Priming Experiments Research Articles

Priming effects in reading words with vertically and horizontally mirrored letters.

We conducted two masked priming experiments to examine how the orthographic system processes words with mirrored letters. In both experiments, four different primes were used: an identity prime, an unrelated control prime, and two mirror-primes in which letters were either mirrored at their vertical or horizontal axis. Task was varied between experiments: In Experiment 1, we used a lexical decision task, and in Experiment 2, we used a cross-case same-different match task. We expected to see priming effects in both mirror-conditions with stronger effects in the vertically than in the horizontally mirrored letters. In the lexical decision task, we observed only vertical priming effects for words, whereas in the same-different task, priming effects were present in both mirror-conditions and for both words and non-words. We discuss the implications of our findings for extant models of orthographic processing.

Long-lag identity priming in the absence of long-lag morphological priming: evidence from Mandarin tone alternation

The present study tested whether listeners hearing one form of a morpheme activate other forms of the same morpheme. Listeners performed lexical decisions while hearing Mandarin monosyllables; crucially, critical targets could be primed by related syllables that occurred 18–52 trials earlier (long-lag priming). The use of long-lag priming ensures that any facilitation effects are due to morphological relatedness and not to semantic or form relationships, which do not prime lexical decisions at long lags. Across three experiments (total N = 458), we consistently found that lexical decisions were primed when the same pronunciation of a morpheme occurred as prime and target (e.g., shiL – shiL) but were not primed when two different variants of the same morpheme occurred as prime and target (e.g., shiR – shiL, where both of these syllables are potential pronunciations of the same morpheme). In other words, we observed identity priming but not morphological priming, unlike other long-lag priming experiments, which almost invariably observe intramodal morphological priming if they test it. This surprising finding suggests that there are boundary conditions on the elicitation of long-lag morphological priming effects.

Are translation equivalents really equivalent? Evidence from concreteness effects in translation priming

Aims and Objectives: Translation equivalents intuitively seem to overlap in meaning. Moreover, the models of the bilingual lexicon often represent the meaning shared between two translations as a holistic node in the semantic network. However, research on semantic representation and processing questions this holistic approach. For instance, abstract words are assumed to be more language-dependent, while concrete words’ meanings are seen as more consistent cross-linguistically. The non-cognate translation priming paradigm offers an ideal methodological setting to study semantic overlap (proxied by concreteness) between translations. Priming effects between non-cognate translation equivalents are assumed to emerge due to spreading activation at the semantic level. Hence, a larger semantic overlap between translation prime-target pairs should lead to larger priming effects. Nevertheless, the evidence from previous translation priming studies investigating concreteness displays a blurry picture, potentially reflecting a shared limitation: their relatively small sample sizes. We overcame this problem by analysing the largest translation priming dataset to date. Methodology: Two hundred Spanish–English highly proficient bilinguals were tested in a bidirectional translation priming experiment employing 314 non-cognate translation equivalents differing in concreteness. Data and analysis: We analysed response times and error rates employing conservative (generalized) linear mixed-effects models. Findings: The results showed that concrete translation pairs elicited larger priming effects than abstract ones, evidencing differences in semantic representation between concrete and abstract words. Importantly, the influence of concreteness appeared only in the forward translation direction, suggesting language experience-related differences in meaning representation. Originality: The present study analysed the largest dataset in the translation priming literature to date, employing a conservative statistical approach to shed light on the effects of concreteness on translation priming. Implications: Our study spotlights the complexity and non-holistic nature of the bilingual semantic representation of concrete and abstract words. The present findings call for more research to help the current models of the bilingual lexicon implement more nuanced semantic representations.

Just a mark: Diacritic function does not play a role in the early stages of visual word recognition.

