Cue Words Research Articles

A new perspective on word association: how keystroke logging informs strength of word association

For many years, word association (WA) data has informed theories of the mental lexicon by analyzing the words elicited. However, findings are inconsistent and WA research is still waiting for ‘a breakthrough in methodology which can unlock its undoubted potential’ (Schmitt 2010. Researching vocabulary: A vocabulary research manual. Palgrave Macmillan, 248). In this paper, we offer a new perspective on WA by using keystroke logging (Inputlog, Leijten & Van Waes 2013. Keystroke logging in writing research: Using Inputlog to analyze and visualize writing processes. Written Communication 30(3). 358–92. Online: www.inputlog.net/description.html) to captures the processes of word production. More specifically, we analyze pause behavior during a continued, typed, word association task with 30 cue words eliciting 4 responses, per cue, to evaluate the strength of links in lexical selection processes. We show a strong positive correlation between pause length and inter-response location, providing empirical evidence which supports the established hypothesis that as more responses are elicited, links between them become weaker. Furthermore, using Fitzpatrick's response classification (2007. Word association patterns: unpacking the assumptions. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 17(3). 319–31), we found meaning-based responses were most common in the dataset generally, but, they particularly occurred after longer pauses, and exclusively so after the longest pauses. Position and form-based responses, whilst less frequent overall, typically followed the shortest pauses. In our conclusion we highlight the importance of our methodology in fine-tuning ongoing understanding of how we access the mental lexicon.

Core Semantic Links or Lexical Associations: Assessing the Nature of Responses in Word Association Tasks.

The processes tapped by the widely-used word association (WA) paradigm remain a matter of debate: while some authors consider them as driven by lexical co-occurrences, others emphasize the role of meaning-based connections. To test these contrastive hypotheses, we analyzed responses in a WA task in terms of their normative defining features (those describing the object denoted by the cue word). Results indicate that 72.5% of the responses had medium-to-high coincidence with such defining semantic features. Moreover, 75.51% of responses had medium-to-high values of Relevance (a measure of the importance of the feature for construing a given concept). Furthermore, most responses (62.7%) referred to elements of the situation in which the concept usually appears, followed by sensory properties (e.g., color) of the denoted object (27.86%). These results suggest that the processes behind WA tasks involve a reactivation of the cue item's semantic properties, particularly those most relevant to its core meaning.

Craving-induced effects of different drug cues on persons abstaining from heroin

Background: The key factors of inducing drug cravings in persons abstaining from drug use remain a focus of addictions research. Given the accumulating evidences, the scope of cues investigated in the cue-reactivity paradigm has increased considerably. Yet, few studies have examined the effects of the intensity and endurance of different types of cues on their ability to induce craving. This study investigated differences among drug-cue words, negative physiological-cue words, and negative social-cue words in the induction of drug cravings among persons abstaining from heroin.Methods: The sample consisted of 149 male abstinent heroin abusers from four addiction rehabilitation centers in China. Based on their abstinence lengths, they were labeled as short-term, medium-term, and long-term abstainer participants respectively. All participants completed a stress-imagery task and rated craving by visual analog scale.Results: There was a significant interaction of cue type and abstinence length. There was no difference on the craving induced by three types of cue words in the short-term group. In the medium-term group, craving induced by negative social-cue words was significantly stronger than that by negative physiological-cue words, but not that by drug-cue words. In the long-term group, the craving induced by negative social-cue words remained the strongest, significantly stronger than that by both drug-cue words and negative physiological-cue words.Conclusion: Negative social-cue words presented in the current study retain the ability to induce craving in heroin abstainers; this finding suggests that negative social cues encountered under more general circumstances could be a risk factor for relapse.

Listening back in time: Does attention to memory facilitate word-in-noise identification?

