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This study examines whether semantic relatedness facilitates or impedes the acquisition of English collocations by conducting two experiments respectively on Chinese undergraduates. Each experiment was composed of a reading session, a productive test, and a receptive test. Experiment 1 began with the reading session of 28 paired-up words and their collocations (in sentence context). Those words were counterbalanced between two randomly selected groups by cross-matching on semantic relatedness. Results of the productive test revealed that the participants scored significantly higher on test items that were semantically related than the randomly cross-paired counterparts. However, for the receptive test, the participants performed significantly better on semantically unrelated items. Experiment 2 was similar to Experiment 1 except that the word pairs selected were only semantically related and did not have any shared morphemes. Experiment 2 also revealed consistent results. The results of the two experiments consistently illustrate that semantic relatedness may exert a facilitatory effect on language output but an inhibitory effect on the process of language input.

Transition theory posits that autobiographical memories are organized by major life transitions, which is often supported by the Living-in-History effect that occurs when people frequently refer to public events to support their date estimates of personal events. In the present study, 52 Chinese older adults in Hong Kong recalled autobiographical events using cue-word method and justified the date estimates of the events. They also reported the most important events and assessed their impacts. Results showed that participants referred to public events only when estimating the date of 5.5% of word-cued events and reported a few public events as personally important, suggesting an absence of the Living-in-History effect. Nonetheless, word-cued events and important events accumulated around major life transitions to form a transition bump; the material change that important events brought about predicted whether the important events were used to organize autobiographical memory, thereby providing new evidence for the transition theory.

Purpose: We report a preliminary study that prospectively tests the potential cognitive enhancing effect of foreign language (FL) learning in older adults with no clear signs of cognitive decline beyond what is age typical. Because language learning engages a large brain network that overlaps with the network of cognitive aging, we hypothesized that learning a new language later in life would be beneficial. Method: Older adults were randomly assigned to 3 training groups--FL, games, and music appreciation. All were trained predominately by a computer-based program for 6 months, and their cognitive abilities were tested before, immediately after, and 3 months after training. Results: FL and games, but not music appreciation, improved overall cognitive abilities that were maintained at 3 months after training. Conclusion: This is the 1st randomized control study providing preliminary support for the cognitive benefits of FL learning.

The present study examines the impact of neighborhood size (number of other two-character words sharing the same character at the same position) on Chinese lexical processing, along with its joint effects with variables such as character frequency, word frequency, and semantic transparency. Previous factorial experiments have yielded conflicting results that are difficult to reconcile with existing models (Li et al., 2015, 2017). To provide high-powered tests for these theoretically important effects on visual word recognition, we leveraged the megastudy approach and used linear mixed-effect analyses to investigate lexical decision and naming responses to a large pool of two-character Chinese words (N > 17,000) sourced from Tse et al.'s (2017, 2023) database. In all analyses we controlled for extraneous orthographic (e.g., stroke count), phonological (e.g., consistency), and semantic (e.g., transparency) variables. In addition to evaluating Li et al.'s (2015, 2017) models, we also investigated whether the parallel dual-route mechanism, which entails lexical access via whole-word or character decomposition-then-composition, could account for neighborhood size effect and its interactions in lexical decision and naming. Finally, we discuss the implications of our findings on the specificity of lexical effects with regard to character position and lexical processing task. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Metaphors are commonly used by individuals to represent andreason about time in daily conversations. These metaphors areoften paired with gestures that reveal the possible axes alongwhich our internal conceptualisation of time may be alignedagainst. The present study attempts to use such gestures astemporal primes to investigate how individuals conceptualizetime. Results revealed effects of congruency along the sagittalaxis, but not the lateral. This suggests that individualsprimarily represent time most strongly along the sagittal axis.Implications for models of how individuals represent time aswell as methods of investigating how time is represented in themind are discussed.

By administering a Stroop task to college-student bilinguals varied in self-rated first- (L1) and second-language (L2) proficiency, the current study examined the effects of L1 and L2 proficiencies on selective attention performance. We conducted ex-Gaussian analyses to capture the modal and positive-tail components of participants' reaction time distributions. Both L1 and L2 proficiencies were associated with a shift of reaction time distributions in incongruent trials, relative to congruent trials, and the tail size of reaction time distributions regardless of trial types. This suggests that bilinguals' L1 and L2 proficiencies could affect their Stroop performance via modulating their conflict resolution and goal maintenance abilities.

English speakers use horizontal spatial metaphors (e.g., before/after) to talk about time relative to vertical spatial metaphors (e.g., up/down), so they may be faster in verifying temporal targets (e.g., June comes after April) that are preceded by primes that activate horizontal, relative to vertical, spatial metaphors. We examined this horizontal bias by comparing the effect of horizontal versus vertical arrows as primes on judging the validity of pure temporal targets (e.g., June is earlier/later than April) versus spatiotemporal targets (e.g., June comes before/after April). The horizontal bias occurred for both types of targets, and participants were faster when the arrow direction (e.g., right pointing; arrow flying from left to right) was congruent with the meaning of relation words in the temporal targets (e.g., later--time flowing from the past to the future) than when it was incongruent, consistent with the view of the left-past/right-future representation of time. (Contains 2 tables and 2 footnotes.)

