Word Fragment Completion Research Articles

Alignment of behaviour and tDCS stimulation site induces maximum response: evidence from online tDCS and ERP

tDCS modulates the activity of the neuronal networks to induce the desired behavioural changes. Two factors determine its effectiveness- (1) whether the network being stimulated is relevant to the task, and (2) if there is a scope for improvement in behavioral performance. To explore this, both dorsal (sub-lexical) and ventral (lexical) reading networks were stimulated (20 min, 2 mA) in 25 healthy young volunteers. Participants performed two reading tasks with different levels of lexical involvement: word fragment completion tasks (WCT) and word association tasks (WAT), while event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded simultaneously. The study used a within-subject design over three sessions, comparing various electrode montages targeting the dorsal pathway's left inferior parietal lobule or the ventral reading pathway's left middle temporal lobule, as well as sham stimulation. The impact of tDCS sessions (dorsal, ventral, & sham) and task type (WCT & WAT) on priming effects (primed vs. unprimed) of behavioral performance (accuracy and reaction times), and ERP parameters (N400 amplitudes and latencies) were statistically analyzed.It was found that tDCS modulated the performance of WAT only (a task with a lower priming effect). The failure to modulate WCT (larger priming effect) indicated that tDCS was effective for conditions with room for improvement compared to a task where performance has reached the ceiling. Ventral stimulation enhanced accuracy in the WAT condition and shortened the N400 latency of the priming effect. In contrast, dorsal stimulation delayed the priming effect reaction time in the WAT condition and enhanced the N400 amplitude. To conclude, enhancement in performance due to tDCS occurs when the network (ventral) being stimulated aligns with the cognitive demands of the task and there is a scope for improvement.

Implicit Attitudes and Terror Management: Pilot of Implicit Association Test as a Means of Measuring Death-Thought Accessibility

Terror management theory (TMT; Greenberg, Pyszczynski, & Solomon, 1986) has been extensively tested and applied in a variety of contexts. One of the major criticisms of TMT is that there are methodological issues with assessing some of the proposed processes within the theory, such as activation of death thought accessibility. The present study provides an initial test of a proposed alternative for measuring death thought accessibility using an image-based implicit association test instead of the traditional word fragment completion task used in a majority of TMT research. An experiment was carried out with 200 undergraduate students using a 2 (mortality salience: Yes or no) x 2 (social/fiscal conservatism: Low or high) between-subjects design. Results provided partial empirical support for the use of an IAT-based measure for death thought accessibility relying on color images. The IAT-based measure outperformed the traditional word fragment completion task at discriminating between mortality and non-mortality salient participants in terms of death thought accessibility.Moreover, this study also tested the mortality salience hypothesis to determine whether mortality salience activates cultural worldview defenses following a brief delay. Specifically, participants with differing political ideologies were asked to evaluate an editorial in support of the Muslim ban. Results found that after being reminded of their death, participants with strong levels of conservatism reported more positive attitudes toward the Muslim ban, relative to those in the control condition (i.e., non-mortality salient). Implications of the findings for this study as well as directions for future research are discussed.

Development and Initial Validation of a Word Fragment Completion Task to Measure Age Metastereotype Activation

AbstractResearchers have shown growing interest in the age metastereotyping process and its potential impact in organizations. Research calls have been made for new measurement tools to help advance this work. This paper presents five studies that were conducted to develop and provide initial validation evidence for a new word fragment completion test to assess age metastereotype activation in an indirect manner. We followed suggestions for best practices in the development of this type of measure (Koopman, J., Howe, M., Johnson, R.E., Tan, J.A., & Chang, C.H. 2013. A framework for developing word fragment completion tasks. Human Resource Management Review, 23 (3), 242–253.) and used Finkelstein et al.’s (Finkelstein, L.M., King, E.B., & Voyles, E.C. 2015. Age metastereotyping and cross-age workplace interactions: A meta view of age stereotypes and work. Work, Age, and Retirement, 1 (1), 26–40.) model of the age metastereotyping process as a basis for choosing correlates for the measure. We discuss the mixed pattern of relationships between the new measure and the variables proposed in that model and provide several suggestions for next steps toward continued validation and use of this measure. Further, we provide detailed information throughout the process that could serve as a springboard and time-saver for others interested in developing their own age metastereotype word fragment completion test to suit their own research needs.

Age and processing effects on perceptual and conceptual priming.

