Abstracts 2005 - The Psychonomic Society

Saturday Morning Papers 169–174
influence the processing of syntactic ambiguities arising from the presence
of N/V homonyms. Homonyms high in noun typicality created
a garden path effect on verb-resolved sentences, and vice versa for
homonyms high in verb typicality. In Study 2, we demonstrate that individual
differences in reading experience, as measured by reading span
and vocabulary, account for differences in the degree to which individuals
utilize phonological typicality to avoid garden path effects. Individuals
high in reading experience seem to be much less reliant upon the
phonological cue than do the low-experience individuals. In Study 3, we
demonstrate that those extremely high in reading experience—namely,
older adults (>65)—are markedly insensitive to the phonological typicality
cue, as compared with their younger counterparts.
11:00–11:15 (169)
Automatic Semantic Activation of Embedded Words in Spoken
Supersets. JEFFREY S. BOWERS, COLIN J. DAVIS, SVEN L.
MATTYS, MARKUS F. DAMIAN, & DEREK HANLEY, University
of Bristol—We report a series of studies that assess the extent to which
words embedded in longer spoken words are activated to the level of
meaning (e.g., is arm activated in charm?). The studies rely on the
picture–word interference effect, which refers to the finding that picture
naming is slowed by the simultaneous presentation of a semantically
related distractor word; for example, naming a picture of a leg
is delayed by the spoken distractor arm. The key question is whether
naming is also slowed when semantically unrelated distractors contain
embedded words semantically related to the picture. For example, is
naming a picture of a shirt slowed by the distractor that? We observed
interference for words that include initial (e.g., tramp) and final (e.g.,
scar) subsets, suggesting that both subsets are activated to the level
of meaning.
11:20–11:35 (170)
Investigating the Time Course of Spoken Word Recognition: Evidence
From Event-Related Potentials. AMY S. DESROCHES,
RANDY LYNN NEWMAN, & MARC F. JOANISSE, University of
Western Ontario (read by Marc F. Joanisse)—Event-related potentials
(ERPs) were used to investigate the time course of spoken word recognition.
Neurologically healthy right-handed English speakers were
tested during a visual–auditory mismatch paradigm. Scalp potentials
were recorded from 64 channels as participants were presented with
a target picture followed by an auditory word that was a match
(CONE–cone), a rhyme mismatch (CONE–bone), a cohort mismatch
(CONE–comb), or an unrelated mismatch (CONE–fox) to the target picture.
The conditions of greatest interest, rhyme and cohort, elicited
two different ERP components. The phonological mismatch negativity
(PMN), a component associated with phonological processing, was
elicited at approximately 250 msec poststimulus onset in the rhyme
condition. In the cohort condition, an N400, a component commonly
associated with semantic processing, peaked around 450 msec. The
findings provide evidence that phonologically similar items compete
for recognition as speech perception unfolds; however, different competition
effects are reflected in distinct neural markers (PMN and
N400).
11:40–11:55 (171)
Sleep and the Acquisition of Novel Spoken Words. GARETH
GASKELL & NICOLAS DUMAY, University of York—When a new
word is learned, its representation must be integrated with existing
knowledge in the learner’s mental lexicon. For spoken word recognition,
this “lexicalization” process is characterized by the ability to inhibit
recognition of existing words. We examined the involvement of
sleep in lexicalization by teaching people novel words at different
times of day. Words learned at 8 p.m. induced inhibitory effects only
after a 12-h interval including sleep, with this effect remaining after
24 h. Conversely, words learned at 8 a.m. showed no inhibitory effects
after 12 h of wakefulness, but these emerged after 24 h, once sleep had
occurred. Although the simple acquisition of a spoken form is swift,
the integration of this knowledge in long-term memory is slower and
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is associated with sleep. We relate these results to models of learning
in which sleep provides an opportunity for hippocampal information
to be fed into long-term neocortical store.
Substrates of Episodic Memory
Grand Ballroom East, Saturday Morning, 10:00–12:00
Chaired by Lynne M. Reder, Carnegie Mellon University
10:00–10:15 (172)
Recollection Depends on Unitization, But Uncommon Stimuli Can
Be Recognized by Familiarity Alone. LYNNE M. REDER & JOYCE
OATES, Carnegie Mellon University, JOSEPH J. QUINLAN, Presbyterian
Hospital, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, EDWARD
THORNTON, Carnegie Mellon University, & ABIGAIL KAUFER &
JEN SAUER, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center—Midazolam
is a drug that creates temporary anterograde amnesia. In a withinsubject,
double-blind experiment, participants viewed a set of abstract
pictures, faces, scenes, and high- and low-frequency words under the
influence of saline in one session and under the influence of midazolam
on a different day. Recognition memory was tested for the five
stimulus types at the end of both sessions. Memory was reliably
poorer in the midazolam condition than in the saline condition, but
this amnesic effect was smaller for pictorial stimuli than for words and
was almost nonexistent for abstract pictures. It is argued that unfamiliar
stimulus types cannot be associated with an experimental context
but that they are also less vulnerable to false alarms. We present
converging evidence to bolster our claims for the role of familiarity
on unitization and episodic binding.
10:20–10:35 (173)
Dose Effects of Triazolam on Brain Activity During Episodic Memory
Encoding. MIRIAM Z. MINTZER, HIROTO KUWABARA,
MOHAB ALEXANDER, JAMES R. BRASIC, ROLAND R. GRIF-
FITHS, WEIGUO YE, & DEAN F. WONG, Johns Hopkins University
School of Medicine—It is well documented that acute administration
of the benzodiazepine hypnotic triazolam impairs episodic memory
encoding. We assessed the pattern of brain activity associated with
triazolam-induced encoding impairment by parametrically manipulating
the level of impairment via administration of three doses of triazolam
(0.1, 0.2, and 0.4 mg/70 kg) to 12 healthy volunteers in a four-session,
placebo-controlled, double-blind, crossover design. Following oral
drug administration, regional cerebral blood flow was measured using
positron emission tomography with [ 15 O]H 2 O during performance of
semantic categorization (encoding) and orthographic categorization
(control) tasks. Whereas results in the placebo condition replicated
those of nondrug encoding studies, triazolam significantly decreased
activation dose dependently during encoding in several regions, including
the prefrontal cortex, medial temporal areas, and the anterior
cingulate. Regions where activation during encoding was correlated
with subsequent memory performance were also identified. Results
enhance the understanding of the neuroanatomical substrates of druginduced
amnesia and episodic memory encoding.
10:40–10:55 (174)
An ROC Analysis of the Role of the Hippocampus in Recollection.
PETER WAIS & JOHN T. WIXTED, University of California, San
Diego, & LARRY R. SQUIRE, Veterans Affairs Medical Center, San
Diego (read by John T. Wixted)—Fortin, Wright, and Eichenbaum
(2004, Nature) conducted an odor recognition memory experiment
with rats, in which they examined the effects of retention interval and
bilateral hippocampal lesions on the shape of the receiver-operating
characteristic (ROC). The results were taken to support a highthreshold
dual-process theory of recognition memory, according to
which the hippocampus selectively subserves the recollection process,
whereas the adjacent parahippocampal structures subserve the familiarity
process. We performed an experiment that was modeled on
Fortin et al.’s experiment with humans, some of whom had bilateral