Lei Mo

Evidence for Long-Term Cross-Language Repetition Priming in Low Fluency Chinese-English Bilinguals.

Previous studies have found that proficiency in a second language affects how the meanings of words are accessed. Support for this hypothesis is based on data from explicit memory tasks with bilingual participants who know two languages that are relatively similar phonologically and orthographically (e.g., Dutch–English, French–English). The present study tested this hypothesis with Chinese–English bilinguals using an implicit memory task – the cross-language repetition priming paradigm. Consistent with the result of Zeelenberg, R. and Pecher, D. (2003), we obtained reliable effects of long-term cross-language repetition priming using a conceptual implicit memory task. Overall, the four experiments support the Revised Hierarchical Model as they demonstrate that low fluency bilinguals can only access the conceptual representation of the second language via the lexical representation of the first language.

Immediacy of Integration in Discourse Comprehension: Evidence from Chinese Readers' Eye Movements.

An eye-movement study was conducted to examine whether Chinese readers immediately activate and integrate related background information during discourse comprehension. Participants were asked to read short passages, each containing a critical word that fitted well within the local context but was inconsistent or neutral with background information from the early part of the passage. This manipulation of textual consistency produced reliable effects on both first-pass reading fixations in the target region and second-pass reading times in the pre-target and target regions. These results indicate that integration processes start very rapidly in reading text in a writing system with properties that encourage delayed processing, suggesting that immediate processing is likely a universal principle in discourse comprehension.

Mixed cultural context brings out bilingual advantage on executive function

The issue of whether bilinguals have advantages over monolinguals in cognitive functions has received ongoing research attention. Most researchers have agreed that continuously shifting between two languages enhances bilinguals executive function, but several recent studies failed to find any evidence of bilingual advantage. In addition, the mechanism of bilingual advantage in executive function is not fully understood. Here, we hypothesized that a bilingual advantage should appear on tasks requiring an enhanced level of executive function, and tested this hypothesis in a non-language-based mixed culture context and single culture context. Proficient bilinguals and non-proficient bilinguals completed an Eriksen Flanker Task in these two contexts. The results showed that proficient bilinguals’ performance on incongruent trials was better than that of non-proficient bilinguals in the mixed cultural context, but not in the single cultural context. These findings cast important light on understanding the nature of bilingual advantage.

What is beautiful brings out what is good in you: The effect of facial attractiveness on individuals' honesty.

This study tested whether the presence of an attractive face would influence individuals honesty. In 2 experiments, 225 participants were asked to predict the outcome of computerised coin-flips and to self-report the accuracy of their predictions. Self-reports were made in the presence of a facial photo of a female who had been rated before the experiment as high attractive, middle attractive or low attractive by other volunteers. Participants were rewarded based on their self-reported (not actual) accuracy. The results showed that subjects tended to give more dishonest self-reports when presented with middle or low attractive facial images than when presented with high attractive images, with self-reported accuracy being significantly higher than the random level. The results of this study show that presented with an attractive face, subjects tend to engage in behaviours that conform to moral codes.

Resolution of activated background information in text comprehension

The present experiments explored the resolution of activated background information in text comprehension. In Experiment 1, participants read passages that contained an elaboration section that was either consistent or qualified (inconsistent but then corrected to be consistent) with respect to the subsequently presented target sentence (see OBrien et al., 1998). However, the experiment used two target sentences, and several filler sentences were inserted between the first and second target sentence. The results showed that the reading times for the first target sentence in the qualified elaboration version were significantly longer than those in the consistent elaboration version. These were consistent with OBriens study, and further indicated that the basic process captured by the memory-based view appears to generalize to the Chinese reader better than does the here-and-now view. More importantly, the results showed that the reading times for the second target sentence in the qualified elaboration version were as long as those in the consistent elaboration version. These further indicated that the activation of background information not only maintained the coherence of the text, but also allowed for the relevant information to be updated, resulting in a unified information set. When the information was reactivated during ongoing reading, it would be in the form of unified information. In Experiment 2, the first target sentence in each passage from Experiment 1 was converted to a filler sentence, and the second target sentence became the target sentence. The results of Experiment 2 showed that the reading times for the target sentence in the qualified elaboration version were significantly longer than those for the consistent elaboration version. These indicated that the delay between the target sentences and the elaboration section was not responsible for the lack of differences in Experiment 1, and confirmed the conclusion of Experiment 1.

