Set Of Word Pairs Research Articles

Test Experience, Direct Instruction, and Their Combination Promote Accurate Beliefs about the Testing Effect.

Practice testing is a highly robust learning strategy that promotes long-term retention, especially in comparison to more passive strategies such as restudying-a finding referred to as the testing effect. However, learners do not always appreciate the memorial benefits of practice testing over restudying, which could limit their use of practice testing during self-regulated learning. The current investigation explored the extent to which learners' metacognitive judgments about the testing effect can be improved via test experience, direct instruction, or a combination of both techniques. Prolific participants underwent two learning cycles. In the first cycle, participants were randomly assigned to either (a) experience a testing effect in their own memory performance (i.e., study unrelated word pairs, practice half the pairs through restudying and half through testing with correct-answer feedback, complete a critical test on the pairs, and receive feedback regarding their performance after using each strategy); (b) imagine they had to learn word pairs and read a passage on the purported benefits of practice testing; or (c) undergo both procedures. In the second cycle, all participants learned a novel set of word pairs. Across both learning cycles, participants estimated memory performance for material learned through testing versus restudying. Both test experience and direct instruction-independently and in combination-led to more accurate memory estimates across learning cycles, but no technique was more effective than the other. In summary, people can learn about the memorial benefits of practice testing when they experience a testing effect on their own memory performance and/or when they receive instruction about its benefits.

Avoiding Conflict: When Speaker Coordination Does Not Require Conceptual Agreement.

In this paper we discuss the socialization hypothesis—the idea that speakers of the same (linguistic) community should share similar concepts given that they are exposed to similar environments and operate in highly-coordinated social contexts—and challenge the fact that it is assumed to constitute a prerequisite to successful communication. We do so using distributional semantic models of meaning (DSMs) which create lexical representations via latent aggregation of co-occurrence information between words and contexts. We argue that DSMs constitute particularly adequate tools for exploring the socialization hypothesis given that 1) they provide full control over the notion of background environment, formally characterized as the training corpus from which distributional information is aggregated; and 2) their geometric structure allows for exploiting alignment-based similarity metrics to measure inter-subject alignment over an entire semantic space, rather than a set of limited entries. We propose to model coordination between two different DSMs trained on two distinct corpora as dimensionality selection over a dense matrix obtained via Singular Value Decomposition This approximates an ad-hoc coordination scenario between two speakers as the attempt to align their similarity ratings on a set of word pairs. Our results underline the specific way in which linguistic information is spread across singular vectors, and highlight the need to distinguish agreement from mere compatibility in alignment-based notions of conceptual similarity. Indeed, we show that compatibility emerges from idiosyncrasy so that the unique and distinctive aspects of speakers’ background experiences can actually facilitate—rather than impede—coordination and communication between them. We conclude that the socialization hypothesis may constitute an unnecessary prerequisite to successful communication and that, all things considered, communication is probably best formalized as the cooperative act of avoiding conflict, rather than maximizing agreement.

T99. LONG-TERM CANNABIS USE ASSOCIATED WITH ALTERED FUNCTIONING DURING VERBAL LEARNING

BackgroundLong-term use of cannabis has long been associated with changes in cognition, including memory and learning, particularly verbal learning in man. However, evidence regarding the neurobiological underpinnings of impairments in memory following long-term cannabis use has not been consistent. Furthermore, to our knowledge none of the studies published to date have specifically investigated whether brain function differed between cannabis users and non-users while learning new information as estimated over repeated trials. Therefore, we aimed to investigate this.MethodsTwenty-one predominantly cannabis users (CU) who started using cannabis during adolescence and 21 healthy non-using controls (NU), completed a block design verbal paired associates learning task whilst undergoing functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging. The task required participants to learn and recall a set of word-pairs over 4 repeated trials. We examined the interaction between repetition and group (CU vs NU) on brain activation during encoding and recall condition using non-parametric repeated measures analysis of variance.ResultsThere was no significant difference in total recall score between CU and NU. However, there was a significant effect of repetition (p<0.001) on recall score, suggesting that there was a significant improvement in recall score over repeated trials across the two groups of participants. Furthermore, there was a significant interaction between repetition and group on recall score such that the change in recall score over repeated trials significantly differed (p =0.032) between the CU and NU groups. This was associated with a significant interaction (p =0.009) between group and repetition on activation in the midbrain bilaterally, extending to the, parahippocampus, caudate and cingulate gyrus during the encoding condition. There was greater engagement of these regions in CU than in NU over repeated encoding trials.DiscussionThese results suggest that verbal learning is slower and more effortful requiring greater engagement of critical brain areas involved in learning in cannabis users compared to non-users.

