Priming Experiments Research Articles

Number of translations and translation direction in masked translation priming: evidence from unbalanced English–Chinese bilinguals

Within the research field of bilingual lexical representation and organization, much attention has been given to whether two languages share a conceptual system and what factors modulate the connection between this conceptual system and the lexical systems of a bilingual’s L1 and L2. One of the most valid ways in the psycholinguistics domain to explore these doubts is to examine the masked translation priming effect and the priming asymmetry through cross-language priming experiments. In this study, a masked priming lexical decision task was conducted with unbalanced English-Chinese bilinguals to investigate whether the masked translation priming effect exists in both translation directions, and to further reveal how the number of translations, which can be categorized into one-translation pair and more-than-one-translation pair conditions, affects the priming effects and modulates translation priming asymmetry. It was demonstrated that both translation direction and the number of translations influence the priming effect. Specifically, the priming effect was observable from L1 to L2 but not from L2 to L1, and the priming for one-translation pairs was significantly greater when compared to that for more-than-one-translation pairs. Moreover, the impacts of translation direction on the priming effect differed between the one-translation pair and more-than-one-translation pair conditions: under the former condition, substantial priming occurred in both directions, whereas for the latter condition, it was observed only in the L1–L2 direction. Several models of the bilingual mental lexicon, mainly the Revised Hierarchical Model and the Distributed Conceptual Feature Model, were used to elucidate the above results.

Does the frequency of cultural switching modulate bilinguals’ performance on Executive Functions tasks? A study of highly proficient bicultural-bilinguals

Aims and Objectives: This study investigates how bicultural switching could influence cognitive performance on Executive Functions tasks among bicultural-bilinguals. Methodology: Study 1 ( n = 233) integrates self-report questionnaire data on cultural and language behaviour with a priming experiment, providing empirical evidence of young adult bilinguals’ ability to shift between multiple cultures. Study 2 ( n = 48) explores the effect of cultural switching frequency on young adult bicultural bilinguals’ performance on tests for interference and inhibition control, set-shifting ability, and attention. Data and Analysis: Study 1: A repeated measures ANOVA was conducted to determine the effect of different primes on participant’s ratings. We ran a two-way mixed ANOVA to ascertain the effect of interlocutors (Grandparents/relatives, Parents, Siblings, Peers/co-workers, Social media) on behaviour (Cultural, Language). Study 2: A one-way ANOVA was conducted on Simon, Flanker, and Wisconsin Card Sort tasks (WCST). Each of the three attention network components was analysed using a 2 (trial-type, within-subjects) × 2 (Switching Group, between-groups) mixed-ANOVA for the Attention Network task. Findings: Study 1: Participants who alternate frequently between cultural frames made a clearer distinction between Western primes than those who switched between cultural frames less, suggesting that the frequency of cultural switching could impact cognition. Study 2: Bicultural bilinguals who switched between cultural frames frequently resolved stimulus-response conflict significantly faster in the Flanker task, made fewer mistakes within each sorting block in the WCST, and had a smaller conflict effect compared to infrequent switchers in the Attention Network Task. Significance: This study examines the effects of bicultural switching on Executive Functions of highly proficient bicultural bilinguals, highlighting it as a potential confound in bilingual research. Bicultural switching effects on interference and inhibition-control persist even in participants at the developmental peak of their cognitive processing capabilities after controlling for a plethora of socio-linguistic variables. Our research highlights how this understudied aspect of multiculturalism may have broad implications for bilingual research in Executive Functions.

A Systematic Investigation into the Generation of Words Using Semantic Priming Experiments

Semantic priming facilitates word generation by improving the ability to produce semantically related words. However, age-related neurobiological changes may diminish this capacity. This study investigates the effect of aging on word generation across different semantic categories in 150 healthy individuals, aged 31 to 80, divided into five age groups. Participants were tasked with generating words in the categories of synonym, antonym, abstract, and concrete, using the DMDX software. The number of words generated and the accuracy of responses were recorded. The findings revealed statistically significant differences (p < 0.05) in the number of words generated across most age groups, with the exception of adjacent age groups (31–40 vs. 41–50, 41–50 vs. 51–60, and 61–70 vs. 71–80), where no significant differences were observed. These results suggest that neurobiological changes between adjacent age groups are subtle. The reduced performance observed in older adults may be attributed to a diminished ability to strategically access and retrieve lexical forms from semantic memory. However, semantic priming appears to mitigate these age-related declines, preventing significant differences between adjacent age groups.

