Long-term repetition priming and semantic interference in a lexical-semantic matching task: tapping the links between object names and colors.

Science.gov (United States)

Lloyd-Jones, Toby J; Nakabayashi, Kazuyo

2014-01-01

Using a novel paradigm to engage the long-term mappings between object names and the prototypical colors for objects, we investigated the retrieval of object-color knowledge as indexed by long-term priming (the benefit in performance from a prior encounter with the same or a similar stimulus); a process about which little is known. We examined priming from object naming on a lexical-semantic matching task. In the matching task participants encountered a visually presented object name (Experiment 1) or object shape (Experiment 2) paired with either a color patch or color name. The pairings could either match whereby both were consistent with a familiar object (e.g., strawberry and red) or mismatch (strawberry and blue). We used the matching task to probe knowledge about familiar objects and their colors pre-activated during object naming. In particular, we examined whether the retrieval of object-color information was modality-specific and whether this influenced priming. Priming varied with the nature of the retrieval process: object-color priming arose for object names but not object shapes and beneficial effects of priming were observed for color patches whereas inhibitory priming arose with color names. These findings have implications for understanding how object knowledge is retrieved from memory and modified by learning.

Long-term repetition priming and semantic interference in a lexical-semantic matching task: Tapping the links between object names and colours

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Toby Jonathan Lloyd-Jones

2014-06-01

Full Text Available Using a novel paradigm to engage the long-term mappings between object names and the prototypical colours for objects, we investigated the retrieval of object-colour knowledge as indexed by long-term priming (the benefit in performance from a prior encounter with the same or a similar stimulus; a process about which little is known. We examined priming from object naming on a lexical-semantic matching task. In the matching task participants encountered a visually presented object name (Experiment 1 or object shape (Experiment 2 paired with either a colour patch or colour name. The pairings could either match whereby both were consistent with a familiar object (e.g., strawberry and red or mismatch (strawberry and blue. We used the matching task to probe knowledge about familiar objects and their colours pre-activated during object naming. In particular, we examined whether the retrieval of object-colour information was modality-specific and whether this influenced priming. Priming varied with the nature of the retrieval process: object-colour priming arose for object names but not object shapes and beneficial effects of priming were observed for colour patches whereas inhibitory priming arose with colour names. These findings have implications for understanding how object knowledge is retrieved from memory and modified by learning.

Chronic cannabis users show altered neurophysiological functioning on Stroop task conflict resolution.

Science.gov (United States)

Battisti, Robert A; Roodenrys, Steven; Johnstone, Stuart J; Pesa, Nicole; Hermens, Daniel F; Solowij, Nadia

2010-12-01

Chronic cannabis use has been related to deficits in cognition (particularly memory) and the normal functioning of brain structures sensitive to cannabinoids. There is increasing evidence that conflict monitoring and resolution processes (i.e. the ability to detect and respond to change) may be affected. This study examined the ability to inhibit an automatic reading response in order to activate a more difficult naming response (i.e. conflict resolution) in a variant of the discrete trial Stroop colour-naming task. Event-related brain potentials to neutral, congruent and incongruent trials were compared between 21 cannabis users (mean 16.4 years of near daily use) in the unintoxicated state and 19 non-using controls. Cannabis users showed increased errors on colour-incongruent trials (e.g. "RED" printed in blue ink) but no performance differences from controls on colour congruent (e.g. "RED" printed in red ink) or neutral trials (e.g. "*****" printed in green ink). Poorer incongruent trial performance was predicted by an earlier age of onset of regular cannabis use. Users showed altered expression of a late sustained potential related to conflict resolution, evident by opposite patterns of activity between trial types at midline and central sites, and altered relationships between neurophysiological and behavioural outcome measures not evident in the control group. These findings indicate that chronic use of cannabis may impair the brain's ability to respond optimally in the presence of events that require conflict resolution and hold implications for the ability to refrain from substance misuse and/or maintain substance abstention behaviours.

Older Adults Do Not Notice Their Names: A New Twist to a Classic Attention Task

Science.gov (United States)

Naveh-Benjamin, Moshe; Kilb, Angela; Maddox, Geoffrey B.; Thomas, Jenna; Fine, Hope C.; Chen, Tina; Cowan, Nelson

2014-01-01

Although working memory spans are, on average, lower for older adults than young adults, we demonstrate in 5 experiments a way in which older adults paradoxically resemble higher capacity young adults. Specifically, in a selective-listening task, older adults almost always failed to notice their names presented in an unattended channel. This is an…

North-American norms for name disagreement: pictorial stimuli naming discrepancies.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Mary O'Sullivan

Full Text Available Pictorial stimuli are commonly used by scientists to explore central processes; including memory, attention, and language. Pictures that have been collected and put into sets for these purposes often contain visual ambiguities that lead to name disagreement amongst subjects. In the present work, we propose new norms which reflect these sources of name disagreement, and we apply this method to two sets of pictures: the Snodgrass and Vanderwart (S&V set and the Bank of Standardized Stimuli (BOSS. Naming responses of the presented pictures were classified within response categories based on whether they were correct, incorrect, or equivocal. To characterize the naming strategy where an alternative name was being used, responses were further divided into different sub-categories that reflected various sources of name disagreement. Naming strategies were also compared across the two sets of stimuli. Results showed that the pictures of the S&V set and the BOSS were more likely to elicit alternative specific and equivocal names, respectively. It was also found that the use of incorrect names was not significantly different across stimulus sets but that errors were more likely caused by visual ambiguity in the S&V set and by a misuse of names in the BOSS. Norms for name disagreement presented in this paper are useful for subsequent research for their categorization and elucidation of name disagreement that occurs when choosing visual stimuli from one or both stimulus sets. The sources of disagreement should be examined carefully as they help to provide an explanation of errors and inconsistencies of many concepts during picture naming tasks.

Face-name learning in older adults: a benefit of hyper-binding.

Science.gov (United States)

Weeks, Jennifer C; Biss, Renée K; Murphy, Kelly J; Hasher, Lynn

2016-10-01

Difficulty remembering faces and corresponding names is a hallmark of cognitive aging, as is increased susceptibility to distraction. Given evidence that older adults spontaneously encode relationships between target pictures and simultaneously occurring distractors (a hyper-binding phenomenon), we asked whether memory for face-name pairs could be improved through prior exposure to faces presented with distractor names. In three experiments, young and older adults performed a selective attention task on faces while ignoring superimposed names. After a delay, they learned and were tested on face-name pairs that were either maintained or rearranged from the initial task but were not told of the connection between tasks. In each experiment, older but not younger participants showed better memory for maintained than for rearranged pairs, indicating that older adults' natural propensity to tacitly encode and bind relevant and irrelevant information can be employed to aid face-name memory performance.

[Developmental changes of rapid automatized naming and Hiragana reading of Japanese in elementary-school children].

Science.gov (United States)

Kobayashi, Tomoka; Inagaki, Masumi; Gunji, Atsuko; Yatabe, Kiyomi; Kita, Yosuke; Kaga, Makiko; Gotoh, Takaaki; Koike, Toshihide

2011-11-01

Two hundred and seven Japanese elementary school children aged from 6 (Grade 1) to 12 (Grade 6) years old were tested for their abilities to name numbers and pictured objects along with reading Hiragana characters and words. These children all showed typical development and their classroom teachers judged that they were not having any problems with reading or writing. The children were randomly divided into two groups, the first group was assigned to two naming tasks;the rapid automatized naming (RAN) of "numbers" and "pictured objects," the second group was assigned to two rapid alternative stimulus (RAS) naming tasks using numbers and pictured objects. All children were asked to perform two reading tasks that were written in Hiragana script: single mora reading task and four syllable word reading task. The total articulation time for naming and reading and performance in terms of accuracy were measured for each task. Developmental changes in these variables were evaluated. The articulation time was significantly longer for the first graders, and it gradually shortened as they moved through to the upper grades in all tasks. The articulation time reached a plateau in the 5th grade for the number naming, while gradual change continued after drastic change in the lower grades for the pictured object naming. The articulation times for the single mora reading and RAN of numbers correlated strongly. The articulation time for the RAS naming was significantly longer compared to that for the RAN, though there were very few errors. The RAS naming showed the highest correlation with the four syllable word reading. This study demonstrated that the performance in rapid automatized naming of numbers and pictures were closely related with performance on reading tasks. Thus Japanese children with reading disorders such as developmental dyslexia should also be evaluated for rapid automatized naming.

Temporal Features of the Differentiation between Self-Name and Religious Leader Name among Christians: An ERP Study

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ruixue Xia

2018-01-01

Full Text Available Existing neuroimaging studies have shown that religion, as a subjective culture, can influence self-referential processing. However, the time course of this impact remains unclear. The present study examined how Christians process their own names, the name of their religious leader (i.e., Jesus, and a famous person’s name (i.e., Yao Ming. Behavioral and EEG data were recorded while the participants performed a name-color judgment task for these three names. The behavioral data showed no significant differences in reaction time or accuracy among the names. However, the ERP data showed that the P200 and P300 amplitudes elicited by the self-name and religious leader name were larger than those elicited by the famous name. Furthermore, the self-name also elicited a larger P300 amplitude than the religious leader name did. These results suggested that both the self-name and the religious leader name were processed preferentially due to their important social value for the self as compared to a generally famous name. Importantly, the dissociation between the self-name and the religious leader name was observed at a high-order cognitive stage, which might be attributed to their different roles in one’s self-concept.

Situated conceptualization and semantic processing: effects of emotional experience and context availability in semantic categorization and naming tasks.

Science.gov (United States)

Moffat, Michael; Siakaluk, Paul D; Sidhu, David M; Pexman, Penny M

2015-04-01

It has been proposed that much of conceptual knowledge is acquired through situated conceptualization, such that both external (e.g., agents, objects, events) and internal (e.g., emotions, introspections) environments are considered important (Barsalou, 2003). To evaluate this proposal, we characterized two dimensions by which situated conceptualization may be measured and which should have different relevance for abstract and concrete concepts; namely, emotional experience (i.e., the ease with which words evoke emotional experience; Newcombe, Campbell, Siakaluk, & Pexman, 2012) and context availability (i.e., the ease with which words evoke contexts in which their referents may appear; Schwanenflugel & Shoben, 1983). We examined the effects of these two dimensions on abstract and concrete word processing in verbal semantic categorization (VSCT) and naming tasks. In the VSCT, emotional experience facilitated processing of abstract words but inhibited processing of concrete words, whereas context availability facilitated processing of both types of words. In the naming task in which abstract words and concrete words were not blocked by emotional experience, context availability facilitated responding to only the abstract words. In the naming task in which abstract words and concrete words were blocked by emotional experience, emotional experience facilitated responding to only the abstract words, whereas context availability facilitated responding to only the concrete words. These results were observed even with several lexical (e.g., frequency, age of acquisition) and semantic (e.g., concreteness, arousal, valence) variables included in the analyses. As such, the present research suggests that emotional experience and context availability tap into different aspects of situated conceptualization and make unique contributions to the representation and processing of abstract and concrete concepts.

The contribution of discrete-trial naming and visual recognition to rapid automatized naming deficits of dyslexic children with and without a history of language delay

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Filippo eGasperini

2014-09-01

Full Text Available Children with Developmental Dyslexia (DD are impaired in Rapid Automatized Naming (RAN tasks, where subjects are asked to name arrays of high frequency items as quickly as possible. However the reasons why RAN speed discriminates DD from typical readers are not yet fully understood. Our study was aimed to identify some of the cognitive mechanisms underlying RAN-reading relationship by comparing one group of 32 children with DD with an age-matched control group of typical readers on a naming and a visual recognition task both using a discrete-trial methodology , in addition to a serial RAN task, all using the same stimuli (digits and colors. Results showed a significant slowness of DD children in both serial and discrete-trial naming tasks regardless of type of stimulus, but no difference between the two groups on the discrete-trial recognition task. Significant differences between DD and control participants in the RAN task disappeared when performance in the discrete-trial naming task was partialled out by covariance analysis for colors, but not for digits. The same pattern held in a subgroup of DD subjects with a history of early language delay (LD. By contrast, in a subsample of DD children without LD the RAN deficit was specific for digits and disappeared after slowness in discrete-trial naming was partialled out. Slowness in discrete-trial naming was more evident for LD than for noLD DD children. Overall, our results confirm previous evidence indicating a name-retrieval deficit as a cognitive impairment underlying RAN slowness in DD children. This deficit seems to be more marked in DD children with previous LD. Moreover, additional cognitive deficits specifically associated with serial RAN tasks have to be taken into account when explaining deficient RAN speed of these latter children. We suggest that partially different cognitive dysfunctions underpin superficially similar RAN impairments in different subgroups of DD subjects.

What’s in a name depends on the type of name: The relationships between semantic and phonological access, reading fluency and reading comprehension

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Poulsen, Mads; Elbro, Carsten

2013-01-01

examined both components in naming tasks – with isolated letters (phonological) and pictures (semantic). Seventy-five Grade 5 students were administered measures of letter and picture naming speed, word and nonword reading fluency, reading comprehension, together with control measures of vocabulary....... The results showed that letter naming was a unique predictor of word reading fluency, while picture naming was not. Conversely, picture naming speed contributed unique variance to reading comprehension, while letter naming did not. The results indicate that phonological and semantic lexical access speed...

Sustained Attention Ability Affects Simple Picture Naming

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Suzanne R. Jongman

2017-07-01

Full Text Available Sustained attention has previously been shown as a requirement for language production. However, this is mostly evident for difficult conditions, such as a dual-task situation. The current study provides corroborating evidence that this relationship holds even for simple picture naming. Sustained attention ability, indexed both by participants’ reaction times and individuals’ hit rate (the proportion of correctly detected targets on a digit discrimination task, correlated with picture naming latencies. Individuals with poor sustained attention were consistently slower and their RT distributions were more positively skewed when naming pictures compared to individuals with better sustained attention. Additionally, the need to sustain attention was manipulated by changing the speed of stimulus presentation. Research has suggested that fast event rates tax sustained attention resources to a larger degree than slow event rates. However, in this study the fast event rate did not result in increased difficulty, neither for the picture naming task nor for the sustained attention task. Instead, the results point to a speed-accuracy trade-off in the sustained attention task (lower accuracy but faster responses in the fast than in the slow event rate, and to a benefit for faster rates in the picture naming task (shorter naming latencies with no difference in accuracy. Performance on both tasks was largely comparable, supporting previous findings that sustained attention is called upon during language production.

Effects of navigated TMS on object and action naming

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Julio Cesar Hernandez-Pavon

2014-09-01

Full Text Available Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS has been used to induce speech disturbances and to affect speech performance during different naming tasks. Lately, repetitive navigated TMS (nTMS has been used for non-invasive mapping of cortical speech-related areas. Different naming tasks may give different information that can be useful for presurgical evaluation. We studied the sensitivity of object and action naming tasks to nTMS and compared the distributions of cortical sites where nTMS produced naming errors. Eight healthy subjects named pictures of objects and actions during repetitive nTMS delivered to semi-random left-hemispheric sites. Subject-validated image stacks were obtained in the baseline naming of all pictures before nTMS. Thereafter, nTMS pulse trains were delivered while the subjects were naming the images of objects or actions. The sessions were video-recorded for offline analysis. Naming during nTMS was compared with the baseline performance. The nTMS-induced naming errors were categorized by error type and location. nTMS produced no-response errors, phonological paraphasias, and semantic paraphasias. In seven out of eight subjects, nTMS produced more errors during object than action naming. Both intrasubject and intersubject analysis showed that object naming was significantly more sensitive to nTMS. When the number of errors was compared according to a given area, nTMS to postcentral gyrus induced more errors during object than action naming. Object naming is apparently more easily disrupted by TMS than action naming. Different stimulus types can be useful for locating different aspects of speech functions. This provides new possibilities in both basic and clinical research of cortical speech representations.

