scholarly journals The metaphoric nature of the ordinal position effect

2019 ◽  
Vol 72 (8) ◽  
pp. 2121-2129 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dandan Zhou ◽  
Hanxi Zhong ◽  
Wenshan Dong ◽  
Min Li ◽  
Tom Verguts ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Processing ◽  
Alternative Hypothesis ◽  
Position Effect ◽  
Serial Order ◽  
Ordinal Position ◽  
Hand Position ◽  
Left Hand ◽  
The Right ◽  
Bottom To Top ◽  
Different Sources

Serial orders are thought to be spatially represented in working memory: The beginning items in the memorised sequence are associated with the left side of space and the ending items are associated with the right side of space. However, the origin of this ordinal position effect has remained unclear. It was suggested that the direction of serial order–space interaction is related to the reading/writing experience. An alternative hypothesis is that it originates from the “more is right”/“more is up” spatial metaphors we use in daily life. We can adjudicate between the two viewpoints in Chinese readers; they read left-to-right but also have a culturally ancient top-to-bottom reading/writing direction. Thus, the reading/writing viewpoint predicts no or a top-to-bottom effect in serial order–space interaction; whereas the spatial metaphor theory predicts a clear bottom-to-top effect. We designed four experiments to investigate this issue. First, we found a left-to-right ordinal position effect, replicating results obtained in Western populations. However, the vertical ordinal position effect was in the bottom-to-top direction; moreover, it was modulated by hand position (e.g., left hand bottom or up). We suggest that order–space interactions may originate from different sources and are driven by metaphoric comprehension, which itself may ground cognitive processing.

scholarly journals The metaphoric nature of the ordinal position effect

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dandan Zhou ◽  
Hanxi Zhong ◽  
Dong Wenshan ◽  
Li Min ◽  
Tom Verguts ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Processing ◽  
Alternative Hypothesis ◽  
Position Effect ◽  
Serial Order ◽  
Ordinal Position ◽  
Writing Theory ◽  
Metaphor Theory ◽  
The Right ◽  
Bottom To Top ◽  
Chinese Subjects

Serial orders are thought to be spatially represented in working memory: The beginning items in the memorized sequence are associated with the left side of space and the ending items associated with the right side of space. However, the origin of this ordinal position effect has remained unclear. It was suggested (Guida, et al., 2018) that the reading / writing experience shapes the direction of serial order-space interaction. An alternative hypothesis is that it originates from the “more is right” / “more is up” spatial metaphors we use in daily life (Lakoff & Johnson, 2003). We can adjudicate between the two theories in Chinese subjects; they read left-to-right, but also have a culturally ancient top-to-bottom reading / writing direction. Thus, the reading / writing theory predicts no or a top-to-bottom effect in serial order-space interaction; whereas the spatial metaphor theory predicts a clear bottom-to-top effect. We designed three experiments to investigate this issue. First, we found a left-to-right ordinal position effect, replicating results obtained in Western populations. However we observed a vertical ordinal position effect in a bottom-to-top direction, which was itself modulated by (left / right) hand positions. We suggest that order-space interactions are a case of metaphoric comprehension, which itself may ground cognitive processing.

scholarly journals VALENCE OF PREDICATES IN THE ACTIVE-PASSIVE TRANSFORMATION IN GERMAN AND UKRAINIAN

2020 ◽  
pp. 77-82
Author(s):  
Tsymbalista L.R.
Keyword(s):  
Sampling Method ◽  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Hand Position ◽  
Continuous Sampling ◽  
Left Hand ◽  
Decisive Effect ◽  
Modern Fiction ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Right

