhood effects in perceptual identification and semantic categorization tasks: A test of the multiple read-out model

How should a word’s orthographic neighborhood affect perceptual identification and semantic categorization, both of which require a word to be uniquely identified? According to the multiple read-out model (Grainger & Jacobs, 1996), inhibitory neighborhood frequency effects should be observed in these types of tasks, and facilitatory neighborhood size effects should not be. In Experiments 1 and 2 (perceptual identification), these effects were examined as a function of stimulus visibility (i.e., high vs. low visibility) to provide as full a test as possible of the model’s predictions. In the high-visibility conditions, words with large neighborhoods were reported less accurately than words with small neighborhoods, but there was no effect of neighborhood frequency (i.e., whether the word had a higher frequency neighbor). In the low-visibility conditions, low-frequency words with large neighborhoods and low-frequency words with higher frequency neighbors showed superior identification performance. In the semantic categorization task (Experiment 3), words with large neighborhoods were responded to more rapidly than words with small neighborhoods, but there was no effect of neighbor-hood frequency. These results are inconsistent with two of the basic premises of the multiple read-out model—namely, that facilitatory neighborhood size effects are due to a variable response criterion (the Σ criterion), rather than to lexical selection processes, and that the lexical selection processes themselves produce an inhibitory neighborhood frequency effect (via the M criterion). Instead, the present results, in conjunction with previous findings, suggest that large neighborhoods (and perhaps higher frequency neighbors) do aid lexical selection.

Orthographic neighborhood effects in lexical decision: The effects of nonword orthographic neighborhood size

The effects of large neighborhoods (neighborhood size) and of higher frequency neighbors (neighborhood frequency) were examined as a function of nonword neighborhood size in lexical decision tasks. According to the multiple read-out model (J. Grainger & A. M. Jacobs, 1996), neighborhood size and neighborhood frequency effects should vary systematically as a function of nonword neighborhood size. In these experiments, the nonword context was more extensively manipulated than in previous studies, providing a more complete test of the models predictions. In addition, simulations were conducted examining the models ability to account for the facilitatory neighborhood size and neighborhood frequency effects observed in these experiments. The results suggest that the model overestimates the role of inhibition in the orthographic processing of English words.

Masked Priming With Orthographic Neighbors : A Test of the Lexical Competition Assumption

In models of visual word identification that incorporate inhibitory competition among activated lexical units, a words higher frequency neighbors will be the words strongest competitors. Preactivation of these neighbors by a prime is predicted to delay the words identification. Using the masked priming paradigm (K. I. Forster & C. Davis, 1984, J. Segui and J. Grainger (1990) reported that, consistent with this prediction, a higher frequency neighbor prime delayed the responses to a lower frequency target, whereas a lower frequency neighbor prime did not delay the responses to a higher frequency target. In the present experiments, using English stimuli, it was found that this pattern held only when the primes and targets had few neighbors; when the primes and targets had many neighbors, lower frequency primes delayed responses to higher frequency targets essentially as much as higher frequency primes delayed responses to lower frequency targets. Several possible explanations for these findings are discussed along with their theoretical implications. Considered together, the results are most consistent with activation-based accounts of the masked priming effect.

Is There a Neighborhood Frequency Effect in English? Evidence From Reading and Lexical Decision

What is the effect of a words higher frequency neighbors on its identification time? According to activation-based models of word identification (J. Grainger & A. M. Jacobs, 1996; J. L. McClelland & D. E. Rumelhart, 1981), words with higher frequency neighbors will be processed more slowly than words without higher frequency neighbors because of the lexical competition mechanism embodied in these models. Although a critical prediction of these models, this inhibitory neighborhood frequency effect has been elusive in studies that have used English stimuli. In the present experiments, the effect of higher frequency neighbors was examined in the lexical decision task and when participants were reading sentences while their eye movements were monitored. Results suggest that higher frequency neighbors have little, if any, effect on the identification of English words. The implications for activation-based models of word identification are discussed.

Cross-script phonological priming for Japanese-English bilinguals: Evidence for integrated phonological representations

Previous masked phonological priming studies with bilinguals whose languages are written in the same script (e.g., Dutch-French bilinguals) strongly suggest that phonological representations for the two languages are integrated, based on the fact that phonological activation created by reading a word in one language facilitates word identification in the other language. The present research examined whether the same is true for different-script bilinguals (Japanese-English bilinguals). In this study, participants made lexical decisions to English targets (e.g., GUIDE) that were primed by three types of masked Japanese primes: cognate translation equivalents (e.g., , /gaido/, guide), phonologically similar but conceptually unrelated words (e.g., , /saido/, side), and phonologically and conceptually unrelated words (e.g., , /koRru/, call). There were significant priming effects for cognate translation primes (94 ms) and phonologically similar primes (30 ms). Whereas the cognate translation priming effect was modulated by target frequency and L2 proficiency, the phonological priming effect was not. Our results suggest that phonological representations for different languages are integrated even if the languages in question use different scripts. The role of phonological activation in bilingual word recognition is discussed.