Item Repetition Research Articles

TED Talks and the Textbook: An In-Depth Lexical Analysis

The development of TED Talks textbooks has been a welcoming addition to English for Academic Purposes (EAP) pedagogy. The textbooks offer educators and learners a suitable framework for practicing all four of the language skills (i.e., listening, reading, speaking, and writing). However, the use of TED Talk resources could create specific vocabulary challenges for learners as they progress through each unit in the textbook. Research suggests that although textbook frameworks encompassing listening resources benefit learners with a familiar lesson approach, the varying vocabulary load and the presence of academic vocabulary and multiword units (MWUs) presented between the chosen resources and the textbook itself could lead to comprehension difficulties for learners. This study investigates the vocabulary of 12 TED Talks included in the commercial textbook Keynote 2 to understand the lexical profile, vocabulary load, and the academic and multiword unit coverage for each of the chosen listening texts. The results showed that the TED Talks selections and the textbook provided inadequate vocabulary practice, limited academic vocabulary exposure, and a lack of item repetition for learners. The study suggests the inclusion of ideal supplementary materials and appropriate TED Talk selections to help provide educators with suitable guidance to support their learners’ varying vocabulary knowledge.

The influence of familiarisation and item repetition on the name agreement effect in picture naming.

Name agreement (NA) refers to the degree to which speakers agree on a picture's name. A robust finding is that speakers are faster to name pictures with high agreement (HA) than those with low agreement (LA). This NA effect is thought to occur because LA pictures strongly activate several names, so speakers need time to select one. HA pictures, in contrast, strongly activate a single name, so there is no need to select one name out of several alternatives. Recent models of lexical access suggest that the structure of the mental lexicon changes with experience. Thus, speakers should consider a range of names when naming LA pictures, but the extent to which they consider each of these names should change with experience. We tested these hypotheses in two picture-naming experiments. In Experiment 1, participants were faster to name LA than HA pictures when they named each picture once. Importantly, they were faster to produce modal names (provided by most participants) than alternative names for LA pictures, consistent with the view that speakers activate multiple names for LA pictures. In Experiment 2, participants were familiarised with the modal name before the experiment and named each picture three times. Although there was still an NA effect when participants named the pictures the first time, it was reduced in comparison to Experiment 1 and was further reduced with each picture repetition. Thus, familiarisation and repetition reduced the NA effect but did not eliminate it, suggesting speakers activate a range of plausible names.

A Stylistic Analysis of Joe Biden's Inaugural Political Speech

In this paper, a stylistic approach has been used to investigate the linguistic features of President Joe Biden's inauguration political speech. Special importance is given to its linguistic characteristics that affect the structure of the selected political speech. This paper is an attempt to highlight the political language of Biden’s political speech. The aim is to seek out how political speeches are packaged to persuade citizens and readers and how stylistic analytical tools assist readers in interpreting the language of Biden in the selected speech. The data has been collected from Time Magazine. The data selection is restricted to Biden's inauguration political speech and has been chosen based on certain foregrounding features that indicate a powerful stylistic effect on readers. The qualitative method has been used to analyze the selected data. In the analysis, some linguistic features, such as graphological, syntactic, grammatical deviations, transitivity, and modality have been used to investigate the style of the selected speech to reveal persuasion. The findings show that Biden's inauguration political speech achieves power, and persuasion through the use of certain stylistic features including lexical and grammatical categories such as abstract nouns, personal pronouns, mental processes, and certain modal auxiliaries. It is concluded that the lexical items that Biden uses are crucial in passing his message to his nation. However, the tendency to use distinctive foregrounding features in the consistent repetition of lexical items and sentence structures are stylistic technique used by Biden for the sake of persuasion.