Валентність предиката має вирішальний вплив на структуру речення. Хоча активний і пасивний варіанти речення опису-ють одну й ту ж ситуацію, предикат проходить крізь трансформацію, яка тісно пов’язана з явищем валентності. У цій статті проаналізовано валентність предиката та її вплив на цю трансформацію у німецькій та українській мовах на прикладах із сучасної літератури.Мета. Метою статті є порівняння трансформації «актив – пасив» у німецькій та українській мовах та опис ролі валентності у цьому процесі.Методи. Для проведення дослідження було зібрано методом суцільної вибірки приклади пасивних конструкцій із сучас-них художніх текстів німецькою та українською мовами, які опісля було оброблено та проаналізовано з використанням типо-логічного, зіставного, описового методів, а також методу моделювання.Валентність предиката проявляється у його здатності формувати зв’язки з іншими елементами в реченні та дає змогу передбачити додаткові позиції у синтаксичній структурі речення, які можуть бути заповнені обов’язковими чи факультатив-ними компонентами. Для предиката властиві два типи валентності, які залежать від позиції поширювачів у реченні. Якщо лівобічну позицію переважно пов’язують із суб’єктом, то правобічна зазвичай стосується актантів з об’єктним, адресатним, локативним чи інструментальним значеннями.Результати. Зважаючи на те, що одна й та ж функція пасивних конструкцій у німецькій та українській мовах реалізується різними формами, валентні зміни у кожній з конструкцій мають свої особливості. Спільною рисою цих перетворень виступає зменшення облігаторних актантів на одну одиницю, яка може бути заповнена факультативно у разі комунікативної потреби у інформації про виконавця дії.Висновки. Можна зробити висновок, що валентність предиката є багатогранним феноменом, що підлягає впливу не лише формально-граматичних, а й семантико-синтаксичних чинників, а також мовленнєвої ситуації загалом. Відповідно, змін у валентності предикатів протягом трансформації з активу у пасив не можна уникнути. The valence of the predicate has a decisive effect on the structure of the sentence. Although the active and passive variant of the sentence describes the same situation, the predicate goes through a transformation that also has to do with valence. This article analyzes the valency of the predicate and its influence on such transformation in German and Ukrainian based on the examples from modern literature.Purpose. The purpose of the article is to compare the active-passive transformation in German and Ukrainian and to describe the role of valence in this process.Methods. For the research, we collected the examples of passive constructions from modern fiction in German and Ukrainian using the continuous sampling method, which were then processed and analyzed using typological, comparative, descriptive methods as well as the modelling method.The valence of the predicate verb shows in its ability to connect with other sentence elements and enables the prediction of the additional positions in the syntactic structure of the sentence, which can be supplemented by mandatory or optional components. The predicate is characterized by two types of valence, which depend on the position of the fillers in the sentence: the left-hand position is mainly connected the subject of the utterance, and the right-hand position has to do with actants which define object, addressee, location or have instrumental meaning.Results. Due to the fact that the same function of passive constructions in German and Ukrainian is realized in different forms, the valence changes in each of the constructions have their own features. A common feature of these transformations is the reduction of obligatory actants by one unit, which can be filled in optionally in case of communicative need for information about the performer of the action.Conclusions. We reach the conclusion that the valence of the predicate is a multilevel phenomenon that is influenced not only by formal grammatical but also by semantic and syntactic factors as well as the language situation in general. Accordingly, changes in the valence of predicates during the active-passive transformation are inevitable.

Bilateral Writing Ability, Cerebral Organization, and Hand Posture

1979 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 867-870
Author(s):  
Allan L. Combs ◽  
Dana A. Beezley ◽  
Gary M. Prater ◽  
Gerald F. Henning ◽  
Rhonda F. Cottrell
Keyword(s):  
Hand Position ◽  
Hand Posture ◽  
Writing Ability ◽  
Left Hand ◽  
Left And Right ◽  
The Right

Among a group of 12 persons selected for the ability to write with ease with either hand, none were found to write using a hooked hand posture with either the right or left hand. Tests of verbal and manipulospatial ability indicated a normal balance of these two types of abilities, usually associated with the left and right hemispheres. Findings are discussed in terms of implications for cerebral organization and hand position in writing.

scholarly journals The Mechanism of the Ordinal Position Effect: Stability Across Sense Modalities and the Hands Crossed Context

i-Perception ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 204166951984107 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qiangqiang Wang ◽  
Tingting Nie ◽  
Weixia Zhang ◽  
Wendian Shi
Keyword(s):  
Position Effect ◽  
Random Order ◽  
Ordinal Position ◽  
Auditory Modality ◽  
Order Information ◽  
Sense Modality ◽  
Relevant Task ◽  
The Right ◽  
Sense Modalities