Improved vocabulary production after naming therapy in aphasia: can gains in picture naming generalize to connected speech?

Science.gov (United States)

Conroy, Paul; Sage, Karen; Ralph, Matt Lambon

2009-01-01

Naming accuracy for nouns and verbs in aphasia can vary across different elicitation contexts, for example, simple picture naming, composite picture description, narratives, and conversation. For some people with aphasia, naming may be more accurate to simple pictures as opposed to naming in spontaneous, connected speech; for others, the opposite pattern may be evident. These differences have, in some instances, been related to word class (for example, noun or verb) as well as aphasia subtype. Given that the aim of picture-naming therapies is to improve word-finding in general, these differences in naming accuracy across contexts may have important implications for the potential functional benefits of picture-naming therapies. This study aimed to explore single-word therapy for both nouns and verbs, and to answer the following questions. (1) To what extent does an increase in naming accuracy after picture-naming therapy (for both nouns and verbs) predict accurate naming of the same items in less constrained spontaneous connected speech tasks such as composite picture description and retelling of a narrative? (2) Does the word class targeted in therapy (verb or noun) dictate whether there is 'carry-over' of the therapy item to connected speech tasks? (3) Does the speed at which the picture is named after therapy predict whether it will also be used appropriately in connected speech tasks? Seven participants with aphasia of varying degrees of severity and subtype took part in ten therapy sessions over five weeks. A set of potentially useful items was collected from control participant accounts of the Cookie Theft Picture Description and the Cinderella Story from the Quantitative Production Analysis. Twenty-four of these words (twelve verbs and twelve nouns) were collated for each participant, on the basis that they had failed to name them in either simple picture naming or connected speech tasks (picture-supported narrative and unsupported retelling of a narrative

Dissociations between word and picture naming in Persian speakers with aphasia

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Mehdi Bakhtiar

2014-04-01

Full Text Available Studies of patients with aphasia have found dissociations in their ability to read words and name pictures (Hillis & Caramazza, 1995; Hillis & Caramazza, 1991. Persian orthography is characterised by nearly regular orthography-phonology (OP mappings however, the omission of some vowels in the script makes the OP mapping of many words less predictable. The aim of this study was to compare the predictive lexico-semantic variables across reading and picture naming tasks in Persian aphasia while considering the variability across participants and items using mixed modeling. Methods and Results A total of 21 brain-injured Persian-speaking patients suffering from aphasia were asked to name 200 normalized Snodgrass object pictures and words taken from Bakhtiar, Nilipour and Weekes (2013 in different sessions. The results showed that word naming performance was significantly better than object naming in Persian speakers with aphasia (p<0.0001. Applying McNemar’s test to examine individual differences found that 18 patients showed significantly better performance in word reading compared to picture naming, 2 patients showed no difference between naming and reading (i.e. case 1 and 10, and one patient (i.e. case 5 showed significantly better naming compared to reading χ (1=10.23, p< 0.01 (see also Figure 1. A mixed-effect logistic regression analysis revealed that the degree of spelling transparency (i.e. the number of letters in a word divided by the number of its phonemes had an effect on word naming (along with frequency, age of acquisition (AoA, and imageability and picture naming (along with image agreement, AoA, word length, frequency and name agreement with a much stronger effect on the word naming task (b= 1.67, SE= 0.41, z= 4.05, p< 0.0001 compared to the picture naming task (b= -0.64, SE= 0.32, z= 2, p< 0.05. Conclusion The dissociation between word naming and picture naming shown by many patients suggests at least two routes are available

Developmental changes in using verbal self-cueing in task-switching situations: the impact of task practice and task-sequencing demands

Science.gov (United States)

Kray, Jutta; Gaspard, Hanna; Karbach, Julia; Blaye, Agnès

2013-01-01

In this study we examined whether developmental changes in using verbal self-cueing for task-goal maintenance are dependent on the amount of task practice and task-sequencing demands. To measure task-goal maintenance we applied a switching paradigm in which children either performed only task A or B in single-task blocks or switched between them on every second trial in mixed-task blocks. Task-goal maintenance was determined by comparing the performance between both blocks (mixing costs). The influence of verbal self-cueing was measured by instructing children to either name the next task aloud or not to verbalize during task preparation. Task-sequencing demands were varied between groups whereas one group received spatial task cues to support keeping track of the task sequence, while the other group did not. We also varied by the amount of prior practice in task switching while one group of participants practiced task switching first, before performing the task naming in addition, and the other group did it vice versa. Results of our study investigating younger (8–10 years) and older children (11–13 years) revealed no age differences in beneficial effects of verbal self-cueing. In line with previous findings, children showed reduced mixing costs under task-naming instructions and under conditions of low task-sequence demands (with the presence of spatial task cues). Our results also indicated that these benefits were only obtained for those groups of children that first received practice in task switching alone with no additional verbalization instruction. These findings suggest that internal task-cueing strategies can be efficiently used in children but only if they received prior practice in the underlying task so that demands on keeping and coordinating various instructions are reduced. Moreover, children benefitted from spatial task cues for better task-goal maintenance only if no verbal task-cueing strategy was introduced first. PMID:24381566

The processing of blend words in naming and sentence reading.

Science.gov (United States)

Johnson, Rebecca L; Slate, Sarah Rose; Teevan, Allison R; Juhasz, Barbara J

2018-04-01

Research exploring the processing of morphologically complex words, such as compound words, has found that they are decomposed into their constituent parts during processing. Although much is known about the processing of compound words, very little is known about the processing of lexicalised blend words, which are created from parts of two words, often with phoneme overlap (e.g., brunch). In the current study, blends were matched with non-blend words on a variety of lexical characteristics, and blend processing was examined using two tasks: a naming task and an eye-tracking task that recorded eye movements during reading. Results showed that blend words were processed more slowly than non-blend control words in both tasks. Blend words led to longer reaction times in naming and longer processing times on several eye movement measures compared to non-blend words. This was especially true for blends that were long, rated low in word familiarity, but were easily recognisable as blends.

Revision of XLM-2013-1129 as invited by the Action Editor, Rebekah Smith: Older Adults Don’t Notice their Names: A New Twist to a Classic Attention Task

OpenAIRE

Naveh-Benjamin, Moshe; Kilb, Angela; Maddox, Geoff; Thomas, Jenna; Fine, Hope; Chen, Tina; Cowan, Nelson

2014-01-01

Although older adults have lower working memory spans on average than young adults, we demonstrate in five experiments one way in which older adults paradoxically resemble higher-capacity young adults. Specifically, in a selective-listening task, older adults almost always failed to notice their names presented in an unattended channel. This is an exaggeration of what high-span young adults show, and the opposite of what low spans show. This striking finding in older adults remained significa...

Naming of objects, faces and buildings in mild cognitive impairment.

Science.gov (United States)

Ahmed, Samrah; Arnold, Robert; Thompson, Sian A; Graham, Kim S; Hodges, John R

2008-06-01

Accruing evidence suggests that the cognitive deficits in very early Alzheimer's Disease (AD) are not confined to episodic memory, with a number of studies documenting semantic memory deficits, especially for knowledge of people. To investigate whether this difficulty in naming famous people extends to other proper names based information, three naming tasks - the Graded Naming Test (GNT), which uses objects and animals, the Graded Faces Test (GFT) and the newly designed Graded Buildings Test (GBT) - were administered to 69 participants (32 patients in the early prodromal stage of AD, so-called Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI), and 37 normal control participants). Patients were found to be impaired on all three tests compared to controls, although naming of objects was significantly better than naming of faces and buildings. Discriminant analysis successfully predicted group membership for 100% controls and 78.1% of patients. The results suggest that even in cases that do not yet fulfil criteria for AD naming of famous people and buildings is impaired, and that both these semantic domains show greater vulnerability than general semantic knowledge. A semantic deficit together with the hallmark episodic deficit may be common in MCI, and that the use of graded tasks tapping semantic memory may be useful for the early identification of patients with MCI.

Named Entity Linking Algorithm

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

M. F. Panteleev

2017-01-01

Full Text Available In the tasks of processing text in natural language, Named Entity Linking (NEL represents the task to define and link some entity, which is found in the text, with some entity in the knowledge base (for example, Dbpedia. Currently, there is a diversity of approaches to solve this problem, but two main classes can be identified: graph-based approaches and machine learning-based ones. Graph and Machine Learning approaches-based algorithm is proposed accordingly to the stated assumptions about the interrelations of named entities in a sentence and in general.In the case of graph-based approaches, it is necessary to solve the problem of identifying an optimal set of the related entities according to some metric that characterizes the distance between these entities in a graph built on some knowledge base. Due to limitations in processing power, to solve this task directly is impossible. Therefore, its modification is proposed. Based on the algorithms of machine learning, an independent solution cannot be built due to small volumes of training datasets relevant to NEL task. However, their use can contribute to improving the quality of the algorithm. The adaptation of the Latent Dirichlet Allocation model is proposed in order to obtain a measure of the compatibility of attributes of various entities encountered in one context.The efficiency of the proposed algorithm was experimentally tested. A test dataset was independently generated. On its basis the performance of the model was compared using the proposed algorithm with the open source product DBpedia Spotlight, which solves the NEL problem.The mockup, based on the proposed algorithm, showed a low speed as compared to DBpedia Spotlight. However, the fact that it has shown higher accuracy, stipulates the prospects for work in this direction.The main directions of development were proposed in order to increase the accuracy of the system and its productivity.

Effects of sequential and discrete rapid naming on reading in Japanese children with reading difficulty.

Science.gov (United States)

Wakamiya, Eiji; Okumura, Tomohito; Nakanishi, Makoto; Takeshita, Takashi; Mizuta, Mekumi; Kurimoto, Naoko; Tamai, Hiroshi

2011-06-01

To clarify whether rapid naming ability itself is a main underpinning factor of rapid automatized naming tests (RAN) and how deep an influence the discrete decoding process has on reading, we performed discrete naming tasks and discrete hiragana reading tasks as well as sequential naming tasks and sequential hiragana reading tasks with 38 Japanese schoolchildren with reading difficulty. There were high correlations between both discrete and sequential hiragana reading and sentence reading, suggesting that some mechanism which automatizes hiragana reading makes sentence reading fluent. In object and color tasks, there were moderate correlations between sentence reading and sequential naming, and between sequential naming and discrete naming. But no correlation was found between reading tasks and discrete naming tasks. The influence of rapid naming ability of objects and colors upon reading seemed relatively small, and multi-item processing may work in relation to these. In contrast, in the digit naming task there was moderate correlation between sentence reading and discrete naming, while no correlation was seen between sequential naming and discrete naming. There was moderate correlation between reading tasks and sequential digit naming tasks. Digit rapid naming ability has more direct effect on reading while its effect on RAN is relatively limited. The ratio of how rapid naming ability influences RAN and reading seems to vary according to kind of the stimuli used. An assumption about components in RAN which influence reading is discussed in the context of both sequential processing and discrete naming speed. Copyright © 2010 The Japanese Society of Child Neurology. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Task activation and functional connectivity show concordant memory laterality in temporal lobe epilepsy.

Science.gov (United States)

Sideman, Noah; Chaitanya, Ganne; He, Xiaosong; Doucet, Gaelle; Kim, Na Young; Sperling, Michael R; Sharan, Ashwini D; Tracy, Joseph I

2018-04-01

In epilepsy, asymmetries in the organization of mesial temporal lobe (MTL) functions help determine the cognitive risk associated with procedures such as anterior temporal lobectomy. Past studies have investigated the change/shift in a visual episodic memory laterality index (LI) in mesial temporal lobe structures through functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) task activations. Here, we examine whether underlying task-related functional connectivity (FC) is concordant with such standard fMRI laterality measures. A total of 56 patients with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) (Left TLE [LTLE]: 31; Right TLE [RTLE]: 25) and 34 matched healthy controls (HC) underwent fMRI scanning during performance of a scene encoding task (SET). We assessed an activation-based LI of the hippocampal gyrus (HG) and parahippocampal gyrus (PHG) during the SET and its correspondence with task-related FC measures. Analyses involving the HG and PHG showed that the patients with LTLE had a consistently higher LI (right-lateralized) than that of the HC and group with RTLE, indicating functional reorganization. The patients with RTLE did not display a reliable contralateral shift away from the pathology, with the mesial structures showing quite distinct laterality patterns (HG, no laterality bias; PHG, no evidence of LI shift). The FC data for the group with LTLE provided confirmation of reorganization effects, revealing that a rightward task LI may be based on underlying connections between several left-sided regions (middle/superior occipital and left medial frontal gyri) and the right PHG. The FCs between the right HG and left anterior cingulate/medial frontal gyri were also observed in LTLE. Importantly, the data demonstrate that the areas involved in the LTLE task activation shift to the right hemisphere showed a corresponding increase in task-related FCs between the hemispheres. Altered laterality patterns based on mesial temporal lobe epilepsy (MTLE) pathology manifest as several

Resolving person names in web people search

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Balog, K.; Azzopardi, L.; de Rijke, M.; King, I.; Baeza-Yates, R.

2009-01-01

Disambiguating person names in a set of documents (such as a set of web pages returned in response to a person name) is a key task for the presentation of results and the automatic profiling of experts. With largely unstructured documents and an unknown number of people with the same name the

Chemical name extraction based on automatic training data generation and rich feature set.

Science.gov (United States)

Yan, Su; Spangler, W Scott; Chen, Ying

2013-01-01

The automation of extracting chemical names from text has significant value to biomedical and life science research. A major barrier in this task is the difficulty of getting a sizable and good quality data to train a reliable entity extraction model. Another difficulty is the selection of informative features of chemical names, since comprehensive domain knowledge on chemistry nomenclature is required. Leveraging random text generation techniques, we explore the idea of automatically creating training sets for the task of chemical name extraction. Assuming the availability of an incomplete list of chemical names, called a dictionary, we are able to generate well-controlled, random, yet realistic chemical-like training documents. We statistically analyze the construction of chemical names based on the incomplete dictionary, and propose a series of new features, without relying on any domain knowledge. Compared to state-of-the-art models learned from manually labeled data and domain knowledge, our solution shows better or comparable results in annotating real-world data with less human effort. Moreover, we report an interesting observation about the language for chemical names. That is, both the structural and semantic components of chemical names follow a Zipfian distribution, which resembles many natural languages.

When does picture naming take longer than word reading?