Inferring Dynamic User Interests in Streams of Short Texts for User Clustering

User clustering has been studied from different angles. In order to identify shared interests, behavior-based methods consider similar browsing or search patterns of users, whereas content-based methods use information from the contents of the documents visited by the users. So far, content-based user clustering has mostly focused on static sets of relatively long documents. Given the dynamic nature of social media, there is a need to dynamically cluster users in the context of streams of short texts. User clustering in this setting is more challenging than in the case of long documents, as it is difficult to capture the users’ dynamic topic distributions in sparse data settings. To address this problem, we propose a dynamic user clustering topic model (UCT). UCT adaptively tracks changes of each user’s time-varying topic distributions based both on the short texts the user posts during a given time period and on previously estimated distributions. To infer changes, we propose a Gibbs sampling algorithm where a set of word pairs from each user is constructed for sampling. UCT can be used in two ways: (1) as a short-term dependency model that infers a user’s current topic distribution based on the user’s topic distributions during the previous time period only, and (2) as a long-term dependency model that infers a user’s current topic distributions based on the user’s topic distributions during multiple time periods in the past. The clustering results are explainable and human-understandable, in contrast to many other clustering algorithms. For evaluation purposes, we work with a dataset consisting of users and tweets from each user. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed short-term and long-term dependency user clustering models compared to state-of-the-art baselines.

Analysis of the encoding factors that produce the negative repetition effect.

Perhaps the most basic finding in memory research is the repetition effect-the fact that repetition enhances memory. Peterson and Mulligan (2012) recently documented a surprising negative repetition effect, in which participants who studied a list of cue-target pairs twice recalled fewer targets than a group who studied the pairs only once. Words within a pair rhymed and across pairs, the target words were drawn from a small set of categories. In the repetition condition, the pairs were initially presented in a random order and then presented a second time blocked by the category of the target words. In the single presentation condition, the pairs were presented only in the blocked order. Participants in the former condition recalled fewer target words on a free recall test despite having seen the word pairs twice (the negative repetition effect). The encoding conditions necessary to produce this effect were examined in 4 experiments. Presenting the repetitions in a single study list elicited the negative repetition effect in free and category-cued recall. However, eliminating the strong within-trial, rhyme relationship eliminated the effect in both tests. Finally, presenting a disorganized but unrelated set of rhyming word pairs as List 1 reduced recall (relative to the single-presentation condition) to the same degree as the repetition condition. The negative repetition effect is due to reduced interitem relational processing during the presentation of the organized list (or half list), a reduction that requires a competing within-target relationship but can be induced by an unrelated as well as identical set of word pairs.

Deficits in Process-Specific Prefrontal and Hippocampal Activations Contribute to Adult Age Differences in Episodic Memory Interference

The ability to distinguish currently relevant from familiar but irrelevant memories is important in everyday life. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to examine the neural correlates of age differences in the ability to withstand interference from similar past events. Younger and older adults worked on a continuous recognition task consisting of 3 consecutive runs. Each run was composed of the same set of word pairs, and participants were instructed to recognize word pair repetitions within runs. The monitoring demands associated with rejecting familiar, but currently irrelevant information were assumed to increase over consecutive runs. Over runs, older, but not younger adults showed decline in memory performance, whereas younger, but not older adults showed increasing engagement of anterior prefrontal cortex. Individual differences in cortical thickness and task-related activation of anterior prefrontal areas predicted performance differences within and across age groups. Compared with younger adults, older adults also showed a reduced hippocampal response to novel associations of familiar stimuli. We conclude that monitoring deficits due to impaired involvement of prefrontal regions and reduced hippocampal responses to associative novelty contribute to aging-related deficits in disambiguating the contextual information of familiar events.

An ERP study on the time course of phonological and semantic activation in Chinese word recognition

With the event-related potential (ERP) technique, we examined the time course of phonological and semantic activation in Chinese word recognition. Participants did a semantic judgment task and a homophone judgment task over the same set of word pairs. Each pair was of either high or low word frequency and the two words were either unrelated or related semantically or phonologically, i.e., being homophones. For high-frequency words, both the semantically related pairs in the homophone task and the homophonic pairs in the semantic task elicited ERP responses different from the unrelated control pairs in the N400 component but not any component earlier, suggesting a similar time course for semantic and phonological activation. For low-frequency words, the semantically related pairs in the homophone task were associated with a similar modulation of N400. However, compared to the unrelated controls, the homophonic pairs in the semantic task elicited a larger P200, a component implicated in phonological processing in the literature, and thus demonstrated a phonological activation earlier than semantic activation. The results showed that word frequency affects the time course of semantic and phonological activation suggesting that phonology is not invariably activated before semantics in Chinese word recognition.

