John A. Spinks

Brain activation in the processing of Chinese characters and words: A functional MRI study

Functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to identify the neural correlates of Chinese character and word reading. The Chinese stimuli were presented visually, one at a time. Subjects covertly generated a word that was semantically related to each stimulus. Three sorts of Chinese items were used: single characters having precise meanings, single characters having vague meanings, and two‐character Chinese words. The results indicated that reading Chinese is characterized by extensive activity of the neural systems, with strong left lateralization of frontal (BAs 9 and 47) and temporal (BA 37) cortices and right lateralization of visual systems (BAs 17–19), parietal lobe (BA 3), and cerebellum. The location of peak activation in the left frontal regions coincided nearly completely both for vague‐ and precise‐meaning characters as well as for two‐character words, without dissociation in laterality patterns. In addition, left frontal activations were modulated by the ease of semantic retrieval. The present results constitute a challenge to the deeply ingrained belief that activations in reading single characters are right lateralized, whereas activations in reading two‐character words are left lateralized. Hum. Brain Mapping 10:16–27, 2000.

Asymmetrical cross-language priming effects

Three experiments were conducted to examine cross-language priming in bilinguals. The first was a cross-language primed lexical decision task experiment with Chinese-English bilinguals. Subjects made lexical decisions about primary associate targets in the two languages at the same rate, but priming occurred only when the prime was in their first language (L1), Chinese, and the target was in their second language (L2), English. Experiment 2 produced the same pattern of asymmetrical priming with two alphabetic languages, French and Dutch. In Experiment 3, the crucial stimuli were translation equivalents. In contrast to the results of Experiments 1 and 2, priming occurred across languages in both the L1-L2 and L2-L1 conditions. However, this priming was also asymmetrical, with more priming occurring in the L1-L2 condition. A tentative separate-interconnected model of bilingual memory is described. It suggests that the representations of words expressed in different languages are stored in separate memory systems, which may be interconnected via one-to-one links between same translation-equivalent representations as well as meaning-integration processes.

Reading Chinese characters for meaning: the role of phonological information.

Two experiments with the Stroop paradigm were conducted to investigate the role of phonological codes in access to the meaning of Chinese characters. Subjects named the ink color of viewed characters or color patches. Key items were color characters, their homophones with the same tone, homophones with different tones, and semantic associates. Apart from finding the usual Stroop interference effect, homophones produced significant interference in the incongruent condition, provided that they had the same tone as the color characters. The interference effect from homophones, however, was significantly smaller than that from color characters. Semantic associates generated an interference effect in the incongruent condition, an effect of the same magnitude as the effect from the same-tone homophones. Finally, in the congruent conditions, all the key items yielded facilitations compared to neutral controls, though the facilitation from color characters was larger than the facilitations from other types of characters. These findings suggest that phonological codes in Chinese are activated obligatorily and provide early sources of constraint in access to meaning.

The Orienting Response in Information Processing

Contents: Preface. Introduction. A Macrolevel Analysis of the Nonsignal Orienting Response. A Macrolevel Analysis of the Signal Orienting Response. A Microlevel Analysis of the Orienting Response Using Extrcellular Recording. A Microlevel Analysis of the Orienting Response Using Intracellular Recording. A Microlevel Analysis of the Orienting Response Using Intracellular Recording From the Isolated Soma. A Microlevel Analysis of the Orienting Response: Extracellular Recording From Detectors and Novelty-Dependent Neurons. Event-Related Potentials and the Orienting Response. Neuronal Organization of Color Space. The Orienting Response and Subjective Space I. The Orienting Response and Subjective Space II. Orienting, Information, and Anticipation. Auditory Event-Related Potentials in the Study of the Orienting Response. Addendum: Underlying Principles of Information Processing.

Cerebral hemodynamic response in Chinese (first) and English (second) language processing revealed by event-related functional MRI

Comparative functional neuroimaging studies using the block design paradigm have previously demonstrated that there are no significant differences in the location of areas of cerebral activation when native Chinese speakers independently process single words or sentences in both the Chinese (first) and English (second) languages. While it has also been documented that significant domains of brain response include the inferior to middle left frontal lobe, the latency, amplitude and duration of the associated hemodynamic changes during isolated neural processing of Chinese and English languages still remain unknown. The aim of this study, therefore, was to examine the characteristics of the hemodynamic alterations in the above-mentioned regions with event-related functional MRI (ER-fMRI) when native Chinese speakers performed verb generation tasks in both the Chinese (first) and English (second) languages. Our results demonstrate the presence of a similar neural activity-induced hemodynamic response in the inferior to middle left frontal lobe during both tasks. Further, there were also no statistically significant differences among the variables that described the hemodynamic response curves. These findings strongly imply that the underlying neural mechanism for Chinese (first) and English (second) language processing may be similar in native Chinese speakers.

