The Mental Lexicon - Volume 12, Issue 3, 2017

We examined the effects of emotion information (valence, arousal, and emotional experience) on lexical decision and semantic categorization (using a “Is the word pain-related or not?” decision criterion) performance for pain-related words. Using linear mixed-effects modeling, we observed facilitatory effects of emotional experience in both tasks, such that faster responses were associated with higher emotional experience ratings. We observed a marginally significant valence effect in the semantic categorization task, such that faster responses were associated with more unpleasantness ratings. These effects were observed even with several other predictor variables (e.g., frequency, age of acquisition, concreteness, physical pain experience ratings) included in the analyses. These results suggest that the dimensions of emotional experience and (to a lesser degree) valence underlie emotion conceptual knowledge of pain-related words; however, their influence appears to be dynamic, depending on task demands.

Unbounded productivity is a hallmark of linguistic competence. Here, we asked whether this capacity automatically applies to signs. Participants saw video-clips of novel signs in American Sign Language (ASL) produced by a signer whose body appeared in a monochromatic color, and they quickly identified the signs’ color. The critical manipulation compared reduplicative (αα) signs to non-reduplicative (αβ) controls. Past research has shown that reduplication is frequent in ASL, and frequent structures elicit stronger Stroop interference. If signers automatically generalize the reduplication function, then αα signs should elicit stronger color-naming interference. Results showed no effect of reduplication for signs whose base (α) consisted of native ASL features (possibly, due to the similarity of α items to color names). Remarkably, signers were highly sensitive to reduplication when the base (α) included novel features. These results demonstrate that signers can freely extend their linguistic knowledge to novel forms, and they do so automatically. Unbounded productivity thus defines all languages, irrespective of input modality.

The current study examined morphological priming in older individuals using two complex phenomena of German inflection. Study 1 examined inflected adjectives which encode multiple morphosyntactic features using regular affixes. Study 2 targeted inflected verb forms which also encode multiple features, but in this case using idiosyncratic stem variants. Study 1 revealed priming effects indicating efficient access of morphosyntactic features from inflected word forms with regular affixes. Study 2 showed that the same individuals were less efficient at accessing morphosyntactic features from marked stems. We argue that this contrast reflects age-related memory decline, which affects feature access from (lexically conditioned) stem variants more than feature access from lexically unconditioned regular forms.

This paper reports an investigation of the production of verb morphology in English speakers with agrammatic aphasia. Our main goal was to test four accounts of the processing of (ir-)regularity by quantifying regularity using affix type and the presence or absence of stem changes.

Production accuracy of regular, mixed and two types of irregular past participles (irregular 1, irregular 2) was tested in English using a sentence completion task with a group of five speakers with agrammatic aphasia.

The results showed significant effects on production accuracy of whether the verb required a stem change and of time reference frame but no effect of affix type: past participles that required stem changes (mixed and irregular 2 past participles) were more difficult to produce than past participles that did not change their stem (regular and irregular 1 past participles). Moreover, the production of present continuous forms was more accurate compared to past participle forms.

These results suggest that a categorical conception of regular versus irregular is over-simplified, as accuracy was best predicted by stem change rather than by regularity. This is a finding most consistent with the Stem-based Assembly model.

The results of this study have implications for the design and selection of stimuli in future experiments: Experimental stimuli need to be controlled for stem changes and affix type rather than assuming that irregular verbs are homogeneous.

Lexical priming is known to arise from phonological similarity between prime and target, and this phenomenon is an important component of our understanding of the processes of lexical access and competition. However, the precise nature of the role of phonological similarity in lexical priming is understudied. In the present study, two experiments were conducted in which participants performed auditory lexical decision on CVC targets which were preceded by primes that either matched the target in all phonemes (CVC condition), in the first two phonemes (CV_ condition), the last two phonemes (_VC condition), the initial and last phonemes (C_C condition) or no phonemes (unrelated condition). Relative to the unrelated condition, all conditions except CV_ led to facilitation of response time to target words. The _VC and C_C conditions led to equivalent facilitation magnitude, while the CV_ condition showed neither facilitation nor inhibition. Accounting for these results requires appeal to processes of lexical competition and also to the notion that phonemes do not lend equivalent phonological similarity; that is, vowels and consonants are processed differently.