Lorella Lotto

Naming times and standardized norms for the italian PD/DPSS set of 266 pictures: Direct comparisons with American, English, French, and Spanish published databases

The present study provides Italian normative measures for 266 line drawings belonging to the new set of pictures developed by Lotto, Dell’Acqua, and Job (in press). The pictures have been standardized on the following measures: number of letters, number of syllables, name frequency, within-category typicality, familiarity, age of acquisition, name agreement, and naming time. In addition to providing the measures, the present study focuses on indirect and direct comparisons (i.e., correlations) of the present norms with databases provided by comparable studies in Italian (in which normative data were collected with Snodgrass & Vanderwart’s set of pictures; Nisi, Longoni, & Snodgrass, 2000), in British English (Barry, Morrison, & Ellis, 1997), in American English (Snodgrass & Vanderwart, 1980; Snodgrass & Yuditsky, 1996), in French (Alario & Ferrand, 1999), and in Spanish (Sanfeliu & Fernandez, 1996).

Effects of Learning Method and Word Type on Acquiring Vocabulary in an Unfamiliar Language

This study examined the roles of learning method, word frequency, and cognate status in the learning of 80 Italian words by 56 adult Dutch learners previously unfamiliar with Italian. We contrasted 2 learning methods: word learning, where the Italian word was presented with its translation in Dutch, and picture learning, where it was presented with a picture depicting its referent. At test, either pictures or the Dutch words constituted the cues for recall of the Italian words. Recall was tested twice: once after 3 learning trials per stimulus, and a second time after an additional 3 learning trials. Two measures served as dependent variables: retrieval times and recall scores. The results show (a) that word learning resulted in better performance than picture learning; (b) that performance was better when the study and test conditions were congruent than when they were incongruent; and (c) that cognates and high-frequency words were easier to learn than noncognates and low-frequency words. Particularly noteworthy is that after 6 learning trials performance had not yet become independent of learning method. We discuss the implications of these results for bilingual memory representation and for sequencing curricula for foreign-language learning.

Mentalizing in economic decision-making.

In the Ultimatum Game, participants typically reject monetary offers they consider unfair even if the alternative is to gain no money at all. In the present study, ERPs were recorded while subjects processed different offers of a proposer. In addition to clearly fair and unfair offers, mid-value offers which cannot be easily classified as fair or unfair and therefore involve more elaborate decision making were analyzed. A fast initial distinction between fair and other kinds of offers was reflected by amplitude of the feedback related negativity (FRN). Mid-value offers were associated with longer RTs, and a larger N350 amplitude. In addition, source analyses revealed a specific involvement of the superior temporal gyrus and the inferior parietal lobule during processing of mid-value offers compared to offers categorized clearly as fair or unfair, suggesting a contribution of mentalizing about the intention of the proposer to the decision making process. Taken together, the present findings support the idea that economic decisions are significantly affected by non-rational factors, trying to narrow the gap between formal theory and the real decisional behaviour.

Predicting outcomes of decisions in the brain

When making decisions, the outcomes of different choices play an important role. Feedback is mainly processed in terms of gains and losses. It is as yet unclear whether this distinction holds for predictable as well as unpredictable outcomes. Using ERPs, the present study aimed to determine whether predictable and unpredictable outcomes are coded differently in the brain. Participants had to choose between one of two options: the certain option was always associated with a gain of 10 euro, while the uncertain option entailed a gain of 30 euro or a loss of 10 euro, with a probability of 50% each. Overall, subjects showed a clear preference for the certain option, a tendency which became more pronounced during the course of the experiment. An early ERP component, the P200, reflected the predictability of outcomes, which was critical for the subsequent decisions. The later feedback related negativity (FRN) reflected the known distinction between gains and losses, while the N500 again reflected differential processing of predictable and unpredictable outcomes. Neither FRN nor the N500 were significantly related to behaviour. Predictability appears to play a central role in outcome evaluation.

The picture superiority effect in categorization: visual or semantic?

Two experiments are reported whose aim was to replicate and generalize the results presented by Snodgrass and McCullough (1986) on the effect of visual similarity in the categorization process. For pictures, Snodgrass and McCulloughs results were replicated because Ss took longer to discriminate elements from 2 categories when they were visually similar than when they were visually dissimilar. However, unlike Snodgrass and McCullough, an analogous increase was also observed for word stimuli. The pattern of results obtained here can be explained most parsimoniously with reference to the effect of semantic similarity, or semantic and visual relatedness, rather than to visual similarity alone.

