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Full-Text Articles in Cognitive Psychology

Exordium: Lost Words, Lost Worlds May 2023

Exordium: Lost Words, Lost Worlds

The International Journal of Ecopsychology (IJE)

Brunold-Conesa, C. (2022). Lost Words, Lost Nature: A Dictionary's Controversial Choices. Montessori Life: The Official Blog and Magazine of the American Montessori Society, Wednesday, September 07, 2022. https://amshq.org/Blog/2022-09-07-Lost-Words-Lost-Nature


The Conceptual Metaphor False Memory Effect, Jeffrey N. Reid Jul 2020

The Conceptual Metaphor False Memory Effect, Jeffrey N. Reid

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Conceptual Metaphor Theory posits that cross-domain mappings play a fundamental role in thought. However, to date there has been little research investigating the influence of conceptual metaphors in the subdomains of cognitive psychology, such as learning, concepts, and memory, leading critics to argue that conceptual metaphors are not psychologically real. The purpose of this dissertation was to explore whether conceptual metaphors influence episodic memory. In four experiments, a modified version of the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm was employed in which participants studied lists of expressions. Every expression within each list was based on a proposed conceptual metaphor. For example, the TIME …


Evaluating Theories Of Bilingual Language Control Using Computational Models, Mark D. Lowry Apr 2019

Evaluating Theories Of Bilingual Language Control Using Computational Models, Mark D. Lowry

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Bilingual language control refers to how bilinguals are able to speak exclusively in one language without the unintended language intruding. Two prominent verbal theories of bilingual language control have been proposed by researchers: the inhibitory control model (ICM) and the lexical selection mechanism model (LSM). The ICM posits that domain-general inhibition is employed in order to suppress the unintended language’s activation. The LSM posits that inhibition is not used; rather a lexical selection mechanism targets only the intended language’s words. In order to better test the theories’ hypotheses, I developed computational models to estimate participants’ reaction times when naming in …


Semantic Processing Of Nominal Metaphor: Figurative Abstraction And Embodied Simulation, Hamad Al-Azary Nov 2018

Semantic Processing Of Nominal Metaphor: Figurative Abstraction And Embodied Simulation, Hamad Al-Azary

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In a metaphor such as that lawyer is a shark, the concept lawyer, which is the metaphor topic, and the concept shark, which is the metaphor vehicle, interact to produce a figurative meaning such that lawyers are predatory. Some theorists argue that sensorimotor properties of the vehicle are the basis of metaphor comprehension (Gibbs & Matlock, 2008; Paivio, 1979; Wilson & Gibbs, 2007). As such, that lawyer is a shark is processed by an embodied simulation where sensorimotor imagery associated with sharks is simulated (e.g., sharks hunting in deep water). However, the long-standing assumption is that metaphors are …


Abstract Concepts And Pictures Of Real-World Situations Activate One Another., Ken Mcrae, Daniel Nedjadrasul, Raymond Pau, Bethany Pui-Hei Lo, Lisa King Jul 2018

Abstract Concepts And Pictures Of Real-World Situations Activate One Another., Ken Mcrae, Daniel Nedjadrasul, Raymond Pau, Bethany Pui-Hei Lo, Lisa King

Psychology Publications

Abstract concepts typically are defined in terms of lacking physical or perceptual referents. We argue instead that they are not devoid of perceptual information because knowledge of real-world situations is an important component of learning and using many abstract concepts. Although the relationship between perceptual information and abstract concepts is less straightforward than for concrete concepts, situation-based perceptual knowledge is part of many abstract concepts. In Experiment 1, participants made lexical decisions to abstract words that were preceded by related and unrelated pictures of situations. For example, share was preceded by a picture of two girls sharing a cob of …


Reasoning With Pseudowords: How Properties Of Novel Verbal Stimuli Influence Item Difficulty And Linguistic-Group Score Differences On Cognitive Ability Assessments, Paul Agnello Feb 2018

Reasoning With Pseudowords: How Properties Of Novel Verbal Stimuli Influence Item Difficulty And Linguistic-Group Score Differences On Cognitive Ability Assessments, Paul Agnello

