Lise Abrams

Cognitive advantages and disadvantages in early and late bilinguals.

Previous research has documented advantages and disadvantages of early bilinguals, defined as learning a 2nd language by school age and using both languages since that time. Relative to monolinguals, early bilinguals manifest deficits in lexical access but benefits in executive function. We investigated whether becoming bilingual after childhood (late bilinguals) can produce the cognitive advantages and disadvantages typical of early bilinguals. Participants were 30 monolingual English speakers, 30 late English-Spanish bilinguals, and 30 early Spanish-English bilinguals who completed a picture naming task (lexical access) and an attentional network task (executive function). Late and early bilinguals manifested equivalent cognitive effects in both tasks, demonstrating lexical access deficits and executive function benefits. These findings provide support for the hypothesis that cognitive effects associated with bilingualism arise as the result of proficient, habitual use of 2 languages and not of developmental changes associated with becoming bilingual during childhood.

Isolating phonological components that increase tip-of-the-tongue resolution

Three experiments investigated the role of specific phonological components in priming tip-of-thetongue (TOT) resolution. When in a TOT state, participants read a list of words that included phonological primes intermixed among unrelated words. The phonological primes contained either the same first letter as the target (Experiment 1), a single syllable (first, middle, or last) of the target (Experiment 2), or the first phoneme or first syllable of the target (Experiment 3). Reading first-letter primes in Experiment 1 did not help to resolve TOTs, whereas reading first-syllable primes significantly increased word retrieval in Experiment 2. Experiment 3 replicated the results of Experiments 1 and 2 using firstphoneme primes instead of first-letter primes and using two primes instead of three, although firstsyllable priming occurred only for primes read silently. The results of these experiments support a transmission deficit model, where TOTs are caused by weak connections among phonological representations and can be resolved through internal or overt production of specific phonology.

Free associations and dominance ratings of homophones for young and older adults

Homophones are words that share phonology but differ in meaning and spelling (e.g.,beach, beech). This article presents the results of normative surveys that asked young and older adults to free associate to and rate the dominance of 197 homophones. Although norms exist for young adults on word familiarity and frequency for homophones, these results supplement the literature by (1) reporting the four most frequent responses to visually presented homophones for both young and older adults, and (2) reporting young and older adults’ ratings of homophone dominance. Results indicated that young and older adults gave the same first response to 67% of the homophones and rated homophone dominance similarly on 60% of the homophone sets. These results identify a subset of homophones that are preferable for research with young and older adults because of age-related equivalence in free association and dominance ratings. These norms can be downloaded from the Psychonomic Society’s Web archive,www.psychonomic.org/archive/.

Syntactic class influences phonological priming of tip-of-the-tongue resolution

During tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) experiences, phonologically related words have both facilitated and impeded word retrieval. In the present experiment, we examined whether phonologically related words’ syntactic class (part of speech) is responsible for these differential effects. Sixty college students saw general knowledge questions whose answers were designated target words and responded “know,” “don’t know,” or “TOT.” Following “TOT” and “don’t know” responses, the participants saw five words, one of which was a prime. The primes contained the target’s first syllable and either shared or did not share the target’s part of speech. Following presentation of the primes, retrieval of the target was attempted again. Different-part-of-speech primes facilitated resolution of TOT states, whereas same-part-of-speech primes had no effect, relative to phonologically unrelated words. These results support node structure theory’s most-primed-wins principle and the transmission deficit model account of TOT states and detail the importance of syntactic class in the selection of words that are candidates for speech production.

Divergent Task Performance in Older Adults: Declarative Memory or Creative Potential?

Divergent thinking is a process or method used to generate creative ideas by exploring many possible solutions or responses, and is a critical element of creativity. Lesion and imaging studies have shown that the frontal lobes are important in mediating divergent thinking, and frontal lobe function is highly dependent on white matter connections with subcortical and cortical networks. Normal aging often results in deficits in functions controlled by the frontal lobes, as well as decrements in white-matter connectivity. Objectives of this study included comparing non-time-constrained tasks of verbal divergent processing in young adults (YAs) and older adults (OAs) and correlating performance with tasks of working memory, language ability, and disengagement/inhibition. Participants were 30 YAs and 30 OAs. Contrary to the a priori hypothesis, OAs produced significantly more unique responses than YAs, although total fluency was not significantly different. Correlational analyses examining the groups together and separately revealed a number of differences suggesting that the groups were utilizing different underlying cognitive abilities to complete these tasks. Future studies are needed to test the hypothesis that the primary factor resulting in higher uniqueness scores for the OAs was a greater wealth of experiences, including in the use of language.