The Effect of Grammatical Gender on Object Categorization

In 3 experiments, we investigated the effect of grammatical gender on object categorization. Participants were asked to judge whether 2 objects, whose names did or did not share grammatical gender, belonged to the same semantic category by pressing a key. Monolingual speakers of English (Experiment 1), Italian (Experiments 1 and 2), and Spanish (Experiments 2 and 3) were tested in their native language. Italian and Spanish participants responded faster to pairs of stimuli sharing the same gender, whereas no difference was observed for English participants. In Experiment 2, the pictures were chosen in such a way that the grammatical gender of the names was opposite in Italian and Spanish. Therefore, the same pair of stimuli gave rise to different patterns depending on the gender congruency of the names in the languages. In Experiment 3, Spanish speakers performed the same task under an articulatory suppression condition, showing no grammatical gender effect. The locus where meaning and gender interact can be located at the level of the lexical representation that specifies syntactic information: Nouns sharing the same grammatical gender activate each other, thus facilitating their processing and speeding up responses, either to semantically related pairs or to semantically unrelated pairs.

Temporal dynamics of cognitive-emotional interplay in moral decision-making

This study investigated the temporal dynamics of emotional and cognitive processing underlying decision-making in moral judgment. Thirty-seven participants were presented with a set of 60 dilemmas varying in whether killing one individual was an intended means to save others (instrumental dilemmas) or a foreseen but unintended consequence (incidental dilemmas). Participants were required to decide between Options A (letting a specific number of people die) and B (killing one person to save a specific number of people). ERPs were recorded to a slide displaying the letters A and B while subjects were deciding between the options, and movement-related potentials were recorded time-locked to the behavioral response, thus allowing the investigation of both stimulus- and response-related processes during decision-making. Ratings of emotional valence and arousal experienced during decision-making were collected after each decision. Compared with incidental dilemmas, instrumental dilemmas prompted a lower number of B choices and significantly more unpleasant decisions. A larger P260 component was found in the frontopolar and frontal areas when subjects were deciding on instrumental than incidental dilemmas, possibly reflecting an immediate affective reaction during the early stage of assessment and formation of preferences between available options. On the other hand, decisions on incidental dilemmas required greater attentional resources during the fairly controlled later processing, as reflected in the larger slow wave amplitudes. In addition, facilitation of action selection and implementation was found for incidental dilemmas during the second stage of decision-making, as supported by the larger amplitudes of both components of the Bereitschaftspotential.

Grammatical gender processing in Italian and Spanish bilinguals

We explored whether the grammatical gender of the native language (L1) affects the production of words in a second language (L2). Evidence from previous studies is contrasting. In the present investigation, Italian–Spanish bilinguals were instructed to name pictures in L2 (Experiments 1 and 2) or to translate words from L1 to L2 (Experiment 3), producing either the bare noun or the noun phrase (article + noun). Half of the nouns had the same gender in the two languages, while the other half had a different gender. In all experiments, responses were faster in the gender-congruent than in the gender-incongruent condition, irrespective of task (L2 picture naming or forward word translation) and syntactic type (bare noun and noun phrase). We propose that in the bilingual system, parallel to the semantic route, a direct lexical, nonsemantic route connects the languages and that the native language interacts at the level of grammatical gender with the lexical representations of the response language.

Visual effects in picture and word categorization.

Two experiments are reported in which participants categorized stimuli as belonging or not belonging to the category of fruits. Blocks of pictures and words were used, with items referring to exemplars having either high or low intercategory visual similarity and/or semantic relatedness. For both pictures and words, response time was longer in the semantically related conditions than in the unrelated condition. Furthermore, there was a strong effect of visual similarity for pictures but not for words when semantic relatedness was held constant: Participants took longer to classify pictures of fruits when these were mixed with visually similar vegetables than when they were mixed with visually dissimilar vegetables. Reducing the stimulus visibility by adding a dot pattern had an additive effect for words but an interactive effect for pictures. The results are explained in terms of a unique locus for category decisions about pictures and words.

Moral dilemmas and moral principles: When emotion and cognition unite

Traditional studies on moral judgement used resolutions of moral dilemmas that were framed in terms of acceptability of the consequentialist action promoting a greater good, thus overlooking the deontological implications (choices cannot be justified by their consequences). Recently, some authors have suggested a parallelism between automatic, unreflective emotional responses and deontological moral judgements. In this study, we developed a novel experimental paradigm in which participants were required to choose between two resolutions of a moral dilemma (consequentialist and deontological). To assess whether emotions are engaged in each of the two resolutions, we asked participants to evaluate their emotional experience through the ratings of valence and arousal. Results showed that emotion is involved not only in deontological but also in consequentialist resolutions. Moreover, response times pointed out a different interplay between emotion and cognition in determining a conflict in the dilemmas resolution. In particular, when people were faced with trolley-like dilemmas we found that decisions leading to deontological resolutions were slower than decisions leading to consequentialist resolutions. We propose that this finding reflects the special (but not accepted) permission provided by the doctrine of the double effect for incidentally causing death for the sake of a good end.