The ephemeral nature of spoken words creates a challenge for oral communications where incoming speech sounds must be processed in relation to representations of just-perceived sounds stored in short-term memory. This can be particularly taxing in noisy environments where perception of speech is often impaired or initially incorrect. Usage of prior contextual information (e.g., a semantically related word) has been shown to improve speech in noise identification. In three experiments, we demonstrate a comparable effect of a semantically related cue word placed after an energetically masked target word in improving accuracy of target-word identification. This effect persisted irrespective of cue modality (visual or auditory cue word) and, in the case of cues after the target, lasted even when the cue word was presented up to 4 seconds after the target. The results are framed in the context of an attention to memory model that seeks to explain the cognitive and neural mechanisms behind processing of items in auditory memory.

Do children and adolescents have a future-oriented bias? A developmental study of spontaneous and cued past and future thinking

Previous research has indicated that adults have a future-oriented cognitive bias, one illustration of which is their tendency to report more thoughts about the future than the past during mind-wandering. We examined whether children showed a similar bias, and whether there were any developmental changes in the magnitude of such a bias. Children aged 6–7 and 9–10 years, adolescents, and adults completed two tasks in which they could report either past or future thoughts: a mind-wandering task assessing spontaneous past and future thinking and a cued episodic thinking task in which they were free to describe either past or future events. Only adults showed a future-oriented bias in the mind-wandering task. Participants in all groups were much more likely to describe past events in the cue word task, and the proportion of future events described did not change developmentally. However, more than a third of the youngest age group produced no descriptions at all of future events, which was a significantly larger proportion than in any other age groups, and illustrates the difficulty that some children of this age have with future thinking. Our findings indicate that future-oriented bias and developmental changes in such bias may be task-specific.

The role of executive function in autobiographical memory retrieval: does the type of cue word matter?

ABSTRACTAutobiographical memories are memories for personally experienced life events. Previous research has revealed individual differences in the ability to recall specific memories that happened at a particular time and place. Some studies suggest such differences can be attributed to the varying capacity of executive function. However, little is known regarding which specific executive function skills predict autobiographical memory specificity. Participants were asked to complete multiple measures of executive function as well as an autobiographical memory task in which they were asked to recall a specific personal memory connected to concrete and abstract cue words. We hypothesised that executive function will be positively related to autobiographical memory specificity and that this relation will be moderated by the cue word type. The results revealed that individuals with higher executive function skills, specifically, higher inhibitory control and cognitive flexibility, recalled significantly more specific memories than those with lower executive function skills; however, no significant interaction between executive function ability and cue word type was found.

Differential Effects of Intranasal Vasopressin on the Processing of Adult and Infant Cues: An ERP Study.

Arginine vasopressin (AVP) is a powerful regulator of various social behaviors across many species. However, seemingly contradictory effects of AVP have been found in both animal and human studies, e.g., promoting aggression on one hand and facilitating social bonding on the other hand. Therefore, we hypothesize that the role of AVP in social behaviors is context-dependent. To this end, we examined the modulatory effect of AVP on male’s behavioral and neural responses to infant and adult cues. After intranasal and double-blind treatment of AVP or placebo, male participants were asked to rate their subjective approaching willingness to infant and adult faces in specific contexts informed by cue words while EEG recording. Our results showed that AVP treatment increased approaching ratings to neutral and positive other-gender adult faces compared to emotional matched same-gender adult faces, and to negative girl faces compared to negative boy faces. Furthermore, compared to placebo treatment, AVP treatment induced larger N1 amplitudes to neutral cues associated with both adults and infants, whereas AVP treatment only sustained pronounced late positive potential amplitudes to neutral cues of infants but not adults. Those findings implicate differential roles of AVP in the processing of adult- and infant-related cues and thus lend support to the context-dependent account.

Not all drugs are created equal: impaired future thinking in opiate, but not alcohol, users.