A very common feature in most writing systems is the presence of diacritics: distinguishing marks that are added for various linguistic reasons. Most models of reading, however, have not yet captured the nature of these marks. Recent priming experiments in several languages have attempted to resolve how diacritical letters are represented in the visual word recognition system. Since the function and appearance of diacritics can change from one language to the other, it is hard to interpret the accumulated evidence. With this in mind, we conducted two masked priming lexical decision experiments in Hungarian, a transparent orthography with a wide use of diacritic vowels that allows for clear-cut manipulations. In the two experiments, we manipulated the presence or absence of the same diacritic (i.e., the acute accent) on two specific sets of letters that behave differently. In Experiment 1, the manipulation changed only the length of vowels, whereas in Experiment 2, it also changed the quality (e.g., a↝/ɒ/ vs. á↝/aː/). In both experiments, we found that primes with an omitted diacritic work just as good as the identity primes (nema→NÉMA = néma→NÉMA [mute]), whereas the addition of a diacritic comes with a cost (mése→MESE > mese→MESE [tale]). This asymmetry favors a purely perceptual account of the very early stages of word recognition, making it blind to the function of diacritics. We suggest that the linguistic functions of diacritics originate at later processing stages.

Stereotyping Among Graduate Students in Mental Health Fields: An EEG Study

Counselors are obligated to work effectively with diverse groups, yet stereotyping and biases can impede counselors’ efforts. Understanding implicit processes in social cognition among counselors is important because implicit stereotyping and biases can negatively influence counselors’ work. Investigation of cognitive processes through electroencephalography (EEG) can illuminate implicit tendencies that potentially lead to microaggressions toward clients. In this study, we tested the hypothesis that graduate students in mental health fields would show indicators of stereotyping in a priming experiment that measured stereotyping implicitly. Both neural (N400 event-related potential component) and behavioral (reaction time) measures were used as indexes for stereotyping. The results showed neural and behavioral markers of stereotyping toward Black men and White women in a sample of graduate students in mental health fields composed of mostly White women. Implications for counseling practice and research are discussed.

The head or the verb: Is the lexical boost restricted to the head verb?

Four structural priming experiments investigated whether the lexical boost is due to the repeated head verb of the primed structure or due to the repetition of any verb, testing structural priming of ditransitive structures (The hotel owner decided to loan the tourist a tent/a tent to the tourist). In Experiments 1–3, we manipulated the repetition of the matrix verb (decided) that is not the syntactic head in the primed structure. The results showed abstract structural priming of the embedded ditransitive structure but the repetition of the matrix verb did not boost the priming. In addition to manipulating the repetition of the matrix verb, we also manipulated the head verb of the primed structure (loan) in Experiment 4. It showed a lexical boost with the repetition of the head verb but no boost with the repetition of the matrix verb. These results are consistent with the residual activation model, which only predicts a boost from the verb that is the head of the primed structure. They do not support models which predict that the repetition of any lexical material in a sentence boosts priming.

Limited Potential for Mineralization of Permafrost Peatland Soil Carbon Following Thermokarst: Evidence From Anoxic Incubation and Priming Experiments

AbstractPermafrost thaw in peatlands risks emitting vast stores of soil organic carbon (SOC) as greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, yet anoxic conditions and low peat quality may prevent rapid SOC loss. To assess differences in anaerobic SOC mineralization following thaw and vulnerability of previously‐frozen peat, we incubated peat (5° and 14°C) from 15 depths of ⁓6 m cores from different thaw sites including an intact permafrost peat plateau and thermokarst bogs that thawed ∼30 and ∼200 years ago. Furthermore, a glucose‐addition experiment after >700 days assessed whether labile C inputs occurring following thermokarst could accelerate SOC mineralization (priming). We found a common pattern of SOC mineralization rate decreasing with depth and peat age. However, we found no differences in peat mineralization rates among sites for samples of similar age and of corresponding peatland developmental stage. Priming effects were minor and short‐term, and did not vary among sites or with peat developmental stage. We also found mineralization rates from anoxic incubations more than an order of magnitude higher than rates implied from field observations, suggesting mineralization rates from anaerobic incubations should be used mainly to interpret relative differences. Peat humification and peat nitrogen and phosphorous content explained more than 85% of the variability in mineralization rates. Peat quality did not influence the temperature sensitivity of peat mineralization. Overall, the absence of substantial priming effects and the lack of differences in mineralization rates between permafrost peat and peat thawed 200 years ago suggests that rapid peatland SOC loss following thaw is unlikely.