Explicit (declarative) memory declines with age, but age effects on implicit (nondeclarative) memory are debated. Some studies have reported null changes in implicit memory (e.g., priming in word-fragment completion, perceptual identification, category exemplar generation) with age, while others have uncovered declines. One factor that may account for these discrepancies is processing. Evidence suggests that conceptual and perceptual processes are not equally affected by ageing, yet processing requirements have varied greatly between studies. Processing may moderate age effects on priming, but no study has systematically examined this issue. This registered report presents an experiment to manipulate processing (conceptual / perceptual) during incidental encoding of words, prior to measures of perceptual (perceptual identification) and conceptual (category verification) priming. The perceptual and conceptual priming tasks were matched on all characteristics except processing, making them highly comparable. The four orthogonal conditions (perceptual encoding, perceptual test [PP]; conceptual encoding, perceptual test [CP]; perceptual encoding, conceptual test [PC]; conceptual encoding, conceptual test [CC]) were designed to clarify situations in which age effects on implicit memory emerge, which holds important practical and theoretical implications. Significant effects of Age, Test, and an Age × Processing interaction emerged. Priming was greater in young than older adults and on the perceptual than the conceptual test, but in contrast to the predictions, the age difference was only significant when prior encoding was perceptual (i.e., in the PP and CP conditions).

Suppression of non-selected solutions as a possible brain mechanism for ambiguity resolution in the word fragment task completion task

Brain systems dealing with multiple meanings of ambiguous stimuli are relatively well studied, while the processing of non-selected meanings is less investigated in the neurophysiological literature and provokes controversy between existing theories. It is debated whether these meanings are actively suppressed and, if yes, whether suppression characterizes any task that involves alternative solutions or only those tasks that emphasize semantic processing or the existence of alternatives. The current functional MRI event-related study used a modified version of the word fragment completion task to reveal brain mechanisms involved in implicit processing of the non-selected solutions of ambiguous fragments. The stimuli were pairs of fragmented adjectives and nouns. Noun fragments could have one or two solutions (resulting in two words with unrelated meanings). Adjective fragments had one solution and created contexts strongly suggesting one solution for ambiguous noun fragments. All fragmented nouns were presented twice during the experiment (with two different adjectives). We revealed that ambiguity resolution was associated with a reduced BOLD signal within several regions related to language processing, including the anterior hippocampi and amygdala and posterior lateral temporal cortex. Obtained findings were interpreted as resulting from brain activity inhibition, which underlies a hypothesized mechanism of suppression of non-selected solutions.

Implicit processes enhance cognitive abilities in mild cognitive impairment

ABSTRACT Previous work has shown that older adults with typical age-related memory changes (i.e., without cognitive impairment) pick up irrelevant information implicitly, and unknowingly use that information when it becomes relevant to a later task. Here, we address the possibility that implicit processes play a similarly beneficial role in the cognitive abilities of individuals with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI). Twenty-two individuals with aMCI and 22 matched controls participated in a picture judgment task while instructed to ignore distractions in the form of word/non-word letter strings. Memory for the distracting words was later tested with a word-fragment completion task. Both groups showed a priming effect, that is, they were significantly more likely to solve fragments of previously presented than non-presented words. However, the aMCI group had significantly higher scores than the older adults without cognitive impairment, t(42) = 2.16, p < .05, Cohen’s d = 0.67. Our findings suggest that individuals with aMCI can enhance their performance on an explicit cognitive task, in this case, word-fragment completion, if previously exposed to the relevant information implicitly, opening up possible interventions aimed at this population.

Filthiness of Immorality: Manipulating Disgust and Moral Rigidity Through Noninvasive Brain Stimulation as a Promising Therapeutic Tool for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

The study was designed to test the hypothesis that indirect inhibition of the insula via cathodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) would decrease disgust and moral rigidity in 36 healthy individuals undergoing 15 min of tDCS over the temporal lobe. To obtain a comprehensive assessment of disgust, we used subjective (affect rating), physiological (heart rate variability [HRV]), and implicit measures (word-fragment completion), and moral judgment was assessed by asking participants to rate the deontological and altruistic moral wrongness of a revised version of the moral foundations vignettes. We found anodal and cathodal stimulations to, respectively, enhance and decrease self-reported disgust, deontological morality, and HRV. Note that these effects were stronger in individuals with higher levels of obsessive compulsive (OC) traits. Because disgust and sensitivity to deontological guilt are among the most impairing features in OC disorder, it is auspicious that cathodal tDCS could be implemented to reduce such symptoms.