Virtual reality assessment of a high-calorie food bias: Replication and food-specificity in healthy participants

BackgroundTheoretical models and behavioural studies indicate faster approach behaviour for high-calorie food (approach bias) among healthy participants. A previous study with Virtual Reality (VR) and online motion-capture quantified this approach bias towards food and non-food cues in a controlled VR environment with hand movements. The aim of this study was to test the specificity of a manual approach bias for high-calorie food in grasp movements compared to low-calorie food and neutral objects of different complexity, namely, simple balls and geometrically more complex office tools. MethodsIn a VR setting, healthy participants (N = 27) repeatedly grasped or pushed high-calorie food, low-calorie food, balls and office tools in randomized order with 30 item repetitions. All objects were rated for valence and arousal. ResultsHigh-calorie food was less attractive and more arousing in subjective ratings than low-calorie food and neutral objects. Movement onset was faster for high-calorie food in push-trials, but overall push responses were comparable. In contrast, responses to high-calorie food relative to low-calorie food and to control objects were faster in grasp trials for later stages of interaction (grasp and collect). Non-parametric tests confirmed an approach bias for high-calorie food. ConclusionA behavioural bias for food was specific to high-calorie food objects. The results confirm the presence of bottom-up advantages in motor-cognitive behaviour for high-calorie food in a non-clinical population. More systematic variations of object fidelity and in clinical populations are outstanding. The utility of VR in assessing approach behaviour is confirmed in this study by exploring manual interactions in a controlled environment.

Testing the response suppression mechanism of working memory.

Many working memory (WM) paradigms involve recalling multiple items from the same memory set. Participants rarely repeat items they have already recalled, avoiding repetition errors. To prevent these errors, WM models incorporate a response suppression mechanism that removes recalled items from the set of response options. Despite its importance for our understanding of WM, response suppression has received limited direct testing. To address this gap, we used computational models implementing two hypothetical mechanisms of response suppression to derive predictions and tested these predictions experimentally. Participants were asked to recall the same items multiple times during a single trial. If already recalled items are removed from the response set to prevent repetition errors, memory performance should be impaired when the same item is tested again. Contrary to this, we found that memory performance was unimpaired when the same item was tested a second time, and even displayed a recall advantage. Therefore, this study demonstrates the implausibility of response suppression to account for how people avoid repetition errors. We discuss alternative explanations. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Linguistic and attentional factors – Not statistical regularities – Contribute to word-selective neural responses with FPVS-oddball paradigms

Studies using frequency-tagging in electroencephalography (EEG) have dramatically increased in the past 10 years, in a variety of domains and populations. Here we used Fast Periodic Visual Stimulation (FPVS) combined with an oddball design to explore visual word recognition. Given the paradigm's high sensitivity, it is crucial for future basic research and clinical application to prove its robustness across variations of designs, stimulus types and tasks. This paradigm uses periodicity of brain responses to measure discrimination between two experimentally defined categories of stimuli presented periodically. EEG was recorded in 22 adults who viewed words inserted every 5 stimuli (at 2 Hz) within base stimuli presented at 10 Hz. Using two discrimination levels (deviant words among nonwords or pseudowords), we assessed the impact of relative frequency of item repetition (set size or item repetition controlled for deviant versus base stimuli), and of the orthogonal task (focused or deployed spatial attention). Word-selective occipito-temporal responses were robust at the individual level (significant in 95% of participants), left-lateralized, larger for the prelexical (nonwords) than lexical (pseudowords) contrast, and stronger with a deployed spatial attention task as compared to the typically used focused task. Importantly, amplitudes were not affected by item repetition. These results help understanding the factors influencing word-selective EEG responses and support the validity of FPVS-EEG oddball paradigms, as they confirm that word-selective responses are linguistic. Second, they show its robustness against design-related factors that could induce statistical (ir)regularities in item rate. They also confirm its high individual sensitivity and demonstrate how it can be optimized, using a deployed rather than focused attention task, to measure implicit word recognition processes in typical and atypical populations.

A Next Basket Recommendation Reality Check

The goal of a next basket recommendation (NBR) system is to recommend items for the next basket for a user, based on the sequence of their prior baskets. We examine whether the performance gains of the NBR methods reported in the literature hold up under a fair and comprehensive comparison. To clarify the mixed picture that emerges from our comparison, we provide a novel angle on the evaluation of next basket recommendation (NBR) methods, centered on the distinction between repetition and exploration: the next basket is typically composed of previously consumed items (i.e., repeat items) and new items (i.e., explore items). We propose a set of metrics that measure the repetition/exploration ratio and performance of NBR models. Using these new metrics, we provide a second analysis of state-of-the-art NBR models. The results help to clarify the extent of the actual progress achieved by existing NBR methods as well as the underlying reasons for any improvements that we observe. Overall, our work sheds light on the evaluation problem of NBR, provides a new evaluation protocol, and yields useful insights for the design of models for this task.