Episodic future thinking refers to the ability to travel forward in time to pre-experience an event. Although future thinking has been intimately linked with self and identity, to our knowledge, no prior research has compared episodic future thinking in populations with different substance use disorders. This study investigates whether there are differences in episodic future thinking between these alcohol and opiate users. The study recruited participants who were on the opiate substitution program (n = 31) and individuals who had been diagnosed with alcohol dependence (n = 21) from the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital Drug and Health Services. Healthy controls (n = 23) were recruited via Royal Prince Alfred Hospital databases and the general community. Past and future thinking was measured using four cue words. After each cue word, participants rated their phenomenological experience (e.g. emotion, reliving experience). Results indicated that alcohol-dependent individuals performed significantly higher in episodic future thinking compared to opiate users. These findings indicate that not all substance use disorder groups share similar episodic thinking capabilities. Our results suggest that the self-projection component of rehabilitation programs may have to be tailored to the different episodic construction abilities found in substance use disorder groups.

The computerized scoring algorithm for the autobiographical memory test: updates and extensions for analyzing memories of English-speaking adults

ABSTRACTThe Autobiographical Memory Test (AMT) has been central in psychopathological studies of memory dysfunctions, as reduced memory specificity or overgeneralised autobiographical memory has been recognised as a hallmark vulnerability for depression. In the AMT, participants are asked to generate specific memories in response to emotional cue words, and their responses are scored by human experts. Because the manual coding takes some time, particularly when analysing a large dataset, recent studies have proposed computerised scoring algorithms. These algorithms have been shown to reliably discriminate between specific and non-specific memories of English-speaking children and Dutch- and Japanese-speaking adults. The key limitation is that the algorithm is not developed for English-speaking adult memories, which may cover a wider range of vocabulary that the existing algorithm for English-speaking child memories cannot process correctly. In the present study, we trained a new support vector machine to score memories of English-speaking adults. In a performance test (predicting memory specificity against human expert coding), the adult-memory algorithm outperformed the child-memory variant. In another independent performance test, the adult-memory algorithm showed robust performances to score memories that were generated in response to a different set of cues. These results suggest that the adult-memory algorithm reliably scores memory specificity.

The Least Costs Hypothesis: A rational analysis approach to the voluntary symbolic control of attention.

Here we propose a rational analysis account of voluntary symbolic attention control-the Least Costs Hypothesis (LCH)-that construes voluntary control as a decision between intentional cue use and unguided search. Consistent with the LCH, the present study showed that this decision is sensitive to variations in cue processing efficiency. In Experiment 1, observers demonstrated a robust preference for using "easy-to-process" arrow cues but not "hard-to-process" spatial word cues to satisfy an easy visual search goal; Experiment 2 showed that this preference persisted even when the temporal costs of cue processing were neutralized. Experiment 3 showed that observers reported this cue type preference outside the context of a speeded task, and Experiment 4 showed empirical measures of this bias to be relatively stable over the course of the task. Together with previous evidence suggesting that observers' decision between intentional cue use and unguided search is also influenced by variations in unguided search efficiency, these findings suggest that voluntary symbolic attention control is mediated by ongoing metacognitive evaluations of demand that are sensitive to perceived variations in the time, effort, and opportunity costs associated with each course of action. Thus, voluntary symbolic attention control is far more complex than previously held. (PsycINFO Database Record

Temporal structure of narratives reveals the intensity of the narrator’s current affective state

Remembering on past emotional episodes frequently elicits an affective state in the remembering person, and remembering in a social context is usually accompanied by narration. This study considers the relationship between the narrator’s affective state and the structure of narratives. More specifically, the study addressees the question whether the temporal structure of narratives reveals the intensity of narrators’ current affective state. The study included 75 participants. They were asked to recount past emotion episodes applying a cue word paradigm with the following emotion category labels: anger, sadness, joy, and pride. Intensity of the narrators’ current affective state was assessed by physiological and self-report measures. The temporal structure of narratives was reflected by the two features of specific temporal reference and temporal unfolding. These features were coded by the method of automated linguistic analysis. The results show that specific temporal reference reflects affective intensity measured as the level of arousal while temporal unfolding reflects affective intensity measured as the valence of the narrator’s current affective state. Results are discussed by highlighting the function of temporal structure of narratives in reliving past experiences during narration.

