Roberto G. de Almeida

Attentional blink differences between adolescent dyslexic and normal readers

The goal of this study was to evaluate the possibility that dyslexic individuals require more working memory resources than normal readers to shift attention from stimulus to stimulus. To test this hypothesis, normal and dyslexic adolescents participated in a Rapid Serial Visual Presentation experiment (Raymond, Shapiro, & Arnell, 1992). Surprisingly, the result showed that the participants with dyslexia produced a shallower attentional blink than normal controls. This result may be interpreted as showing differences in the way the two groups encode information in episodic memory. They also fit in a cascade-effect perspective of developmental dyslexia.

The effect of context on the processing of type-shifting verbs☆

Abstract Recent research in lexical semantics has suggested that verbs such as begin and enjoy semantically select for a complement that denotes an activity or an event. When no such activity or event is specified in the form of a progressive or infinitival complement, as in John began ( to read/reading ) the book , the verb is said to “coerce” the NP direct object to shift its role to encompass the activity that begin requires as complement (e.g., writing , reading ). Empirical support for this view has been provided by McElree, Traxler, Pickering, Seely, & Jackendoff (2001). In the present study, however, in two self-paced reading experiments, type-shifting effects (taken to be longer reading times engendered by the computation of the coercion process) were not obtained with sentences in isolation (Experiment 1) or with sentences embedded in contexts that specified the nature of the activity performed over the complement NP (Experiment 2). It is argued that type-shifting verbs are similar to non-preferred verbs for given contexts and that type-shifting operations are pragmatic inferences computed over underspecified semantic representations.

Changing morphological structures: The effect of sentence context on the interpretation of structurally ambiguous English trimorphemic words

Morphological parsing has often been studied with words in isolation. In this study we used sentence context to investigate how structural analyses of morphologically complex words are affected by the semantic content of their carrier sentences. Our main stimuli were trimorphemic ambiguous words such as unlockable (meaning either “not able to be locked” or “able to be unlocked”). We treat these words as structurally ambiguous such that the meaning of the words is determined by the perceived organisation of their constituent morphemes. The effect and malleability of this structural organisation were examined in one offline rating experiment and one cross-modal priming experiment with ambiguous words embedded in sentence context. The results of the study suggest that morphologically ambiguous words do show two interpretations and that the balance of these interpretations can be affected by the semantics of the sentence in which they are embedded. We interpret the pattern of data to suggest that when structurally ambiguous words are presented in isolation, word-internal factors determine which interpretation is to be preferred. However, in strongly constraining sentence contexts, these preferred parses are modified online to be consistent with the semantics of the entire sentence structure.

Thematic roles in Alzheimer's disease: Hierarchy violations in psychological predicates

The nature of the verb deficit in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) was investigated with a special focus on thematic-role assignment, employing verbs whose argument realization follows canonical thematic hierarchy, with Agent and Theme as main roles (e.g., The hunter killed the deer), and verbs whose argument realization deviates from canonical hierarchy, such as psych verbs (e.g., fear, frighten). SubjectExperiencer verbs (e.g., fear) do not assign an Agent role to the subject position of the sentence, but instead assign the role of Experiencer to that position. Object-Experiencer verbs (e.g., frighten) deviate from canonical thematic hierarchy in two ways. Like fear verbs, the frighten verbs do not assign the role of Agent. Moreover, they assign the role of Theme to the subject position and the role of Experiencer to the object position, thus resulting in the non-canonical Theme <Experiencer argument realization. Ten AD patients, 11 matched elderly controls, and 49 young controls performed a sentence completion task in which they had to choose a verb that would render the sentence grammatical and meaningful. AD patients showed no problems with canonical structures, but performed worse than controls in psych verb sentences, demonstrating greater difficulty with object-Experiencer sentences. Results suggest that AD patients may have an impairment in more fine-grained aspects of verb-semantic representation, such as thematic roles. 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The interpretation of ambiguous trimorphemic words in sentence context

Many trimorphemic words are structurally and semantically ambiguous. For example, unlock-able can either be un-lockable (cannot be locked) or unlock-able (can be unlocked). Which interpretation is preferred and whether the preceding sentence context affects the initial interpretation is not clear from prior research. The present experiment embedded ambiguous trimorphemic words in sentence contexts, manipulated whether or not preceding context disambiguated the meaning, and examined the pattern of fixation durations on the ambiguous word and the remainder of the text. The results indicated that the unlock-able interpretation was preferred; moreover, preceding context did not exert a significant effect until the eyes had initially exited from the target word.

What Do Category-Specific Semantic Deficits Tell Us about the Representation of Lexical Concepts? ☆

A reassessment of category-specific semantic deficits in light of their contribution to a theory of the representation of lexical concepts is proposed. Two theories are examined: one, held by the majority of researchers in the field, claims that concepts are represented by sets of features; another, in contrast, claims that concepts are atomic representations. An analysis of category-specific semantic deficits in terms of inferential relations (of the meaning-postulates type) between atomic concepts is elaborated. It is argued that this theory can better account for the pattern of performance exhibited by patients with semantic deficits.

