Javier García-Orza

DEVELOPMENT OF THE INHIBITORY COMPONENT OF THE EXECUTIVE FUNCTIONS IN CHILDREN AND ADOLESCENTS

The development of inhibitory control, one component of the executive functions, during childhood and adolescence was the focus of the present study. A group of 99 participants between 6 and 17 years of age were studied using the Stroop test. Results suggest the existence of age-related differences both in response times and errors that follow a nonlinear relationship. Interference increased in the first age groups, declining from around 10 years till 17 years. Data also suggest that word reading plays an important role in the performance of the task. When reading is blocked, linear relationships between age and interference measures emerge, showing an increase in inhibitory functions during childhood and adolescence.

Are transposition effects specific to letters

Recent research has consistently shown that pseudowords created by transposing two letters are perceptually similar to their corresponding base words (e.g., jugde–judge). In the framework of the overlap model (Gomez, Ratcliff, & Perea, 2008), this effect is due to a noisy process in the localization of the “objects” (e.g., letters, kana syllables). In the present study, we examine whether this effect is specific to letter strings or whether it also occurs with other “objects” (namely, digits, symbols, and pseudoletters). To that end, we conducted a series of five masked priming experiments using the same–different task. Results showed robust effects of transposition for all objects, except for pseudoletters. This is consistent with the view that locations of familiar objects (i.e., letters, numbers, and symbols) can be best understood as distributions along a dimension rather than as precise points.

“2 x 3” primes naming “6”: Evidence from masked priming

It is a common assumption for multiplication-solving models that single-digit multiplications are automatically retrieved. However, the experimental evidence for this is based on paradigms under suspicion. In this research, we employed a new procedure with the aim of assessing the automatic retrieval of multiplication more directly. In two experiments, multiplication automatism was studied using briefly presented primes (stimulus onset asynchrony = 48 msec) in a number-naming task. In Experiment 1, in the congruent conditions, the target and the prime were the same numbers (e.g., prime, 6; target, 6) or the target was the solution to the multiplication prime (e.g., prime, 2×3=; target, 6). In the incongruent conditions, no relationship existed between the primes and the targets (e.g., prime, 32; target, 6; or prime, 4×8=; target, 6). Experiment 2 explored the relevance of the equal sign for the multiplication-priming effect. Data showed that naming was faster when the solution of the multiplication prime matched the target, as compared with the incongruent condition (multiplication-priming effect), and that these effects were found irrespective of the presence of the equal sign. The fact that this priming effect was found even though the participants were unaware of the presentation of the primes supports the automatic character of single-digit multiplication. We conclude by arguing that this procedure is highly valuable for exploring the mechanisms involved in simple arithmetic solving.

Masked priming effects are modulated by expertise in the script

In a recent study using a masked priming same–different matching task, García-Orza, Perea, and Muñoz (2010) found a transposition priming effect for letter strings, digit strings, and symbol strings, but not for strings of pseudoletters (i.e., produced similar response times to the control pair ). They argued that the mechanism responsible for position coding in masked priming is not operative with those “objects” whose identity cannot be attained rapidly. To assess this hypothesis, Experiment 1 examined masked priming effects in Arabic for native speakers of Arabic, whereas participants in Experiments 2 and 3 were lower intermediate learners of Arabic and readers with no knowledge of Arabic, respectively. Results showed a masked priming effect only for readers who are familiar with the Arabic script. Furthermore, transposed-letter priming in native speakers of Arabic only occurred when the order of the root letters was kept intact. In Experiments 3–7, we examined why masked repetition priming is absent for readers who are unfamiliar with the Arabic script. We discuss the implications of these findings for models of visual-word recognition.

Dissociating Arabic Numeral Reading and Basic Calculation: A Case Study

This study is about JS, a patient who suffered from anomia, phonological dyslexia and severe writing problems following a left hemispheric stroke. He showed good arabic numeral comprehension as evidenced in number-comparison tasks, but impairment in transcoding arabic numerals into verbal numbers and verbal numbers into arabic numerals. Although JS had several operand reading errors, the four arithmetic operations were not affected. In calculations with arabic numerals, he produced the correct results both in oral and written responses. For instance, when presented with the multiplication “7×3”, JS read the operation as “four times five”, but provided the correct response orally “twenty one” and written “21”. This behavior goes against those hypotheses which posit that multiplication facts are verbally-based, and those which establish the same route for verbal number production in calculation and arabic numeral reading.