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Andrea eValente

2016-01-01

Full Text Available Differences between the cognitive processes involved in word reading and picture naming are well established (e.g. visual or lexico-semantic stages. Still, it is commonly thought that retrieval of phonological forms is shared across tasks. We report a test of this second hypothesis based on the time course of electroencephalographic (EEG neural activity, reasoning that similar EEG patterns might index similar processing stages.Seventeen participants named objects and read aloud the corresponding words while their behavior and EEG activity were recorded. The latter was analyzed from stimulus onset onwards (stimulus-locked analysis and from response onset backwards (response-locked analysis, using non-parametric statistics and the spatio-temporal segmentation of ERPs.Behavioral results confirmed that reading entails shorter latencies than naming. The analysis of EEG activity within the stimulus-to-response period allowed distinguishing three phases, broadly successive. Early on, we observed identical distribution of electric field potentials (i.e. topographies albeit with large amplitude divergences between tasks. Then, we observed sustained cross-task differences in topographies accompanied by extended amplitude differences. Finally, the two tasks again revealed the same topographies, with significant cross-task delays in their onsets and offsets, and still significant amplitude differences. In the response-locked ERPs, the common topography displayed an offset closer to response articulation in word reading compared with picture naming, that is the transition between the offset of this shared map and the onset of articulation was significantly faster in word reading.The results suggest that the degree of cross-task similarity varies across time. The first phase suggests similar visual processes of variable intensity and time course across tasks, while the second phase suggests marked differences. Finally, similarities and differences within the

Text-based language identification of multilingual names

CSIR Research Space (South Africa)

Giwa, O

2015-11-01

Full Text Available Text-based language identification (T-LID) of isolated words has been shown to be useful for various speech processing tasks, including pronunciation modelling and data categorisation. When the words to be categorised are proper names, the task...

Named entity normalization in user generated content

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Jijkoun, V.; Khalid, M.A.; Marx, M.; de Rijke, M.

2008-01-01

Named entity recognition is important for semantically oriented retrieval tasks, such as question answering, entity retrieval, biomedical retrieval, trend detection, and event and entity tracking. In many of these tasks it is important to be able to accurately normalize the recognized entities,

Active learning for ontological event extraction incorporating named entity recognition and unknown word handling.

Science.gov (United States)

Han, Xu; Kim, Jung-jae; Kwoh, Chee Keong

2016-01-01

Biomedical text mining may target various kinds of valuable information embedded in the literature, but a critical obstacle to the extension of the mining targets is the cost of manual construction of labeled data, which are required for state-of-the-art supervised learning systems. Active learning is to choose the most informative documents for the supervised learning in order to reduce the amount of required manual annotations. Previous works of active learning, however, focused on the tasks of entity recognition and protein-protein interactions, but not on event extraction tasks for multiple event types. They also did not consider the evidence of event participants, which might be a clue for the presence of events in unlabeled documents. Moreover, the confidence scores of events produced by event extraction systems are not reliable for ranking documents in terms of informativity for supervised learning. We here propose a novel committee-based active learning method that supports multi-event extraction tasks and employs a new statistical method for informativity estimation instead of using the confidence scores from event extraction systems. Our method is based on a committee of two systems as follows: We first employ an event extraction system to filter potential false negatives among unlabeled documents, from which the system does not extract any event. We then develop a statistical method to rank the potential false negatives of unlabeled documents 1) by using a language model that measures the probabilities of the expression of multiple events in documents and 2) by using a named entity recognition system that locates the named entities that can be event arguments (e.g. proteins). The proposed method further deals with unknown words in test data by using word similarity measures. We also apply our active learning method for the task of named entity recognition. We evaluate the proposed method against the BioNLP Shared Tasks datasets, and show that our method

An ERP-study of brand and no-name products.

Science.gov (United States)

Thomas, Anika; Hammer, Anke; Beibst, Gabriele; Münte, Thomas F

2013-11-23

Brands create product personalities that are thought to affect consumer decisions. Here we assessed, using the Go/No-go Association Task (GNAT) from social psychology, whether brands as opposed to no-name products are associated with implicit positive attitudes. Healthy young German participants viewed series of photos of cosmetics and food items (half of them brands) intermixed with positive and negative words. In any given run, one category of goods (e.g., cosmetics) and one kind of words (e.g., positive) had to be responded to, whereas responses had to be withheld for the other categories. Event-related brain potentials were recorded during the task. Unexpectedly, there were no response-time differences between congruent (brand and positive words) and incongruent (brand and negative words) pairings but ERPs showed differences as a function of congruency in the 600-750 ms time-window hinting at the existence of implicit attitudes towards brand and no-name stimuli. This finding deserves further investigation in future studies. Moreover, the amplitude of the late positive component (LPC) was found to be enhanced for brand as opposed to no-name stimuli. Congruency effects suggest that ERPs are sensitive to implicit attitudes. Moreover, the results for the LPC imply that pictures of brand products are more arousing than those of no-name products, which may ultimately contribute to consumer decisions.

Semantic Dementia Shows both Storage and Access Disorders of Semantic Memory

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Yumi Takahashi

2014-01-01

Full Text Available Objective. Previous studies have shown that some patients with semantic dementia (SD have memory storage disorders, while others have access disorders. Here, we report three SD cases with both disorders. Methods. Ten pictures and ten words were prepared as visual stimuli to determine if the patients could correctly answer names and select pictures after hearing the names of items (Card Presentation Task, assessing memory storage disorder. In a second task, the viewing time was set at 20 or 300 msec (Momentary Presentation Task, evaluating memory access disorder using items for which correct answers were given in the first task. The results were compared with those for 6 patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD. Results. The SD patients had lower scores than the AD group for both tasks, suggesting both storage and access disorders. The AD group had almost perfect scores on the Card Presentation Task but showed impairment on the Momentary Presentation Task, although to a lesser extent than the SD cases. Conclusions. These results suggest that SD patients have both storage and access disorders and have more severe access disorder than patients with AD.

Facilitation and interference in naming: A consequence of the same learning process?

Science.gov (United States)

Hughes, Julie W; Schnur, Tatiana T

2017-08-01

Our success with naming depends on what we have named previously, a phenomenon thought to reflect learning processes. Repeatedly producing the same name facilitates language production (i.e., repetition priming), whereas producing semantically related names hinders subsequent performance (i.e., semantic interference). Semantic interference is found whether naming categorically related items once (continuous naming) or multiple times (blocked cyclic naming). A computational model suggests that the same learning mechanism responsible for facilitation in repetition creates semantic interference in categorical naming (Oppenheim, Dell, & Schwartz, 2010). Accordingly, we tested the predictions that variability in semantic interference is correlated across categorical naming tasks and is caused by learning, as measured by two repetition priming tasks (picture-picture repetition priming, Exp. 1; definition-picture repetition priming, Exp. 2, e.g., Wheeldon & Monsell, 1992). In Experiment 1 (77 subjects) semantic interference and repetition priming effects were robust, but the results revealed no relationship between semantic interference effects across contexts. Critically, learning (picture-picture repetition priming) did not predict semantic interference effects in either task. We replicated these results in Experiment 2 (81 subjects), finding no relationship between semantic interference effects across tasks or between semantic interference effects and learning (definition-picture repetition priming). We conclude that the changes underlying facilitatory and interfering effects inherent to lexical access are the result of distinct learning processes where multiple mechanisms contribute to semantic interference in naming. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Visual object naming in patients with small lesions centered at the left temporopolar region.

Science.gov (United States)

Campo, Pablo; Poch, Claudia; Toledano, Rafael; Igoa, José Manuel; Belinchón, Mercedes; García-Morales, Irene; Gil-Nagel, Antonio

2016-01-01

Naming is considered a left hemisphere function that operates according to a posterior-anterior specificity gradient, with more fine-grained information processed in most anterior regions of the temporal lobe (ATL), including the temporal pole (TP). Word finding difficulties are typically assessed using visual confrontation naming tasks, and have been associated with selective damage to ATL resulting from different aetiologies. Nonetheless, the role of the ATL and, more specifically, of the TP in the naming network is not completely established. Most of the accumulated evidence is based on studies on patients with extensive lesions, often bilateral. Furthermore, there is a considerable variability in the anatomical definition of ATL. To better understand the specific involvement of the left TP in visual object naming, we assessed a group of patients with an epileptogenic lesion centered at the TP, and compared their performance with that of a strictly matched control group. We also administered a battery of verbal and non-verbal semantic tasks that was used as a semantic memory baseline. Patients showed an impaired naming ability, manifesting in a certain degree of anomia and semantically related naming errors, which was influenced by concept familiarity. This pattern took place in a context of mild semantic dysfunction that was evident in different types and modalities of semantic tasks. Therefore, current findings demonstrate that a restricted lesion to the left TP can cause a significant deficit in object naming. Of importance, the observed semantic impairment was far from the devastating degradation observed in semantic dementia and other bilateral conditions.

Teaching receptive naming of Chinese characters to children with autism by incorporating echolalia.

OpenAIRE

Leung, J P; Wu, K I

1997-01-01

The facilitative effect of incorporating echolalia on teaching receptive naming of Chinese characters to children with autism was assessed. In Experiment 1, echoing the requested character name prior to the receptive naming task facilitated matching a character to its name. In addition, task performance was consistently maintained only when echolalia preceded the receptive manual response. Positive results from generalization tests suggested that learned responses occurred across various nove...

Is visual attention automatically attracted to one's own name?

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Bundesen, C; Kyllingsbæk, Søren; Houmann, K J

1997-01-01

Subjects were presented with briefly exposed visual displays of words that were common first names with a length of four to six letters. In the main experiment, each display consisted of four words: two names shown in red and two shown in white. The subject's task was to report the red names (tar......, visual attention was not automatically attracted by the subject's own name....

Contrasting patterns of comprehension for superordinate, basic-level, and subordinate names in semantic dementia and aphasic stroke patients.

Science.gov (United States)

Crutch, Sebastian J; Warrington, Elizabeth K

2008-06-01

It is well established that patients with semantic memory impairment show a relative sparing of general superordinate information as compared with more detailed item-specific information. The objective of the current study was to examine whether or not this superordinate superiority effect is also reliably observed in individuals with stroke. The participants were 3 patients with a diagnosis of semantic dementia (SD) and 4 left middle cerebral artery stroke patients. In the first experiment, participants were administered a series of spoken-word-picture matching tasks, in which picture identity was probed under two conditions: item name (e.g., goose, beetle, shark, hedgehog) and superordinate name (e.g., bird, insect, fish, mammal). The SD patients showed the predicted pattern of performance, identifying stimuli significantly more accurately by their superordinate term than by their specific name. By contrast, the stroke patients showed the reverse pattern of inferior performance in the superordinate condition in all versions of the experimental task. In a second experiment comparing comprehension ofbasic-level names (e.g., dog, bird, fish) and subordinate-level names (e.g., Dalmatian, sparrow, trout), stroke patients also showed a reversal of the normal basic-level effect, showing less accurate comprehension of basic-level names. The pattern of results documented among the stroke patients cannot be accommodated obviously or readily by existing models of conceptual knowledge. These contrasting abilities of SD patients, stroke patients, and normal healthy participants to process subordinate, basic-level, and superordinate names are considered in relation to disorders of executive processing and taxonomic categorization.

Task Irrelevant External Cues Can Influence Language Selection in Voluntary Object Naming: Evidence from Hindi-English Bilinguals.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Divya Bhatia

Full Text Available We examined if external cues such as other agents' actions can influence the choice of language during voluntary and cued object naming in bilinguals in three experiments. Hindi-English bilinguals first saw a cartoon waving at a color patch. They were then asked to either name a picture in the language of their choice (voluntary block or to name in the instructed language (cued block. The colors waved at by the cartoon were also the colors used as language cues (Hindi or English. We compared the influence of the cartoon's choice of color on naming when speakers had to indicate their choice explicitly before naming (Experiment 1 as opposed to when they named directly on seeing the pictures (Experiment 2 and 3. Results showed that participants chose the language indicated by the cartoon greater number of times (Experiment 1 and 3. Speakers also switched significantly to the language primed by the cartoon greater number of times (Experiment 1 and 2. These results suggest that choices leading to voluntary action, as in the case of object naming can be influenced significantly by external non-linguistic cues. Importantly, these symbolic influences can work even when other agents are merely indicating their choices and are not interlocutors in bilingual communication.

Task control signals in pediatric Tourette syndrome show evidence of immature and anomalous functional activity

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jessica A Church

2009-11-01

Full Text Available Tourette Syndrome (TS is a pediatric movement disorder that may affect control signaling in the brain. Previous work has proposed a dual-networks architecture of control processing involving a task-maintenance network and an adaptive control network (Dosenbach et al., 2008. A prior resting-state functional connectivity MRI (rs-fcMRI analysis in TS has revealed functional immaturity in both putative control networks, with “anomalous” correlations (i.e. correlations outside the typical developmental range limited to the adaptive control network (Church et al., 2009. The present study used functional MRI (fMRI to study brain activity related to adaptive control (by studying start-cues signals, and to task-maintenance (by studying signals sustained across a task set. Two hypotheses from the previous rs-fcMRI results were tested. First, adaptive control (i.e., start-cue activity will be altered in TS, including activity inconsistent with typical development (“anomalous”. Second, group differences found in task maintenance (i.e., sustained activity will be consistent with functional immaturity in TS. We examined regions found through a direct comparison of adolescents with and without TS, as well as regions derived from a previous investigation that showed differences between unaffected children and adults. The TS group showed decreased start-cue signal magnitude in regions where start-cue activity is unchanged over typical development, consistent with anomalous adaptive control. The TS group also had higher magnitude sustained signals in frontal cortex regions that overlapped with regions showing differences over typical development, consistent with immature task maintenance in TS. The results demonstrate task-related fMRI signal differences anticipated by the atypical functional connectivity found previously in adolescents with TS, strengthening the evidence for functional immaturity and anomalous signaling in control networks in adolescents

Cortical mechanisms of person representation: recognition of famous and personally familiar names.

Science.gov (United States)

Sugiura, Motoaki; Sassa, Yuko; Watanabe, Jobu; Akitsuki, Yuko; Maeda, Yasuhiro; Matsue, Yoshihiko; Fukuda, Hiroshi; Kawashima, Ryuta

2006-06-01

Personally familiar people are likely to be represented more richly in episodic, emotional, and behavioral contexts than famous people, who are usually represented predominantly in semantic context. To reveal cortical mechanisms supporting this differential person representation, we compared cortical activation during name recognition tasks between personally familiar and famous names, using an event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Normal subjects performed familiar- or unfamiliar-name detection tasks during visual presentation of personally familiar (Personal), famous (Famous), and unfamiliar (Unfamiliar) names. The bilateral temporal poles and anterolateral temporal cortices, as well as the left temporoparietal junction, were activated in the contrasts Personal-Unfamiliar and Famous-Unfamiliar to a similar extent. The bilateral occipitotemporoparietal junctions, precuneus, and posterior cingulate cortex showed activation in the contrasts Personal-Unfamiliar and Personal-Famous. Together with previous findings, differential activation in the occipitotemporoparietal junction, precuneus, and posterior cingulate cortex between personally familiar and famous names is considered to reflect differential person representation. The similar extent of activation for personally familiar and famous names in the temporal pole and anterolateral temporal cortex is consistent with the associative role of the anterior temporal cortex in person identification, which has been conceptualized as a person identity node in many models of person identification. The left temporoparietal junction was considered to process familiar written names. The results illustrated the neural correlates of the person representation as a network of discrete regions in the bilateral posterior cortices, with the anterior temporal cortices having a unique associative role.

