Department of Psychological Sciences Papers and Publications

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Browsing Department of Psychological Sciences Papers and Publications by Subject "aphasia"

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    Effects of semantic diversity and word frequency on single word processing
    (American Psychological Association, 2022) Chapman, Curtiss A.; Martin, Randi C.
    Some research suggests that semantic diversity (SemD), a measure of the variability of contexts in which a word appears, plays an important role in language processing, determining the availability of word representations (e.g., Adelman et al., 2006) and causing task-specific benefits or detriments to performance (e.g., Hoffman & Woollams, 2015). Some researchers have claimed that word frequency has no effect once such diversity measures are taken into account (Adelman et al., 2006). Taking advantage of the power of five large-scale databases, we investigated the effects of SemD, word frequency, and their interaction in five tasks, including word reading, lexical and concreteness decision, object picture naming, and word repetition. We found: (a) word frequency and SemD effects were consistently distinct; (b) effects of SemD were facilitatory in nearly all tasks, but inhibitory effects were also found; contrary to existing claims, we conclude that inhibitory SemD effects do not necessarily imply semantic selection requirements; (c) the presence of SemD effects minimally influenced the size of frequency effects when SemD was left uncontrolled, suggesting that SemD does not explain absent frequency effects in the patient literature; and (d) word frequency and SemD only interact in the largest data sets. Results are discussed in the context of rational models of memory (Anderson & Milson, 1989; Anderson & Schooler, 1991) and the Controlled Semantic Cognition framework (Lambon Ralph et al., 2017).
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    Localizing Interference during Naming: Convergent Neuroimaging and Neuropsychological Evidence for the Function of Broca's Area
    (National Academy of Science, 2009) Schnur, Tatiana T.; Schwartz, Myrna F.; Kimberg, Daniel Y.; Hirshorn, Elizabeth; Coslett, H. Branch; Thompson-Schill, Sharon L.
    In order to produce a word, the intended word must be selected from a competing set of other words. In other domains where competition affects the selection process, the left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG) responds to competition among incompatible representations. The aim of this study was to test whether the LIFG is necessary for resolution of competition in word production. Using a novel methodological approach applying the same rigorous analytic methods to neuropsychological data as is done with neuroimaging data, we compared brain activation patterns in normal speakers (using fMRI) with the results of lesion-deficit correlations in aphasic speakers who performed the same word production task designed to elicit competition during lexical selection. The degree of activation of the LIFG in normal speakers and damage to the LIFG in aphasic speakers was associated with performance on the production task. These convergent findings provide strong support for the hypothesis that the region of cortex commonly known as Broca's area (i.e., the posterior LIFG) serves to bias competitive interactions during language production.
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    An Online Multimedia Resource in Behavioral Neuroscience
    (2003) Lane, David M.; Tang, Zhihua; National Science Foundation, Division of Undergraduate Education; Faculty for Undergraduate Neuroscience
    The advance of web-based technology has stimulated innovation in education. This paper discusses the development and evaluation of an online multimedia resource for undergraduate-level behavioral neuroscience education. This resource surveys four major subject areas: language, attention and perception, thinking, and autism. It employs audio and video streaming, online demonstration experiments, computer simulation, and internet links. This online resource has two distinct advantages over a paper textbook. First, a considerable proportion of the content is conveyed using multimedia, thus making the learning experience more vivid and dynamic. Second, its interactive components provide opportunities for students to participate in the various experimental tasks introduced in the text and to compare their own performance with those of others. This hands-on experience not only enables students to gain in-depth procedural knowledge of the tasks but also has positive effects on their motivation. Feedback from three undergraduate classes that used this resource as supplementary material showed that students were highly positive about its pedagogical values. This free resource is available on the web at http://psych.rice.edu/mmtbn/.
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    Syntactic agreement attraction reflects working memory processes
    (Taylor & Francis, 2016) Slevc, L. Robert; Martin, Randi C.
    Does producing syntactic agreement rely on syntactic or memory-based retrieval processes? The present study investigated the extent to which syntactic processing deficits and working memory (WM) deficits predict susceptibility to agreement attraction (Bock & Miller, 1991), where speakers tend to erroneously produce plural agreement for a singular subject when another noun in the sentence is grammatically plural. Four brain-injured patients with varying degrees of grammatical and WM deficits completed sentences with local nouns that matched or mismatched in number with the head noun, and that were plausible or implausible subjects. Both aspects of grammatical deficits and the extent of WM deficits predicted the extent of agreement attraction effects. These data are consistent with the proposal that producing an agreeing verb involves a cue-based search in WM for an appropriate controlling noun, which is subject to interference from other elements in memory with similar properties (cf. Badecker & Kuminiak, 2007).
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    Temporal characteristics of semantic perseverations induced by blocked-cyclic picture naming
    (Elsevier, 2009-03) Hsiao, Esther Y; Schwartz, Myrna F.; Schnur, Tatiana T; Dell, Gary S
    When unimpaired participants name pictures quickly, they produce many perseverations that bear a semantic relation to the target, especially when the pictures are blocked by category. Evidence suggests that the temporal properties of these "semantic perseverations" may differ from typical lexical perseverations in aphasia. To explore this, we studied semantic perseverations generated by participants with aphasia on a naming task with semantic blocking [Schnur, T. T., Schwartz, M. F., Brecher, A., & Hodgson, C. (2006). Semantic interference during blocked-cyclic naming: Evidence from aphasia. Journal of Memory and Language, 54, 199-227]. The properties of these perseverations were investigated by analyzing how often they occurred at each lag (distance from prior occurrence) and how time (response-stimulus interval) influenced the lag function. Chance data sets were created by reshuffling stimulus-response pairs in a manner that preserved unique features of the blocking design. We found that the semantic blocking manipulation did not eliminate the expected bias for short-lag perseverations (recency bias). However, immediate (lag 1) perseverations were not invariably the most frequent, which hints at a source of inconsistency within and across studies. Importantly, there was not a reliable difference between the lag functions for perseverations generated with a 5 s, compared to 1 s, responsestimulus interval. The combination of recency bias and insensitivity to elapsed time indicates that the perseveratory impetus in a named response does not passively decay with time but rather is diminished by interference from related trials. We offer an incremental learning account of these findings.