Phonologically mediated priming of preexisting and new associations in young and older adults.

In 2 experiments, the authors investigated phonologically mediated priming of preexisting and new associations in word retrieval. Young and older adults completed paired word stems with the first word that came to mind. Priming of preexisting associations occurred when word-stem pairs containing homophones (e.g., beech-s____) showed more completions with the target (e.g., sand) relative to unrelated pairs (e.g., batch-s____), with more priming for subordinate than for dominant homophones. Priming occurred for new associations independent of dominance such that word-stem pairs containing homophones (e.g., beech-l____ and beach-l____) were completed with the same word (e.g., laugh) more often than unrelated pairs (e.g., beech-l____ and batch-l____). No age differences in phonologically mediated priming were found for either type of association, suggesting age equivalence in the use of bottom-up phonological connections.

Why did I right that? Factors that influence the production of homophone substitution errors

Despite considerable research on language production errors involving speech, little research exists in the complementary domain of writing. Two experiments investigated the production of homophone substitution errors, which occur when a contextually appropriate word (e.g., beech) is replaced with its homophone (e.g., beach tree). Participants wrote down auditorily presented sentences containing dominant or subordinate homophones. Homophones were preceded by a lexical prime that overlapped in phonology and orthography (e.g., teacher) or only orthography (e.g., headmaster) with the target homophone. Results showed more substitution errors when the context elicited a subordinate homophone than when it elicited a dominant homophone. Furthermore, both types of primes equivalently increased production of homophone errors relative to control words (e.g., lawyer), suggesting that only orthographic overlap between the prime and target was necessary to influence errors. These results are explained within dual-route models of spelling, which postulate an interaction between lexical and sublexical routes when spelling.

Competing influences of emotion and phonology during picture-word interference

ABSTRACT Speaking is susceptible to distraction, illustrated by slowed picture naming in the presence of taboo distractor words. However, other distractors such as phonologically related words speed picture naming. Two experiments explored the simultaneous influences of these competing factors. Participants named target pictures superimposed with taboo, negative, positive, or neutral distractor words, and filler pictures were presented after every target to investigate emotional carryover effects. Distractors were phonologically related or unrelated to the target (Experiment 1) or filler (Experiment 2). Results showed that taboo, and to a lesser extent negative, distractors slowed picture naming relative to neutral and positive distractors, and slowing from taboo distractors persisted into the filler trial. In contrast, phonological overlap between targets and distractors sped target but not filler picture naming, especially when distractors were taboo. These findings suggest that strong emotional words engage attention to influence phonological encoding during speech production, and interfering effects from taboo words are particularly long lasting. Results are interpreted within existing language production theories, using mechanisms that are sensitive to words’ emotional properties and that regulate distractor interference during speech production.

Exploring the generality of retest effects: Commentary on “When does age-related cognitive decline begin?”

With respect to age differences in cognitive functioning, longitudinal and cross-sectional analyses have typically revealed differential patterns of results. Longitudinal comparisons show little or no age-related declines, whereas cross-sectional comparisons typically demonstrate poorer performance with increasing age. Salthouse presents evidence suggesting that longitudinal comparisons fail to detect age declines because the effects of prior test experience are not taken into account and that age-related declines in cognition begin in early adulthood. The present paper discusses some implications of these findings, such as their generalizability to other cognitive tasks, and highlights some additional findings in his paper that are worthy of discussion.

The relevance of situation awareness in older adults’ cognitive functioning: a review

Age-related declines in cognition may have detrimental effects on older adults’ ability to complete everyday activities that young- and middle-aged individuals perform automatically. Theories of cognitive aging have found deficits in older adults’ fluid intelligence, capacity for inhibition, number of processing resources, and speed of processing, and in recent years, studies have proposed cognitive strategies to ameliorate these declines. However, few strategies directly train the cognitive strategies necessary to improve performance in dynamic environments and physical activities. One such strategy may be the enhancement of situation awareness, the capability to perceive and understand one’s environment. Although the term has typically been applied to pilots and other expert performers, situation awareness may also be relevant to cognitive aging, where older adults’ perception and comprehension of their environment become critical to everyday functioning and physical activities. If older adults’ situation awareness can be facilitated, then it may be possible to reduce the impact of age-related cognitive declines, allowing older adults to successfully participate in dynamic situations and sports where the environment is constantly changing (e.g., driving and tennis). The following review outlines cognitive deficits in aging, details their relation to situation awareness, and discusses how training in situation awareness may reduce cognitive declines.