As trials go by: Effects of 2-AFC item repetition on statistical learning performance.

One of the most popular tasks used to test statistical learning (SL) involves asking participants to identify which of two stimuli, a triplet presented during the previous familiarization phase versus a new sequence made of the same stimuli never presented together, is more familiar based on the stream presented before, that is, to perform a two-alternative forced-choice (2-AFC) task. Despite the widespread use of this task, it has come under increasing criticism in current cognitive research due to psychometric flaws. A common practice to improve SL measurement involves increasing the number of 2-AFC trials by presenting the same items (triplets and foils) several times during the test phase. This work aimed to directly analyze the effect that this practice entails by examining how the proportion of correct discriminations of three-syllable nonsense words presented during the familiarization phase of an auditory triplet embedded task changed as the number of 2-AFC item repetitions increased. We also tested whether this effect was modulated by the predictability of the "words" embedded in the auditory streams (high and low) and the conditions under which they were presented to participants (implicit and explicit). Results showed that 2-AFC item repetitions had indeed detrimental effects on SL measurement, as indexed by a significant decrease in the proportion of correct discriminations as the number of items repetitions increased, both in the 2-AFC task performed under implicit and explicit conditions, although, in the first case, only for low-predictable "words." These findings recommend caution when using this strategy to improve SL measurement. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Development and Validation of a Psychological Assessment Scale for Adolescents with Leukemia

The study aimed to develop and validate a scale that records biopsychosocial problems in adolescents with leukemia. First, 30 adolescents with leukemia were individually interviewed to produce an item pool of twenty-eight divergent problems. Repeated items were excluded, and the final 25-item list of distinct problems was pilot tested among 25 adolescents with leukemia as a 4-point self-report measure of the Psychological Symptom Scale. A sample of 250 adolescents received the final 25-item list, the Cancer Pain Rating Scale (Ikram & Rafiq, 2021), and a demographic information sheet containing age, stage of leukemia, and history of the pre-and post-chemotherapy sessions were recorded. Further to validate the items Principle Component Analysis was administered through which 19 items with four factors were identified: biological, emotional, social, and psychological. Results revealed high concurrent and internal validity of the measure. The results have been debated regarding the implications of mental health symptoms for adolescent counseling services and suggest further research.

The test developer’s dilemma: Evaluating the balance of feasibility and empiric performance of test development techniques for repeated written assessments

Purpose Written assessments face challenges when administered repeatedly, including resource-intensive item development and the potential for performance improvement secondary to item recall as opposed to understanding. This study examines the efficacy of three-item development techniques in addressing these challenges. Methods Learners at five training programs completed two 60-item repeated assessments. Items from the first test were randomized to one of three treatments for the second assessment: (1) Verbatim repetition, (2) Isomorphic changes, or (3) Total revisions. Primary outcomes were the stability of item psychometrics across test versions and evidence of item recall influencing performance as measured by the rate of items answered correctly and then incorrectly (correct-to-incorrect rate), which suggests guessing. Results Forty-six learners completed both tests. Item psychometrics were comparable across test versions. Correct-to-incorrect rates differed significantly between groups with the highest guessing rate (lowest recall effect) in the Total Revision group (0.15) and the lowest guessing rate (highest recall effect) in the Verbatim group (0.05), p = 0.01. Conclusions Isomorphic and total revisions demonstrated superior performance in mitigating the effect of recall on repeated assessments. Given the high costs of total item revisions, there is promise in exploring isomorphic items as an efficient and effective approach to repeated written assessments. Practice points Item psychometrics were comparable across repeated assessments developed with three different techniques: verbatim repetition, isomorphic changes, and total revisions. Isomorphic changes and total item revisions demonstrate superior performance in mitigating the effect of recall on repeated assessments as compared to a verbatim repetition of test items. Given the high costs of total item revisions, there is promise in exploring isomorphic items as an efficient and effective approach to repeated written assessments.