PET studies on the memory processing of word pairs in bilingual Finnish–English subjects

This study examined the fundamental question whether verbal memory processing in two unrelated languages is mediated by a common neural system or by distinct cortical areas. Ten right-handed, male Finnish–English adult late bilinguals who had acquired the second language after the age of 10 were scanned whilst either encoding/retrieving word pairs in their mother tongue (Finnish) or in a foreign language (English). Within each language, subjects had to encode and retrieve four sets of 12 visually presented paired word associates which were not semantically related. Two sets consisted of highly imageable words (e.g. monkey-table; koira-lasi) and the other two sets of abstract word pairs (e.g. freedom-moral; uhka-suure). Presentation of pseudowords served as a reference condition. An emission scan was recorded after each intravenous administration of O-15 water. Encoding was associated with prefrontal and hippocampal activation. During memory retrieval, precuneus showed a consistent activation in both languages and for both highly imageable and abstract words. Although the brain mechanisms of the two languages share common components, differential activations were found in Broca's area and in the cerebellum as well as in the angular/supramarginal gyri according to the language used.

Symbols: Circles and Spheres Represent the Same Referents

Forms can represent referents that are not shapes. This ability of forms to symbolize does not depend on cliches or conventions for each referent. A circle and a square can be taken as symbols for soft and hard, warm and cold, or alive and dead. The referents of circle and square, as symbols, are likely determined by properties of the forms. Therefore, referents of circle and square as symbols should be referents of other forms that share many properties with a circle and a square—forms such as a sphere and a cube. Three experiments examined this hypothesis by having participants match a list of referents with sphere and cube (Experiment 1), curved and angular (Experiment 2), and curved and straight (Experiment 3). The list was a set of word pairs that had previously been matched to circle and square. Sphere and cube generated the same kind of consensus as circle and square. Curved and angular generated the same kind of consensus as curved and straight. This suggests that the more key features two forms have in common, the more symbolic referents they will share. If the matching of forms and referents had been based on idioms or cliches, similar common uses of the terms square and straight would have produced similarities between judgments of symbolic referents of circle and square, and judgments of symbolic referents of curved and straight.

Preserved performance by cerebellar patients on tests of word generation, discrimination learning, and attention.

Recent theories suggest that the human cerebellum may contribute to the performance of cognitive tasks. We tested a group of adult patients with cerebellar damage attributable to stroke, tumor, or atrophy on four experiments involving verbal learning or attention shifting. In experiment 1, a verb generation task, participants produced semantically related verbs when presented with a list of nouns. With successive blocks of practice responding to the same set of stimuli, both groups, including a subset of cerebellar patients with unilateral right hemisphere lesions, improved their response times. In experiment 2, a verbal discrimination task, participants learned by trial and error to pick the target words from a set of word pairs. When age was taken into account, there were no performance differences between cerebellar patients and control subjects. In experiment 3, measures of spatial attention shifting were obtained under both exogenous and endogenous cueing conditions. Cerebellar patients and control subjects showed similar costs and benefits in both cueing conditions and at all SOAs. In experiment 4, intra- and interdimensional shifts of nonspatial attention were elicited by presenting word cues before the appearance of a target. Performance was substantially similar for cerebellar patients and control subjects. These results are presented as a cautionary note. The experiments failed to provide support for current hypotheses regarding the role of the cerebellum in verbal learning or attention. Alternative interpretations of previous results are discussed.

A cognitive and electrophysiological investigation of dyslexia

With the event-related potential (ERP) technique, we examined the time course of phonological and semantic activation in Chinese word recognition. Participants did a semantic judgment task and a homophone judgment task over the same set of word pairs. Each pair was of either high or low word frequency and the two words were either unrelated or related semantically or phonologically, i.e., being homophones. For high-frequency words, both the semantically related pairs in the homophone task and the homophonic pairs in the semantic task elicited ERP responses different from the unrelated control pairs in the N400 component but not any component earlier, suggesting a similar time course for semantic and phonological activation. For low-frequency words, the semantically related pairs in the homophone task were associated with a similar modulation of N400. However, compared to the unrelated controls, the homophonic pairs in the semantic task elicited a larger P200, a component implicated in phonological processing in the literature, and thus demonstrated a phonological activation earlier than semantic activation. The results showed that word frequency affects the time course of semantic and phonological activation suggesting that phonology is not invariably activated before semantics in Chinese word recognition.

An intelligibility evaluation of several linear prediction vocoder modifications

Several linear prediction vocoder modifications and an evaluation of their effects on intelligibility are presented. Diagnostic rhyme test (DRT) comparisons among 1) the fixed filter order, fixed analysis frame rate vocoder, 2) various modified vocoders, and 3) the input speech, are implemented using two speakers, seven listeners, and a selected set of word pairs reflecting six phonemic attribute contrasts. Reducing the filter order from ten to four for unvoiced speech frames analyzed at a rate of 44.4 frames/s produces no significant decrease in the scores for all of the six features tested by the DRT. Updating the unvoiced analysis frames with shorter windows at twice the frame rate (88.8 frames/s) leads to a significant improvement in the scores for the sustention feature. Lower order coefficient representation and faster analysis update during unvoiced speech improves the sustention feature with little degradation to the other features, and almost no increase to transmission rate. Results of the DRT evaluation and considerations for implementing the test within ordinary laboratory facilities are discussed.