Training the Interpretation of Ambiguity

<p>The interpretation of emotionally ambiguous words, sentences, or scenarios can be biased through training procedures that are collectively called Cognitive Bias Modification for Interpretation (CBM-I). Little CBM-I research has examined the underlying mechanisms responsible for the induction of emotional interpretive biases, or the potential for this line of enquiry to inform psycholinguistic models of meaning activation and selection. In this thesis a novel CBM-I paradigm was developed and then systematically manipulated in order to discriminate between two mechanistic accounts of changes in interpretive bias – the Emotional Priming Account and the Ambiguity Resolution Account. In Experiment 1 participants completed word fragments that were consistently related to either a negative or benign interpretation of an ambiguous sentence. In a subsequent semantic priming task they demonstrated an interpretation bias, in that they were faster to judge the relatedness of targets that were associated with the training-congruent than the training-incongruent meaning of an emotionally ambiguous homograph. In Experiment 2 the time between the presentation of the prime and the target (Stimulus Onset Asynchrony; SOA) at test was shortened. Interpretive biases were not observed at a short SOA suggesting that training did not induce biases at an early lexical activation stage. Interpretive bias was then eliminated when participants simply completed valenced word fragments (Experiment 3) or completed fragments related to emotional but unambiguous sentences (Experiment 4) during training. Only when participants were required to actively resolve emotionally ambiguous sentences during training did changes in interpretation emerge at test. These findings suggest that CBM-I achieves its effects by altering a production rule that aids the selection of a single meaning from alternatives, in line with an Ambiguity Resolution account. Finally, no interpretive biases were observed when the task in the test phase was substituted with a lexical decision task (Experiment 5). Participants only showed biases in the selection of meanings when the test phase encouraged them to interpret the prime. This pattern of results suggests that the alteration of selection patterns in word recognition depend on the strategies employed by participants in the test phase. Overall the findings are discussed with regards to the Ambiguity Resolution and Emotional Priming accounts of modified interpretive biases. Implications for current psycholinguistic models of meaning activation and selection are considered.</p>

Training the Interpretation of Ambiguity

<p>The interpretation of emotionally ambiguous words, sentences, or scenarios can be biased through training procedures that are collectively called Cognitive Bias Modification for Interpretation (CBM-I). Little CBM-I research has examined the underlying mechanisms responsible for the induction of emotional interpretive biases, or the potential for this line of enquiry to inform psycholinguistic models of meaning activation and selection. In this thesis a novel CBM-I paradigm was developed and then systematically manipulated in order to discriminate between two mechanistic accounts of changes in interpretive bias – the Emotional Priming Account and the Ambiguity Resolution Account. In Experiment 1 participants completed word fragments that were consistently related to either a negative or benign interpretation of an ambiguous sentence. In a subsequent semantic priming task they demonstrated an interpretation bias, in that they were faster to judge the relatedness of targets that were associated with the training-congruent than the training-incongruent meaning of an emotionally ambiguous homograph. In Experiment 2 the time between the presentation of the prime and the target (Stimulus Onset Asynchrony; SOA) at test was shortened. Interpretive biases were not observed at a short SOA suggesting that training did not induce biases at an early lexical activation stage. Interpretive bias was then eliminated when participants simply completed valenced word fragments (Experiment 3) or completed fragments related to emotional but unambiguous sentences (Experiment 4) during training. Only when participants were required to actively resolve emotionally ambiguous sentences during training did changes in interpretation emerge at test. These findings suggest that CBM-I achieves its effects by altering a production rule that aids the selection of a single meaning from alternatives, in line with an Ambiguity Resolution account. Finally, no interpretive biases were observed when the task in the test phase was substituted with a lexical decision task (Experiment 5). Participants only showed biases in the selection of meanings when the test phase encouraged them to interpret the prime. This pattern of results suggests that the alteration of selection patterns in word recognition depend on the strategies employed by participants in the test phase. Overall the findings are discussed with regards to the Ambiguity Resolution and Emotional Priming accounts of modified interpretive biases. Implications for current psycholinguistic models of meaning activation and selection are considered.</p>

EXPRESS: Controlled or automatic? Influence of congruency proportion and stimulus onset asynchrony on the brightness-valence and space-valence metaphoric congruency effects

Whether a cognitive process is operated automatically or in a controlled manner has been a long-standing question in cognitive psychology. However, this issue has not been investigated in the activation of metaphoric association. A primed word valence judgment task is often used to test the activation of metaphoric association, in which participants first see a prime (bright/dark square or fixation point moving up or down from the center of the screen) and then make a valence judgment to a target word. Metaphoric congruency effect occurs when participants make faster judgments to the target with valence being matched with the prime (good followed bright/top prime) than being mismatched with the prime (good followed dark/bottom prime). In the present two experiments, we manipulated prime-target stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) and proportion of metaphorically congruent trials (congruency proportion) to tease apart the effects of automatic and controlled activation of brightness-valence and spatial-valence metaphoric associations on word valence judgments. Results showed an overall effect of congruency proportion on brightness-valence and spatial-valence metaphoric congruency effect, which was independent of prime-target SOA. The effect was enhanced or reversed when congruency proportion was higher or lower than 0.5, respectively, suggesting that the activation of metaphoric association could be modulated by strategic control. The implications of these findings on the Conceptual Metaphor Theory and semantic priming theories are discussed.