The effects of variable encoding contexts on item and source recognition.

How repeated encoding affects retention of item details is an unresolved question. The Competitive Trace theory (Yassa & Reagh, Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 7, 107, 2013) assumes that even slight variations in encoding contexts across item repetitions induce competition among non-overlapping contextual traces, leading to semanticization and decontextualized memory traces. However, empirical support for this assumption is mixed. In extension of previous research, the current study attempted to increase the competition between contextual traces by increasing encoding context variability. In three experiments we tested how repeated encoding in the same context or different contexts affects target recognition, similar lure discrimination, and source memory. Participants viewed images of objects once, three times in the same or three times in different contexts. Context variability was implemented through variations in background color or encoding tasks. Repeated encoding improved memory for item details, independent of context variability. Background color was poorly remembered but answering different encoding questions for repeated items impaired recollection of specific encoding tasks, in comparison to encoding items only once or repeatedly with the same encoding task. Our findings show that repetitions enhance memory for perceptual details but can impair memory for contextual elements, a dissociation that needs to be considered by the Competitive Trace Theory and other consolidation theories.

A randomized crossover single-case series comparing blocked versus random treatment for anomia

ABSTRACT The motor learning literature has demonstrated that blocked practice facilitates better acquisition of motor skills, whereas random practice facilitates retention and transfer. The verbal learning and memory literature offers similar evidence. The purpose of this study was to investigate effects of blocked versus random practice in treatment for anomia. The study used a single site, randomized crossover design, with two replicated experimental phases (two blocked and two random) for each of 10 individuals with anomia. Each phase consisted of a cued picture-naming treatment. Individual treatment and maintenance effects, as well as weighted averages and group effects, were calculated using Tau-U based on the proportion of correctly named probes. Nine of 10 participants demonstrated treatment effects during each of the four phases. Acquisition was comparable for blocked and random practice. Maintenance effects were observed following seven blocked phases of treatment and 12 random phases of treatment across participants. For four of 10 participants the random schedule resulted in better maintenance of trained items. Although further research is needed, the present data suggest that for word retrieval treatment with multiple repetitions of the same items, a random presentation may benefit maintenance of treatment gains.

Writing Multiple Choice Questions—Has the Student Become the Master?

Construct We compared the quality of clinician-authored and student-authored multiple choice questions (MCQs) using a formative, mock examination of clinical knowledge for medical students. Background Multiple choice questions are a popular format used in medical programs of assessment. A challenge for educators is creating high-quality items efficiently. For expediency’s sake, a standard practice is for faculties to repeat items in examinations from year to year. This study aims to compare the quality of student-authored with clinician-authored items as a potential source of new items to include in faculty item banks. Approach We invited Year IV and V medical students at the University of Adelaide to participate in a mock examination. The participants first completed an online instructional module on strategies for answering and writing MCQs, then submitted one original MCQ each for potential inclusion in the mock examination. Two 180-item mock examinations, one for each year level, were constructed. Each consisted of 90 student-authored items and 90 clinician-authored items. Participants were blinded to the author of each item. Each item was analyzed for item difficulty and discrimination, number of item-writing flaws (IWFs) and non-functioning distractors (NFDs), and cognitive skill level (using a modified version of Bloom’s taxonomy). Findings Eighty-nine and 91 students completed the Year IV and V examinations, respectively. Student-authored items, compared with clinician-authored items, tended to be written at both a lower cognitive skill and difficulty level. They contained a significantly higher rate of IWFs (2–3.5 times) and NFDs (1.18 times). However, they were equally or better discriminating items than clinician-authored items. Conclusions Students can author MCQ items with comparable discrimination to clinician-authored items, despite being inferior in other parameters. Student-authored items may be considered a potential source of material for faculty item banks; however, several barriers exist to their use in a summative setting. The overall quality of items remains suboptimal, regardless of author. This highlights the need for ongoing faculty training in item writing.

Two-item conditional same-different categorization in pigeons: Finding differences.

