Fast priming of grammatical decisions: repetition and transposed-word priming effects

We used the grammatical decision task to investigate fast priming of written sentence processing. Targets were sequences of 5 words that either formed a grammatically correct sentence or were ungrammatical. Primes were sequences of 5 words and could be the same word sequence as targets, a different sequence of words with a similar syntactic structure, the same sequence with two inner words transposed or the same sequence with two inner words substituted by different words. Prime-word sequences were presented in a larger font size than targets for 200 ms and followed by the target sequence after a 100 ms delay. We found robust repetition priming in grammatical decisions, with same sequence primes leading to faster responses compared with prime sequences containing different words. We also found transposed-word priming effects, with faster responses following a transposed-word prime compared with substituted-word primes. We conclude that fast primed grammatical decisions might offer investigations of written sentence processing what fast primed lexical decisions have offered studies of visual word recognition.

Intangible features extraction in the processing of abstract concepts: Evidence from picture-word priming

Over the last decade, hypotheses ranging from linguistic symbol processing to embodiment have been formulated to account for the content and mechanisms responsible for the representation of abstract concepts. Results of recent studies have suggested that abstract concepts, just like concrete ones, can benefit from knowledge of real-world situational context, but that they can also be processed based on abstract pictures devoid of such situational features. This paper presents two semantic priming experiments to explore such mechanisms further. The first experiment replicates Kuipers, Jones, and Thierry (2018) in a cross-linguistic setting which shows that abstract concepts can be processed from abstract pictures devoid of tangible features. In the second experiment, we studied extraction mechanisms that come into play when participants are presented with abstract and concrete pictures that provide situational information to illustrate target abstract concepts. We expected this facilitatory effect to be limited to concrete picture primes. Our data analysed with both Bayesian and Frequentist tests showed however that even when presented with tangible situational information, the extraction of features still occurred for abstract pictures. We discuss the implications of this with respect to future avenues for studying the processing of abstract concepts.

Damage Control upon Learning That One’s Study Failed to Replicate

But what happens to investigators whose studies fails to replicate? The answer is complicated by the growing use of social media by scientists and the tenor of the original investigators’ responses to the replicators. Alternative case studies are presented including John Bargh’s vitriolic outburst following a failure of his classic word priming study to replicate, Amy Cuddy’s unfortunate experience with power posing, and Matthew Vees’s low-keyed response in which he declined to aggressively disparage his replicators, complemented the replicators’ interpretation of their replication, and neither defended his original study or even suggested that its findings might be wrong. In addition to such case studies, surveys on the subject suggest that there are normally no long-term deleterious career or reputational effects on investigators for a failure of a study to replicate and that a reasoned (or no) response to a failed replication is the superior professional and affective solution.

The Role of Age, Political Affiliation, and Framing in Attitudes Toward Hispanic and Latinx Immigrants

The United States is experiencing rapid aging and increasing racial and ethnic diversity. Nevertheless, political rhetoric about immigrants has stoked negative assumptions and beliefs adding to fear and cultural misperceptions. Among those most affected are people of Hispanic/LatinX ethnicity, who comprise approximately 18% of the population. To address negative stereotypes, we sought to test how framing affected attitudes about Hispanic/LatinX immigrants and how people in different generations across the political spectrum respond to framing. As part of the “Latinos and Economic Security (LES),” a national research project funded by the Ford Foundation, we launched the “Well Being 501 Latino Economic Security” survey through the American Life Panel of RAND Corporation in 2018. Before answering the survey questions, participants (n=739) were randomly assigned to three different conditions: a 100-word priming statement focused on Hispanic/LatinX work ethic/religiosity/patriotism (33.29%), a 100-word priming statement focused on justice/equity/fairness (32.75%), and a control group with no priming statement (33.96%). We used multiple linear regression to examine relationships among demographic variables, age, political affiliation, and priming statements and attitudes toward Hispanic/LatinX immigrants. Key findings include: 1) age, political affiliation, education level, race and ethnicity, and gender explained 47.5% of the variance in attitudes; 2) baby boomers and generation X were significantly less tolerant of Hispanic/LatinX; 3) priming statements played a salient mediating role in neutralizing negative attitudes. By employing a developmental perspective, we proposed six recommendations from the aspects of reframing policy narrative and developing educational programs targeted at improving attitudes toward Hispanic/LatinX immigrants.

Age-related dissociation of N400 effect and lexical priming

The use of contextual information is an important capability to facilitate language comprehension. This can be shown by studying behavioral and neurophysiological measures of accelerated word recognition when semantically or phonemically related information is provided in advance, resulting in accompanying attenuation of the respective event-related potential, i.e. the N400 effect. Against the background of age-dependent changes in a broad variety of lexical capacities, we aimed to study whether word priming is accomplished differently in elderly compared to young persons. 19 young (29.9 ± 5.6 years) and 15 older (69.0 ± 7.2 years) healthy adults participated in a primed lexical decision task that required the classification of target stimuli (words or pseudo-words) following related or unrelated prime words. We assessed reaction time, task accuracy and N400 responses. Acceleration of word recognition by semantic and phonemic priming was significant in both groups, but resulted in overall larger priming effects in the older participants. Compared with young adults, the older participants were slower and less accurate in responding to unrelated word-pairs. The expected N400 effect was smaller in older than young adults, particularly during phonemic word and pseudo-word priming, with a rather similar N400 amplitude reduction by semantic relatedness. The observed pattern of results is consistent with preserved or even enhanced lexical context sensitivity in older compared to young adults. This, however, appears to involve compensatory cognitive strategies with higher lexical processing costs during phonological processing in particular, suggested by a reduced N400 effect in the elderly.