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Pseudowords (words that are not real but resemble real words in a language) have been used increasingly as a technique to reduce contamination due to construct-irrelevant variance in assessments of verbal fluid reasoning (Gf). However, despite pseudowords being researched heavily in other psychology sub-disciplines, they have received little attention in cognitive ability testing contexts. Thus, there has been an assumption that all pseudowords work equally and work equally well for all test-takers. The current research examined three objectives with the first being whether changes to the pseudoword properties of length and wordlikeness (how much a pseudoword resembles a typical or …


Investigating The Necessary Components Of A Sarcastic Context, John D. Campbell Feb 2012

Investigating The Necessary Components Of A Sarcastic Context, John D. Campbell

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This research is designed to investigate the contextual components utilized to convey sarcastic verbal irony, testing whether theoretical components deemed as necessary for creating a sense of irony are, in fact, necessary. A novel task was employed: Given a set of statements that out-of-context were not rated as sarcastic, participants were instructed to either generate discourse context that would make the statements sarcastic or meaningful (without further specification). In a series of studies these generated contexts were shown to differ from one another along the dimensions presumed as necessary (failed expectation, pragmatic insincerity, negative tension and presence of a victim) …


The Effect Of Word Sociality On Word Recognition, Sean Seaman Jan 2010

The Effect Of Word Sociality On Word Recognition, Sean Seaman

Wayne State University Dissertations

While research into the role of semantic structure in the recognition of written and spoken words has grown, it has not looked specifically at the role of conversational context on the recognition of isolated words. This study was a corpus-based and behavioral exploration of a new semantic variable - sociality - and used on-line behavioral testing to obtain new word recognition data using the visual and auditory lexical decision tasks. The results consistently demonstrated that sociality is one of the most robust predictors of lexical decision performance. Overall, it appears that the visual lexical decision task is quite sensitive to …


Word Concreteness And Word Frequency As Moderators Of The Tip-Of-The-Tongue Effect, Jennifer Lynn Gianico Jan 2010

Word Concreteness And Word Frequency As Moderators Of The Tip-Of-The-Tongue Effect, Jennifer Lynn Gianico

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) experience is a universal experience in which a speaker cannot fully produce a word that he or she believes will eventually be recalled and could easily be recognized. The purpose of the current set of experiments is to determine how different variables affect the rate of TOTs. Specifically, a series of three experiments investigates the roles of word concreteness and word frequency on TOT rates. A new finding, the concreteness effect on TOT rates, emerged and was replicated across all three experiments. This never-before investigated concreteness effect is discussed in terms of a general two-stage model of …


The Representation Of Multiple Translations In Bilingual Memory : An Examination Of Lexical Organization For Concrete, Abstract, And Emotion Words In Spanish-English Bilinguals, Dana M. Basnight-Brown Jan 2009

The Representation Of Multiple Translations In Bilingual Memory : An Examination Of Lexical Organization For Concrete, Abstract, And Emotion Words In Spanish-English Bilinguals, Dana M. Basnight-Brown

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Tokowicz and Kroll (2007) originally reported that the number of translations a word has across languages influences the speed with which bilinguals translate concrete and abstract words from one language to another. The current work examines how the number of translations that characterize a word influences bilingual lexical organization and the processing of concrete, abstract and emotional stimuli. Experiment 1 examined whether the number-of-translations effect reported previously could be obtained in a different task (i.e., lexical decision task) using the same materials presented by Tokowicz and Kroll. Decision latencies revealed no significant differences between concrete and abstract words, which suggested …


The Effect Of Masking The Prime In Orthographic And Semantically Related Pairs : An Interactive Activation Account, Rowan Johnston Jan 1997

The Effect Of Masking The Prime In Orthographic And Semantically Related Pairs : An Interactive Activation Account, Rowan Johnston

Theses : Honours

Visual word recognition studies rely on priming tasks to examine underlying processes within the lexical system. A commonly used method is the lexical decision task, where participants are presented with a letter string that is either a familiar word or a meaningless non word such as fost. Response times are measured for the time taken to decide if the letter string is a word or a non word. The word the participant responds to is the target, while the preceding word is referred to as the prime. There are three types of priming conditions reported here. First, semantic priming where …