Gait stability and variability measures show effects of impaired cognition and dual tasking in frail people

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

de Vries Oscar J

2011-01-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background Falls in frail elderly are a common problem with a rising incidence. Gait and postural instability are major risk factors for falling, particularly in geriatric patients. As walking requires attention, cognitive impairments are likely to contribute to an increased fall risk. An objective quantification of gait and balance ability is required to identify persons with a high tendency to fall. Recent studies have shown that stride variability is increased in elderly and under dual task condition and might be more sensitive to detect fall risk than walking speed. In the present study we complemented stride related measures with measures that quantify trunk movement patterns as indicators of dynamic balance ability during walking. The aim of the study was to quantify the effect of impaired cognition and dual tasking on gait variability and stability in geriatric patients. Methods Thirteen elderly with dementia (mean age: 82.6 ± 4.3 years and thirteen without dementia (79.4 ± 5.55 recruited from a geriatric day clinic, walked at self-selected speed with and without performing a verbal dual task. The Mini Mental State Examination and the Seven Minute Screen were administered. Trunk accelerations were measured with an accelerometer. In addition to walking speed, mean, and variability of stride times, gait stability was quantified using stochastic dynamical measures, namely regularity (sample entropy, long range correlations and local stability exponents of trunk accelerations. Results Dual tasking significantly (p Conclusions The observed trunk adaptations were a consistent instability factor. These results support the concept that changes in cognitive functions contribute to changes in the variability and stability of the gait pattern. Walking under dual task conditions and quantifying gait using dynamical parameters can improve detecting walking disorders and might help to identify those elderly who are able to adapt walking

False recall and recognition of brand names increases over time.

Science.gov (United States)

Sherman, Susan M

2013-01-01

Using the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm, participants are presented with lists of associated words (e.g., bed, awake, night). Subsequently, they reliably have false memories for related but nonpresented words (e.g., SLEEP). Previous research has found that false memories can be created for brand names (e.g., Morrisons, Sainsbury's, Waitrose, and TESCO). The present study investigates the effect of a week's delay on false memories for brand names. Participants were presented with lists of brand names followed by a distractor task. In two between-subjects experiments, participants completed a free recall task or a recognition task either immediately or a week later. In two within-subjects experiments, participants completed a free recall task or a recognition task both immediately and a week later. Correct recall for presented list items decreased over time, whereas false recall for nonpresented lure items increased. For recognition, raw scores revealed an increase in false memory across time reflected in an increase in Remember responses. Analysis of Pr scores revealed that false memory for lures stayed constant over a week, but with an increase in Remember responses in the between-subjects experiment and a trend in the same direction in the within-subjects experiment. Implications for theories of false memory are discussed.

Object Interference in Children's Colour and Position Naming: Lexical Interference or Task-Set Competition?

Science.gov (United States)

La Heij, Wido; Boelens, Harrie; Kuipers, Jan-Rouke

2010-01-01

Cascade models of word production assume that during lexical access all activated concepts activate their names. In line with this view, it has been shown that naming an object's colour is facilitated when colour name and object name are phonologically related (e.g., "blue" and "blouse"). Prevor and Diamond's (2005) recent observation that…

γ-oscillations modulated by picture naming and word reading: intracranial recording in epileptic patients.

Science.gov (United States)

Wu, Helen C; Nagasawa, Tetsuro; Brown, Erik C; Juhasz, Csaba; Rothermel, Robert; Hoechstetter, Karsten; Shah, Aashit; Mittal, Sandeep; Fuerst, Darren; Sood, Sandeep; Asano, Eishi

2011-10-01

We measured cortical gamma-oscillations in response to visual-language tasks consisting of picture naming and word reading in an effort to better understand human visual-language pathways. We studied six patients with focal epilepsy who underwent extraoperative electrocorticography (ECoG) recording. Patients were asked to overtly name images presented sequentially in the picture naming task and to overtly read written words in the reading task. Both tasks commonly elicited gamma-augmentation (maximally at 80-100 Hz) on ECoG in the occipital, inferior-occipital-temporal and inferior-Rolandic areas, bilaterally. Picture naming, compared to reading task, elicited greater gamma-augmentation in portions of pre-motor areas as well as occipital and inferior-occipital-temporal areas, bilaterally. In contrast, word reading elicited greater gamma-augmentation in portions of bilateral occipital, left occipital-temporal and left superior-posterior-parietal areas. Gamma-attenuation was elicited by both tasks in portions of posterior cingulate and ventral premotor-prefrontal areas bilaterally. The number of letters in a presented word was positively correlated to the degree of gamma-augmentation in the medial occipital areas. Gamma-augmentation measured on ECoG identified cortical areas commonly and differentially involved in picture naming and reading tasks. Longer words may activate the primary visual cortex for the more peripheral field. The present study increases our understanding of the visual-language pathways. Copyright © 2011 International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology. Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Benefits of interhemispheric integration on the Japanese Kana script-matching tasks.

Science.gov (United States)

Yoshizaki, K; Tsuji, Y

2000-02-01

We tested Banich's hypothesis that the benefits of bihemispheric processing were enhanced as task complexity increased, when some procedural shortcomings in the previous studies were overcome by using Japanese Kana script-matching tasks. In Exp. 1, the 20 right-handed subjects were given the Physical-Identity task (Katakana-Katakana scripts matching) and the Name-Identity task (Katakana-Hiragana scripts matching). On both tasks, a pair of Kana scripts was tachistoscopically presented in the left, right, and bilateral visual fields. Distractor stimuli were also presented with target Kana scripts on both tasks to equate the processing load between the hemispheres. Analysis showed that, while a bilateral visual-field advantage was found on the name-identity task, a unilateral visual-field advantage was found on the physical-identity task, suggesting that, as the computational complexity of the encoding stage was enhanced, the benefits of bilateral hemispheric processing increased. In Exp. 2, the 16 right-handed subjects were given the same physical-identity task as in Exp. 1, except Hiragana scripts were used as distractors instead of digits to enhance task difficulty. Analysis showed no differences in performance between the unilateral and bilateral visual fields. Taking into account these results of physical-identity tasks for both Exps. 1 and 2, enhancing task demand in the stage of ignoring distractors made the unilateral visual-field advantage obtained in Exp. 1 disappear in Exp. 2. These results supported Banich's hypothesis.

Character-level neural network for biomedical named entity recognition.

Science.gov (United States)

Gridach, Mourad

2017-06-01

Biomedical named entity recognition (BNER), which extracts important named entities such as genes and proteins, is a challenging task in automated systems that mine knowledge in biomedical texts. The previous state-of-the-art systems required large amounts of task-specific knowledge in the form of feature engineering, lexicons and data pre-processing to achieve high performance. In this paper, we introduce a novel neural network architecture that benefits from both word- and character-level representations automatically, by using a combination of bidirectional long short-term memory (LSTM) and conditional random field (CRF) eliminating the need for most feature engineering tasks. We evaluate our system on two datasets: JNLPBA corpus and the BioCreAtIvE II Gene Mention (GM) corpus. We obtained state-of-the-art performance by outperforming the previous systems. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to investigate the combination of deep neural networks, CRF, word embeddings and character-level representation in recognizing biomedical named entities. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Face-name association learning and brain structural substrates in alcoholism.

Science.gov (United States)

Pitel, Anne-Lise; Chanraud, Sandra; Rohlfing, Torsten; Pfefferbaum, Adolf; Sullivan, Edith V

2012-07-01

Associative learning is required for face-name association and is impaired in alcoholism, but the cognitive processes and brain structural components underlying this deficit remain unclear. It is also unknown whether prompting alcoholics to implement a deep level of processing during face-name encoding would enhance performance. Abstinent alcoholics and controls performed a levels-of-processing face-name learning task. Participants indicated whether the face was that of an honest person (deep encoding) or that of a man (shallow encoding). Retrieval was examined using an associative (face-name) recognition task and a single-item (face or name only) recognition task. Participants also underwent 3T structural MRI. Compared with controls, alcoholics had poorer associative and single-item learning and performed at similar levels. Level of processing at encoding had little effect on recognition performance but affected reaction time (RT). Correlations with brain volumes were generally modest and based primarily on RT in alcoholics, where the deeper the processing at encoding, the more restricted the correlations with brain volumes. In alcoholics, longer control task RTs correlated modestly with smaller tissue volumes across several anterior to posterior brain regions; shallow encoding correlated with calcarine and striatal volumes; deep encoding correlated with precuneus and parietal volumes; and associative recognition RT correlated with cerebellar volumes. In controls, poorer associative recognition with deep encoding correlated significantly with smaller volumes of frontal and striatal structures. Despite prompting, alcoholics did not take advantage of encoding memoranda at a deep level to enhance face-name recognition accuracy. Nonetheless, conditions of deeper encoding resulted in faster RTs and more specific relations with regional brain volumes than did shallow encoding. The normal relation between associative recognition and corticostriatal volumes was not

A Coupled Hidden Conditional Random Field Model for Simultaneous Face Clustering and Naming in Videos

KAUST Repository

Zhang, Yifan

2016-08-18

For face naming in TV series or movies, a typical way is using subtitles/script alignment to get the time stamps of the names, and tagging them to the faces. We study the problem of face naming in videos when subtitles are not available. To this end, we divide the problem into two tasks: face clustering which groups the faces depicting a certain person into a cluster, and name assignment which associates a name to each face. Each task is formulated as a structured prediction problem and modeled by a hidden conditional random field (HCRF) model. We argue that the two tasks are correlated problems whose outputs can provide prior knowledge of the target prediction for each other. The two HCRFs are coupled in a unified graphical model called coupled HCRF where the joint dependence of the cluster labels and face name association is naturally embedded in the correlation between the two HCRFs. We provide an effective algorithm to optimize the two HCRFs iteratively and the performance of the two tasks on real-world data set can be both improved.

Never forget a name: white matter connectivity predicts person memory

Science.gov (United States)

Metoki, Athanasia; Alm, Kylie H.; Wang, Yin; Ngo, Chi T.; Olson, Ingrid R.

2018-01-01

Through learning and practice, we can acquire numerous skills, ranging from the simple (whistling) to the complex (memorizing operettas in a foreign language). It has been proposed that complex learning requires a network of brain regions that interact with one another via white matter pathways. One candidate white matter pathway, the uncinate fasciculus (UF), has exhibited mixed results for this hypothesis: some studies have shown UF involvement across a range of memory tasks, while other studies report null results. Here, we tested the hypothesis that the UF supports associative memory processes and that this tract can be parcellated into subtracts that support specific types of memory. Healthy young adults performed behavioral tasks (two face-name learning tasks, one word pair memory task) and underwent a diffusion-weighted imaging scan. Our results revealed that variation in UF microstructure was significantly associated with individual differences in performance on both face-name tasks, as well as the word association memory task. A UF sub-tract, functionally defined by its connectivity between face-selective regions in the anterior temporal lobe and orbitofrontal cortex, selectively predicted face-name learning. In contrast, connectivity between the fusiform face patch and both anterior face patches had no predictive validity. These findings suggest that there is a robust and replicable relationship between the UF and associative learning and memory. Moreover, this large white matter pathway can be subdivided to reveal discrete functional profiles. PMID:28646241

Emergent name-writing abilities of preschool-age children with language impairment.

Science.gov (United States)

Cabell, Sonia Q; Justice, Laura M; Zucker, Tricia A; McGinty, Anita S

2009-01-01

The 2 studies reported in this manuscript collectively address 3 aims: (a) to characterize the name-writing abilities of preschool-age children with language impairment (LI), (b) to identify those emergent literacy skills that are concurrently associated with name-writing abilities, and (c) to compare the name-writing abilities of children with LI to those of their typical language (TL) peers. Fifty-nine preschool-age children with LI were administered a battery of emergent literacy and language assessments, including a task in which the children were asked to write their first names. A subset of these children (n=23) was then compared to a TL-matched sample to characterize performance differences. Results showed that the name-writing abilities of preschoolers with LI were associated with skills in alphabet knowledge and print concepts. Hierarchical multiple regression analysis indicated that only alphabet knowledge uniquely contributed to the variance in concurrent name-writing abilities. In the matched comparison, the TL group demonstrated significantly more advanced name-writing representations than the LI group. Children with LI lag significantly behind their TL peers in name-writing abilities. Speech-language pathologists are encouraged to address the print-related skills of children with LI within their clinical interventions.

A Coupled Hidden Conditional Random Field Model for Simultaneous Face Clustering and Naming in Videos

KAUST Repository

Zhang, Yifan; Tang, Zhiqiang; Wu, Baoyuan; Ji, Qiang; Lu, Hanqing

2016-01-01

, we divide the problem into two tasks: face clustering which groups the faces depicting a certain person into a cluster, and name assignment which associates a name to each face. Each task is formulated as a structured prediction problem and modeled

Tagging Named Entities in Croatian Tweets

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Krešimir Baksa

2017-01-01

Full Text Available Named entity extraction tools designed for recognizing named entities in texts written in standard language (e.g., news stories or legal texts have been shown to be inadequate for user-generated textual content (e.g., tweets, forum posts. In this work, we propose a supervised approach to named entity recognition and classification for Croatian tweets. We compare two sequence labelling models: a hidden Markov model (HMM and conditional random fields (CRF. Our experiments reveal that CRF is the best model for the task, achieving a very good performance of over 87% micro-averaged F1 score. We analyse the contributions of different feature groups and influence of the training set size on the performance of the CRF model.

Rapid naming, phonological memory and reading fluency in Brazilian bilingual students.

Science.gov (United States)

Fleury, Fernanda Oppenheimer; Avila, Clara Regina Brandão de

2015-01-01

To characterize the performance of Brazilian students exposed to two languages in reading fluency, phonological memory, and rapid naming, according to grade level, and to investigate correlations between these variables. Sixty students took part in this study (50% female), enrolled in the third to the fifth grades of two elementary schools of the city of São Paulo. They constituted two groups - bilingual group: 30 Brazilian children whose mother tongue and language spoken at home was Brazilian Portuguese and who were daily exposed to English at school for a period not shorter than three years; monolingual group: 30 students, from a monolingual Brazilian elementary school, who were paired by gender, age, and grade level with the bilingual students. Foreign children, children with complaint or indication of speech and language disorder, or who had been retained were excluded. A rapid automatized naming, pseudoword repetition, and oral reading tests were administered. The bilingual children were assessed in both languages and their performances were compared among themselves and with the monolingual group, which was only assessed in Brazilian Portuguese. The bilingual group showed better performance in English, rapid naming, and pseudoword repetition tasks, whereas Brazilian Portuguese, in reading fluency. A higher number of correlations were found in Brazilian Portuguese. The results suggest that the acquisition of a second language may positively influence the abilities of rapid naming, reading rate, and accuracy. Brazilian bilingual students performed better in tasks of phonological memory in English and Brazilian Portuguese performed better in reading fluency. Different correlation patterns were found between the rapid naming, accuracy, and reading rate, in the bilingual group analysis, in both languages.

Effects of Semantic Elaboration and Typicality on Picture Naming in Alzheimer Disease

Science.gov (United States)

Morelli, Claudia A.; Altmann, Lori J. P.; Kendall, Diane; Fischler, Ira; Heilman, Kennneth M.

2011-01-01

Purpose: Individuals with probable Alzheimer disease (pAD) are frequently impaired at picture naming. This study examined whether a semantic elaboration task would facilitate naming in pAD, and whether training either semantically typical or atypical stimulus items facilitated generalized improvement in picture naming and category generation…

Semantic Interference in Immediate and Delayed Naming and Reading: Attention and Task Decisions

Science.gov (United States)

Piai, Vitoria; Roelofs, Ardi; Schriefers, Herbert

2011-01-01

Disagreement exists about whether lexical selection in word production is a competitive process. Competition predicts semantic interference from distractor words in immediate but not in delayed picture naming. In contrast, Janssen, Schirm, Mahon, and Caramazza (2008) obtained semantic interference in delayed picture naming when participants had to…

A method for named entity normalization in biomedical articles: application to diseases and plants.