Effects of primer components of silane and 10-methacryloyloxydecyl dihydrogen phosphate on resin bonding to tribochemical silica-coated highly translucent zirconia.

To assess the influence of different primer compositions-silane (S), 10-methacryloyloxydecyl dihydrogen phosphate (MDP), and the combination of silane and MDP (S + MDP)-on the bonding performance of MDP-free and MDP-containing resin cements to highly translucent zirconia. Tribochemical silica-coated zirconia plates were pretreated with one of three experimental primers, S, MDP, or S + MDP, with untreated specimens serving as controls. Subsequently, these plates were bonded to stainless-steel rods using either two MDP-free or two MDP-containing resin cements. Tensile bond strength was measured after 24h (TC0) and following thermal cycling (4-60°C for 10,000 cycles; TC10,000). Data were analyzed using a three-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), followed by one-way ANOVA and Tukey-Kramer post hoc tests (α = 0.05). X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) assessed the elemental mass concentrations on the zirconia surfaces. For MDP-free resin cements, MDP-treated specimens exhibited significantly greater bond strengths than controls, regardless of the aging conditions. However, a significant reduction in bond strength was observed between TC0 and TC10,000 in most of the MDP-free resin cement groups, except for one S + MDP group. Conversely, for MDP-containing resin cements, the S + MDP group exhibited no statistically significant differences between aging conditions. Notably, XPS analysis detected silicon, zirconium, and aluminum on the zirconia surfaces. No significant difference in tensile bond strength was observed between aging conditions for MDP-containing resin cements bonded to tribochemical silica-coated zirconia primed with S + MDP. The combination of MDP-containing primers and resin cements demonstrated superior bonding performance to tribochemical silica-coated zirconia.

The Role of Nutrient and Energy Limitation on Microbial Decomposition of Deep Podzolized Carbon: A Priming Experiment

AbstractSoil carbon decomposition is primarily driven by microbial activities and is regulated by factors which stimulate or impede microbial functions. Deep podzolized carbon (DPC), found in the United States Southeastern Coastal Plain, is situated well below the soil surface in horizons isolated from active plant input. This carbon is characterized by high C:N ratios (>30) which could reflect nutrient limitation of microbial decomposition. To uncover the energy or nutrient limitation on DPC degradation, a 90‐day priming experiment was performed with soils from the surface horizon and DPC horizons (i.e., Bh1 and Bh2) received the additions of 13C‐labeled alanine and glucose. This resulted in prominent priming effects: addition of alanine increased basal decomposition of soil organic carbon by 918 ± 51% and 737 ± 7% in Bh2 and Bh1, respectively. Glucose relative priming was 505 ± 28% in Bh1 and 606 ± 77% of basal respiration in Bh2. These strong responses to substrate input highlight the susceptibility of DPC to loss when microbial carbon and nutrient constraints are alleviated. After 90 days, glucose addition increased the microbial biomass in DPC horizons relative to alanine addition, with the latter showing no difference from ultrapure‐water control. The response of the microbial biomass indicates constraint by a lack of energy sources both by the paucity of labile substrates and reduced availability of organic matter as a result of podzolization. Our study has important implications for predicting the response of DPC in Coastal Plain soils in the context of land management and global change.

Emerging Roots: Investigating Early Access to Meaning in Maltese Auditory Word Recognition.