Participants' reaction time (RT) data in a prime-probe flanker task (e.g., ABA-CAC) were analyzed in terms of the characteristics of RT distribution to examine possible mechanisms that produce negative priming. When the prime and probe were presented in the same context and the proportion of repetition-target trials (TRP) was 0.33, negative priming increased as a function of RT bins, supporting the episodic retrieval account (Neill, 1997). Manipulations that discourage the use of episodic retrieval (i.e., switching context between prime and probe or 0.00 TRP) eliminated the increase in negative priming across RT bins, even though the overall effect remained significant. These data support a dual-mechanism account in which, depending on task demands, both selective inhibition and episodic retrieval can be involved in producing negative priming. (Contains 3 footnotes, 2 tables, and 3 figures.)

Word frequency and semantic priming effects are among the most robust effects in visual word recognition, and it has been generally assumed that these two variables produce interactive effects in lexical decision performance, with larger priming effects for low-frequency targets. The results from four lexical decision experiments indicate that the joint effects of semantic priming and word frequency are critically dependent upon differences in the vocabulary knowledge of the participants. Specifically, across two Universities, additive effects of the two variables were observed in means, and in RT distributional analyses, in participants with more vocabulary knowledge, while interactive effects were observed in participants with less vocabulary knowledge. These results are discussed with reference to [Borowsky, R., & Besner, D. (1993)." Visual word recognition: A multistage activation model." "Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 19," 813-840] multistage account and [Plaut, D. C., & Booth, J. R. (2000). "Individual and developmental differences in semantic priming: Empirical and computational support for a single-mechanism account of lexical processing." "Psychological Review, 107," 786-823] single-mechanism model. In general, the findings are also consistent with a flexible lexical processing system that optimizes performance based on processing fluency and task demands. (Contains 10 tables and 6 figures.)

The joint effects of stimulus quality and word frequency in lexical decision were examined in 4 experiments as a function of nonword type (legal nonwords, e.g., BRONE, vs. pseudohomophones, e.g., BRANE). When familiarity was a viable dimension for word-nonword discrimination, as when legal nonwords were used, additive effects of stimulus quality and word frequency were observed in both means and distributional characteristics of the response-time distributions. In contrast, when the utility of familiarity was undermined by using pseudohomophones, additivity was observed in the means but not in distributional characteristics. Specifically, opposing interactive effects in the underlying distribution were observed, producing apparent additivity in means. These findings are consistent with the suggestion that, when familiarity is deemphasized in lexical decision, cascaded processing between letter and word levels is in play, whereas, when familiarity is a viable dimension for word-nonword discrimination, processing is discrete. (Contains 5 footnotes, 10 tables, and 5 figures.)

Letter-search (LS) within a prime often eliminates semantic priming. In 2 lexical decision experiments, the authors found that priming from LS primes occurred for low-frequency (LF) but not high-frequency (HF) targets whether the target's word frequency was manipulated between or within participants and whether the prime-target pairs were associated symmetrically or forward asymmetrically. For the LF targets, LS priming was (a) equivalent for forward asymmetric and symmetric pairs and (b) equal to silent-read (SR) priming for forward asymmetric pairs but less than SR priming for symmetric pairs. The typical finding of greater SR priming for response times for LF than for HF targets occurred for symmetric priming but not for forward asymmetric priming, which showed the interaction for errors. The authors consider their findings' implications for various accounts of how LS affects priming and explain the findings within J. H. Neely and D. E. Keefe's (1989) 3-process model as follows: (a) LS eliminates expectancy and semantic matching but does not reduce semantic activation and (b) expectancy contributes to SR priming for HF targets but not for LF targets, whereas the opposite is so for semantic matching.

Four experiments examined whether studying a single Deese/Roediger-McDermott (DRM) list produces semantic priming for nonstudied critical items (CIs) and semantic + repetition priming for studied associates. After 30 s of mental arithmetic that followed the study of a DRM list, priming was assessed in a lexical decision task when the nonwords were either pronounceable (Experiment 1) or pseudohomophones (Experiments 2-4). Priming was measured relative to a baseline containing exactly the same CIs and associates that had not been primed by their related DRM lists. Significant CI semantic priming effects occurred in all four experiments, whether or not there was within-test priming from a related associate preceding the CI by 3-7 items. To our knowledge, these are the first experiments using "standard" DRM study procedures to provide a convincing demonstration of a genuine CI semantic priming effect in a delayed indirect memory test that should be free of intentional retrieval strategies. Discussion focuses on measuring long-term semantic activation effects without the influence of source monitoring in a lexical decision task.