Abstracts 2005 - The Psychonomic Society

Friday Noon Posters 2092–2097
MERSKI, & SANDRA GRGIC, Pennsylvania State University, Erie—
Metaphors require a semantic leap between terms, but the topic of directionality
has been debated. The structure mapping approach suggests
that in the earliest stages of metaphor processing, commonalities
of the topic (subject) and vehicle (predicate) are extracted regardless
of the order of terms, whereas in a later stage, directional inferences
are drawn from the vehicle to the topic. But according to the categorization
approach, metaphor processing is always asymmetrical, since
the vehicle names the category created by the interaction of topic and
vehicle (vicious and predatory). Behavioral data has provided support
for both approaches, using different techniques. In this research, the
time course of metaphor comprehension was analyzed using a sensitive
online measure, event-related brain potentials. Participants read
high- and low-similarity metaphors in normal or reversed order. In
support of the categorization approach, differences were found very
early in sentence processing.
(2092)
Feature Overlap Across the Cerebral Hemispheres: Testing the
Conceptual Structure and Coarse–Fine Semantic Coding Theories.
LEA PILGRIM & MARK JUNG-BEEMAN, Northwestern University—Distributed
models of conceptual structure argue that living/
nonliving concepts differ in their distribution of shared/distinctive
features and the pattern of correlations between them. This suggests
that any sensitivity to feature overlap may also interact with living/
nonliving domain of knowledge. Furthermore, past research has suggested
that the right hemisphere (RH) performs coarse semantic coding,
in contrast to relatively finer semantic coding in the left hemisphere
(LH). Consequently, the RH may be particularly sensitive to
whether concepts have many shared, correlated features in common.
We test these predictions by presenting, to each hemifield, word pairs
that had many, few, or no features in common (e.g., dog–sheep; dog–
raven; dog–train). In accord with differing conceptual structure across
domains, participants were more accurate responding to living concepts
with many shared features; there was no such advantage for nonliving
concepts. Finally, although there was an overall LH advantage,
hemifield did not interact with domain of knowledge.
(2093)
Influences of Offset Masking on Eye Movements in a Divided Visual
Field Task. KEITH M. YOUNG, RUTH ANN ATCHLEY, & PAUL
ATCHLEY, University of Kansas—A problem in divided visual field
(DVF) language studies is horizontal saccades that could be due to
changes in luminance that lead to either automatic/bottom-up processes
or to top-down influences (i.e., selective attention). Past attention literature
suggests that these saccades should be significantly reduced
with the use of an offset mask, causing a reduction in attentional capture.
We have examined the effectiveness of using an offset mask to
reduce eye movements. Although we found no change in the number
of saccades observed, a significant difference in latency did occur.
Longer latencies were found during the offset block, as compared with
the onset block, resulting in two different types of horizontal saccades.
The onset condition produced bottom-up, or express, saccades, whereas
the offset condition seemed to cause top-down saccades (programmed
by the frontal eye fields). The present research continues this examination
of masking manipulations to reduce saccades in DVF priming
paradigms.
(2094)
ERP Correlates of Negation in a Sentence–Picture Verification
Paradigm. JANA LÜDTKE, Technische Universität Berlin, CLAU-
DIA K. FRIEDRICH, University of Konstanz, & MONICA DE FIL-
IPPIS & BARBARA KAUP, Technische Universität Berlin—In a
sentence–picture verification paradigm, participants were presented
(RSVP) with affirmative or negative sentences (e.g., “In front of the
house there was a/no cat”). Response latencies, as well as event-related
potentials (ERPs), were measured during reading and verification.
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ERPs evoked by the object noun (i.e., “cat”) showed an enhanced negativity
in negative, as compared with affirmative, sentences. When the
ISI between sentence and picture presentation was short (250 msec),
verification latencies, as well as ERPs evoked by the picture, showed
a negation � truth value interaction: After affirmative sentences, false
pictures led to relatively long response times and high N400 amplitudes,
whereas after negative sentences, true pictures led to relatively
long response times and high N400 amplitudes. In contrast, when the
ISI was long (1,500 msec), main effects of truth value and negation
were observed in the N400 time window. Implications with respect to
different processing models of negation are discussed.
(2095)
Grounding Natural Language Quantifiers in Visual Attention.
KENNY R. COVENTRY, ANGELO CANGELOSI, STEPHEN NEW-
STEAD, ALISON BACON, ROHANA RAJAPAKSE, & DAVI VANN
BUGMANN, University of Plymouth (sponsored by Laura A. Carlson)—
The literature on vague quantifiers in English (words like “some,”
“many,” etc.) is replete with demonstration of context effects. Yet little
attention has been paid to the issue of where such pragmatic effects
come from. We explore the possibility that such effects are a result
of a visual attentional bottleneck that limits the accuracy of
judgments of number in visual scenes under conditions of time pressure.
We present the results of six experiments that reveal a range of
new context effects on the acceptability of vague quantifiers for describing
a number of objects in a visual scene and show parallel effects
on judgments of number, using the same visual scenes under
speeded conditions. We also overview a new dual-route computational
model for natural language quantifiers that grounds meaning direction
in perception.
(2096)
Compounds Are Processed More Quickly Than Monomorphemic
Words. HONGBO JI & CHRISTINA L. GAGNE, University of Alberta,
& RACHEL J. J. K. KEMPS, Utrecht University—Previous research
(Hudson & Buijs, 1995) has shown that derived words (e.g.,
calculation) are processed more quickly than morphologically simple
words (e.g., chimpanzee). We examine whether this advantage for morphologically
complex words extends to semantically transparent compound
words. Three experiments demonstrate that lexical decision times
to compounds (e.g., rosebud) are shorter than responses to matched
monomorphemic words (e.g., giraffe). This suggests that complex
structure aids, rather than hinders, lexical processing. The influence
of morphological structure was further examined by manipulating the
word frequency of the two constituents (high vs. low) while controlling
the whole-word frequency of the compound. There was a main
effect of the first constituent’s word frequency on lexical decision time
but no effect of the second constituent’s frequency. Correlational
analysis revealed an effect of the first constituent’s family size but no
effect of the second constituent’s family size.
(2097)
The Psychological Reality of Atomic Propositions. SIMON J. DEN-
NIS, University of Adelaide—Ratcliff and McKoon (1978) presented
participants with sentences assumed to contain two propositions and
showed that subsequent recognition priming was larger for withinproposition
primes than for between-propositions primes. Typically,
this evidence is taken as support for the reality of atomic propositions.
However, there are a number of asymmetries in their data that undermine
a simple propositional model. In this work, we replicate Ratcliff
and McKoon (1978), focusing on the between-propositions comparisons
and using a cloze priming task. Whereas the study sentences appeared
in the active form, the cloze items appeared in the passive form, to reduce
the likelihood that subjects were relying on a syntactic information.
Both accuracy and reaction time data show significant asymmetries,
with the activation of the first proposition providing a greater
advantage to second-proposition processing than vice versa.