Research on same-different categorization has shown that mastery of tasks of this kind can be strongly affected by the number of items in the training arrays-for both humans and nonhuman animals. Evidence for two-item same-different categorization in pigeons is decidedly mixed: although some investigations have succeeded, others have failed. To date, no research has documented successful conditional same-different categorization using just two items, nor has research explored how pigeons' responses in this paradigm might be influenced by perceptual characteristics of the training stimuli. Through a series of methodological modifications, we provide the first successful documentation that pigeons can perform two-item conditional same-different categorization to a high degree of accuracy; further, they can do so without the support of item repetition. We also show for the first time that the perceptual disparity between the items in pairs of different stimuli plays a key part in pigeons' same-different categorization performance. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Prior episodic learning and the efficacy of retrieval practice

In three experiments we investigated how the level of study-based, episodic knowledge influences the efficacy of subsequent retrieval practice (testing) as a learning event. Possibilities are that the efficacy of a test, relative to a restudy control, decreases, increases, or is independent of the degree of prior study-based learning. The degree of study-based learning was manipulated by varying the number of item repetitions in the initial study phase between one and eight. Predictions of the dual-memory model of test-enhanced learning for the case of one study-phase repetition were used as a reference. Results support the hypothesis that the advantage of testing over restudy is independent of the degree of prior episodic learning, and they suggest that educators can apply cued-recall testing with the expectation that its efficacy is similar across varying levels of prior content learning. Implications for testing effect theory are discussed.

Perceived Causal Problem Networks: Reliability, Central Problems, and Clinical Utility for Depression.

Personalized case conceptualization is often regarded as a prerequisite for treatment success in psychotherapy for patients with comorbidity. This article presents Perceived Causal Networks, a novel method in which patients rate perceived causal relations among behavioral and emotional problems. First, 231 respondents screening positive for depression completed an online Perceived Causal Networks questionnaire. Median completion time (including repeat items to assess immediate test-retest reliability) was 22.7 minutes, and centrality measures showed excellent immediate test-retest reliability. Networks were highly idiosyncratic, but worrying and ruminating were the most central items for a third of respondents. Second, 50 psychotherapists rated the clinical utility of Perceived Causal Networks visualizations. Ninety-six percent rated the networks as clinically useful, and the information in the individual visualizations was judged to contain 47% of the information typically collected during a psychotherapy assessment phase. Future studies should individualize networks further and evaluate the validity of perceived causal relations.

Immediate recall of serial numbers with or without multiple item repetitions

ABSTRACT Immediate recall of lists of items in random serial order has been examined in thousands of studies throughout the history of experimental psychology. In most studies, though, there have been no repetitions of items within a list, or occasionally a single repetition. These stimuli differ from the common uses of item series, which often include multiple repetitions (e.g., identification numbers; orders of people at a restaurant table). To begin to understand such cases we presented lists that, in some trial blocks, were constructed with no restrictions on repetitions. Specifically, we examined immediate serial recall of visually-presented, nine-digit lists, either spatially separated into three separate groups of three digits (Experiment 1) or undivided (Experiment 2). Many of the lists included single or multiple repetitions of digits, with repeated digits either adjacent or non-adjacent in an unpredictable manner. We assessed theoretical expectations derived from prior research. Effects of repetition were often helpful but, when repetitions favoured a grouping that conflicted with the presented grouping into threes in Experiment 1, repetition was disadvantageous. We suggest a theoretical analysis in which participants can use presented grouping cues or, when those cues are absent, create their own groupings to exploit repetitions among the stimuli.

Are there segmental and tonal effects on syntactic encoding? Evidence from structural priming in Mandarin