Grammatical encoding of double-object alternations in Zhuang: Evidence for the one-stage model.

Production research has yielded mixed findings regarding whether grammatical encoding specifies grammatical functions and linear word order simultaneously or separately, supporting either one-stage or two-stage models. Here, we focused on the double object (DO) and shifted double object (SDO) constructions in Zhuang, an ethnic minority language in China because they differ only in linear ordering of the two nouns whose grammatical functions are direct object and indirect object, assuming the roles of Theme and Recipient, respectively. Using two structural priming experiments, we found that both DO and SDO constructions induced within-structure priming effects, but they did not prime each other. Such structural priming effects persisted, regardless of whether semantic features (i.e., animacy of the Theme) were repeated across primes and targets. Taken together, these priming patterns support the one-stage model of grammatical encoding, where a conceptual representation is converted into a structure specifying both grammatical functions and linear word order.

"Ladetes"-A novel device to test deformation behaviors of hydrate-bearing sediments.

Natural gas hydrate (NGH) exploitation is severely restricted by geotechnical problems. Deformation behaviors of the hydrate-bearing strata (HBS) control the occurrence and evolution of geotechnical problems during extracting natural gas from HBS. In this paper, a novel approach named Ladetes is introduced to evaluate the lateral deformation behaviors of the near-wellbore and fracture-filling regions of the HBS. The pressuremeter test and the flat dilatometer test are designed to simulate the inner boundaries of an NGH-producing well and an artificial stimulation fracture for the first time. The device can realize the in situ hydrate formation prior to the experiment and axial loading application throughout the experiment. Both the strain control mode and the stress control mode can be achieved to estimate the deformation characteristics of HBS under different downhole conditions. Prime experiments proved their adaptability and reliability. The Ladetes provides an effective and alternative way of obtaining geotechnical parameters for HBS.

Biases in BCI experiments: Do we really need to balance stimulus properties across categories?

Brain Computer Interfaces (BCIs) consist of an interaction between humans and computers with a specific mean of communication, such as voice, gestures, or even brain signals that are usually recorded by an Electroencephalogram (EEG). To ensure an optimal interaction, the BCI algorithm typically involves the classification of the input signals into predefined task-specific categories. However, a recurrent problem is that the classifier can easily be biased by uncontrolled experimental conditions, namely covariates, that are unbalanced across the categories. This issue led to the current solution of forcing the balance of these covariates across the different categories which is time consuming and drastically decreases the dataset diversity. The purpose of this research is to evaluate the need for this forced balance in BCI experiments involving EEG data. A typical design of neural BCIs involves repeated experimental trials using visual stimuli to trigger the so-called Event-Related Potential (ERP). The classifier is expected to learn spatio-temporal patterns specific to categories rather than patterns related to uncontrolled stimulus properties, such as psycho-linguistic variables (e.g., phoneme number, familiarity, and age of acquisition) and image properties (e.g., contrast, compactness, and homogeneity). The challenges are then to know how biased the decision is, which features affect the classification the most, which part of the signal is impacted, and what is the probability to perform neural categorization per se. To address these problems, this research has two main objectives: (1) modeling and quantifying the covariate effects to identify spatio-temporal regions of the EEG allowing maximal classification performance while minimizing the biasing effect, and (2) evaluating the need to balance the covariates across categories when studying brain mechanisms. To solve the modeling problem, we propose using a linear parametric analysis applied to some observable and commonly studied covariates to them. The biasing effect is quantified by comparing the regions highly influenced by the covariates with the regions of high categorical contrast, i.e., parts of the ERP allowing a reliable classification. The need to balance the stimulus's inner properties across categories is evaluated by assessing the separability between category-related and covariate-related evoked responses. The procedure is applied to a visual priming experiment where the images represent items belonging to living or non-living entities. The observed covariates are the commonly controlled psycho-linguistic variables and some visual features of the images. As a result, we identified that the category of the stimulus mostly affects the late evoked response. The covariates, when not modeled, have a biasing effect on the classification, essentially in the early evoked response. This effect increases with the diversity of the dataset and the complexity of the algorithm used. As the effects of both psycho-linguistic variables and image features appear outside of the spatio-temporal regions of significant categorical contrast, the proper selection of the region of interest makes the classification reliable. Having proved that the covariate effects can be separated from the categorical effect, our framework can be further used to isolate the category-dependent evoked response from the rest of the EEG to study neural processes involved when seeing living vs. non-living entities.