In Semitic languages, the consonantal root is central to morphology, linking form and meaning. While psycholinguistic studies highlight its importance in language processing, the role of meaning in early lexical access and its representation remain unclear. This study investigates when meaning becomes accessible during the processing of Maltese verb forms, using a computational model based on the Discriminative Lexicon framework. Our model effectively comprehends and produces Maltese verbs, while also predicting response times in a masked auditory priming experiment. Results show that meaning is accessible early in lexical access and becomes more prominent after the target word is fully processed. This suggests that semantic information plays a critical role from the initial stages of lexical access, refining our understanding of real-time language comprehension. Our findings contribute to theories of lexical access and offer valuable insights for designing priming studies in psycholinguistics. Additionally, this study demonstrates the potential of computational models in investigating the relationship between form and meaning in languageprocessing.

A Novel Graphite Fluoride/Bioactive Glass-containing Orthodontic Primer with Antibacterial and Remineralization Properties: An In-vitro Study.

This study aimed to develop a novel orthodontic primer that incorporated graphite fluoride (GF) and Bioactive glass (BAG) and to investigate its cell viability, bonding strength, and enamel damage, as well as its antibacterial and remineralization properties. Nine groups were prepared by adding different concentrations of GF (1, 2, and 4 wt.%) and BAG (1, 3, and 5 wt.%) to Transbond™ XT orthodontic primer. The prepared primers were compared to the control primer in terms of cell viability, shear bond strength (SBS), adhesive remnant index (ARI), enamel damage index (EDI), and antibacterial test. Then, the groups with better antibacterial properties (GFBAG 1-1, GFBAG 4-1, GFBAG 4-3, GFBAG 4-5) were evaluated for the remineralization properties. All the prepared orthodontic primers with different concentrations of GF/BAG revealed acceptable cell viability levels, with comparable SBS and ARI values to the control primer (p>0.05). Simultaneously, the EDI was reduced, while the antibacterial properties were significantly enhanced when compared to the control group (p0.05). The result of remineralization properties revealed that the selected groups had significantly higher remineralization ability than the control group; this was most pronounced in the GFBAG 4-3 group. All the prepared GF/BAG orthodontic primers are biologically safe with adequate SBS, ARI, and EDI values for clinical application with enhanced antibacterial properties. The GFBAG 4-3 experimental primer reveals the best antibacterial and remineralization properties which require further in-vitro and in-vivo investigations as a preventive measure of white spot lesions.

Morphological encoding in language production: Electrophysiological evidence from Mandarin Chinese compound words.

This study investigates the role of morphology during speech planning in Mandarin Chinese. In a long-lag priming experiment, thirty-two Mandarin Chinese native speakers were asked to name target pictures (e.g., "" /shan1/ "mountain"). The design involved pictures referring to morpheme-related compound words (e.g., "" /shan1yang2/ "goat") sharing a morpheme with the first (e.g., "" /shan1/ "mountain") or the second position of the targets (e.g., /nao3/ "brain" with prime /dian4nao3/ "computer"), as well as unrelated control items. Behavioral and electrophysiological data were collected. Interestingly, the behavioral results went against earlier findings in Indo-European languages, showing that the target picture naming was not facilitated by morphologically related primes. This suggests no morphological priming for individual constituents in producing Mandarin Chinese disyllabic compound words. However, targets in the morpheme-related word condition did elicit a reduced N400 compared with targets in the morpheme-unrelated condition for the first position overlap in the ERP analyses but not for the second, suggesting automatic activation of the first individual constituent in noun compound production. Implications of these findings are discussed.

A Simple Computational Model of Semantic Priming in 18-Month-Olds.

We propose a simple computational model that describes potential mechanisms underlying the organization and development of the lexical-semantic system in 18-month-old infants. We focus on two independent aspects: (i) on potential mechanisms underlying the development of taxonomic and associative priming, and (ii) on potential mechanisms underlying the effect of Inter Stimulus Interval on these priming effects. Our model explains taxonomic priming between words by semantic feature overlap, whereas associative priming between words is explained by Hebbian links between semantic representations derived from co-occurrence relations between words (or their referents). From a developmental perspective, any delay in the emergence of taxonomic priming compared to associative priming during infancy seems paradoxical since feature overlap per se need not be learned. We address this paradox in the model by showing that feature overlap itself is an emergent process. The model successfully replicates infant data related to Inter Stimulus Interval effects in priming experiments and makes testablepredictions.