Green as a cbemcuru: modal as well as amodal color cues can help to solve anagrams.

Embodied cognition theories have been getting much support in recent years from studies showing that multimodal experiential traces are activated during language comprehension. However, there are almost no studies examining this influence in the opposite direction. Here, we investigated the influence of modal (physical color patch) and amodal (color word) cues on anagram solving times. We manipulated the association between the color cue and the solution word's referent color (e.g., finding the solution word "cucumber" for the anagram "cmrbucue" should be facilitated by the word "green" or a green color patch). In a third experiment, both cues were combined: a color word was presented inside a color patch before the anagram appeared. We indeed observed priming effects: anagrams were solved faster when the preceding color patch or color word matched the solution word's referent compared to a mismatching color patch or color word. When combining these cues, a priming effect only was found when both color word and color patch matched the solution word's referent. These results further strengthen the notion that multimodal experiential traces play an important role in language comprehension and expand upon the results of earlier studies on anagram solution tasks.

Overnight memory consolidation facilitates rather than interferes with new learning of similar materials-a study probing NMDA receptors.

Although sleep-dependent consolidation and its neurochemical underpinnings have been strongly researched, less is known about how consolidation during sleep affects subsequent learning. Since sleep enhances memory, it can be expected to pro-actively interfere with learning after sleep, in particular of similar materials. This pro-active interference should be enhanced by substances that benefit consolidation during sleep, such as D-cycloserine. We tested this hypothesis in two groups (Sleep, Wake) of young healthy participants receiving on one occasion D-cycloserine (175 mg) and on another occasion placebo, according to a double-blind balanced crossover design. Treatment was administered after participants had learned a set of word pairs (A-B list) and before nocturnal retention periods of sleep vs. wakefulness. After D-cycloserine blood plasma levels had dropped to negligible amounts, i.e., the next day in the evening, participants learned, in three sequential runs, new sets of word pairs. One list-to enhance interference-consisted of the same cue words as the original set paired with a new target word (A-C list) and the other of completely new cue words (D-E set). Unexpectedly, during post-retention learning the A-C interference list was generally better learned than the completely new D-E list, which suggests that consolidation of previously encoded similar material enhances memory integration rather than pro-active interference. Consistent with this view, new learning of word pairs was better after sleep than wakefulness. Similarly, D-cycloserine generally enhanced learning of new word pairs, compared to placebo. This effect being independent of sleep or wakefulness, leads us to speculate that D-cycloserine, in addition to enhancing sleep-dependent consolidation, might mediate a time-dependent process of active forgetting.

The influence of cognitive-emotional tasks as autobiographical memory recollection and future projections during walking on walking characteristics in the elderly

Dual-task (DT) studies have demonstrated that performing a secondary cognitive task alters gait. However, the tasks employed in these studies are typically of low ecological relevance, and have not emphasized a possible impact of emotional processing on gait parameters. The current work aim was to examine whether gait in old individuals is influenced by simultaneously preforming cognitive-emotional tasks of retrieving autobiographical memories (AM) or imagining future projections (FP), in a dual-task (DT) paradigm. Our working hypothesis was that similar to lab-based cognitive tasks, naturalistic, emotion-evoking processes may lead to alterations in gait execution. Twenty-four old adults were instructed to recollect AM and FP, in response to cue words that were chosen in preliminary interviews to be personally relevant. A single-task condition (ST) served as baseline and a cognitive verbal fluency task (VF) as an active control. Emotional responses to the tasks were subjectively rated using the Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM) scale, the autonomic-system activity was monitored using the MindWare Impedance Cardiograph, and gait was measured using the APDM's Mobility Lab™. AM and FP increased emotional valence relative to ST ( P < 0.0001), while VF had diverse emotional responses. This effect was corroborated by increases in skin conductance, which were higher in the DT conditions relative to ST ( P < 0.0001). DT led to a decrease in gait speed and cadence and an increase in double-limb-support, primarily in the VF condition and with a similar trend in AM and FP. Increase in emotional valence led to increases in gait speed ( P = 0.05) and cadence ( P = 0.011). The effect of AM and FP on walking characteristics in the elderly showed similar trends to that of VF. Walking was influenced by emotional aspects that accompanied the various tasks.