Science.gov (United States)

Cho, Hyejin; Choi, Wonjun; Lee, Hyunju

2017-10-13

In biomedical articles, a named entity recognition (NER) technique that identifies entity names from texts is an important element for extracting biological knowledge from articles. After NER is applied to articles, the next step is to normalize the identified names into standard concepts (i.e., disease names are mapped to the National Library of Medicine's Medical Subject Headings disease terms). In biomedical articles, many entity normalization methods rely on domain-specific dictionaries for resolving synonyms and abbreviations. However, the dictionaries are not comprehensive except for some entities such as genes. In recent years, biomedical articles have accumulated rapidly, and neural network-based algorithms that incorporate a large amount of unlabeled data have shown considerable success in several natural language processing problems. In this study, we propose an approach for normalizing biological entities, such as disease names and plant names, by using word embeddings to represent semantic spaces. For diseases, training data from the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) disease corpus and unlabeled data from PubMed abstracts were used to construct word representations. For plants, a training corpus that we manually constructed and unlabeled PubMed abstracts were used to represent word vectors. We showed that the proposed approach performed better than the use of only the training corpus or only the unlabeled data and showed that the normalization accuracy was improved by using our model even when the dictionaries were not comprehensive. We obtained F-scores of 0.808 and 0.690 for normalizing the NCBI disease corpus and manually constructed plant corpus, respectively. We further evaluated our approach using a data set in the disease normalization task of the BioCreative V challenge. When only the disease corpus was used as a dictionary, our approach significantly outperformed the best system of the task. The proposed approach shows robust

We Are Going to Name Names and Call You Out! Improving the Team in the Academic Operating Room Environment.

Science.gov (United States)

Bodor, Richard; Nguyen, Brian J; Broder, Kevin

2017-05-01

Communication failures between multidisciplinary teams can impact efficiency, performance, and morale. Academic operating rooms (ORs) often have surgical, anesthesia, and nursing teams, each teaching multiple trainees. Incorrectly identifying name and "rank" (postgraduate year [PGY]) of resident trainees can disrupt performance evaluations and team morale and even potentially impair delivery of quality care when miscommunication errors proliferate. Our OR-based survey asked 50 participants (18 surgeons, 14 anesthesiologists, and 18 nursing members), to recall basic identification data including provider names and PGY levels from their recent collaborating OR teams. Participants also weighed in on the importance of using accurate "names and ranks" for all OR participants. Each service reliably knew their own team members' names and rank. However, surgery and anesthesia teams displayed decreased knowledge about their lower level trainees, whereas nursing teams performed best, identifying all level nurses present. Deficits occurred whenever participants tried recalling basic identifying data about contributors from any other collaborating team. Typically, misidentified participants were lower level PGY residents working on other teams' services. All survey respondents desired improving systems to better remember "names and ranks" identifications among OR participants, citing both safety and team morale benefits. Many fail to know the names and ranks of contributors among members of different OR teams. Even our most reliable nursing team was inconsistent at identification information from collaborating practitioners. Despite universally acknowledged benefits, participants rarely learned basic background identification data beyond their own team. Those surveyed all desired improving identifications with suggestions including sterile name and rank tags and proper notification of entry and exit from the OR. Because successful collaborations require appropriate level task

Negative induced mood influences word production: An event-related potentials study with a covert picture naming task.

Science.gov (United States)

Hinojosa, J A; Fernández-Folgueiras, U; Albert, J; Santaniello, G; Pozo, M A; Capilla, A

2017-01-27

The present event-related potentials (ERPs) study investigated the effects of mood on phonological encoding processes involved in word generation. For this purpose, negative, positive and neutral affective states were induced in participants during three different recording sessions using short film clips. After the mood induction procedure, participants performed a covert picture naming task in which they searched letters. The negative compared to the neutral mood condition elicited more negative amplitudes in a component peaking around 290ms. Furthermore, results from source localization analyses suggested that this activity was potentially generated in the left prefrontal cortex. In contrast, no differences were found in the comparison between positive and neutral moods. Overall, current data suggest that processes involved in the retrieval of phonological information during speech generation are impaired when participants are in a negative mood. The mechanisms underlying these effects were discussed in relation to linguistic and attentional processes, as well as in terms of the use of heuristics. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Interference with olfactory memory by visual and verbal tasks.

Science.gov (United States)

Annett, J M; Cook, N M; Leslie, J C

1995-06-01

It has been claimed that olfactory memory is distinct from memory in other modalities. This study investigated the effectiveness of visual and verbal tasks in interfering with olfactory memory and included methodological changes from other recent studies. Subjects were allocated to one of four experimental conditions involving interference tasks [no interference task; visual task; verbal task; visual-plus-verbal task] and presented 15 target odours. Either recognition of the odours or free recall of the odour names was tested on one occasion, either within 15 minutes of presentation or one week later. Recognition and recall performance both showed effects of interference of visual and verbal tasks but there was no effect for time of testing. While the results may be accommodated within a dual coding framework, further work is indicated to resolve theoretical issues relating to task complexity.

Survival Processing and the Stroop Task

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Stephanie A. Kazanas

2015-11-01

Full Text Available This study was designed to investigate the impact of survival processing with a novel task for this paradigm: the Stroop color-naming task. As the literature is mixed with regard to task generalizability, with survival processing promoting better memory for words, but not better memory for faces or paired associates, these types of task investigations are important to a growing field of research. Using the Stroop task provides a unique contribution, as identifying items by color is an important evolutionary adaptation and not specific to humans as is the case with word recall. Our results indicate that survival processing, with its accompanying survival-relevance rating task, remains the best mnemonic strategy for word memory. However, our results also indicate that presenting the survival passage does not motivate better color-naming performance than color-naming alone. In addition, survival processing led to a larger amount of Stroop interference, though not significantly larger than the other conditions. Together, these findings suggest that considering one’s survival when performing memory and attention-based tasks does not enhance cognitive performance generally, although greater allocation of attentional resources to color-incongruent concrete objects could be considered adaptive. These findings support the notion that engaging in deeper processing via survival-relevance ratings may preserve these words across a variety of experimental manipulations.

Brand name confusion: Subjective and objective measures of orthographic similarity.

Science.gov (United States)

Burt, Jennifer S; McFarlane, Kimberley A; Kelly, Sarah J; Humphreys, Michael S; Weatherall, Kimberlee; Burrell, Robert G

2017-09-01

Determining brand name similarity is vital in areas of trademark registration and brand confusion. Students rated the orthographic (spelling) similarity of word pairs (Experiments 1, 2, and 4) and brand name pairs (Experiment 5). Similarity ratings were consistently higher when words shared beginnings rather than endings, whereas shared pronunciation of the stressed vowel had small and less consistent effects on ratings. In Experiment 3 a behavioral task confirmed the similarity of shared beginnings in lexical processing. Specifically, in a task requiring participants to decide whether 2 words presented in the clear (a probe and a later target) were the same or different, a masked prime word preceding the target shortened response latencies if it shared its initial 3 letters with the target. The ratings of students for word and brand name pairs were strongly predicted by metrics of orthographic similarity from the visual word identification literature based on the number of shared letters and their relative positions. The results indicate a potential use for orthographic metrics in brand name registration and trademark law. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

Inhibitory processes, working memory, phonological awareness, naming speed, and early arithmetic achievement.

Science.gov (United States)

Navarro, Jose I; Aguilar, Manuel; Alcalde, Concepcion; Ruiz, Gonzalo; Marchena, Esperanza; Menacho, Inmaculada

2011-11-01

This study identified the cognitive processes that underlie the individual differences in early mathematical performance in elementary school children. Taking into account the Baddeley framework multicomponent model, the inhibitory processes, working memory, phonological awareness, and naming speed are considered to be related to early math learning. To examine this relationship, we compared the performance of a total of 424 typically developing middle-class children, aged between 4 and 7 years in a battery of cognitive and early numeric tests: The Utrecht Early Numeracy Test, the Rapid Automatized Naming Test, Spanish version of the Stroop task, the Numeracy Interference Test, Digit Span test, and Phonological Knowledge Test. The mean age of the participants was 72.21 months (sd = 14.8), and 48.6% were male and 51.4% were female. The results demonstrated that children performing worst on central executive, phonological processing, and inhibitory processes showed lower results in early mathematical tasks measured by The Utrecht Early Numeracy Test. Results supported the notion that the executive system is an important predictor of children's mathematical performance.

Improved proper name recall in aging after electrical stimulation of the anterior temporal lobes

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Lars A Ross

2011-10-01

Full Text Available Evidence from neuroimaging and neuropsychology suggests that portions of the anterior temporal lobes play a critical role in proper name retrieval. We previously found that anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS to the anterior temporal lobes improved retrieval of proper names in young adult. Here we extend that finding to older adults who tend to experience greater proper-naming deficits than young adults. The task was to look at pictures of famous faces or landmarks and verbally recall the associated proper name. Our results show a numerical improvement in face naming after left or right anterior temporal lobe stimulation, but a statistically significant effect only after left-lateralized stimulation. The magnitude of the enhancing effect was similar in older and younger adults but the lateralization of the effect differed depending on age. These results provide evidence that tDCS may be a useful tool for the neurorehabilitation of cognitive function in healthy and pathological cognitive decline.

Effects of age, task, and frequency on variability of finger tapping.

Science.gov (United States)

Sommervoll, Yngve; Ettema, Gertjan; Vereijken, Beatrix

2011-10-01

The goal was to assess whether prior studies might have overestimated performance variability in older adults in dual task conditions by relying on primary motor tasks that are not constant with aging. 30 younger and 31 older adults performed a bimanual tapping task at four different frequencies in isolation or concurrently with a secondary task. Results showed that performance of younger and older adults was not significantly different in performing the tapping task at all frequencies and with either secondary task, as indicated by mean tapping performance and low number of errors in the secondary tasks. Both groups showed increased variability as tapping frequency increased and with the presence of a secondary task. Tapping concurrently while reading words increased tapping variability more than tapping concurrently while naming colours. Although older participants' performances were overall more variable, no interaction effects with age were found and at the highest frequencies of tapping, younger and older participants did not differ in performance.

Vocabulary comprehension and strategies in name construction among children using aided communication.

Science.gov (United States)

Deliberato, Débora; Jennische, Margareta; Oxley, Judith; Nunes, Leila Regina d'Oliveira de Paula; Walter, Cátia Crivelenti de Figueiredo; Massaro, Munique; Almeida, Maria Amélia; Stadskleiv, Kristine; Basil, Carmen; Coronas, Marc; Smith, Martine; von Tetzchner, Stephen

2018-03-01

Vocabulary learning reflects the language experiences of the child, both in typical and atypical development, although the vocabulary development of children who use aided communication may differ from children who use natural speech. This study compared the performance of children using aided communication with that of peers using natural speech on two measures of vocabulary knowledge: comprehension of graphic symbols and labeling of common objects. There were 92 participants not considered intellectually disabled in the aided group. The reference group consisted of 60 participants without known disorders. The comprehension task consisted of 63 items presented individually in each participant's graphic system, together with four colored line drawings. Participants were required to indicate which drawing corresponded to the symbol. In the expressive labelling task, 20 common objects presented in drawings had to be named. Both groups indicated the correct drawing for most of the items in the comprehension tasks, with a small advantage for the reference group. The reference group named most objects quickly and accurately, demonstrating that the objects were common and easily named. The aided language group named the majority correctly and in addition used a variety of naming strategies; they required more time than the reference group. The results give insights into lexical processing in aided communication and may have implications for aided language intervention.

Lexical Access in Persian Normal Speakers: Picture Naming, Verbal Fluency and Spontaneous Speech

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Zahra Sadat Ghoreishi

2014-06-01

Full Text Available Objectives: Lexical access is the process by which the basic conceptual, syntactical and morpho-phonological information of words are activated. Most studies of lexical access have focused on picture naming. There is hardly any previous research on other parameters of lexical access such as verbal fluency and analysis of connected speech in Persian normal participants. This study investigates the lexical access performance in normal speakers in different issues such as age, sex and education. Methods: The performance of 120 adult Persian speakers in three tasks including picture naming, verbal fluency and connected speech, was examined using "Persian Lexical Access Assessment Package”. The performance of participants between two gender groups (male/female, three education groups (below 5 years, above 12 years, between 5 and 12 years and three age groups (18-35 years, 36-55 years, 56-75 years were compared. Results: According to findings, picture naming increased with increasing education and decreased with increasing age. The performance of participants in phonological and semantic verbal fluency showed improvement with age and education. No significant difference was seen between males and females in verbal fluency task. In the analysis of connected speech there were no significant differences between different age and education groups and just mean length of utterance in males was significantly higher than females. Discussion: The findings could be a primitive scale for comparison between normal subjects and patients in lexical access tasks, furthermore it could be a horizon for planning of treatment goals in patients with word finding problem according to age, gender and education.

Neural correlates of own and close-other’s name recognition: ERP evidence

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Pawel eTacikowski

2014-04-01

Full Text Available One’s own name seems to have a special status in the processing of incoming information. In event-related potential (ERP studies this preferential status has mainly been associated with higher P300 to one’s own name than to other names. Some studies showed preferential responses to own name even for earlier ERP components. However, instead of just being self-specific, these effects could be related to the processing of any highly relevant and/or frequently encountered stimuli. If this is the case: (1 processing of other highly relevant and highly familiar names (e.g., names of friends, partners, siblings, etc. should be associated with similar ERP responses as processing of one's own name; and (2 processing of own and close others' names should result in larger amplitudes of early and late ERP components than processing of less relevant and less familiar names (e.g., names of famous people, names of strangers, etc.. To test this hypothesis we measured and analyzed ERPs from 62 scalp electrodes in 22 subjects. Subjects performed a speeded two-choice recognition task - familiar vs. unfamiliar - with one’s own name being treated as one of the familiar names. All stimuli were presented visually. We found that amplitudes of P200, N250 and P300 did not differ between one’s own and close-other’s names. Crucially, they were significantly larger to own and close-other’s names than to other names (unknown and famous for P300 and unknown for P200 and N250. Our findings suggest that preferential processing of one’s own name is due to its personal-relevance and/or familiarity factors. This pattern of results speaks for a common preference in processing of different kinds of socially relevant stimuli.

Seres vivos y artefactos: ¿efectos categoriales producto de la ausencia de color en tareas de denominación de dibujos? (Living things and artifacts: categorial effects in black-and-white picture naming tasks?

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

María Macarena Martínez-Cuitiño

2015-04-01

Full Text Available Patients with acquired brain injury may have difficulties in processing a unique semantic category. In patients with the most common semantic deficits, living things is the most commonly compromised domain. Nevertheless, the results of assessing healthy participants are contradictory. Most studies with healthy participants reported better performance with the category of living things, whereas other studies have reported better performance with artifacts, depending on the type of material used. Although researchers generally use black-and-white pictures to assess semantic categories, this kind of material omits an essential perceptual attribute in processing living things: colour. This study assessed a group of young healthy participants to determine differences in naming living things and artifacts in a naming task using black-and-white pictures. The stimuli used were matched according to the major lexical-semantic variables: name agreement, visual complexity, lexical frequency, conceptual familiarity, age of acquisition, number of syllables, and number of phonemes. The results show that healthy participants are more accurate and faster at naming when categorizing artifacts and that artifacts have an advantage over the category living things in which colour is a key attribute (animals and fruits/vegetables. This advantage is lost in relation to the category body parts in which colour is not an essential attribute for their recognition.