The Influence of LED Lighting on Attention and Long-Term Memory

The fact that the illuminance of LED lights affects human attention and long-term memory has been verified through various studies, but there are no consistent research results about what level of illuminance is effective. The aims of this study were to systematically verify the effects of LED lighting on attention and long-term memory. The experiment was designed with four illuminance levels—300 lx, 400 lx, 500 lx, and 1,000 lx—as experimental conditions to determine the effects of LED lights on attention and long-term memory. Participants in the experiment were 18 college students. The attention task was performed using a handmade attention measuring instrument. Long-term memory was measured by the word fragment completion (hereinafter, referred to as “WFC”) task on the memory retention volume of the learning task that was learned exactly 24 hours before. Of the total 20 tasks, the ratio of correctly retrieval tasks was used as a dependent variable. As a result, attention showed the highest performance with a mean performance of 19.39 (SD = 3.78) at 1,000 lx. A statistically significant difference was also found between the 1,000 lx and 300 lx conditions (p=0.01). On the contrary, long-term memory showed the highest retrieval rate at an average of 58.06% (SD = 22.57) at 400 lx, and long-term memory performance was better in the order of 500 lx (mean = 48.89, SD = 20.33), 1,000 lx (mean = 45.83, SD = 23.53), and 300 lx (Mean = 43.33, SD = 19.10). Statistically, there was a significant difference between 300 lx and 400 lx (p=0.01), 400 lx and 1,000 lx (p=0.01). Through this study, it was verified that the effects of attention and long-term memory are different according to the illuminance of LED lighting, and these results can be important data to clarify the influence of light on human memory in the future.

The effect of visual priming on the lexical retrieval on implicit memory tasks for advanced foreign language learners

This study attempted to investigate the possible effects of visual priming on a foreign language vocabulary retrieval on three implicit memory task types (i.e., word stem completion (WSC), word fragment completion (WFC) and anagram solution tasks). Gender effect was also focused for lexical retrieval under the priming effect. A total of 45 male and 45 female Iranian advanced EFL learners were recruited and assigned to each of the three experimental groups of the study which contained an equal number of males and females learners. WSC, WFC and anagram solution tasks held 30 lexical items which were developed out of 5000 most frequent words in English. 15 primed and 15 unprimed lexical items were randomly accommodated in each task. After the visual priming phase and distracting participants’ attention via an unrelated task, the participants were asked to do the implicit memory tasks based on their experimental groups. The results showed that participants gained higher scores on the visually primed lexical items on all implicit tasks. Also, no statistically significant difference was observed between males and females regarding the visual priming effect. Pedagogical implications are finally discussed on the light of the findings.

“In your head, zombie”: zombies, predation and memory

ABSTRACTImagining fictional creatures like zombies in survival situations boosts long-term memory for words encoded in these situations more than rating words for pleasantness (zombie effect). Study 1 required word-ratings in a zombie-survival scenario; participants were told they had to protect against either possible zombie attack or contamination. The zombie-survival situations yielded identical recall levels but higher recall rates than pleasantness. Study 2 matched a zombie-survival scenario on perceived fear with scenarios involving ghosts or predators. Perceived disgust in the zombie scenario was higher than in these other survival conditions. Words were remembered better when processed in survival scenarios than when rated for pleasantness, but there was no reliable difference in recall between the scenarios. In neither study did the number of death-related words produced in a word-fragment completion task fit the mortality salience account of the zombie memory effect. Overall findings suggest that this effect relates to the fear system.

The impact of trauma exposure on explicit and implicit memory

ABSTRACTObjectives: The present study aimed to determine whether explicit and implicit memory systems are modulated by the type of content (neutral, emotional trauma-related and generally-emotional) in sexual abuse victims who did not develop PTSD, compared to non-exposed controls.Design: A mixed-factorial design with Content (neutral, trauma-related, generally-emotional) as a within-subject variable and Group (victims, controls) as a between-subject variable was used in two experiments.Methods: In both experiments, participants were required to learn three stories presented orally: a neutral, an emotional trauma-related (sexual abuse) and a generally-emotional story. In Experiment 1, participants’ memory was tested with two explicit tasks (free recall and Remember/Know/Guess) and one implicit task (word-fragment completion task). In Experiment 2, a modified version of the word-fragment completion task was presented, followed by an awareness questionnaire to ensure the implicit character of the test.Results: Victims showed lower performances with neutral contents, relative to controls, in explicit and implicit tasks. However, this difference was not observed with trauma-related contents suggesting this information is preferentially processed by trauma-exposed participants (with increased attentional resources).Conclusions: Our results show that trauma exposure may itself be associated with implicit and explicit memory alterations, even for individuals who did not develop PTSD.

