H. M. B. Oliveira

Filamentous fungi in drinking water, particularly in relation to biofilm formation

The presence of filamentous fungi in drinking water has become an area worthy of investigation with various studies now being published. The problems associated with fungi include blockage of water pipes, organoleptic deterioration, pathogenic fungi and mycotoxins. Fungal biofilm formation is a less developed field of study. This paper updates the topic and introduces novel methods on fungal biofilm analysis, particularly from work based in Brazil. Further recommendations for standard methodology are provided.

Fungi from a Groundwater-Fed Drinking Water Supply System in Brazil

Filamentous fungi in drinking water distribution systems are known to (a) block water pipes; (b) cause organoleptic biodeterioration; (c) act as pathogens or allergens and (d) cause mycotoxin contamination. Yeasts might also cause problems. This study describes the occurrence of several fungal species in a water distribution system supplied by groundwater in Recife—Pernambuco, Brazil. Water samples were collected from four sampling sites from which fungi were recovered by membrane filtration. The numbers in all sampling sites ranged from 5 to 207 colony forming units (CFU)/100 mL with a mean value of 53 CFU/100 mL. In total, 859 isolates were identified morphologically, with Aspergillus and Penicillium the most representative genera (37% and 25% respectively), followed by Trichoderma and Fusarium (9% each), Curvularia (5%) and finally the species Pestalotiopsis karstenii (2%). Ramichloridium and Leptodontium were isolated and are black yeasts, a group that include emergent pathogens. The drinking water system in Recife may play a role in fungal dissemination, including opportunistic pathogens.

The Minho Word Pool: Norms for imageability, concreteness, and subjective frequency for 3,800 Portuguese words.

Words are widely used as stimuli in cognitive research. Because of their complexity, using words requires strict control of their objective (lexical and sublexical) and subjective properties. In this work, we present the Minho Word Pool (MWP), a dataset that provides normative values of imageability, concreteness, and subjective frequency for 3,800 (European) Portuguese words—three subjective measures that, in spite of being used extensively in research, have been scarce for Portuguese. Data were collected with 2,357 college students who were native speakers of European Portuguese. The participants rated 100 words drawn randomly from the full set for each of the three subjective indices, using a Web survey procedure (via a URL link). Analyses comparing the MWP ratings with those obtained for the same words from other national and international databases showed that the MWP norms are reliable and valid, thus providing researchers with a useful tool to support research in all neuroscientific areas using verbal stimuli. The MWP norms can be downloaded along with this article or from http://p-pal.di.uminho.pt/about/databases.

Mecanismos explicativos das falsas memórias no paradigma DRM

This literature review explores the major theories and explanatory mechanisms in the occurrence of false memories in the Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm (DRM). This study presents data from empirical studies that support each of the theories and discusses their implications for understanding false memories. Historically, the first theories explaining false memories focused on the concept of association in order to explain intrusions in memory tasks. Later on, the concept of activation received greater importance in explaining false memories in the DRM paradigm. However, activation by itself is insufficient to explain all the results described by several authors. Therefore, the two current major theories that explain false memories in the DRM paradigm (activation monitoring theory and fuzzy trace theory) consider the existence of monitoring or control mechanisms, together with activation mechanisms. These monitoring mechanisms, which operate in opposite direction to activation mechanisms, explain the decrease or disappearance of false memories under certain circumstances. Although different, activation monitoring and fuzzy trace theories have reconcilable perspectives and may be both necessary for a comprehensive understanding of false memories in the DRM paradigm. Thus, we propose the adoption of a theoretical approach that integrates contributionsfrom both theories.

