Word-fragment Task Research Articles

Do Pandemics Trigger Death Thoughts?

The current article aims to investigate the effects of pandemics of varying severity on death-thought accessibility in two studies while controlling for health anxiety. Study 1 ( n = 203) examined the effect of standard mortality salience (MS), severe pandemic, mild pandemic, and dental conditions on death-thought accessibility as assessed by the death word fragment task (DWFT). Study 1 did not find significant effects of MS and delay on death-thought accessibility, which could be attributable to the less-sensitive nature of the DWFT. Thus, Study 2 ( n = 163) was conducted with more sensitive death-thought accessibility measures. Results from Study 2 found that response time toward death and positive words on the lexical-decision task was significantly faster than in standard MS and dental conditions. Both studies recruited predominantly Americans (Study 1) and Europeans (Study 2), which limits the generalizability of the results to other populations. Future studies can consider replicating the studies in other populations.

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.

Guns Automatically Prime Aggressive Thoughts, Regardless of Whether a “Good Guy” or “Bad Guy” Holds the Gun

The mere presence of weapons can increase aggression—called the “weapons effect.” Weapons are theorized to increase aggression by priming aggressive thoughts. This research tested the robustness of the weapons effect using two large representative samples of American adults (total N = 1,097). Participants saw photos of criminals, soldiers, police in military gear, or police in regular gear with guns. Experiment 2 also included a condition with photos of Olympians with guns used to shoot inanimate targets. The control group was police in plainclothes without guns. The accessibility of aggressive thoughts was measured using a word fragment task (e.g., KI_ _ can be completed as KILL or KISS). Photos of individuals with guns used to shoot human targets primed aggressive thoughts, regardless of whether a “good guy” (soldier, police) or “bad guy” (criminal) held the gun. Photos of Olympians with guns used to shoot inanimate targets did not prime aggressive thoughts.

The effect of the illuminance of light emitting diode (LED) lamps on long-term memory

In this study, the effect of the illuminance of LED lamps on long term memory is verified in the conditions of 400lx, 700lx, 1000lx according to the standards of study room illuminance between 400lx, the minimum and 1000lx, the maximum suggested by KSA 3011. Word fragment task is used to measure the long term memory. As a dependent task, 90 words made up of 7 letters are selected among 2700 words which have low frequency provided by sesame word. According to the experiment result, the rate of long term memory is 60.42% under the condition of 400lx, which is the most effective, 59.38% under the condition of 700lx, and 52.68% under 1000lx. In addition, the p value between 400lx and 1000lx is 0.028, which is statistically significant. The significance of this study lies in that the effect of the illuminance of LED lamps on long term memory, rather than the existing issues such as attentiveness or work memory is searched, suggesting the possibility that the lower, rather than lighter the illuminance of LED light is, the more effective long term memory is.

Substance Use in the Middle East: Risk and Resilience Factors Predicting Alcohol and Cannabis Use in Lebanon

In this study, the effect of the illuminance of LED lamps on long term memory is verified in the conditions of 400 lx, 700 lx, 1000 lx according to the standards of study room illuminance between 400 lx, the minimum and 1000 lx, the maximum suggested by KSA 3011. Word fragment task is used to measure the long term memory. As a dependent task, 90 words made up of 7 letters are selected among 2700 words which have low frequency provided by sesame word. According to the experiment result, the rate of long term memory is 60.42% under the condition of 400 lx, which is the most effective, 59.38% under the condition of 700 lx, and 52.68% under 1000 lx. In addition, the p value between 400 lx and 1000 lx is 0.028, which is statistically significant. The significance of this study lies in that the effect of the illuminance of LED lamps on long term memory, rather than the existing issues such as attentiveness or work memory is searched, suggesting the possibility that the lower, rather than lighter the illuminance of LED light is, the more effective long term memory is.

単語完成課題における環境的文脈依存効果に及ぼす保持期間の影響

The effect of environmental context on performance on a word-fragment completion task, as an implicit memory task, was investigated by varying the retention interval between the encoding and retrieval sessions. In two experiments, 40 to-be-remembered items were presented incidentally to participants before they engaged in a word fragment task. The retention interval was one week in Experiment 1 and 10 minutes in Experiment 2. Except for an environmental context cue of odor, the environmental contexts of the encoding and retrieval sessions in both experiments were different. Reinstatement of the environmental context cue of odor facilitated performance in Experiment 1 only. This result suggests that when the effectiveness of item cues such as word fragments is reduced by a long retention interval, the environmental cues can facilitate performance in word-fragment task.