An Investigation of Civilian Implicit Attitudes Toward Police Officers

This research investigated civilian implicit attitudes toward police. Previous research has solely used explicit measures (or examined police officers’ implicit reactions to civilians). Two studies assessed the implicit activation of safety and fear when participants were primed with police using a Word Fragment Completion Task (e.g., Johnson and Lord 2010). In a college sample, police primes led to increased safety and decreased fear construct activation, whereas in an online sample, both safety and fear became more accessible. Overall, results indicated that a wide range of individual differences in implicit attitudes toward police exist, that implicit reactions to police officers might be distinct from explicit global evaluations, and that, despite the existence of negative police-civilian interactions, the appearance of police officers might still tend to activate safety-related thoughts. The findings prompt the need to further assess the underlying cognitive components of civilian attitudes toward police officers.

Context specificity of automatic influences of memory.

It has often been shown that intentional recollection is influenced by context manipulations, such as context reinstatement (e.g., Smith, 2013; Smith & Vela, 2001), but whether or not automatic retrieval (e.g., Jacoby, 1991) is likewise context dependent remains an open question. Here, we present two experiments that examined effects of context manipulations on indirect measures of memory. The first experiment tested anagram completion, and the second experiment used word fragment completion to test effects of context reinstatement; both experiments found reinstatement effects. To address potential problems of explicit contamination, we also asked participants if they were aware of the priming manipulations. Separating participants according to their test awareness showed effects of context manipulations for both aware and unaware participants. A greater effect size was found for aware participants only in Experiment 1, in which participants had enough time on each test trial for recollection to be used. We conclude that context reinstatement does affect automatic retrieval. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

Your mobile phone indeed means your social network: Priming mobile phone activates relationship related concepts

Mobile phones have become an integral part of life, drawing researchers' attention to their behavioral consequences. Yet, we know little about the psychological associations of mobile phones. It has been proposed that due to their role in maintaining social relationships, the mobile phone, as an object, has become the representation of a person's social network. This paper empirically investigates this idea. A sample of 154 university students participated in an experiment that tested the cognitive consequences of activating the concept of a mobile phone. We primed the concept of a mobile phone and measured the accessibility of thoughts related to social relationships with a word fragment completion task. People reminded of their mobile phones (vs. neutral personal objects) found significantly more words related to social networks, demonstrating the association between social relationships and the idea of mobile phones. Additionally, priming people with their mobile phones was associated with lower need to belong.

The role of language in suicide reporting: Investigating the influence of problematic suicide referents

BackgroundAlthough suicide experts recommend using neutral suicide referents in news media reporting, this recommendation has not yet been tested empirically. This recommendation, based on the empirically yet untested assumption that problematic suicide referents carry meaning that is inappropriate from a prevention perspective, may lead to a different perspective on suicide, termed “framing effects.” For example, in German-speaking countries, the neutral term Suizid (suicide) is recommended. Conversely, Freitod (“free death”) and Selbstmord (“self-murder”) convey associative meanings related to problematic concepts such as free will (Freitod) and crime/murder (Selbstmord), and are therefore not recommended. MethodUsing a web-based randomized controlled trial focused on German speakers (N = 451), we tested whether the news media's use of Suizid, Selbstmord, and Freitod elicits framing effects. Participants read identical news reports about suicide. Only the specific suicide referents varied depending on the experimental condition. Post-reading, participants wrote short summaries of the news reports, completed a word-fragment completion test and a questionnaire targeting suicide-related attitudes. ResultsWe found that the news frame primed some frame-related concepts in the memory and also increased frame-related word choice. Importantly, we found that participants reading the free will-related Freitod frame showed greater attitudinal support for suicide among individuals suffering from incurable diseases. ConclusionsThis study highlights the importance of how the news media write about suicide and supports the language recommendations put forward by suicide experts.

