List context effects on masked phonological priming in the lexical decision task

To investigate the language-specific or language-integrated nature of bilingual lexical processing in different task contexts, we studied how bilinguals process nonwords that differ in their relative resemblance to the bilinguals’ two languages in different versions of the lexical decision task. Unbalanced German-English bilinguals performed a pure-German, a pure-English, and a mixed lexical decision task on the same set of nonwords that were either very English-like or very German-like. Rejection latencies for these two nonword categories were reversed in the pure-English and pure-German conditions: Nonwords that were more similar to the current target language were rejected more slowly. In the mixed task, reaction times were generally slower, and nonwords resembling the participants’ subdominant language (English) were harder to reject. The results suggest that task context substantially alters the criteria for the word/nonword decision in bilinguals.

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Phonological priming and the role of phonology in nonnative word recognition

Bilingualism Language and Cognition ◽

10.1017/s1366728918000056 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 21 (3) ◽

pp. 437-442 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

KIRA GOR

Keyword(s):

Word Recognition ◽

Lexical Decision ◽

Lexical Decision Task ◽

Native Speakers ◽

Nonnative Speakers ◽

Decision Task ◽

Phonological Priming ◽

Lexical Competition ◽

Minimal Pairs

Research on nonnative auditory word recognition makes use of a lexical decision task with phonological priming to explore the role of phonological form in nonnative lexical access. In a medium-lag lexical decision task with phonological priming, nonnative speakers treat minimal pairs of words differentiated by a difficult phonological contrast as a repetition of the same word. While native speakers show facilitation in medium-lag priming only for identical word pairs, nonnative speakers also show facilitation for minimal pairs. In short-lag phonological priming, when the prime and the target have phonologically overlapping onsets, nonnative speakers show facilitation, while native speakers show inhibition. This review discusses two possible reasons for facilitation in nonnative phonological priming: reduced sensitivity to nonnative phonological contrasts, and reduced lexical competition of nonnative words with underdifferentiated, or fuzzy phonolexical representations. Nonnative words may be processed sublexically, which leads to sublexical facilitation instead of the inhibition resulting from lexical competition.

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Effect of Emotions in a Lexical Decision Task

Swiss Journal of Psychology ◽

10.1024/1421-0185/a000193 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 76 (2) ◽

pp. 71-79 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Hélène Maire ◽

Renaud Brochard ◽

Jean-Luc Kop ◽

Vivien Dioux ◽

Daniel Zagar

Keyword(s):

Lexical Decision ◽

Lexical Decision Task ◽

Emotional State ◽

Control Group ◽

Decision Task ◽

Attentional Orienting ◽

Emotional States ◽

Sequence Effect ◽

Emotion Induction ◽

Before And After

Abstract. This study measured the effect of emotional states on lexical decision task performance and investigated which underlying components (physiological, attentional orienting, executive, lexical, and/or strategic) are affected. We did this by assessing participants’ performance on a lexical decision task, which they completed before and after an emotional state induction task. The sequence effect, usually produced when participants repeat a task, was significantly smaller in participants who had received one of the three emotion inductions (happiness, sadness, embarrassment) than in control group participants (neutral induction). Using the diffusion model ( Ratcliff, 1978 ) to resolve the data into meaningful parameters that correspond to specific psychological components, we found that emotion induction only modulated the parameter reflecting the physiological and/or attentional orienting components, whereas the executive, lexical, and strategic components were not altered. These results suggest that emotional states have an impact on the low-level mechanisms underlying mental chronometric tasks.

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Are Emotions Abstract or Concrete?

Experimental Psychology (formerly Zeitschrift für Experimentelle Psychologie) ◽

10.1027/1618-3169/a000374 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 64 (5) ◽

pp. 315-324 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Xu Xu ◽

Chunyan Kang ◽

Kaia Sword ◽

Taomei Guo

Keyword(s):

Lexical Decision ◽

Lexical Decision Task ◽

Well Being ◽

Event Related Potential ◽

Decision Task ◽

N400 Amplitude ◽

Abstract Nouns ◽

Concrete Nouns ◽

Emotion Concepts ◽

Healthy Participants

Abstract. The ability to identify and communicate emotions is essential to psychological well-being. Yet research focusing exclusively on emotion concepts has been limited. This study examined nouns that represent emotions (e.g., pleasure, guilt) in comparison to nouns that represent abstract (e.g., wisdom, failure) and concrete entities (e.g., flower, coffin). Twenty-five healthy participants completed a lexical decision task. Event-related potential (ERP) data showed that emotion nouns elicited less pronounced N400 than both abstract and concrete nouns. Further, N400 amplitude differences between emotion and concrete nouns were evident in both hemispheres, whereas the differences between emotion and abstract nouns had a left-lateralized distribution. These findings suggest representational distinctions, possibly in both verbal and imagery systems, between emotion concepts versus other concepts, implications of which for theories of affect representations and for research on affect disorders merit further investigation.

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