Development of a graphene oxide/hydroxyapatite-containing orthodontic primer: An in-vitro study

Fixed orthodontic appliances increase the risk of enamel demineralization and the development of white spot lesions (WSLs). This study aimed to develop a novel orthodontic primer that incorporates graphene oxide (GO) and hydroxyapatite (HA), investigate their cell viability, bonding strength, and enamel damage, and evaluate their antibacterial and remineralization properties. Nine groups were prepared by adding different concentrations of GO (0.1, 0.25, and 0.5 wt%) and HA (2, 5, and 7 wt%) to Transbond™ XT orthodontic primer. After observing the surface morphology of the material by a Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscope (FESEM), the phase of the materials by X-ray diffraction (XRD), and their chemical compositions by Energy Dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX). The prepared primers were compared to the control primer group in terms of cell viability, shear bond strength (SBS), adhesive remnant index (ARI), enamel damage index (EDI), and antibacterial test. Then the groups with higher antibacterial properties (GOHA 0.1–2, GOHA 0.1–5, GOHA 0.25–2) were selected to evaluate their remineralization properties. Primers with all the prepared concentrations of GO/HA revealed acceptable cell viability levels within the limit of the ISO standards with comparable SBS and ARI values with the control primer (p > 0.05). Simultaneously, the EDI significantly reduced, and the antibacterial properties enhanced when compared to the control group (p < 0.05). The result of remineralization properties revealed that the selected groups had significantly higher remineralization ability than the control group which was more pronounced in GOHA 0.25–2 group. All the prepared orthodontic primers with different concentrations of GO/HA are safe biologically with adequate SBS, ARI, and EDI values for clinical application with enhanced antibacterial properties. The GOHA 0.25–2 experimental primer reveals the best antibacterial and remineralization properties which require further in-vitro and in-vivo investigation as a preventive measure of WSL.

A cue reactivity experiment: Exposure to images of alcoholic beverages and social contexts on alcohol cravings, motivations, attitudes, approval, and behavior

The incentive-sensitization theory of addiction postulates that relevant cues can trigger alcohol cravings, tendencies, and related outcomes. Additionally, consistent with the encoding specificity principle and social impact theory, social contexts depicting people can activate pro-alcohol reactions and tendencies. This randomized experiment tested the cue reactivity effects of exposure to images depicting variations in the number of people consuming alcoholic or nonalcoholic beverages on alcohol-related cravings and outcomes. The sample consisted of 594 adult alcohol users who passed manipulation checks. Participants were randomly assigned to a condition in a 2 (beverage type cue manipulation: alcoholic vs. nonalcoholic) × 3 (social context cue manipulation: beverage-only [no people] vs. solitary drinking [1 person] vs. social drinking [2 or more people]) factorial design and primed with a series of photographs. Dependent variables measured alcohol cravings, alcohol motives, alcohol attitudes, alcohol approval, and alcohol behavior. Factorial MANCOVA and ANCOVAs were performed. Main effects for the social context manipulation were found. Specifically, the social drinking condition compared to the beverage-only condition induced significantly higher pro-alcohol cravings, attitudes, and behaviors. The beverage type manipulation did not influence the dependent variables. The findings offer insights that visual cues depicting social drinking scenarios activated alcohol-related cravings and outcomes, regardless of whether the beverages shown were alcoholic or nonalcoholic. This priming experiment helps to understand the social mechanisms underlying cue reactivity and offers implications for advancing cue-based alcohol interventions.

The Roles of Segments and Tone in Mandarin Lexical Processing: An ERP Study.

Segments and tone are important sub-syllabic units that play large roles in lexical processing in tonal languages. However, their roles in lexical processing remain unclear, and the event-related potential (ERP) technique will benefit the exploration of the cognitive mechanism in lexical processing. The high temporal resolution of ERP enables the technique to interpret rapidly changing spoken language performances. The present ERP study examined the different roles of segments and tone in Mandarin Chinese lexical processing. An auditory priming experiment was designed that included five types of priming stimuli: consonant mismatch, vowel mismatch, tone mismatch, unrelated mismatch, and identity. Participants were asked to judge whether the target of the prime-target pair was a real Mandarin disyllabic word or not. Behavioral results including reaction time and response accuracy and ERP results were collected. Results were different from those of previous studies that showed the dominant role of consonants in lexical access in mainly non-tonal languages like English. Our results showed that consonants and vowels play comparable roles, whereas tone plays a less important role than do consonants and vowels in lexical processing in Mandarin. These results have implications for understanding the brain mechanisms in lexical processing of tonal languages.