Diagnosis makes a difference: Perceptions of older persons with dementia symptoms

ABSTRACTBackground/Study Context: Employing the stereotype content model and terror management theory, we examined whether stereotypes and feelings about persons with dementia vary depending on the type of dementia diagnosis and purported causes of the dementia.Methods: Participants were randomly assigned to read one of four vignettes that depicted a man who consulted his doctor because of memory problems. All vignettes described the same symptoms and diagnostic tests, but each of four groups read a different result: all tests normal (Normal); Alzheimer’s disease (AD); Wernicke–Korsakoff Syndrome (WKS) associated with alcohol abuse; and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) associated with head injuries from playing football in high school and college. Measures included a word fragment completion task, a stereotype content scale, and an emotions scale.Results: Results showed no differences in the number of death-related words generated in the word fragment completion task and no differences in assessment of competence across the four groups. Those in the Normal, AD, and CTE groups evaluated the man as warmer than those in the WKS group. Participants in the AD condition showed more empathy than those in the WKS group. There were no differences in pity or fear but the CTE condition produced more envy and admiration and the WKS condition produced more contempt.Conclusion: These results suggest that different forms of dementia elicit varying emotional and cognitive responses.

Replication and extension of long-term implicit memory: Perceptual priming but conceptual cessation.

We endeavored to replicate Mitchell's (2006) finding of 17-year implicit memory priming. Subjects saw word and picture stimuli in 1999-2000 (M age = 18.9) and were retested after 11-14 years (M = 13.2; M age = 32.1). Via the internet, they completed four implicit memory tasks: picture fragment identification, word fragment completion, word stem completion, and category exemplar generation. Relative to control subjects (matched on stimuli, age, and education), longitudinal subjects revealed priming on picture and word fragment identification (perceptual tasks), but no priming on word stem completion or category exemplar generation (conceptual tasks). Four longitudinal subjects who failed to recall participating in the prior laboratory session had priming similar to the 10 subjects who did remember. Thus, we replicated the longevity of perceptual priming for pictures, and extended this to word fragment priming as well.

Effects of Saccade Induced Retrieval Enhancement on conceptual and perceptual tests of explicit & implicit memory

The effects of saccadic horizontal (bilateral) eye movements upon tests of both conceptual and perceptual forms of explicit and implicit memory were investigated. Participants studied a list of words and were then assigned to one of four test conditions: conceptual explicit, conceptual implicit, perceptual explicit, or perceptual implicit. Conceptual tests comprised category labels with either explicit instructions to recall corresponding examples from the study phase (category-cued recall), or implicit instructions to generate any corresponding examples that spontaneously came to mind (category-exemplar generation). Perceptual tests comprised of word-fragments with either explicit instructions to complete these with study items (word-fragment-cued recall), or implicit instructions to complete each fragment with the first word that simply ‘popped to mind’ (word-fragment completion). Just prior to retrieval, participants were required to engage in 30 s of bilateral vs. no eye movements. Results revealed that saccadic horizontal eye movements enhanced performance in only the conceptual explicit condition, indicating that Saccade-Induced Retrieval Enhancement is a joint function of conceptual and explicit retrieval mechanisms. Findings are discussed from both a cognitive and neuropsychological perspective, in terms of their potential functional and neural underpinnings.

Macbeth Arabia: moral threat and cleansing-related construct accessibility in Arab women

ABSTRACTThe “Macbeth effect” denotes a relationship between threatened moral integrity (e.g., guilt) and cleansing-related cognition and behaviours. This idea has received empirical support and may have implications for our understanding obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Most previous explorations of the Macbeth effect, however, have been undertaken in Europe or North America. This study aimed to test the effect among Muslim, Arabic-speaking, citizens of the United Arab Emirates. Experimental participants (N = 112) completed a task designed to threaten moral integrity (recalling past misdeeds), followed by a word-fragment completion task, where cleansing and non-cleansing completions were possible. A control-group (N = 95) completed only the word-fragment completion task. Participants recalling past misdeeds made significantly more cleansing-related word-fragment completions than their control-group counterparts. This study extends evidence of a Macbeth effect to an Arabic-speaking Muslim population and may have implications for our understanding of OCD within this population.

Do young adults show conceptual knowledge of previous distractors?

ABSTRACTUsing implicit tests, older adults have been found to retain conceptual knowledge of previously seen task-irrelevant information. While younger adults typically do not show the same effect, evidence from one study [Gopie, N., Craik, F. I. M., & Hasher, L. (2011). A double dissociation of implicit and explicit memory in younger and older adults. Psychological Science, 22, 634–640. doi:10.1177/0956797611403321] suggests otherwise. In that study, young adults showed greater explicit than implicit memory for previous distractors on a word fragment completion task. This was interpreted as evidence for maintaining access to previous conceptual knowledge of the distractors. Here, we report two failures to replicate that original finding, followed by a third study designed to test directly whether young adults use conceptual-level information that was previously irrelevant. Our findings agree with others that young adults show weak to no evidence of conceptual knowledge of previously irrelevant information.