Expertise-dependent perceptual performance in chess tasks with varying complexity.

Perceptual performance, anticipating opponents' strategies, and judging chess positions especially in subliminal processing is related to expertise level and dependent on chunking processes. It becomes obvious that chess expertise is a multidimensional phenomenon related predominantly to experience. Under consideration of chess expertise categorization, we conducted two priming experiments expanding existing designs by gradually increasing the target and task complexity. The main aim was the evaluation of potential visuocognitive limitations. The results reveal experts' perceptual superiority manifested by their faster reaction times in settings with increased stimulus and task complexity. Further, experts' priming effects seem to be affected by the target content and/ or priming duration. For short prime duration, experts show priming effects only for less complex prime-target content. Interestingly, for longer prime duration and more complex prime-target content, all participants reveal priming effects. In summary, we argue that experts' visuocognitive processing (i.e., detecting or anticipating potential threats to the king) is rooted in a more efficient visuocognition due to stored chunks of checking and mating constellations. We suggest that visuocognitive limitations are related also to the prime-target complexity as well as to the task. Further investigations must be conducted in order to elucidate the factors with an increased impact on chess players' performance.

“It’s like Hawai’i”: Making a tourist utopia in Jeju Island, 1963-1985

This paper examines the trajectory, ambitions, and practices involved in the official national and provincial planning for Jeju Island from 1963 to 1985 as it became reimagined as the so-called ‘Hawai'i of East Asia’. Jeju Island has been constantly built, left unfinished, demolished, and rebuilt at each wave and ebb in regional tourism trends. Jeju has thus become a complicated geography of heavy contradictions as South Korea’s prime tourism experiment. Before the 2002 ‘Free International City’ project, the larger region of Jeju Island was identified as a ‘specified region’ from 1963 for experimentation in tourism. By virtue of its historic marginality, Jeju has been portrayed as a pristine internal frontier ripe for tourism and utopian transformation ‘like Hawai’i’. Surprisingly, however, ‘Hawai’i’ does not actually appear in official planning documentation, even while it is a frequent talking point in public discourse. In this paper, I discuss the specter of ‘Hawai’i’ in Jeju tourism development and address the discrepancy between official development planning strategies and colloquial references to Hawai’i, observing that reference to ‘Hawai’i’ was not from initial design but followed the late 1950s to 1960s zeitgeist in which tourism itself became a mark of distinction for modernity.

Learning about the meanings of ambiguous words: evidence from a word-meaning priming paradigm with short narratives.

Fluent language comprehension requires people to rapidly activate and integrate context-appropriate word meanings. This process is challenging for meanings of ambiguous words that are comparatively lower in frequency (e.g., the “bird” meaning of “crane”). Priming experiments have shown that recent experience makes such subordinate (less frequent) word meanings more readily available at the next encounter. These experiments used lists of unconnected sentences in which each ambiguity was disambiguated locally by neighbouring words. In natural language, however, disambiguation may occur via more distant contextual cues, embedded in longer, connected communicative contexts. In the present experiment, participants (N = 51) listened to 3-sentence narratives that ended in an ambiguous prime. Cues to disambiguation were relatively distant from the prime; the first sentence of each narrative established a situational context congruent with the subordinate meaning of the prime, but the remainder of the narrative did not provide disambiguating information. Following a short delay, primed subordinate meanings were more readily available (compared with an unprimed control), as assessed by responses in a word association task related to the primed meaning. This work confirms that listeners reliably disambiguate spoken ambiguous words on the basis of cues from wider narrative contexts, and that they retain information about the outcome of these disambiguation processes to inform subsequent encounters of the same word form.