Transfer of test-enhanced learning: Meta-analytic review and synthesis.

Attempting recall of information from memory, as occurs when taking a practice test, is one of the most potent training techniques known to learning science. However, does testing yield learning that transfers to different contexts? In the present article, we report the findings of the first comprehensive meta-analytic review into that question. Our review encompassed 192 transfer effect sizes extracted from 122 experiments and 67 published and unpublished articles (N = 10,382) that together comprise more than 40 years of research. A random-effects model revealed that testing can yield transferrable learning as measured relative to a nontesting reexposure control condition (d = 0.40, 95% CI [0.31, 0.50]). That transfer of learning is greatest across test formats, to application and inference questions, to problems involving medical diagnoses, and to mediator and related word cues; it is weakest to rearranged stimulus-response items, to untested materials seen during initial study, and to problems involving worked examples. Moderator analyses further indicated that response congruency and elaborated retrieval practice, as well as initial test performance, strongly influence the likelihood of positive transfer. In two assessments for publication bias using PET-PEESE and various selection methods, the moderator effect sizes were minimally affected. However, the intercept predictions were substantially reduced, often indicating no positive transfer when none of the aforementioned moderators are present. Overall, our results motivate a three-factor framework for transfer of test-enhanced learning and have practical implications for the effective use of practice testing in educational and other training contexts. (PsycINFO Database Record

The role of semantic representations in verbal working memory.

Two main mechanisms, articulatory rehearsal and attentional refreshing, are argued to be involved in the maintenance of verbal information in working memory (WM). Whereas converging research has suggested that rehearsal promotes the phonological representations of memoranda in working memory, little is known about the representations that refreshing may promote. Not only would examining this question address this gap in the literature, but the investigation has profound implications for different theoretical proposals of how refreshing functions and on the relationships between WM and long-term memory (LTM). Accordingly, we tested predictions from 5 models regarding how refreshing may moderate the semantic representation of memoranda in verbal WM. This series of 4 experiments presented a cue word that was either semantically or phonologically related to a target during the recall phase of a complex span task. Experiment 1 established the benefit of semantic over phonological retrieval cues, and Experiment 2 established that this semantic benefit was specific to a refreshing-rather than a rehearsal-based maintenance strategy. Finally, we showed that this semantic benefit did not vary with the cognitive load of the concurrent task (Experiments 3 and 4) or the intention to learn the memoranda (Experiment 4). These results indicate that cue-based retrieval from episodic LTM may strongly contribute to semantic processing effects in WM recall, but this influence of episodic LTM is independent of the function of refreshing to reactivate memory traces. Accordingly, these results have strong implications for the functioning of refreshing and the links between WM and LTM. (PsycINFO Database Record

Two retrievals from a single cue: A bottleneck persists across episodic and semantic memory.

There is evidence in the literature that two retrievals from long-term memory cannot occur in parallel. To date, however, that work has explored only the case of two retrievals from newly acquired episodic memory. These studies demonstrated a retrieval bottleneck even after dual-retrieval practice. That retrieval bottleneck may be a global property of long-term memory retrieval, or it may apply only to the case of two retrievals from episodic memory. In the current experiments, we explored whether that apparent dual-retrieval bottleneck applies to the case of one retrieval from episodic memory and one retrieval from highly overlearned semantic memory. Across three experiments, subjects learned to retrieve a left or right keypress response form a set of 14 unique word cues (e.g., black-right keypress). In addition, they learned a verbal response which involved retrieving the antonym of the presented cue (e.g., black-"white"). In the dual-retrieval condition, subjects had to retrieve both the keypress response and the antonym word. The results suggest that the retrieval bottleneck is superordinate to specific long-term memory systems and holds across different memory components. In addition, the results support the assumption of a cue-level response chunking account of learned retrieval parallelism.