Influence of the large-small split effect on strategy choice in complex subtraction.

Two main theories have been used to explain the arithmetic split effect: decision-making process theory and strategy choice theory. Using the inequality paradigm, previous studies have confirmed that individuals tend to adopt a plausibility-checking strategy and a whole-calculation strategy to solve large and small split problems in complex addition arithmetic, respectively. This supports strategy choice theory, but it is unknown whether this theory also explains performance in solving different split problems in complex subtraction arithmetic. This study used small, intermediate and large split sizes, with each split condition being further divided into problems requiring and not requiring borrowing. The reaction times (RTs) for large and intermediate splits were significantly shorter than those for small splits, while accuracy was significantly higher for large and middle splits than for small splits, reflecting no speed-accuracy trade-off. Further, RTs and accuracy differed significantly between the borrow and no-borrow conditions only for small splits. This study indicates that strategy choice theory is suitable to explain the split effect in complex subtraction arithmetic. That is, individuals tend to choose the plausibility-checking strategy or the whole-calculation strategy according to the split size.

Universal Phonological Features

The Theory of universal grammar suggests that human languages may share some similarities at the phonological level. Based on this hypothesis, we further propose a language generalization effect (LGE) and hypothesize that people may inherit the universal phonological features from their native languages and then transfer them to foreign languages. To test this hypothesis, in two experiments, participants listened to a pair of normal and syllable reversed recordings (Experiments 1a–1d) or normal and phonemic reversed recordings (Experiments 2a–2d) in unknown and native languages and reported their similarities. The results indicated that participants were more sensitive to the dissimilarities of normal recordings than to reversed ones. These results suggest that participants could identify the universal phonological features from normal recordings, but not reversed ones, and then adopt these features to better verify the dissimilarities of normal recordings. In sum, the current study first proposed the LGE and reported primary evidence to support it.

Color adaptation induced from linguistic description of color

Recent theories propose that language comprehension can influence perception at the low level of perceptual system. Here, we used an adaptation paradigm to test whether processing language caused color adaptation in the visual system. After prolonged exposure to a color linguistic context, which depicted red, green, or non-specific color scenes, participants immediately performed a color detection task, indicating whether they saw a green color square in the middle of a white screen or not. We found that participants were more likely to perceive the green color square after listening to discourses denoting red compared to discourses denoting green or conveying non-specific color information, revealing that language comprehension caused an adaptation aftereffect at the perceptual level. Therefore, semantic representation of color may have a common neural substrate with color perception. These results are in line with the simulation view of embodied language comprehension theory, which predicts that processing language reactivates the sensorimotor systems that are engaged during real experience.

Working memory operates over the same representations as attention

A recent study observed a working memory (WM) Stroop effect with a magnitude equivalent to that of the classic Stroop effect, indicating that WM operates over the same representations as attention. However, more research is needed to examine this proposal. One unanswered question is whether the WM Stroop effect occurs when the WM item and the perceptual task do not have an overlapping response set. We addressed this question in Experiment 1 by conducting an attentional word-color task and a WM word-color task. The results showed that a WM Stroop effect also occurred in that condition, as a word that only indirectly evoked a color representation could interfere with the color judgement in both the attentional task and WM task. In Experiment 2, we used a classic Simon task and a WM Simon task to examine whether holding visuo-spatial information rather than verbal information in WM could interfere with perceptual judgment as well. We observed a WM Simon effect of equivalent magnitude to that of the classic Simon effect. The well-known stimulus-response compatibility effect also existed in the WM domain. The two experiments together demonstrated that WM operates over the same representations as attention, which sheds new light on the hypothesis that working memory is internally directed attention.