A robust demonstration of the cognate facilitation effect in first-language and second-language naming.

Science.gov (United States)

Sheng, Li; Lam, Boji Pak Wing; Cruz, Diana; Fulton, Aislynn

2016-01-01

The cognate facilitation effect refers to the phenomenon that in bilinguals performance on various vocabulary tasks is enhanced for cross-linguistic cognates as opposed to noncognates. However, research investigating the presence of the cognate advantage in bilingual children remains limited. Most studies with children conducted to date has not included a control group or rigorously designed stimuli, which may jeopardize the validity and robustness of the emerging evidence. The current study addressed these methodological problems by examining performance in picture naming tasks in 34 4- to 7-year-old Spanish-English bilinguals and 52 Mandarin-English bilinguals as well as 37 English-speaking monolinguals who served as controls. Stimuli were controlled for phonology, word frequency, and length. The Spanish-English bilinguals performed better for cognates than for noncognates and exhibited a greater number of doublet responses (i.e., providing correct responses in both languages) in naming cognate targets than in naming noncognates. The control groups did not show differences in performance between the two sets of words. These findings provide compelling evidence that cross-linguistic similarities at the phonological level allow bootstrapping of vocabulary learning. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Classification of visual and linguistic tasks using eye-movement features.

Science.gov (United States)

Coco, Moreno I; Keller, Frank

2014-03-07

The role of the task has received special attention in visual-cognition research because it can provide causal explanations of goal-directed eye-movement responses. The dependency between visual attention and task suggests that eye movements can be used to classify the task being performed. A recent study by Greene, Liu, and Wolfe (2012), however, fails to achieve accurate classification of visual tasks based on eye-movement features. In the present study, we hypothesize that tasks can be successfully classified when they differ with respect to the involvement of other cognitive domains, such as language processing. We extract the eye-movement features used by Greene et al. as well as additional features from the data of three different tasks: visual search, object naming, and scene description. First, we demonstrated that eye-movement responses make it possible to characterize the goals of these tasks. Then, we trained three different types of classifiers and predicted the task participants performed with an accuracy well above chance (a maximum of 88% for visual search). An analysis of the relative importance of features for classification accuracy reveals that just one feature, i.e., initiation time, is sufficient for above-chance performance (a maximum of 79% accuracy in object naming). Crucially, this feature is independent of task duration, which differs systematically across the three tasks we investigated. Overall, the best task classification performance was obtained with a set of seven features that included both spatial information (e.g., entropy of attention allocation) and temporal components (e.g., total fixation on objects) of the eye-movement record. This result confirms the task-dependent allocation of visual attention and extends previous work by showing that task classification is possible when tasks differ in the cognitive processes involved (purely visual tasks such as search vs. communicative tasks such as scene description).

The task-relevant attribute representation can mediate the Simon effect.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Dandan Tang

Full Text Available Researchers have previously suggested a working memory (WM account of spatial codes, and based on this suggestion, the present study carries out three experiments to investigate how the task-relevant attribute representation (verbal or visual in the typical Simon task affects the Simon effect. Experiment 1 compared the Simon effect between the between- and within-category color conditions, which required subjects to discriminate between red and blue stimuli (presumed to be represented by verbal WM codes because it was easy and fast to name the colors verbally and to discriminate between two similar green stimuli (presumed to be represented by visual WM codes because it was hard and time-consuming to name the colors verbally, respectively. The results revealed a reliable Simon effect that only occurs in the between-category condition. Experiment 2 assessed the Simon effect by requiring subjects to discriminate between two different isosceles trapezoids (within-category shapes and to discriminate isosceles trapezoid from rectangle (between-category shapes, and the results replicated and expanded the findings of Experiment 1. In Experiment 3, subjects were required to perform both tasks from Experiment 1. Wherein, in Experiment 3A, the between-category task preceded the within-category task; in Experiment 3B, the task order was opposite. The results showed the reliable Simon effect when subjects represented the task-relevant stimulus attributes by verbal WM encoding. In addition, the response times (RTs distribution analysis for both the between- and within-category conditions of Experiments 3A and 3B showed decreased Simon effect with the RTs lengthened. Altogether, although the present results are consistent with the temporal coding account, we put forth that the Simon effect also depends on the verbal WM representation of task-relevant stimulus attribute.

A multitasking general executive for compound continuous tasks.

Science.gov (United States)

Salvucci, Dario D

2005-05-06

As cognitive architectures move to account for increasingly complex real-world tasks, one of the most pressing challenges involves understanding and modeling human multitasking. Although a number of existing models now perform multitasking in real-world scenarios, these models typically employ customized executives that schedule tasks for the particular domain but do not generalize easily to other domains. This article outlines a general executive for the Adaptive Control of Thought-Rational (ACT-R) cognitive architecture that, given independent models of individual tasks, schedules and interleaves the models' behavior into integrated multitasking behavior. To demonstrate the power of the proposed approach, the article describes an application to the domain of driving, showing how the general executive can interleave component subtasks of the driving task (namely, control and monitoring) and interleave driving with in-vehicle secondary tasks (radio tuning and phone dialing). 2005 Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

Exploration history and place names of northern East Greenland: Colophon, abstract, introduction, official place names in Greenland

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Higgins, Anthony K.

2010-12-01

Full Text Available The first recorded landing by Europeans on the coast of northern East Greenland (north of 69°N was that of William Scoresby Jr., a British whaler, in 1822. This volume includes a chronological summary of the pioneer 19th century exploration voyages made by British, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, French and German expeditions – all of whom reported that the region had previously been occupied by the Inuit or Eskimo; also included are brief outlines of the increasing number of government and privately sponsored expeditions throughout the 20th century, whose objectives included cartography, geology, zoology, botany, trapping and the ascent of the highest mountain summits. In 1934 the Place Name Committee for Greenland was established, the tasks of which included a review of all place names hitherto recorded on published maps of Greenland, their formal adoption in danicised form, and the approval or rejection of new name proposals. In northern East Greenland, by far the largest numbers of new place names were those proposed by scientists associated with Lauge Koch’s geological expeditions that lasted from 1926 until 1958. This volume records the location and origin of more than 3000 officially approved place names as well as about 2650 unapproved names.The author’s interest in the exploration history and place names of northern East Greenland started in 1968, when the Geological Survey of Greenland initiated a major five-year geological mapping programme in the Scoresby Sund region. Systematic compilation of names began about 1970, initially with the names given by William Scoresby Jr., and subsequently broadened in scope to include the names proposed by all expeditions to northern East Greenland. The author has participated in 16 summer mapping expeditions with the Survey to northern East Greenland. Publication of this volume represents the culmination of a lifetime working in the Arctic.

Survival Processing and the Stroop Task

OpenAIRE

Stephanie A. Kazanas; Kendra M. Van Valkenburg; Jeanette Altarriba

2015-01-01

This study was designed to investigate the impact of survival processing with a novel task for this paradigm: the Stroop color-naming task. As the literature is mixed with regard to task generalizability, with survival processing promoting better memory for words, but not better memory for faces or paired associates, these types of task investigations are important to a growing field of research. Using the Stroop task provides a unique contribution, as identifying items by color is an importa...

Abbreviations for device names: a proposed methodology with specific examples.

Science.gov (United States)

Alam, Murad; Dover, Jeffrey S; Alam, Murad; Goldman, Mitchel P; Kaminer, Michael S; Orringer, Jeffrey; Waldorf, Heidi; Alam, Murad; Avram, Mathew; Cohen, Joel L; Draelos, Zoe Diana; Dover, Jeffrey S; Hruza, George; Kilmer, Suzanne; Lawrence, Naomi; Lupo, Mary; Metelitsa, Andrei; Nestor, Mark; Ross, E Victor

2013-04-01

Many devices used in dermatology lack generic names. If investigators use commercial device names, they risk the appearance of bias. Alternatively, reliance on ad-hoc names and abbreviations may confuse readers who do not recognize these. To develop a system for assigning abbreviations to denote devices commonly used in dermatology. Secondarily, to use this system to create abbreviations for FDA-approved neurotoxins and prepackaged injectable soft-tissue augmentation materials. The American Society for Dermatologic Surgery convened a Lexicon Task Force in March 2012. One charge of this Task Force was to develop criteria for assigning abbreviations to medical devices. A modified consensus process was used. Abbreviations to denote devices were to be: based on a standardized approach; transparent to the casual reader; markedly brief; and in all cases, different than the commercial names. Three-letter all caps abbreviations, some with subscripts, were assigned to denote each of the approved neurotoxins and fillers. A common system of abbreviations for medical devices in dermatology may avoid the appearance of bias while ensuring effective communication. The proposed system may be expanded to name other devices, and the ensuing abbreviations may be suitable for journal articles, continuing medical education lectures, or other academic or clinical purposes. © 2013 by the American Society for Dermatologic Surgery, Inc. Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Effect of task demands on dual coding of pictorial stimuli.

Science.gov (United States)

Babbitt, B C

1982-01-01

Recent studies have suggested that verbal labeling of a picture does not occur automatically. Although several experiments using paired-associate tasks produced little evidence indicating the use of a verbal code with picture stimuli, the tasks were probably not sensitive to whether the codes were activated initially. It is possible that verbal labels were activated at input, but not used later in performing the tasks. The present experiment used a color-naming interference task in order to assess, with a more sensitive measure, the amount of verbal coding occurring in response to word or picture input. Subjects named the color of ink in which words were printed following either word or picture input. If verbal labeling of the input occurs, then latency of color naming should increase when the input item and color-naming word are related. The results provided substantial evidence of such verbal activation when the input items were words. However, the presence of verbal activation with picture input was a function of task demands. Activation occurred when a recall memory test was used, but not when a recognition memory test was used. The results support the conclusion that name information (labels) need not be activated during presentation of visual stimuli.

What Discrete and Serial Rapid Automatized Naming Can Reveal about Reading

Science.gov (United States)

de Jong, Peter F.

2011-01-01

Serial rapid automized naming (RAN) has been often found to correlate more strongly with reading than discrete RAN. This study aimed to demonstrate that the strength of the RAN-reading fluency relationship is dependent on the format of both RAN and the reading task if the reading task consists of sight words. Seventy-one first-grade, 74…

Training Letter and Orthographic Pattern Recognition in Children with Slow Naming Speed

Science.gov (United States)

Conrad, Nicole J.; Levy, Betty Ann

2011-01-01

Although research has established that performance on a rapid automatized naming (RAN) task is related to reading, the nature of this relationship is unclear. Bowers (2001) proposed that processes underlying performance on the RAN task and orthographic knowledge make independent and additive contributions to reading performance. We examined the…

Object and Action Naming: A Study on Persian-Speaking Children

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Reza Nilipour

2013-04-01

Full Text Available Objectives: Nouns and verbs are the central conceptual linguistic units of language acquisition in all human languages. While the noun-bias hypothesis claims that nouns have a privilege in children’s lexical development across languages, studies on Mandarin and Korean and other languages have challenged this view. More recent cross-linguistic naming studies on children in German, Turkish, English and Korean demonstrate that all languages, including Korean show a noun advantage however the degree of this discrepancy differs between languages. The aim of this study wasto look at object and action naming in normal Persian children as a measure of conceptual developmentin preschool children and its possible use for screening and therapeutic procedures. Methods: In this analytical study, noun bias and processing dissociation of object and action naming in 64 three to six year old healthy monolingual Persian-speaking children was investigated. A black and white picture naming task, consisting of 36 nouns (natural and man-made, and 36 verbs (transitive and intransitive was designed using DMDX software to measure response accuracy and reaction time of the subjects. Results: The results indicate a significant noun advantage with regard to accuracy and naming latencies. The results also reveal that transitive verbs are named more accurately than intransitive ones in Persianspeaking children. Also,the data indicate that accuracy of object and action namingimprove with age (P=0.000. Discussion: Based on the resultswe recommended that a standardized Persian object and action naming battery be used. Such a tool would have the potential of screening lexical development delay and possible noun-verb performance gap in preschool children.

Robust hybrid name disambiguation framework for large databases

KAUST Repository

Zhu, Jia

2013-10-26

In many databases, science bibliography database for example, name attribute is the most commonly chosen identifier to identify entities. However, names are often ambiguous and not always unique which cause problems in many fields. Name disambiguation is a non-trivial task in data management that aims to properly distinguish different entities which share the same name, particularly for large databases like digital libraries, as only limited information can be used to identify authors\\' name. In digital libraries, ambiguous author names occur due to the existence of multiple authors with the same name or different name variations for the same person. Also known as name disambiguation, most of the previous works to solve this issue often employ hierarchical clustering approaches based on information inside the citation records, e.g. co-authors and publication titles. In this paper, we focus on proposing a robust hybrid name disambiguation framework that is not only applicable for digital libraries but also can be easily extended to other application based on different data sources. We propose a web pages genre identification component to identify the genre of a web page, e.g. whether the page is a personal homepage. In addition, we propose a re-clustering model based on multidimensional scaling that can further improve the performance of name disambiguation. We evaluated our approach on known corpora, and the favorable experiment results indicated that our proposed framework is feasible. © 2013 Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, Hungary.

Robust hybrid name disambiguation framework for large databases

KAUST Repository

Zhu, Jia; Yang, Yi; Xie, Qing; Wang, Liwei; Hassan, Saeed-Ul

2013-01-01

In many databases, science bibliography database for example, name attribute is the most commonly chosen identifier to identify entities. However, names are often ambiguous and not always unique which cause problems in many fields. Name disambiguation is a non-trivial task in data management that aims to properly distinguish different entities which share the same name, particularly for large databases like digital libraries, as only limited information can be used to identify authors' name. In digital libraries, ambiguous author names occur due to the existence of multiple authors with the same name or different name variations for the same person. Also known as name disambiguation, most of the previous works to solve this issue often employ hierarchical clustering approaches based on information inside the citation records, e.g. co-authors and publication titles. In this paper, we focus on proposing a robust hybrid name disambiguation framework that is not only applicable for digital libraries but also can be easily extended to other application based on different data sources. We propose a web pages genre identification component to identify the genre of a web page, e.g. whether the page is a personal homepage. In addition, we propose a re-clustering model based on multidimensional scaling that can further improve the performance of name disambiguation. We evaluated our approach on known corpora, and the favorable experiment results indicated that our proposed framework is feasible. © 2013 Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, Hungary.

TwitterNEED: a hybrid approach for named entity extraction and disambiguation for tweets

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Habib, Mena Badieh; van Keulen, Maurice

Twitter is a rich source of continuously and instantly updated information. Shortness and informality of tweets are challenges for Natural Language Processing tasks. In this paper, we present TwitterNEED, a hybrid approach for Named Entity Extraction and Named Entity Disambiguation for tweets. We

An fMRI investigation of the effects of attempted naming on word retrieval in aphasia

Science.gov (United States)

Heath, Shiree; McMahon, Katie L.; Nickels, Lyndsey A.; Angwin, Anthony; MacDonald, Anna D.; van Hees, Sophia; McKinnon, Eril; Johnson, Kori; Copland, David A.