Discrimination, Inclusion, and Anti‐System Attitudes among Muslims in Germany

AbstractMuslims in Europe and North America face high rates of discrimination and hostility. Less clear are the consequences of this prejudice on Muslims’ political attitudes. Leveraging a survey of 1,330 Muslims in Germany, we show that Muslims who have personally experienced discrimination exhibit higher anti‐system tendencies: more supportive of violence, more supportive of Islamism, and less supportive of democracy and secularism. We also find that these patterns are concentrated among Muslims who believe they “suffer alone,” not believing other Muslims experience similar hostility. Finally, through a priming experiment, we find causal evidence that German Chancellor Angela Merkel's inclusive rhetoric and policies toward Muslims may help mitigate these dynamics, reducing perceptions of discrimination and in turn producing pro‐system sentiments.

Orthographic and semantic priming effects in neighbour cognates: Experiments and simulations

AbstractTo investigate how orthography and semantics interact during bilingual visual word recognition, Dutch–English bilinguals made lexical decisions in two masked priming experiments. Dutch primes and English targets were presented that were either neighbour cognates (boek – BOOK), noncognate translations (kooi – CAGE), orthographically related neighbours (neus – NEWS), or unrelated words (huid - COAT). Prime durations of 50 ms (Experiment 1) and 83 ms (Experiment 2) led to similar result patterns. Both experiments reported a large cognate facilitation effect, a smaller facilitatory noncognate translation effect, and the absence of inhibitory orthographic neighbour effects. These results indicate that cognate facilitation is in large part due to orthographic-semantic resonance. Priming results for each condition were simulated well (all r's >.50) by Multilink+, a recent computational model for word retrieval. Limitations to the role of lateral inhibition in bilingual word recognition are discussed.

Guest Editors’ Introduction: Opening Conversations that Matter in Public Music Studies

Guest Editors’ Introduction: Opening Conversations that Matter in Public Music Studies

Visual word recognition among oldest old people: The effect of age and cognitive load.

During the fourth age, a marked physiological deterioration and critical points of dysfunction are observed, during which cognitive performance exhibits a marked decline in certain skills (fluid intelligence) but good performance of others (crystallized intelligence). Experimental evidence describes important constraints on word production during old age, accompanied by a relative stabilization of speech comprehension. However, cognitive changes associated with advanced aging could also affect comprehension, particularly word recognition. The present study examines how the visual recognition of words is affected during the fourth age when tasks involving different cognitive loads are applied. Through linear regression models, performance was compared between two third-age groups and a fourth-age group on reaction time (RT) and accuracy in naming, priming and lexical decision experiments. The fourth-age group showed a significant RT increase in all experiments. In contrast, accuracy was good when the task involved a low cognitive demand (Experiments 1 and 2); however, when a decisional cognitive factor was included (Experiment 3), the fourth-age group performed significantly worse than the younger third-age group. We argue that the behavior observed among fourth-age individuals is consistent with an unbalanced cognitive configuration, in which the fluid intelligence deficit significantly reduces the speed necessary to recognize words, independent of the cognitive load associated with the test. In contrast, the maintenance in crystallized intelligence improves the accuracy of the process, strengthening linguistic functionality in the advanced stages of old age.

Phonetic and Lexical Encoding of Tone in Cantonese Heritage Speakers.