The influence of semantic and morphological complexity of verbs on sentence recall: Implications for the nature of conceptual representation and category-specific deficits ☆

One hundred and forty normal undergraduate students participated in a Proactive Interference (PI) experiment with sentences containing verbs from four different semantic and morphological classes (lexical causatives, morphological causatives, and morphologically complex and simplex perception verbs). Past research has shown significant PI build-up effects for semantically and morphologically complex verbs in isolation (de Almeida & Mobayyen, 2004). The results of the present study show that, when embedded into sentence contexts, semantically and morphologically complex verbs do not produce significant PI build-up effects. Different verb classes, however, yield different recall patterns: sentences with semantically complex verbs (e.g., causatives) were recalled significantly better than sentences with semantically simplex verbs (e.g., perception verbs). The implications for the nature of both verb-conceptual representations and category-specific semantic deficits are discussed.

Semantic properties, aptness, familiarity, conventionality, and interpretive diversity scores for 84 metaphors and similes

For 84 unique topic–vehicle pairs (e.g., knowledge–power), participants produced associated properties for the topics (e.g., knowledge), vehicles (e.g., power), metaphors (knowledge is power), and similes (knowledge is like power). For these properties, we also obtained frequency, saliency, and connotativeness scores (i.e., how much the properties deviated from the denotative or literal meaning). In addition, we examined whether expression type (metaphor vs. simile) impacted the interpretations produced. We found that metaphors activated more salient properties than did similes, but the connotativeness levels for metaphor and simile salient properties were similar. Also, the two types of expressions did not differ across a wide range of measures collected: aptness, conventionality, familiarity, and interpretive diversity scores. Combined with the property lists, these interpretation norms constitute a thorough collection of data about metaphors and similes, employing the same topic–vehicle words, which can be used in psycholinguistic and cognitive neuroscience studies to investigate how the two types of expressions are represented and processed. These norms should be especially useful for studies that examine the online processing and interpretation of metaphors and similes, as well as for studies examining how properties related to metaphors and similes affect the interpretations produced.

Compound Pre-Access Decomposition: Effects of Constituent Disruption

In this study, we report three experiments that investigate whether recognition of existing English compounds is dependent on the recognition of their constituent morphemes. A constituent disruption paradigm was employed with compounds of fixed length, but variable constituent length. The results of Experiment 1 confirmed that disrupting a single character in a three-character word by replacing it with a crosshatch (e.g., way → w#y) interfered with recognition rates more than the disruption of a single character of a five-letter word (e.g., drive → dr#ve). However, in Experiment 2, when these constituents were embedded in eight-character compounds (e.g., driveway), no differential effect of constituent disruption was found for either naming accuracy or latency. In Experiment 3, this effect was replicated in a masked priming lexical decision paradigm in which disrupted compounds served as primes and intact compounds served as targets. The results of the three experiments were interpreted to offer counter-evidence to the claim that compound recognition is dependent on the prelexical recognition of constituent morphemes. We argue that although English compound processing may indeed be characterized by both whole-word recognition and constituent activation, access to individual morphemes is not a necessary condition in the recognition process.

Aptness Predicts Metaphor Preference in the Lab and on the Internet

ABSTRACT Experimental studies have suggested that variables such as aptness (Chiappe & Kennedy, 2001) or conventionality (Gentner & Bowdle, 2008) are predictors of people’s preference for expressing a particular topic–vehicle pair (e.g., “time–money”) as either a metaphor (“TIME IS MONEY”) or a simile (“TIME IS LIKE MONEY”). In the present study, we investigated if such variables would also be predictive within a more naturalistic context, where other variables, such as the intention to include an explanation (Roncero, Kennedy, & Smyth, 2006), may also influence people’s decision. Specifically, we investigated the production of metaphor and simile expressions on the Internet via the Google search engine and checked for accompanying explanations, as well as the properties they expressed, to examine whether ratings such as aptness, conventionality, as well as participants’ own stated preference or the intention to produce an explanation, would predict which topic–vehicle pairs appeared more often as metaphors. We found that participants’ stated preference predicted metaphor dominance on the Internet, and that apt topic–vehicles occurred more often as metaphors. The explanations collected, however, occurred 82% of the time after similes, and familiar expressions were the most explained. Finally, comparing the properties expressed in these explanations to normed property lists, we found that simile explanations typically expressed a novel conception of the topic–vehicle relationship. Therefore, we found that Internet posters use metaphors to convey an apt relationship, as found in previous laboratory studies, but prefer using a simile frame when they want to express a relationship that readers will find novel.