Abstracts 2005 - The Psychonomic Society

Saturday Noon Posters 4093–4099
SO CARAMAZZA, Harvard University—The asymmetrical languageswitching
cost (Meuter & Allport, 1999) is often cited as a signature
effect of language suppression and has provided the bulk of empirical
support for the language suppression hypothesis (Green, 1998). In
this study, we found that unbalanced bilinguals exhibited an asymmetrical
language-switching cost in a digit-naming task, but not when
switching from digit naming to picture naming in the same experiment.
Participants named pictures (in their L1) equally quickly regardless
of whether the previous digit-naming trial had been named
in L1 or L2. This was true even when the pictures and the digits
elicited the same verbal responses (Experiment 2). We suggest that
this finding constitutes a serious challenge to the language suppression
hypothesis. In contrast to the suppression hypothesis, we suggest
that bilingual lexical selection may proceed on the basis of differential
activation.
(4093)
Word Spelling Performance Is Impaired by the Presentation of Errors
During Feedback Intervention. EVE GRIVOT & ARNAUD REY,
LEAD-CNRS, Université de Bourgogne, Dijon, SÉBASTIEN PACTON,
Université René Descartes, Paris, & PIERRE PERRUCHET, LEAD-
CNRS, Université de Bourgogne, Dijon—Several studies have shown
that paying attention to misspellings has a negative impact on spelling
performance (e.g., Brown, 1988). This observation suggests that
when a teacher provides feedback after a spelling test, exposition to
errors should be avoided. This hypothesis was tested in an experiment
in which adult participants had to learn the spelling of 16 pseudowords.
After a familiarization phase with all the pseudowords, participants
performed two spelling tests successively. Between the two
tests, one group did not receive any feedback on its spelling performance
at Test 1. A second group received feedback and was exposed
to its own errors. A third group received feedback but did not see its
errors again. As was predicted, the results showed that performance
at Test 2 was weaker for the second group. It therefore clearly indicates
that exposing participants to their own errors during feedback
intervention has a negative impact on spelling performance.
(4094)
Semantic Decomposability and the Acoustic Correlates of Idiom
Production. DEBRA TITONE & SHARI BAUM, McGill University—
Many studies have examined idiom comprehension; however, far fewer
studies have examined spoken idiom production. In the present study,
“verb the noun” idioms (e.g., chew the fat) were selected that varied in
semantic decomposability of the verb and noun but were controlled
in terms of familiarity and predictability of the idiom-final word.
These idioms were embedded in idiomatic and literal contexts and
were presented to 10 speakers in a manner that highlighted their interpretive
contrast. Participants read the context sentence silently and
then produced the idiomatic or literal target sentence for recording on
digital media and, later, acoustic analysis. For all idioms, nouns were
produced with longer durations in idiomatic, relative to literal, contexts.
For idioms where noun decomposability was high, verbs were
produced with shorter durations in idiomatic, relative to literal, contexts.
These results suggest that speakers prosodically mark figurative
productions of idiomatic expressions as a function of their semantic
decomposability.
(4095)
Recency of Production Influences Semantic Substitutions in Blocked-
Cyclic Naming. ESTHER Y. LEE, Moss Rehabilitation Research Institute,
TATIANA T. SCHNUR, Moss Rehabilitation Research Institute &
University of Pennsylvania, & MYRNA F. SCHWARTZ, Moss Rehabilitation
Research Institute—When repeatedly naming sets of pictures
from the same semantic category, aphasic speakers often produce substitutions
from the set of pictures presented. These substitution errors
could be due to random selection from the set or could depend on the
recency of each name’s production (i.e., number of intervening trials,
or “lag”). To assess whether recency played a role, we analyzed sub-
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stitutions produced when aphasic participants named 12 sets of six related
pictures in four-cycle blocks. To estimate the chance of producing
substitutions by random selection, we shuffled target–response pairs
within blocks, preserving each block’s cyclic structure. For both observed
and random distributions, we calculated substitution frequency
and the probability of a match for a given substitution, at each of the
first six lags. After accounting for chance, both measures were found
to change over lags. In accord with the competitor priming account,
substitutions are dependent on the recency of previous production.
(4096)
Conditional Picture Naming: When It Costs and When It Doesn’t.
CLAUDIO MULATTI, University of Trento, FRANCESCA PERES-
SOTTI, University of Padua, & REMO JOB, University of Trento—
Job and Tenconi (2002) proposed that to categorize-then-name pictures
(conditional naming) does not take longer than just naming them
(free naming), because the semantic information required for picture
naming includes all the information required by categorization. An alternative
explanation would be that the absence of cost in conditional
naming, as compared with free naming, is due to the slow rate of activation
of picture name representations, which allows other tasks,
such as semantic categorization, to be covertly carried out. Empirical
evidence disentangling the two explanations is provided.
(4097)
No Morphological Encoding in Chinese Word Production: Further
Evidence. JENN-YEU CHEN, National Cheng Kung University, &
GUAN-HUNG LIU & TRAIN-MIN CHEN, National Chung Cheng
University—Employing the implicit priming paradigm, we had shown
previously that word production in Chinese does not involve morphological
encoding (Chen & Chen, in press). We sought further evidence
from three experiments, employing the same paradigm. In Experiment
1, the disyllabic target words shared the initial characters or
did not. The preparation effect was similar whether the shared characters
corresponded to different morphemes or to the same morpheme.
In Experiment 2, the disyllabic target words were monomorphemic
or bimorphemic. They shared the initial syllables or did not.
In the bimorphemic condition, the shared syllables were of the same
character and of the same morpheme. The preparation effects were
similar in the two conditions. In Experiment 3, associative word naming
was contrasted with direct word naming. The preparation effect
did not differ between the two versions of the implicit priming task.
The results strengthened our previous conclusion.
(4098)
Errors in Deep Dyslexia Are Correlated With Words’ Production
Complexity. ARPITA BOSE, ANNETTE COLANGELO, & LORI
BUCHANAN, University of Windsor, & GUY VAN ORDEN, Arizona
State University—Deep dyslexia is characterized by marked production
of semantic errors and nonword reading difficulty. Various explanations
have been proposed, particularly pertaining to the semantic
and/or phonological systems. However, these explanations did not consider
whether the output production difficulty of words could impact
word reading. We tested for an effect of output production difficulty
in a post hoc analysis of the reading errors of a deep dyslexic subject.
Phonetic complexity of words estimated output production difficulty,
and as words increased in phonetic complexity, so too did the likelihood
of reading errors. In addition, the positive association of phonetic
complexity with reading errors is modulated by semantic blocking.
That is, the association was most pronounced when words were presented
in blocks of semantically related words, as opposed to randomized
lists. The findings will be discussed in the context of word production
models including both lexical and production processes.
(4099)
Speech Errors: You Don’t Learn From Your Mistakes, You Simply
Learn Your Mistakes. KARIN R. HUMPHREYS & HEATHER MEN-
ZIES, McMaster University—Every act of speaking is also an act of