Incorporating Frequency Effects in the Lexical Access of Mandarin Tone 3 Sandhi.

Mandarin tone 3 sandhi refers to the phenomenon whereby a tone 3 syllable changes to a tone 2 when followed by another tone 3. This phonological process creates a deviation between the tonal forms realized at morphemic (/tone3-tone3/) and word ([tone2-tone3]) levels, posing questions in terms of how disyllabic tone 3 sandhi words are represented and accessed. The current study conducted three cross-modal lexical decision priming experiments to investigate this issue. Experiment 1 manipulated the frequencies of the initial morpheme and whole word, showing that the higher initial-character frequency against the whole word gives stronger activation to the underlying representation and the lower frequency of the initial character leads to stronger activation of the surface tone. Experiments 2 and 3 operationalized the relative frequency of the initial tone 3 morpheme's realization as a sandhi tone, finding that the competition between the two tonal realizations also influences how T3 sandhi words are accessed. Specifically, the more frequently the T3 morpheme surfaces as a T2 allomorph, the less activated the underlying representation becomes in the mental lexicon. Our results indicate a complex interplay between morpheme, word, and the associated tonal representations in the mental lexicon and that these factors co-determine the lexical access of tone 3 sandhi.

Deficit aversion: Mercantilist ideas and individual trade preferences

AbstractWhat factors affect trade preferences? This article focuses on current‐account balances, which despite being de‐emphasized by mainstream economic theory, play an outsized role in political rhetoric regarding the costs and benefits of free trade. This article shows that individual preferences over trade openness reflect the mercantilist belief that when a country is running a current‐account deficit, trade reduces that country's aggregate employment prospects and diminishes its status on the world stage. This article shows that current‐account balances are an important driver of individual trade preferences. The theory's predictions are borne out by hierarchical analysis of cross‐national observational survey data, and further supported by the results of an original survey priming experiment in the United States. These results contribute to a growing literature emphasizing the effect of macroeconomic factors on preferences.

Effect of lay theory of climate change on coping strategies: Stability and variability of information-induced results

Individuals' explanations for the cause of global climate change are based on their life experiences and acquired climate knowledge, namely the lay theories of climate change by this study. This explanation could related with their coping on climate change, but previous research has paid less attention to this issue. Study 1 conducted two national surveys (1a: n = 978, 1b: n = 933) to explore Chinese people’s lay theories of climate change and their relationship to coping strategies. In Study 2, three sub-studies were conducted to investigate the variability of lay theories of climate change and its impact on coping strategies, respectively, using the priming experiment (2a: n = 150) and the daily experience method (2b: n = 76, 2c: n = 138). The results suggest that lay theories of climate change can be divided into natural cycle theory and human-made acceleration theory. Human-made acceleration theory positively predicts problem- and meaning-focused coping strategies, and negatively predicts emotion-focused coping strategies. Participants' lay theories of climate change, while stable, are subject to change, which in turn affects their coping strategies. It is harder to get participants to switch to natural cycle theory than to human-made acceleration theory. This study puts forward the viewpoint of lay theories of climate change, which enriches the research on coping strategies of climate change.