Associative strength or gist extraction: Which matters when DRM lists have two critical lures?:

The Deese–Roediger–McDermott (DRM) paradigm is often used in the study of false memories. This paradigm typically uses lists of words associated with one critical lure. The primary objective of our study was to understand the production of false memories using the DRM paradigm when lists of words are associated with two critical lures. Three experiments were performed, and it was observed that the critical lures associated with the first set were significantly more frequently recalled than the critical lures associated with the second set. This result was verified when the words were presented in descending order of association with the critical lure (Experiment 1), when the words of the second set were presented in ascending order of association with the critical lure (Experiment 2), and when all the words in the list had the same associative strength (Experiment 3). Results are explained by the activation/monitoring and fuzzy-trace theories.

Lexico-syntactic interactions in the resolution of relative clause ambiguities in a second language (L2): The role of cognate status and L2 proficiency

Abstract There is extensive evidence showing that bilinguals activate lexical representations in a non-selective way both when words are presented in isolation and in sentence contexts. Recent research has shown the existence of cross-language activation at the syntactic level as well. However, the extent to which the lexical and syntactic levels of representation interact during second language (L2) sentence processing, and how these interactions are modulated by L2 proficiency remain unclear. In this paper, we explore how native speakers of European-Portuguese (L1) who are learning English as an L2 at different levels of proficiency (intermediate vs. advanced) resolve relative clause (RC) syntactic ambiguities in their L2. European Portuguese and English native speakers were used as controls. Participants were asked to perform a sentence completion task, with cognates and noncognates critically embedded in the complex noun phrase (NP) preceding the RC, and which contained its antecedent. Results revealed that L2 learners, like English controls, preferred to attach the RC to the last host of the complex NP, regardless of L2 proficiency. Importantly, the cognate status of the complex NP modulated the results, although, contrary to our expectation, the presence of cognates induced less L1 syntax interference compared to noncognates.

How letter order is encoded in bilingual reading? the role of deviant-letter position in cognate word recognition

ABSTRACT Objective: Previous literature in the monolingual domain has showed that letter position is not encoded in an absolute-position manner. However, with the exception of the unpublished work by Font [(2001). Rôle de la langue dansl’accès au lexique chez les bilingues: Influence de la proximité orthographique et sémantique interlangue surla reconnaissance visuelle de mots (Unpublished Doctoral thesis). Université Paul Valery, Montpellier)], there is no study investigating this issue with bilinguals. According to Font, the recognition of cognate words is affected by the position of the deviant letter. This calls the validity of the input-coding scheme of the most relevant computational model of bilingual word recognition (The Bilingual Interactive Activation Plus Model [BIA+; Dijkstra, T., & vanHeuven, W. J. (2002). The architecture of the bilingual word recognition system: From identification to decision. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 5, 175–197. doi:10.1017/S1366728902003012; Dijkstra, T., Miwa, K., Brummelhuis, B., Sappelli, M., & Baayen, H. (2010). How cross-language similarity and task demands affect cognate recognition. Journal of Memory and Language, 62, 284–301. doi:10.1016/j.jml.2009.12.003]) into question, since it holds that letter positions are perfectly encoded. The aim of the present research was to further examine the way letter position is encoded during non-native reading by manipulating the deviant-letter position of European Portuguese (EP)-English (EN) cognate words. Method: To that purpose 288 stimuli (144 Portuguese-English translation words [72 cognates and 72 noncognates] and 144 pseudowords) were selected. Cognates were assigned to two experimental conditions according to deviant-letter position: 1) at end of the word (matriz-MATRIX); and 2) at the beginning of the word (coala-KOALA). A third condition varying both at the beginning and at the end (e.g., escala-SCALE) was also included as a control to test how the degree of cross-language overlap modulates the results. Twenty-eight proficient Portuguese-English bilinguals were asked to perform a masked priming lexical decision task in English. Results: The results revealed faster responses for cognates with greater degree of cross-language overlap (Conditions 1 and 2). More important, priming effects were not modulated by deviant-letter position, i.e., the size of priming was similar across condition 1 and 2. Conclusion: Although a priori, no amendments seems to be needed in the “front-end” of the coding scheme of the BIA+ model when cognate words are considered, future studies should be developed in order to explore if these results are restricted to outer deviant-letters.