The ordinal position effect posits that items positioned earlier in an ordinal sequence are responded to faster with the left key than the right key, and items positioned later in an ordinal sequence are responded to faster with the right key than the left key. Although the mechanism of the ordinal position effect has been investigated in many studies, it is unclear whether the ordinal position effect can extend to the auditory modality and the hands crossed context. Therefore, the present study employed days as the order information to investigate this question. Days were visually or acoustically displayed on a screen in random order, and participants were instructed to judge whether the probe day they perceived was before or after the current day (days-relevant task) or to identify the color or voice of the probe day they perceived (days-irrelevant task). The results indicate the following: (a) The days before the current day were responded to faster with the left key than the right key, and the days after the current day were responded to faster with the right key than the left key, both when the days-relevant task and the days-irrelevant task were performed, regardless of the sense modality. (b) The ordinal position effect for judgments of days was also obtained in the auditory modality even when the hands were crossed. These results indicate that the ordinal position effect can extend to the auditory modality and the hands crossed context, similar to the spatial-numerical association of response codes effect of numbers.

Order Information in Verbal Working Memory Shifts the Subjective Midpoint in Both the Line Bisection and the Landmark Tasks

2017 ◽  
Vol 70 (10) ◽  
pp. 1973-1983 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sophie Antoine ◽  
Mariagrazia Ranzini ◽  
Titia Gebuis ◽  
Jean-Philippe van Dijck ◽  
Wim Gevers
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Serial Order ◽  
Verbal Working Memory ◽  
Ordinal Position ◽  
Line Bisection ◽  
Spatial Processing ◽  
Continuous Processing ◽  
Left And Right ◽  
The Right ◽  
Line Bisection Task

A largely substantiated view in the domain of working memory is that the maintenance of serial order is achieved by generating associations of each item with an independent representation of its position, so-called position markers. Recent studies reported that the ordinal position of an item in verbal working memory interacts with spatial processing. This suggests that position markers might be spatial in nature. However, these interactions were so far observed in tasks implying a clear binary categorization of space (i.e., with left and right responses or targets). Such binary categorizations leave room for alternative interpretations, such as congruency between non-spatial categorical codes for ordinal position (e.g., begin and end) and spatial categorical codes for response (e.g., left and right). Here we discard this interpretation by providing evidence that this interaction can also be observed in a task that draws upon a continuous processing of space, the line bisection task. Specifically, bisections are modulated by ordinal position in verbal working memory, with lines bisected more towards the right after retrieving items from the end compared to the beginning of the memorized sequence. This supports the idea that position markers are intrinsically spatial in nature.

S–R Compatibilities Depend on Eccentricity of Responding Hand

1989 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 263-272 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claire F. Michaels
Keyword(s):  
Reaction Times ◽  
The State ◽  
The Body ◽  
Body Midline ◽  
Hand Position ◽  
Finger Movement ◽  
Left Hand ◽  
Action System ◽  
Right Hand ◽  
The Right

Bauer and Miller (1982) demonstrated that when responding on the body midline with the right hand, subjects react faster when the pairing between horizontally oriented stimuli (an X to the left or right of fixation) and vertically oriented responses (an up or down finger movement) is left–down, right–up (“anti-clockwise”) but when responding with the left hand, the converse pairing was faster. The present experiments tested whether those preferences held for responses other than on the body midline. Unimanual reaction times for clockwise and anti-clockwise S–R pairings were determined for both hands at the midline and 30 and 60 cm to the left or right. Hand position determined both the direction and extent of the compatibility preference; at eccentric positions the right hand preferred clockwise pairings and the left anticlockwise, the converse of that found by Bauer and Miller. The results extend Bauer and Miller's finding, raise problems for theories of S–R compatibility, and further reveal that the state of the action system “sets up” perception.

scholarly journals The empirical reach of the ´mental whiteboard´: A commentary on Ginsburg et al. (2017)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elger Abrahamse ◽  
Alessandro Guida
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Boundary Conditions ◽  
Position Effect ◽  
Serial Order ◽  
Ordinal Position

In a recent study, Ginsburg and colleagues (2017) explored the boundary conditions of the ordinal position effect, which refers to the horizontal format with which (non-spatial) item sequences have been observed to be represented in working memory. On the basis of 6 experiments on the ordinal position effect, they conclude that serial order in working memory is spatial by nature only if the memoranda are processed semantically. In this commentary we explain why we feel that Ginsburg et al.’s (2017) conclusions are premature, and how they inspire specific guidelines for a more optimal study of ´spatialization´ for serial order in working memory.