More workload on the central executive of working memory, less attention capture by novel visual distractors: Evidence from an fMRI study

The present study examined the interaction of the central executive in working memory with visual attention. Native Chinese participants were given two versions of a number subtraction task, one of low demand and one of high demand, and were asked to ignore a simultaneously presented peripheral distractor. The distractor could be Chinese or Korean characters, familiar or novel to participants, respectively. Compared with the low-demand subtraction task, brain regions commonly associated with central executive functions, including left middle prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate cortex, and precentral gyrus/sulcus, were significantly activated in the high-demand task. Critically, there was a significant interaction between distractor type and task demand. Novel distractors captured attention and elicited automatic visual analysis, shown by primary visual cortex activation, only when the subtraction task was of low demand but not when it was of high demand. The results provide confirmatory evidence that the extent to which higher level cognitive resources, specifically, the central executive component of working memory, are absorbed by a cognitive task has an impact upon automatic processing that occurs in response to distracting items.

Multivariate prediction of academic performance by Hong Kong University students

Abstract Verbal intelligence, English-language skills, personality, and attitude scales were used as predictors of academic performance in 230 male and female arts students at the University of Hong Kong. A series of bivariate, multiple, and canonical correlation analyses were performed. The results showed that verbal intelligence and attitudes, excepting study orientation, were not predictive of performance. English-language skills had the most predictive value, accounting for about 10% of the variance of performance measures. Personality variables failed to predict performance when composite criterion measures (GPAs) were used; however, they proved to be of predictive value when results of individual academic subjects were used as criterion measures. The study points to the importance of using noncomposite criterion measures in prediction and of considering the cultural context of achievement.

Patterns of outcome in schizophrenia in Hong Kong

A total of 153 schizophrenic subjects were included for outcome assessment in different aspects of their life functions. The same group of subjects was followed‐up 1 year later to assess the consistency of their outcome pattern. A factor analysis on the outcome measures was conducted, and 5 independent factors were noted. Outcome on symptomatic control was most favourable but less consistent over time. Psychosocial deficits, on the other hand, were more enduring and noted in a significant proportion of the subjects.

The effects of anticipated information on skin conductance and cardiac activity

This experiment examined electrodermal and cardiac activity within a two-stimulus anticipation paradigm. A warning stimulus informed subjects (N = 24) whether an imperative stimulus to follow would contain two or four letters (low or high information conditions) and whether this stimulus would be presented for 60 or 75 msec (short or long duration). The subjects task was to identify as many of the letters in the imperative stimulus as possible. Although the amount of information conveyed by the warning stimulus was identical throughout the experiment (2 bits), skin conductance responses during the warning stimulus-imperative stimulus interval were larger prior to the high information imperative stimulus than prior to the low. Cardiac activity was not affected by the experimental manipulations. The implications of these findings for theories of the orienting response are discussed, particularly with reference to the view that orienting reflects an activation of the information processing system.

A study of the attentional changes accompanying orienting to different types of change stimuli

Abstract The effects of the orienting response on subsequent motor response efficiency were studied. Subjects underwent a standard habituation series of fifteen trials. On the sixteenth trial, they received one of four stimuli each of which was followed by a reaction time (RT) task: (a) same stimulus as the habituation stimulus, (b) slide of the word ‘COMING’ which subjects had been forewarned would precede the reaction time task, (c) subjects own name, (d) innocuous change stimulus. The results showed that RT was generally slowed in the stimulus-related change conditions compared with the no change condition, indicating that orienting to a novel or significant stimulus does not result in a generalized alerting or arousal. While skin conductance and heart rate data show no difference between the various change trial conditions, digital pulse amplitude changes, particularly later in the processing of the stimulus complex, differentiated these conditions. The data elucidate the information processing changes that accompany orienting. The significance and theoretical implications of the data are discussed.