• The Mandarin Ba-SVO transitive alternation shows structural priming. • There is a lexical, but not a semantic, boost of such priming. • The phonological boost of such priming does not depend on orthographic overlap. • Syllabic overlap promotes structural priming while tonal overlap is not. • Phonological (and lexical) overlap facilitates word order encoding. Numerous studies have established that speakers tend to form utterances by reusing previously experienced sentence structures (i.e., structural priming). It was also frequently found that the repetition of lexical items enhances structural priming (i.e., lexical boost). This facilitation effect occurs not only when there is a full overlap of verbs, but also when one level of the lexical representation (semantic or phonological representation) overlaps between the prime and the target. In the current study, we further scrutinize the phonological overlap effect on structural priming. We asked whether the phonological effect is independent of orthographic overlap, and whether it is driven by overlap of segments, tone, or both. In five structural priming experiments (three lab-based, two web-based experiments), native Mandarin speakers were instructed to describe transitive pictures after receiving SVO or SOV “ba” prime sentences. In Experiment 1, prime and target verbs had lexical overlap (e.g., 脱[tuo1, to take off]-脱[tuo1] ), semantic overlap (e.g., 卸[xie4, to remove]-脱[tuo1] ), phonological overlap (e.g., 拖[tuo1, to mop]-脱[tuo1] ), or no overlap (e.g., 打[da3, to beat]-脱[tuo1] ) while similarities at other levels were carefully avoided. There were structural priming and lexical boost effects, but semantic or phonological overlap did not boost priming. In two further lab-based experiments and their large-scale online replications, verbs in prime and target had full phonological overlap (segmental + tonal, e.g., 拖[tuo1]-脱[tuo1] ), syllabic overlap only (e.g., [tuo2, to carry]-脱[tuo1] ), tonal overlap only ( 称[cheng1, to weigh]-脱[tuo1] ), or no overlap. All four experiments showed structural priming, which was boosted by full phonological overlap. The syllabic overlap exerted a significant facilitation effect on structural priming, whereas no tonal effect was found. Together, these results indicate that processing at the phonological level feeds back to syntactic encoding in sentence production, which further supports an interactive view of language production.

Extraction of structural regularities by baboons (Papio Papio): Adjacent and nonadjacent repetition patterns differ in learnability.

Several animal species can discriminate between different sequential patterns based on repetitions of items (e.g., ABB vs. ABA), and generalize their performance to sequences made of novel elements but following the same underlying structure. This achievement suggests that these species possess the ability to abstract the sequences structures beyond exemplars. Developmental studies in humans suggest however that adjacent repetition patterns (e.g., ABB) are easier to extract than patterns based on a nonadjacent (e.g., ABA) repetitions. This study addressed this effect of adjacency from a comparative perspective. Seventeen Guinea baboons (Papio papio) were tested with an adaptation of the serial response time task. Results show that baboons successfully learned and generalized both adjacent and nonadjacent repetition patterns after extensive exposure to each pattern in 2 successive experimental phases (Experiment 1). However, when these patterns were presented interleaved within the same experimental phase and at equal frequencies (Experiment 2), or presented successively as in Experiment 1 but with less exposure trials (Experiment 3), baboons showed evidence of learning of the adjacent repetition pattern only. Overall, these data suggest that baboons are more sensitive to adjacent than nonadjacent repetitions. We argue that a strategy based on sole detection of the presence/absence of an adjacent repetition is therefore likely to be adopted by the tested animals in pattern learning studies contrasting adjacent versus nonadjacent repetition patterns, and that future studies may need to avoid this contrast to prevent the use of this strategy. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Reliability of Sensory Test for Japonica Type Rice Cultivars in China

It is of great theoretical and practical significance to construct a scientific taste sensory evaluation method to obtain accurate and reliable data, so as to provide theoretical basis and technical support for the breeding and cultivation technology development of taste japonica rice varieties. In this study, sensory evaluation experiments were carried out based on statistical analysis. Through the analysis of variance of the evaluation results, the identification ability and hobbies of the evaluators were analyzed, and the correlation between them was discussed. The results show that there are significant differences between appraisers and varieties between the two repetitions of the comprehensive evaluation items investigated in this experiment, which verifies the repeatability of sensory evaluation and reveals the feasibility of taste sensory evaluation method. Among the 20 taste tasters participating in the taste evaluation experiment, 16 (80% of all) have low recognition ability for the taste comprehensive evaluation items, of which 6 (30% of all) have different hobbies from the overall tendency of all tasters, so they are considered not suitable to carry out taste evaluation as taste tasters. However, the results also show that the number of evaluators participating in this experiment who have both high recognition ability and high consistency with all hobbies is less. Therefore, in order to obtain more reliable results, it is very necessary to strengthen the training of appraisers and cultivate appraisers with high discrimination ability.