Cognitive Technology to Evaluate the Academic Learning of Computational Cognition in Psychology Students

&lt;p style="text-align:justify"&gt;This study illustrated an alternative way to evaluate students’ academic learning. It involved the joint and intertwined application of the natural semantic network technique, computer simulations, and semantic priming experiments to assess the cognitive changes in knowledge structures due to academic learning in two groups of psychology students. The experimental group was enrolled in a course on computational cognition, while the control group was oblivious to this course. The results indicated that the cognitive assessment tools discriminate the cognitive changes produced as a result of general training undertaken in a psychology degree versus the influence of a specific course. After the course, the experimental group increased their technical vocabulary, changed their conceptual valuation of definers related to computational theories of mind, and reorganized the relations among definers according to the computational cognition approach. Also, this group presented a higher connectivity index between the concepts of the semantic network, their conceptual activation level and conceptual co-activation pattern changed, and their access level to the evaluated schema’s concepts improved. In contrast, the control group did not show significant changes in their cognitive patterns after the course. These findings suggest that cognitive tools may be helpful in the diagnosis of academic learning.&lt;/p&gt;

The psycholinguistics of shining-through effects in translation: cross-linguistic structural priming or serial lexical co-activation?

AbstractThe manuscript explores the psycholinguistic processes responsible for cross-linguistic influence in translation. In two experimental studies with professional translators-in-training, we investigate the psycholinguistic foundations of shining-through effects in translated texts, i.e., cases where the grammatical structure of a source sentence leaves traces in the translated sentence. Experiment 1 reports the results from a translation task investigating the influence of the grammatical structure of the source sentence on structural choices for its translation. The results showed a significant influence of source sentence structure, which gradually decreased with increasing translation competence scores. In Experiment 2, we investigated to what extent the effect of source structure influence found in Experiment 1 can be accounted for through cross-linguistic structural priming. In a cross-linguistic priming experiment in which the source sentences from Experiment 1 were used as primes, participants showed no evidence of structural priming. A cross-experiment comparison revealed significant source sentence influence in the translation task, but no such effect in the priming task, for matched sets of sentences. Our results cast doubt on the claim that shining-through effects in translation are caused by cross-linguistic structural priming. We suggest an alternative account which instead explains structural cross-linguistic influence in translation through serial lexical co-activation.

Visual similarity effects in the identification of Arabic letters: evidence with masked priming

Abstract Research using masked priming and parafoveal preview techniques has shown that visual letter similarity has an impact on word processing during the initial stages in Latin-derived scripts. However, these effects appear to be absent in Arabic. One reason for this discrepancy could be attributed to the distinctive features of the Arabic script, which includes numerous letters sharing a basic form while varying in the location or number of diacritics. To shed light on this issue, the present study employed Arabic letters rather than words in two masked priming experiments: an alphabetic decision task and a letter-matching task. Both experiments showed that visually similar letters were more effective as primes than visually dissimilar letters. These findings suggest that the processes of letter identification in Arabic and Latin scripts may be roughly alike, implying that differences in visual letter similarity across scripts may arise at later stages of processing.

Evidence for a constituent order boost in structural priming

The study investigates the role of constituent order in structural priming. We report the results from a PO/DO priming experiment in German, in which we experimentally manipulated verb position in primes and targets. Significant structural priming effects occurred irrespective of whether verb position was the same in prime and target or not. However, additional similarity in constituent order was able to boost structural priming effects, with significantly stronger priming when the verb occurred in the same position in prime and target. We argue that existing one-stage and two-stage accounts of formulation struggle to account for the entire data pattern and propose an alternative account of formulation which can explain our results.

Anti-Black Political Violence and the Historical Legacy of the Great Replacement Conspiracy

Racial violence is central to the American polity. We argue that support for violence, specifically anti-Black violence, has a long historical arc in American politics dating back to chattel slavery. In this paper, we argue that the racial violence associated with the “great replacement” conspiracy is much more pervasive among the white American public because of the historical legacy of anti-Black violent sentiment. To investigate the prevalence of this idea, we conducted a preregistered simple priming experiment aimed to tap into top-of-mind ideas about racial demographic change. Our experimental design spans multiple data sources, including two probability samples, over the course of a year. We ultimately find that simply priming attitudes about racial demographic change through a single open-ended question consistently leads to increased support for political violence, increasing racial resentment, and expressed anti-Black views. Our approach allows us to test this question through variant methodological means, all of which confirm strong associations Americans have between racial demographic change, anti-Blackness, and violence. Our findings demonstrate that Black threat is an important driver of democratic backsliding in the realm of political violence that requires further attention.