EXPRESS: Comparing Person and People Perception: Multiple Group Members Do Not Increase Stereotype Priming

A characteristic feature of daily life is encountering people in groups. Surprisingly, however, at least during the initial stages of processing, research has focused almost exclusively on the construal of single individuals. As such, it remains unclear whether person and people (i.e., group) perception yield comparable or divergent outcomes. Addressing this issue, here we explored a core social-cognitive topic — stereotype activation — by presenting both single and multiple facial primes in a sequential-priming task. In addition, the processes underlying task performance were probed using a drift diffusion model analysis. Based on prior work, it was hypothesized that multiple (vs. single) primes would increase stereotype-based responding. Across two experiments, a consistent pattern of results emerged. First, stereotype priming was insensitive to the number of primes that were presented and occurred only at a short prime-target stimulus onset asynchrony (i.e., 250 ms). Second, priming was underpinned by a bias toward congruent (vs. incongruent) prime-target responses. Collectively these findings advance understanding of the emergence and origin of stereotype priming during person and people perception.

Preferred Lexical Access Route in Persian Learners of English: Associative, Semantic or Both

Background: Words in the Mental Lexicon (ML) construct semantic field through associative and/ or semantic connections, with a pervasive native speaker preference for the former. Non-native preferences, however, demand further inquiry. Previous studies have revealed inconsistent Lexical Access (LA) patterns due to the limitations in the methodology and response categorization. Objectives: To fill the gap, we employed a primed Picture Naming (PN) task for investigating the relations between concepts in the ML of Iranian EFL (English as a foreign language) learners. We also explored whether conscious priming at a long prime-target stimulus onset asynchrony affected the naming latency of the learners with different proficiency levels. Materials & Methods: The participants were 31 EFL learners (11-16 years old) at A1 and A2 levels based on the Common European Framework of Reference for languages. They were recruited in summer 2020 from language institutes in Bushehr and Kazeroon cities, Iran, through a convenience sampling method. They performed a PN task, including 66 prime-target pairs presented in associative, semantic, both semantic and associative, or unrelated conditions. The mixed-effects modeling was used for data analysis. Results: Based on the likelihood ratio test of model comparisons for condition effect (χ2 (1) =9.07, P=0.002), the interaction of condition, frequency, and length was significant in the semantic condition (t=2.72, P=0.008). A slight effect was also observed from the prime frequency in the associative condition (t=1.82, P=0.07). Conclusion: Results indicate one-level access to the ML, which is indeed a function of language proficiency. Findings are further discussed in terms of ML structure and patterns of LA.

The Cost of Spatial-Attentional Precuing for the Perception of Spatially Quantised Visual Images

We have investigated the effects of selective attentional spatial precuing and levels of quantisation on the perception of spatially quantised visual images of faces. The coarseness (number of square-shaped isoluminant pixels per image) of quantisation of eight alternative facial images was systematically varied from 9 to 16 pixels per image (along the horizontal dimension). 16 grey levels of the image were used; both local and global precues that designated the position of the expected stimulus-image were employed. Precue-to-target stimulus onset asynchrony was equal to 120 ms, and target image duration was varied between 28 and 76 ms. Targets were exposed at one of four quasiperipheral positions, either after the precue or without the precue. It was found that precues had a facilitative effect on identification with fine levels of quantisation or with original images, but this changed to a cost for precuing with coarse levels (9 – 11 pixels per image). A dramatic drop in overall identification efficiency with moving from 12 pixels per image to 11 pixels per image condition was also revealed. The results are interpreted as supporting (1) the idea of gradual coarse-to-detailed presetting of spatial filters by the precue, and (2) the existence of some implicit relational metrics of the critical facial identity cues that can be ‘catastrophically’ disintegrated by a small but critical change in quantisation value.

Semantic Processing of Foveally and Parafoveally Presented Words in a Lexical Decision Task

Using a lexical decision task in which two primes appeared simultaneously in the visual field for 150 msec followed by a target word, two experiments examined semantic priming from attended and unattended primes as a function of both the separation between the primes in the visual field and the prime-target stimulus-onset asynchrony (SOA). In the first experiment significant priming effects were found for both the attended and unattended prime words, though the effect was much greater for the attended words. In addition, and also for both attention conditions, priming showed a tendency to increase with increasing eccentricity (2.3°, 3.3°, and 4.3°) between the prime words in the visual field at the long (550 and 850 msec) but not at the short (250 msec) prime-target SOA. In the second experiment the prime stimuli were either two words (W-W) or one word and five Xs (W-X). We manipulated the degree of eccentricity (2° and 3.6°) between the prime stimuli and used a prime-target SOA of 850 msec. Again significant priming was found for both the attended and unattended words but only the W-W condition showed a decrement in priming as a function of the separation between the primes; this decrement came to produce negative priming for the unattended word at the narrow (2°) separation. These results are discussed in relation to the semantic processing of parafoveal words and the inhibitory effects of focused attention.

Attention Effects on Form Discrimination at Different Eccentricities

Considerable disagreement exists in the visual attention literature about how attention is allocated over the visual field. One frequently expressed metaphor is that attention moves like a spotlight, and in some variants it is assumed that attention takes longer to shift to targets further from fixation. In order to test this metaphor, five experiments were conducted in which target location was precued and form discrimination accuracy was assessed. By varying the interval between the precue and the target (stimulus onset asynchrony, SOA), a time course of attention effects was obtained for targets at 2°, 6°, and 10° eccentricity. In the first three experiments, precueing effects were found, but there were no differences in performance as a function of eccentricity for very short SOAs, with either a peripheral cue or a foveal arrow cue. For long SOAs, however, performance was better for targets that were closer to fixation. In Experiments 4 (peripheral cue) and 5 (foveal cue), the targets were scaled to make them equally discriminable at all eccentricities. Again precueing effects were found, but there were no differences in accuracy as a function of eccentricity for most SOAs. These results suggest that attention shifting is not analogous to a constant-velocity moving spotlight.