2015-01-01

In healthy controls, picture naming performance can be facilitated by a single prior exposure to the same picture (“priming”). This priming phenomenon is utilized in the treatment of aphasia, which often includes repeated picture naming as part of a therapeutic task. The current study sought to determine whether single and/or multiple exposures facilitate subsequent naming in aphasia and whether such facilitatory effects act through normal priming mechanisms. A functional magnetic resonance imaging paradigm was employed to explore the beneficial effects of attempted naming in two individuals with aphasia and a control group. The timing and number of prior exposures was manipulated, with investigation of both short-term effects (single prior exposure over a period of minutes) and long-term effects (multiple presentations over a period of days). Following attempted naming, both short-term and long-term facilitated items showed improvement for controls, while only the long-term condition showed benefits at a behavioral level for the participants with aphasia. At a neural level, effects of long-term facilitation were noted in the left precuneus for one participant with aphasia, a result also identified for the equivalent contrast in controls. It appears that multiple attempts are required to improve naming performance in the presence of anomia and that for some individuals with aphasia the source of facilitation may be similar to unimpaired mechanisms engaged outside the language network. PMID:26074801

Novel names extend for how long preschool children sample visual information.

Science.gov (United States)

Carvalho, Paulo F; Vales, Catarina; Fausey, Caitlin M; Smith, Linda B

2018-04-01

Known words can guide visual attention, affecting how information is sampled. How do novel words, those that do not provide any top-down information, affect preschoolers' visual sampling in a conceptual task? We proposed that novel names can also change visual sampling by influencing how long children look. We investigated this possibility by analyzing how children sample visual information when they hear a sentence with a novel name versus without a novel name. Children completed a match-to-sample task while their moment-to-moment eye movements were recorded using eye-tracking technology. Our analyses were designed to provide specific information on the properties of visual sampling that novel names may change. Overall, we found that novel words prolonged the duration of each sampling event but did not affect sampling allocation (which objects children looked at) or sampling organization (how children transitioned from one object to the next). These results demonstrate that novel words change one important dynamic property of gaze: Novel words can entrain the cognitive system toward longer periods of sustained attention early in development. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Musical Training, Bilingualism, and Executive Function: A Closer Look at Task Switching and Dual-Task Performance

Science.gov (United States)

Moradzadeh, Linda; Blumenthal, Galit; Wiseheart, Melody

2015-01-01

This study investigated whether musical training and bilingualism are associated with enhancements in specific components of executive function, namely, task switching and dual-task performance. Participants (n = 153) belonging to one of four groups (monolingual musician, bilingual musician, bilingual non-musician, or monolingual non-musician)…

Traces of vocabulary acquisition in the brain: Evidence from covert object naming.

Science.gov (United States)

Ellis, A W; Burani, C; Izura, C; Bromiley, A; Venneri, A

2006-11-15

One of the strongest predictors of the speed with which adults can name a pictured object is the age at which the object and its name are first learned. Age of acquisition also predicts the retention or loss of individual words following brain damage in conditions like aphasia and Alzheimer's disease. Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) was used to reveal brain areas differentially involved in naming objects with early or late acquired names. A baseline task involved passive viewing of non-objects. The comparison between the silent object naming conditions (early and late) with baseline showed significant activation in frontal, parietal and mediotemporal regions bilaterally and in the lingual and fusiform gyri on the left. Direct comparison of early and late items identified clusters with significantly greater activation for early acquired items at the occipital poles (in the posterior parts of the middle occipital gyri) and at the left temporal pole. In contrast, the left middle occipital and fusiform gyri showed significantly greater activation for late than early acquired items. We propose that greater activation to early than late objects at the occipital poles and at the left temporal pole reflects the more detailed visual and semantic representations of early than late acquired items. We propose that greater activation to late than early objects in the left middle occipital and fusiform gyri occurs because those areas are involved in mapping visual onto semantic representations, which is more difficult, and demands more resource, for late than for early items.

Task planning systems with natural language interface

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Kambayashi, Shaw; Uenaka, Junji

1989-12-01

In this report, a natural language analyzer and two different task planning systems are described. In 1988, we have introduced a Japanese language analyzer named CS-PARSER for the input interface of the task planning system in the Human Acts Simulation Program (HASP). For the purpose of a high speed analysis, we have modified a dictionary system of the CS-PARSER by using C language description. It is found that the new dictionary system is very useful for a high speed analysis and an efficient maintenance of the dictionary. For the study of the task planning problem, we have modified a story generating system named Micro TALE-SPIN to generate a story written in Japanese sentences. We have also constructed a planning system with natural language interface by using the CS-PARSER. Task planning processes and related knowledge bases of these systems are explained. A concept design for a new task planning system will be also discussed from evaluations of above mentioned systems. (author)

Pigeons (Columba livia) show change blindness in a color-change detection task.

Science.gov (United States)

Herbranson, Walter T; Jeffers, Jacob S

2017-07-01

Change blindness is a phenomenon whereby changes to a stimulus are more likely go unnoticed under certain circumstances. Pigeons learned a change detection task, in which they observed sequential stimulus displays consisting of individual colors back-projected onto three response keys. The color of one response key changed during each sequence and pecks to the key that displayed the change were reinforced. Pigeons showed a change blindness effect, in that change detection accuracy was worse when there was an inter-stimulus interval interrupting the transition between consecutive stimulus displays. Birds successfully transferred to stimulus displays involving novel colors, indicating that pigeons learned a general change detection rule. Furthermore, analysis of responses to specific color combinations showed that pigeons could detect changes involving both spectral and non-spectral colors and that accuracy was better for changes involving greater differences in wavelength. These results build upon previous investigations of change blindness in both humans and pigeons and suggest that change blindness may be a general consequence of selective visual attention relevant to multiple species and stimulus dimensions.

Language production in a shared task: Cumulative Semantic Interference from self- and other-produced context words.

Science.gov (United States)

Hoedemaker, Renske S; Ernst, Jessica; Meyer, Antje S; Belke, Eva

2017-01-01

This study assessed the effects of semantic context in the form of self-produced and other-produced words on subsequent language production. Pairs of participants performed a joint picture naming task, taking turns while naming a continuous series of pictures. In the single-speaker version of this paradigm, naming latencies have been found to increase for successive presentations of exemplars from the same category, a phenomenon known as Cumulative Semantic Interference (CSI). As expected, the joint-naming task showed a within-speaker CSI effect, such that naming latencies increased as a function of the number of category exemplars named previously by the participant (self-produced items). Crucially, we also observed an across-speaker CSI effect, such that naming latencies slowed as a function of the number of category members named by the participant's task partner (other-produced items). The magnitude of the across-speaker CSI effect did not vary as a function of whether or not the listening participant could see the pictures their partner was naming. The observation of across-speaker CSI suggests that the effect originates at the conceptual level of the language system, as proposed by Belke's (2013) Conceptual Accumulation account. Whereas self-produced and other-produced words both resulted in a CSI effect on naming latencies, post-experiment free recall rates were higher for self-produced than other-produced items. Together, these results suggest that both speaking and listening result in implicit learning at the conceptual level of the language system but that these effects are independent of explicit learning as indicated by item recall. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Named Entity Recognition for Novel Types by Transfer Learning

OpenAIRE

Qu, Lizhen; Ferraro, Gabriela; Zhou, Liyuan; Hou, Weiwei; Baldwin, Timothy

2016-01-01

In named entity recognition, we often don't have a large in-domain training corpus or a knowledge base with adequate coverage to train a model directly. In this paper, we propose a method where, given training data in a related domain with similar (but not identical) named entity (NE) types and a small amount of in-domain training data, we use transfer learning to learn a domain-specific NE model. That is, the novelty in the task setup is that we assume not just domain mismatch, but also labe...

Name fashion dynamics and social class

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Bloothooft, G.; Schraagen, M.P.

2011-01-01

Modern parents in The Netherlands choose the first names they like for their children. In this decision most follow fashion and as a typical property of fashion, many popular names now have a life cycle of only one generation. Some names show a symmetry between rise and fall of the name, but most

Name agreement in picture naming : An ERP study

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Cheng, Xiaorong; Schafer, Graham; Akyürek, Elkan G.

Name agreement is the extent to which different people agree on a name for a particular picture. Previous studies have found that it takes longer to name low name agreement pictures than high name agreement pictures. To examine the effect of name agreement in the online process of picture naming, we

A family of names : rune-names and ogam-names and their relation to alphabet letter-names

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Griffiths, Alan

2013-01-01

The current consensus is that vernacular names assigned to the runes of the Germanic fuþark and to Irish ogam characters are indigenous creations independent of Mediterranean alphabet traditions. I propose, however, that ogam-names are based on interpretations of Hebrew, Greek or Latin letter-names

False feedback and beliefs influence name recall in younger and older adults.

Science.gov (United States)

Strickland-Hughes, Carla M; West, Robin Lea; Smith, Kimberly A; Ebner, Natalie C

2017-09-01

Feedback is an important self-regulatory process that affects task effort and subsequent performance. Benefits of positive feedback for list recall have been explored in research on goals and feedback, but the effect of negative feedback on memory has rarely been studied. The current research extends knowledge of memory and feedback effects by investigating face-name association memory and by examining the potential mediation of feedback effects, in younger and older adults, through self-evaluative beliefs. Beliefs were assessed before and after name recognition and name recall testing. Repeated presentation of false positive feedback was compared to false negative feedback and a no feedback condition. Results showed that memory self-efficacy declined over time for participants in the negative and no feedback conditions but was sustained for those receiving positive feedback. Furthermore, participants who received negative feedback felt older after testing than before testing. For name recall, the positive feedback group outperformed the negative feedback and no feedback groups combined, with no age interactions. The observed feedback-related effects on memory were fully mediated by changes in memory self-efficacy. These findings advance our understanding of how beliefs are related to feedback in memory and inform future studies examining the importance of self-regulation in memory.

Very low birth weight piglets show improved cognitive performance in the spatial cognitive holeboard task

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Alexandra eAntonides

2015-02-01

Full Text Available Low birth weight (LBW is common in humans and has been found to cause lasting cognitive and developmental deficits later in life. It is thought that the primary cause is intra-uterine growth restriction due to a shortage of oxygen and nutrients supply to the fetus. Pigs appear to be a good model animal to investigate long-term cognitive effects of LBW, as LBW is common in commercially farmed breeds of pigs. Moreover, pigs are developmentally similar to humans and can be trained to perform complex tasks. In this study, we trained ten very low birth weight (vLBW piglets and their ten normal birth weight (NBW siblings in a spatial cognitive holeboard task in order to investigate long-term cognitive effects of LBW. In this task, four out of sixteen holes contain a hidden food reward, which allows measuring working memory (short-term and reference memory (long-term in parallel. Piglets were trained for 46-54 trials during the acquisition phase, followed by a 20-trial reversal phase in which a different set of four holes was baited. Both groups acquired the task and improved their performance over time. A mixed model repeated measures ANOVA revealed that vLBW piglets showed a better reference memory performance than NBW piglets in both the acquisition and reversal phase. Additionally, the vLBW piglets fell back less in working memory scores than the NBW animals when switched to the reversal phase. These findings are contrary to findings in humans. Moreover, vLBW pigs had lower hair cortisol concentrations than NBW pigs in flank hair at 12 weeks of age. These results could indicate that restricted intra-uterine growth causes compensatory mechanisms to arise in early development that result in beneficial effects for vLBW piglets, increasing their low survival chances in early-life competition.

Very low birth weight piglets show improved cognitive performance in the spatial cognitive holeboard task.

Science.gov (United States)

Antonides, Alexandra; Schoonderwoerd, Anne C; Nordquist, Rebecca E; van der Staay, Franz Josef

2015-01-01

Low birth weight (LBW) is common in humans and has been found to cause lasting cognitive and developmental deficits later in life. It is thought that the primary cause is intra-uterine growth restriction (IUGR) due to a shortage of oxygen and supply of nutrients to the fetus. Pigs appear to be a good model animal to investigate long-term cognitive effects of LBW, as LBW is common in commercially farmed breeds of pigs. Moreover, pigs are developmentally similar to humans and can be trained to perform complex tasks. In this study, we trained ten very low birth weight (vLBW) piglets and their ten normal birth weight (NBW) siblings in a spatial cognitive holeboard task in order to investigate long-term cognitive effects of LBW. In this task, four out of sixteen holes contain a hidden food reward, which allows measuring working memory (WM) (short-term memory) and reference memory (RM) (long-term memory) in parallel. Piglets were trained for 46-54 trials during the acquisition phase, followed by a 20-trial reversal phase in which a different set of four holes was baited. Both groups acquired the task and improved their performance over time. A mixed model repeated measures ANOVA revealed that vLBW piglets showed better RM performance than NBW piglets in both the acquisition and reversal phase. Additionally, WM scores in the vLBW were less disrupted than in the NBW animals when switched to the reversal phase. These findings are contrary to findings in humans. Moreover, vLBW pigs had lower hair cortisol concentrations (HCCs) than NBW pigs in flank hair at 12 weeks of age. These results could indicate that restricted intra-uterine growth causes compensatory mechanisms to arise in early development that result in beneficial effects for vLBW piglets, increasing their low survival chances in early-life competition.

Effects of visual and verbal interference tasks on olfactory memory: the role of task complexity.

Science.gov (United States)

Annett, J M; Leslie, J C

1996-08-01

Recent studies have demonstrated that visual and verbal suppression tasks interfere with olfactory memory in a manner which is partially consistent with a dual coding interpretation. However, it has been suggested that total task complexity rather than modality specificity of the suppression tasks might account for the observed pattern of results. This study addressed the issue of whether or not the level of difficulty and complexity of suppression tasks could explain the apparent modality effects noted in earlier experiments. A total of 608 participants were each allocated to one of 19 experimental conditions involving interference tasks which varied suppression type (visual or verbal), nature of complexity (single, double or mixed) and level of difficulty (easy, optimal or difficult) and presented with 13 target odours. Either recognition of the odours or free recall of the odour names was tested on one occasion, either within 15 minutes of presentation or one week later. Both recognition and recall performance showed an overall effect for suppression nature, suppression level and time of testing with no effect for suppression type. The results lend only limited support to Paivio's (1986) dual coding theory, but have a number of characteristics which suggest that an adequate account of olfactory memory may be broadly similar to current theories of face and object recognition. All of these phenomena might be dealt with by an appropriately modified version of dual coding theory.

On identifying name equivalences in digital libraries. Name equivalence, Surname matching, Author identification, Databases

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Dror G. Feitelson

2004-01-01

Full Text Available The services provided by digital libraries can be much improved by correctly identifying variants of the same name. For example, this will allow for better retrieval of all the works by a certain author. We focus on variants caused by abbreviations of first names, and show that significant achievements are possible by simple lexical analysis and comparison of names. This is done in two steps: first a pairwise matching of names is performed, and then these are used to find cliques of equivalent names. However, these steps can each be performed in a variety of ways. We therefore conduct an experimental analysis using two real datasets to find which approaches actually work well in practice. Interestingly, this depends on the size of the repository, as larger repositories may have many more similar names.