Testing Memories of Personally Experienced Events: The Testing Effect Seems Not to Persist in Autobiographical Memory.

Numerous studies have shown that retrieving contents from memory in a test improves long-term retention for those contents, even when compared to restudying (i.e., the “testing effect”). The beneficial effect of retrieval practice has been demonstrated for many different types of memory representations; however, one particularly important memory system has not been addressed in previous testing effect research: autobiographical memory. The aim of the present study was to examine the effect of retrieving memories for personally experienced events on long-term memory for those events. In an initial elicitation session, participants described memories for personally experienced events in response to a variety of cue words. In a retrieval practice/restudy session the following day, they repeatedly practiced retrieval for half of their memories by recalling and writing down the previously described events; the other half of memories was restudied by rereading and copying the event descriptions. Long-term retention of all previously collected memories was assessed at two different retention intervals (2 weeks and 13 weeks). In the retrieval practice session, a hypermnesic effect emerged, with memory performance increasing across the practice cycles. Long-term memory performance significantly dropped from the 2-weeks to the 13-weeks retention interval, but no significant difference in memory performance was observed between previously repeatedly retrieved and previously repeatedly restudied memories. Thus, in autobiographical memory, retrieval practice seems to be no more beneficial for long-term retention than repeated re-exposure.

Management of psychological pressures in competitive situations with cognitive appraisals

Psychological pressure or what we call stress is experienced by sportspersons and athletes because the consequences of failure are important to them. Stress occurs when there is an imbalance between requirement and the person’s capacity or abilities. It fluctuates based on the individual differences and the environment, which is especially relevant to athletes. How can the athletes whose emotional investment is negatively impacting their personal performance in sports be helped. Players still need some form of demand to function best, but too high can be unfavorable to their well-being, health and performance. This paper tends to illuminate the effects of various techniques which can help combat stress. Stress management is made up of treatment techniques, which have the ability to “reduce stressors, modify cognitive appraisals, reduce affect states, increase positive affect states and facilitate effective coping Behaviors”. Techniques like self-talk, imagery and relaxation work efficiently in competitive stress situations. Self talk involves cue words used strategically to enhance performance, raise confidence and increase motivation whereas Imagery is the mental creation of sensory experiences and relaxation involves voluntary reduction in psychological and muscle tension. These techniques have proved to be very helpful in enhancing performance of novice and elite athletes.

Measurement of overgeneral autobiographical memory: Psychometric properties of the autobiographical memory test in young and older populations.

The Autobiographical Memory Test (AMT) is the most widely used measure of overgeneral autobiographical memory (OGM). The AMT appears to have good psychometric properties, but more research is needed on the influence and applicability of individual cue words in different languages and populations. To date, no studies have evaluated its usefulness as a measure of OMG in Spanish or older populations. This work aims to analyze the applicability of the AMT in young and older Spanish samples. We administered a Spanish version of the AMT to samples of young (N = 520) and older adults (N = 155). We conducted confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), item response theory-based analysis (IRT) and differential item functioning (DIF). Results confirm the one-factor structure for the AMT. IRT analysis suggests that both groups find the AMT easy given that they generally perform well, and that it is more precise in individuals who score low on memory specificity. DIF analysis finds three items differ in their functioning depending on age group. This differential functioning of these items affects the overall AMT scores and, thus, they should be excluded from the AMT in studies comparing young and older samples. We discuss the possible implications of the samples and cue words used.