David S. Gorfein

Inhibition in cognition

This highly accessible volume is the first new book on cognitive inhibition in over 10 years. It covers the broad range of cognition, from attention and performance through memory and language, from development and aging through pathology and psychopathology. It is essential reading for those striving to better understand the nature of and interactions among the mechanisms responsible for executive control and implementation of real-time cognitive performance.

On the consequences of meaning selection: Perspectives on resolving lexical ambiguity.

A presentation of research in the study of comprehension and discourse processes - lexically ambiguous words, how they are accessed, and how meaning is derived. Investigators describe the state of knowledge and theory regarding the role that words play in comprehension. The work should be useful to individuals concerned with the problems of cognitive deficits or changes associated with disease and ageing as well as the more contemporary problem of getting computers to understand what we say and write. It should also be of interest to researchers in comprehension and discourse processes.

Norms as a tool for the study of homography

Four continuous word associations to each of 107 homographs were obtained from 50 male and 50 female undergraduates. Included in the word sample were 12 nonhomophonic homographs (heterophones). The data were analyzed to derive two indexes. A dominance score was defined on the basis of the frequency that a particular meaning was associated to each homograph. A stability score was a measure of the likelihood that the continuous associations were consistent with the first associate. Norms were provided for these measures. Comparison of heterophones to homophones indicates that the former are significantly more stable.

A transfer analysis of the repetition effect in the lexical and ambiguity decision tasks

Two experiments were performed in an attempt to evaluate explanations of repetition priming—the facilitation observed when the same word is processed a second time in the same task. One task employed was lexical decision (word/nonword) and the other was ambiguity decision (ambiguous/ unambiguous). In the first experiment, transfer on a lexical decision task was measured following either a lexical decision or an ambiguity decision. When the identical lists were processed in the first phase for lexical and ambiguity decision, equal repetition effects were obtained on lexical decision. However, when the ambiguity task was presented without nonwords, no repetition priming occurred. In a second experiment, the within-task repetition effect was large for the ambiguity decision, whereas no transfer was obtained from lexical decision to ambiguity decision. The results were interpreted as being consistent with a transfer-appropriate processing account of repetition priming.

A Context-Sensitive Frequency-Based Theory of Meaning Achievement

The basic problem for the psychologist interested in any form of human communication is how meaning is achieved by the organism. The present chapter has a twofold purpose: (1) to present evidence for the role of frequency in resolving semantic ambiguity and (2) to elucidate a theory of frequency action that has generality for human information processing. We will argue that the most important role in understanding the processing of words is that the processing will depend on the frequency of the word. Robinson’s classic statements (1932) of the law of frequency were recently updated by Slamecka (1987) in the following words: Since that time, psychologists have considerably extended the list of effective variables, but the impression that I receive from my review is that these other variables tend to play out their roles superimposed against a larger background, which reduces them almost to local eddies that are swept along in the irresistible tide of repetition increments (p. 128) We believe the data with respect to the processing of homographs support a similar statement; i.e., the law of frequency will apply to the task.

On the norming of homophones.

Associative norms for homographs have been widely used in the study of language processing. A number of sets of these are available, providing the investigator with the opportunity to compare materials collected over a span of years and a range of locations. Words that are homophonic but not homographic have been used to address a variety of questions in memory as well as in language processing. However, a paucity of normative data are available for these materials, especially with respect to responses to the spoken form of the homophone. This article provides such data for a sample of 207 homophones across four different tasks, both visual and auditory, and examines how well the present measures correlate with each other and with those of other investigators. The finding that these measures can account for a considerable proportion of the variance in the lexical decision and naming data from the English Lexicon Project provides an additional demonstration of their utility. The norms from this study are available online in the Psychonomic Society Archive of Norms, Stimuli, and Data, at www .psychonomic.org/archive.

Resolving Semantic Ambiguity: An Introduction

What processes allow a person to know that the statement “I’m blue” usually means that a person is feeling sad rather than the person is the color blue? Or that on the sports page the headline “All tied up” refers to the same number of games or points achieved by some sport’s teams, rather than someone being entwined in rope? Or that in a gambling casino, the request “Hit me” is a request for cards and not violence? Or that the question “What would you say to an omelet?” does not usually warrant the reply “Bonjour, omelet”?