Editorial Note

1946 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 2-2
Keyword(s):  
Editorial Note ◽  
Speech Sounds ◽  
Left Hand ◽  
Hand Column ◽  
Right Hand ◽  
Infant Speech ◽  
The Right

In the article “Infant Speech Sounds and Intelligence” by Orvis C. Irwin and Han Piao Chen, in the December 1945 issue of the Journal, the paragraph which begins at the bottom of the left hand column on page 295 should have been placed immediately below the first paragraph at the top of the right hand column on page 296. To the authors we express our sincere apologies.

Is the Future the Right Time?

2010 ◽  
Vol 57 (4) ◽  
pp. 308-314 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marc Ouellet ◽  
Julio Santiago ◽  
Ziv Israeli ◽  
Shai Gabay
Keyword(s):  
Auditory Task ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Visual Modality ◽  
Opposite Pattern ◽  
Time Line ◽  
Temporal Reference ◽  
Left Hand ◽  
Reading Direction ◽  
Mental Time Line ◽  
The Right

Spanish and English speakers tend to conceptualize time as running from left to right along a mental line. Previous research suggests that this representational strategy arises from the participants’ exposure to a left-to-right writing system. However, direct evidence supporting this assertion suffers from several limitations and relies only on the visual modality. This study subjected to a direct test the reading hypothesis using an auditory task. Participants from two groups (Spanish and Hebrew) differing in the directionality of their orthographic system had to discriminate temporal reference (past or future) of verbs and adverbs (referring to either past or future) auditorily presented to either the left or right ear by pressing a left or a right key. Spanish participants were faster responding to past words with the left hand and to future words with the right hand, whereas Hebrew participants showed the opposite pattern. Our results demonstrate that the left-right mapping of time is not restricted to the visual modality and that the direction of reading accounts for the preferred directionality of the mental time line. These results are discussed in the context of a possible mechanism underlying the effects of reading direction on highly abstract conceptual representations.

scholarly journals Hand Preference and Performance in Basketball Tasks

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (22) ◽  
pp. 4336 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emanuela Gualdi-Russo ◽  
Natascia Rinaldo ◽  
Alba Pasini ◽  
Luciana Zaccagni
Keyword(s):  
Professional Training ◽  
Factor Model ◽  
Hand Preference ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Basketball Players ◽  
Confirmatory Factor Analyses ◽  
Left Hand ◽  
Confirmatory Factor ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The Right

The aims of this study were to develop and validate an instrument to quantitatively assess the handedness of basketballers in basketball tasks (Basketball Handedness Inventory, BaHI) and to compare it with their handedness in daily activities by the Edinburgh Handedness Inventory (EHI). The participants were 111 basketballers and 40 controls. All subjects completed the EHI and only basketballers filled in the BaHI. To validate the BaHI, a voluntary subsample of basketballers repeated the BaHI. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses supported a two-factor model. Our results show that: (i) Handedness score (R) in daily actions did not differ between basketball players (R by EHI = 69.3 ± 44.6) and the control group (R by EHI = 64.5 ± 58.6); (ii) basketballers more frequently favored performing certain sport tasks with the left hand or mixed hands (as highlighted by R by BaHI = 50.1 ± 47.1), although their choice was primarily the right hand in everyday gestures; and (iii) this preference was especially true for athletes at the highest levels of performance (R by BaHI of A1 league = 38.6 ± 58.3) and for those playing in selected roles (point guard’s R = 29.4 ± 67.4). Our findings suggest that professional training induces handedness changes in basketball tasks. The BaHI provides a valid and reliable measure of the skilled hand in basketball. This will allow coaches to assess mastery of the ball according to the hand used by the athlete in the different tasks and roles.

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