Physical similarity (and not quantity representation) drives perceptual comparison of numbers: Evidence from two Indian notations

Numerical quantity seems to affect the response in any task that involves numbers, even in tasks that do not demand access to quantity (e.g., perceptual tasks). That is, readers seem to activate quantity representations upon the mere presentation of integers. One important piece of evidence in favor of this view comes from the finding of a distance effect in perceptual tasks: When one compares two numbers, response times (RTs) are a function of the numerical distance between them. However, recent studies have suggested that the physical similarity between Arabic numbers is strongly correlated with their numerical distance, and that the former could be a better predictor of RT data in perceptual tasks in which magnitude processing is not required (Cohen, 2009a). The present study explored the Persian and Arabic versions of Indian numbers (Exps. 1 and 2, respectively). Naïve participants (speakers of Spanish) and users of these notations (Pakistanis and Jordanians) participated in a physical same–different matching task. The RTs of users of the Indian notations were regressed on perceptual similarity (estimated from the Spanish participants’ RTs) and numerical distance. The results showed that, regardless of the degree of correlation between the perceptual similarity function and the numerical distance function, the critical predictor for RTs was perceptual similarity. Thus, participants do not automatically activate Indian integers’ quantity representations, at least not when these numbers are presented in simple perceptual tasks.

Emotional nouns affect attachment decisions in sentence completion tasks.

We report three sentence completion experiments in which we manipulate the emotional dimension of the nouns in a complex noun phrase (NP) that precedes a relative clause (RC), as in the classic ambiguity in Someone shot the servant of the actress who was on the balcony. The aim was to see whether nouns such as orgy or genocide affect the well-established preference of Spanish to adjoin the relative clause high in the tree (to servant instead of actress in the example above). We manipulated the valence and arousal of the lexical entities residing in the NP. Our results indicate that (a) the inclusion of either pleasant or unpleasant words induces changes in the usual NP1 preference found in Spanish; (b) the effects of high-arousal words are especially clear, in that they pull RC adjunction towards the NP where they are located, be it the NP1 or the NP2; and (c) in the context of sentence production, these kinds of words seem intense enough to promote changes in (and even reverse) a solid syntactic bias. We discuss these findings in the light of existing theories of syntactic ambiguity resolution.

Animacy in the adjunction of Spanish RCs to complex NPs

The present paper focuses on the role of animacy in the processing of relative clauses (RCs) after complex NPs. We follow research by the Desmet et al. team on Dutch in exploring the role of animacy in Spanish RCs. We present data from a corpus study and two self-paced experiments and we compare the three studies and the Dutch and Spanish results. Our main objective is to fill important gaps in past research on the processing of adjunction ties in Spanish and to offer a more detailed exploration of grain effects in exposure-based accounts. In particular, we have sought both to analyse the match between corpus studies and online processing in Spanish much more closely than it has been until now and to see whether animacy could revert the well-established tendency of Spanish RCs to attach high inside the complex noun phrase.

Position coding in two-digit arabic numbers.

Digit position coding in two-digit Arabic numbers was examined in two masked priming experiments. In Experiment 1, participants had to decide whether the presented stimulus was a two-digit Arabic number (e.g., 67) or not (e.g., G7). Target stimuli could be preceded by a prime which (i) shared one digit in the initial position (e.g., 13-18), (ii) shared one digit but in a different position (83-18), and (iii) was a transposed number (81-18). Two unrelated control conditions, equalized in terms of the distance between primes and targets with the experimental conditions, were also included (e.g., 79-18). Results showed a priming effect only when prime and target shared digits in the same position. Experiment 2 employed a masked priming same-different matching task - a task that has been successfully employed in the literature on letter position coding. Results showed faster response times when prime and target shared digits - including the transposed-digit condition - relative to the control conditions. Thus, the identity of each digit in the early stages of visual processing is not associated with a specific position in two-digit Arabic numbers. We examine the implication of these findings for models of Arabic number processing.

Masked transposition effects for simple versus complex nonalphanumeric objects

When two letters/digits/symbols are switched in a string (e.g., jugde–judge; 1492–1942; *?