Heritage speakers contend with at least two languages: the less dominant first language (L1), that is, the heritage language, and the more dominant second language (L2). In some cases, their L1 and L2 bear striking phonological differences. In the current study, we investigate Toronto-born Cantonese heritage speakers and their maintenance of Cantonese lexical tone, a linguistic feature that is absent from English, the more dominant L2. Across two experiments, Cantonese heritage speakers were tested on their phonetic/phonological and lexical encoding of tone in Cantonese. Experiment 1 was an AX discrimination task with varying inter-stimulus intervals (ISIs), which revealed that heritage speakers discriminated tone pairs with disparate pitch contours better than those with shared pitch contours. Experiment 2 was a medium-term repetition priming experiment, designed to extend the findings of Experiment 1 by examining tone representations at the lexical level. We observed a positive correlation between English dominance and priming in tone minimal pairs that shared contours. Thus, while increased English dominance does not affect heritage speakers' phonological-level representations, tasks that require lexical access suggest that heritage Cantonese speakers may not robustly and fully distinctively encode Cantonese tone in lexical memory.

Comparative Assessment of Different Pre-Treatment Bonding Strategies to Improve the Adhesion of Self-Adhesive Composites to Dentin.

The aim of this study is to compare the adhesive interface formed in dentin, using self-adhesive composites applied with different bonding strategies, by testing the microtensile bond strength (μTBS) and ultramorphology through the use of light microscopy. Permanent, sound human molars were randomly allocated to six experimental groups. The groups included a negative control group, where only etching was performed via EtchOnly; a positive control group where an adhesive was applied, OptiBondFL (OBFL); and an experimental group where a primer was applied using a co-curing strategy together with a composite (Primer_CoCuring). The samples were sectioned into microspecimens for μTBS (n = 8) and into 1-mm thick slabs for light microscopy using Masson’s trichrome staining protocol (n = 3). The statistical analysis included a two-way ANOVA for μTBS data and Tukey’s HSD was used as a post-hoc test (significance level of 5%; SPSS v. 26.0). The results of the μTBS revealed that the self-adhesive composite (F = 6.0, p < 0.018) and the bonding strategy (F = 444.1, p < 0.001) significantly affected the bond strength to dentin. However, their interactions were not significant (F = 1.2, p = 0.29). Etching dentin with no additional treatment revealed the lowest μTBS (VF_EtchOnly = 2.4 ± 0.8 MPa; CC_EtchOnly = 2.0 ± 0.4 MPa), which was significantly different from using a primer (VF_CoCu = 8.8 ± 0.8 MPa; CC_CoCu = 6.3 ± 1.0 MPa) or using the full adhesive (VF_OptiBondFL = 22.4 ± 0.3 MPa; CC_OptibondFL = 21.2 ± 0.4 MPa). Microscopy images revealed that the experimental Primer_CoCuring was the only group with no collagen fibers exposed to the dentin–composite interface. Overall, the use of a primer, within the limitations of this study, increased the bonding of the self-adhesive composite and provided sufficient infiltration of the collagen based on light-microscopic imaging.

Where is mirror invariance? Masked priming effects by mirrored and rotated transformations of reversible and nonreversible letters

The cognitive mechanism underpinning mirror priming effects for letters (e.g., IDEA primed by ibea) is still unclear: it could be about mirror invariance (perceptual equivalence of mirror images - d and b - which does not extend to other orientation contrasts like plane rotations - d and p) or about visual similarity (b, d, and p share the same visual features and shape). To enlighten it and investigate the modulatory role of task and orthographic context (words vs single letters), we manipulated letter (nonreversible; reversible) and prime condition (identity, mirrored, rotated, control) in four masked priming experiments: lexical decision with conventional and sandwich paradigms (Experiments 1 and 2), same-different task on words and single letters (Experiments 3 and 4). All experiments replicated the differential mirror priming effect: inhibitory for reversible letters, facilitatory for nonreversible letters. Notably, similar priming effects were found for plane rotations. Regardless of task or orthographic context, a reliably larger orientation cost was found for reversible than nonreversible letters for both mirror images and plane rotations. These results suggest that the underlying mechanism is not mirror invariance, but rather visual similarity allied with prelexical dynamics.