The Task Manager for the LHCb On-Line Farm

CERN Document Server

Bonifazi, F; Carbone, A; Galli, D; Gregori, D; Marconi, U; Peco, G; Vagnoni, V

2004-01-01

The Task Manager is a utility to start, stop and list processes on the on-line farm. Each process started by the Task Manager has a string environment variable set, named UTGID (User defined unique Thread Group Identifier) which allows to identify the process. The Task Manager uses the UTGID to list the running processes and to identify the processes to be stopped. It has also the ability to start a process using a particular user name and to set the scheduler type and the priority for the process itself. The Task Manager package includes a Linux DIM server (tmSrv), four Linux command line DIM clients (tmStart, tmLs, tmKill and tmStop) and a JCOP (Joint Control Project) PVSS client.

Current Trends in Name Giving among Bulgarians: A Study of the Names of Newborns in the Sofia Region

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Maya Vlahova-Angelova

2017-11-01

Full Text Available The article showcases a large-scale study of the modern Bulgarian anthroponymic system conducted by the Applied Onomastics section of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences Institute for the Bulgarian Language (IBL with the aim of revealing the current trends in the choice of personal names by the Bulgarians at the beginning of the 21st century. The study focuses on personal names of Bulgarians born in 2010 in the Sofia region, as extracted from the Unified System of Civil Registration and Administrative Services of the Population of the Republic of Bulgaria. The total number of births this year was 1,005, of which 51.5% were boys, 48.5% were girls. Statistical and linguistic analysis of names allowed to measure the popularity of both individual personal names and different name types. It shows the quantitative ratio between most commonly chosen names and those of a singular use in relation to the total number of anthroponyms in the corpus, and proves that the male names are more sustainable in terms of usage than female. The derivational and etymological analysis of personal names helped to identify the productive word-formation types of names and the so-called “unisex names,” to distinguish between the native Bulgarian and the borrowed foreign names, as well as to classify graphic and phonetic variants of the same anthroponym. A number of quantitative comparisons were made between certain categories of names, for example, between compound (two-stem personal names (such as Miroslav and simple names (such as Biser, showing the ratio of the two-component personal names (such as Anna-Maria to the rest of the anthroponyms. It was found that the Bulgarian anthroponymic system in the beginning of the 21st century is more open to the non-adapted foreign names (like Mishel, Nancy, shows wider usage of diminutive “unisex names” (Moni, Stephy, Toni, as well as the growing popularity of shortened forms used as official names (Alex, Boni, Pepi, and the

Use of global context for handling noisy names in discussion texts of a homeopathy discussion forum

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Mukta Majumder

2014-03-01

Full Text Available The task of identifying named entities from the discussion texts in Web forums faces the challenge of noisy names. As the names are often misspelled or abbreviated, the conventional techniques have failed to detect the noisy names properly. In this paper we propose a global context based framework for handling the noisy names. The framework is tested on a named entity recognition system designed to identify the names from the discussion texts in a homeopathy diagnosis discussion forum. The proposed global context-based framework is found to be effective in improving the accuracy of the named entity recognition system.

Reduced verbal fluency for proper names in nondemented patients with Parkinson's disease: a quantitative and qualitative analysis.

Science.gov (United States)

Fine, Eric M; Delis, Dean C; Paul, Brianna M; Filoteo, J Vincent

2011-02-01

There has been an increasing interest within neuropsychology in comparing verbal fluency for different grammatical classes (e.g., verb generation vs. noun generation) in neurological populations, including Parkinson's disease (PD). However, to our knowledge, few studies have compared verbal fluency for common nouns and proper names in PD. Common nouns and proper names differ in terms of their semantic characteristics, as categories of common nouns are organized hierarchically based on semantics, while categories of proper nouns lack a well-defined semantic organization. In addition, there is accumulating evidence that the retrieval of these distinct grammatical classes are subserved by somewhat distinct neural systems. Given that verbal fluency deficits are among the first impairments to emerge in PD, and that such deficits are predictors of future cognitive decline, it is important to examine all aspects of verbal fluency in this population. For the current study, we compared the performance of a group of 32 nondemented PD patients with 32 healthy participants (HP) on verbal fluency tasks for common nouns (animals) and proper names (boys' first names). A significant interaction between verbal fluency task and diagnostic status emerged, as the PD group performed significantly worse on only the proper name fluency task. This finding may reflect the absence of well-defined semantic organization that structures the verbal search for first names, thus placing a greater onus on strategic or "executive" verbal retrieval processes.

Sharing one biographical detail elicits priming between famous names: Empirical and computational approaches

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Matthias eIhrke

2011-05-01

Full Text Available In this paper three experiments and corresponding model simulations are reported that investigate the priming of famous name recognition in order to explore the structure of the part of the semantic system dealing with people. Consistent with empirical findings, novel computational simulations using Burton et al.'s interactive activation and competition model point to a conceptual distinction between how priming is initiated in single- and double-familiarity tasks, indicating that priming should be weaker or non-existent for the single-familiarity task. Experiment One demonstrates that, within a double-familiarity framework using famous names, categorial and associative priming are reliable effects. Pushing the model to the limit, it predicts that pairs of celebrities who are neither associatively- nor categorially-related but who share single biographical features, both died in a car crash for example, should prime each other. Experiment Two investigated this in a double familiarity task but the effect was not observed. We therefore simulated and realized a pairwise learning task that was conceptually similar to the double-familiarity decision task but allowed to strengthen the underlying connections. Priming based on a single biographical feature could be found both in simulations and the experiment. The effect was not due to visual or name similarity which were controlled for and participants did not report using the biographical links between the people to learn the pairs. The results are interpreted to lend further support to structural models of the memory for persons. Furthermore, the results are consistent with the idea that episodic features known about people are stored in semantic memory and are automatically activated when encountering that person.

Feeling-of-knowing for proper names.

Science.gov (United States)

Izaute, Marie; Chambres, Patrick; Larochelle, Serge

2002-12-01

The main objective of the presented study was to study feeling-of-knowing (FOK) in proper name retrieval. Many studies show that FOK can predict performance on a subsequent criterion test. Although feeling-of-knowing studies involve questions about proper names, none make this distinction between proper names and common names. Nevertheless, the specific character of proper names as a unique label referring to a person should allow participants to target precisely the desired verbal label. Our idea here was that the unique character of proper name information should result in more accurate FOK evaluations. In the experiment, participants evaluated feeling-of-knowing for proper and common name descriptions. The study demonstrates that FOK judgments are more accurate for proper names than for common names. The implications of the findings for proper names are briefly discussed in terms of feeling-of-knowing hypotheses.

75 FR 32186 - Task Force on Community Preventive Services

Science.gov (United States)

2010-06-07

... DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Task Force on Community Preventive Services Name: Task Force on Community Preventive Services meeting. Times and Dates: 8... by space available. Purpose: The mission of the Task Force is to develop and publish the Guide to...

75 FR 4402 - Task Force on Community Preventive Services

Science.gov (United States)

2010-01-27

... DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Task Force on Community Preventive Services Name: Task Force on Community Preventive Services meeting. Times and Dates: 8..., limited only by space available. Purpose: The mission of the Task Force is to develop and publish the...

Separating lexical-semantic access from other mnemonic processes in picture-name verification.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jason Fitzgerald Smith

2013-10-01

Full Text Available We present a novel paradigm to identify shared and unique brain regions underlying non-semantic, non-phonological, abstract, audio-visual (AV memory versus naming using a longitudinal functional magnetic resonance imaging experiment. Participants were trained to associate novel AV stimulus pairs containing hidden linguistic content. Half of the stimulus pairs were distorted images of animals and sine-wave speech versions of the animal’s name. Images and sounds were distorted in such a way as to make their linguistic content easily recognizable only after being made aware of its existence. Memory for the pairings was tested by presenting an AV pair and asking participants to verify if the two stimuli formed a learned pairing. After memory testing, the hidden linguistic content was revealed and participants were tested again on their recollection of the pairings in this linguistically informed state. Once informed, the AV verification task could be performed by naming the picture. There was substantial overlap between the regions involved in recognition of nonlinguistic sensory memory and naming, suggesting a strong relation between them. Contrasts between sessions identified left angular gyrus and middle temporal gyrus as key additional players in the naming network. Left inferior frontal regions participated in both naming and nonlinguistic AV memory suggesting the region is responsible for AV memory independent of phonological content contrary to previous proposals. Functional connectivity between angular gyrus and left inferior frontal gyrus and left middle temporal gyrus increased when performing the AV task as naming. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that, at the spatial resolution of fMRI, the regions that facilitate nonlinguistic AV associations are a subset of those that facilitate naming though reorganized into distinct networks.

Insights into Intraspecies Variation in Primate Prosocial Behavior: Capuchins (Cebus apella Fail to Show Prosociality on a Touchscreen Task

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Lindsey A. Drayton

2014-04-01

Full Text Available Over the past decade, many researchers have used food donation tasks to test whether nonhuman primates show human-like patterns of prosocial behavior in experimental settings. Although these tasks are elegant in their simplicity, performance within and across species is difficult to explain under a unified theoretical framework. Here, we attempt to better understand variation in prosociality by examining the circumstances that promote and hinder the expression of prosocial preferences. To this end, we tested whether capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella—a species that has previously demonstrated prosocial preferences—would behave prosocially using a novel touchscreen task. In contrast to previous studies, we found that capuchins as a group did not prosocially deliver food to a partner. Importantly however, data from control conditions revealed that subjects demonstrated limited understanding of the reward contingencies of the task. We also compared individuals’ performance in the current study with their performance in a previously published prosociality study. We conclude by discussing how continuing to explore intraspecies variation in performance on prosocial tasks may help inform debates regarding the existence of other-regarding preferences in nonhuman species.

ERP responses to person names as a measure of trait inference in person perception.

Science.gov (United States)

Wang, Lin; Bastiaansen, Marcel; Yang, Yufang

2015-01-01

Using event-related potentials (ERPs), this study examines how trait information inferred from behaviors is associated with person names. In linguistic discourses, person names were associated with descriptions of either positive or negative behaviors. In a subsequent explicit evaluation task, the previously described person names were presented in isolation, and the participants were asked to judge the emotional valence of these names. We found that the names associated with positive descriptions elicited a larger positivity in the ERP than the names associated with negative descriptions. The results indicate that the emotional valence of person names attached to person perception can be dynamically influenced by short descriptions of the target person, probably due to trait inference based on the provided behavioral descriptions.

Heuristic Scheduling Algorithm Oriented Dynamic Tasks for Imaging Satellites

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Maocai Wang

2014-01-01

Full Text Available Imaging satellite scheduling is an NP-hard problem with many complex constraints. This paper researches the scheduling problem for dynamic tasks oriented to some emergency cases. After the dynamic properties of satellite scheduling were analyzed, the optimization model is proposed in this paper. Based on the model, two heuristic algorithms are proposed to solve the problem. The first heuristic algorithm arranges new tasks by inserting or deleting them, then inserting them repeatedly according to the priority from low to high, which is named IDI algorithm. The second one called ISDR adopts four steps: insert directly, insert by shifting, insert by deleting, and reinsert the tasks deleted. Moreover, two heuristic factors, congestion degree of a time window and the overlapping degree of a task, are employed to improve the algorithm’s performance. Finally, a case is given to test the algorithms. The results show that the IDI algorithm is better than ISDR from the running time point of view while ISDR algorithm with heuristic factors is more effective with regard to algorithm performance. Moreover, the results also show that our method has good performance for the larger size of the dynamic tasks in comparison with the other two methods.

Subjective task complexity in the control room

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Braarud, Per Oeivind

2000-05-01

Understanding of what makes a control room situation difficult to handle is important when studying operator performance, both with respect to prediction as well as improvement of the human performance. Previous exploratory work on complexity showed a potential for prediction and explanation of operator performance. This report investigates in further detail the theoretical background and the structure of operator rated task complexity. The report complements the previous work on complexity to make a basis for development of operator performance analysis tools. The first part of the report outlines an approach for studying the complexity of the control room crew's work. The approach draws upon man-machine research as well as problem solving research. The approach identifies five complexity-shaping components: 'task work characteristics', 'teamwork characteristics', 'individual skill', 'teamwork skill', and 'interface and support systems'. The crew's work complexity is related to concepts of human performance quality and human error. The second part of the report is a post-hoc exploratory analysis of four empirical HRP studies, where operators' conception of the complexity of control room work is assessed by questionnaires. The analysis deals with the structure of complexity questionnaire ratings, and the relationship between complexity ratings and human performance measures. The main findings from the analysis of structure was the identification of three task work factors which were named Masking, Information load and Temporal demand, and in addition the identification of one interface factor which was named Navigation. Post-hoc analysis suggests that operator's subjective complexity, which was assessed by questionnaires, is related to workload, task and system performance, and operator's self-rated performance. (Author). 28 refs., 47 tabs

Computerized management of plant intervention tasks

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Quoidbach, G.

2004-01-01

The main objective of the 'Computerized Management of Plant Intervention Tasks' is to help the staff of a nuclear or a conventional power plant or of any other complex industrial facility (chemical industries, refineries, and so on) in planning, organizing, and carrying out any (preventive or corrective) maintenance task. This 'Computerized Management of Plant Intervention Tasks' is organized around a data base of all plant components in the facility that might be subjected to maintenance or tagout. It allows to manage, by means of intelligent and configurable 'mail service', the course of the intervention requests as well as various treatments of those requests, in a safe and efficient way, adapted to each particular organization. The concept of 'Computerized Management' of plant intervention tasks was developed by BELGATOM in 1983 for the Belgian nuclear power plants of ELECTRABEL. A first implementation of this concept was made at that time for the Doel NPP under the name POPIT (Programming Of Plant Intervention Tasks). In 1988, it was decided to proceed to a functional upgrade of the application, using advanced software and hardware techniques and products, and to realize a second implementation in the Tihange NPP under the name ACM (Application Consignation Maintenance). (author)

Multi-language naming game

Science.gov (United States)

Zhou, Jianfeng; Lou, Yang; Chen, Guanrong; Tang, Wallace K. S.

2018-04-01

Naming game is a simulation-based experiment used to study the evolution of languages. The conventional naming game focuses on a single language. In this paper, a novel naming game model named multi-language naming game (MLNG) is proposed, where the agents are different-language speakers who cannot communicate with each other without a translator (interpreter) in between. The MLNG model is general, capable of managing k different languages with k ≥ 2. For illustration, the paper only discusses the MLNG with two different languages, and studies five representative network topologies, namely random-graph, WS small-world, NW small-world, scale-free, and random-triangle topologies. Simulation and analysis results both show that: 1) using the network features and based on the proportion of translators the probability of establishing a conversation between two or three agents can be theoretically estimated; 2) the relationship between the convergence speed and the proportion of translators has a power-law-like relation; 3) different agents require different memory sizes, thus a local memory allocation rule is recommended for saving memory resources. The new model and new findings should be useful for further studies of naming games and for better understanding of languages evolution from a dynamical network perspective.

Memory Training for Individuals with Alzheimer’s Disease Improves Name Recall

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

J. P. Kesslak

1997-01-01

Full Text Available Alzheimer’s disease is clinically characterized by a variety of progressive cognitive deficits, most notably an impaired ability to acquire new information, such as name recall. Eleven demented patients and 11 controls participated in a 4 week memory program that included training in name–face recall. Individuals were taught strategies for name–face rehearsal, and administered task specific and standardized tests to assess the intervention efficacy. During the memory training patients improved recall of names and faces (p

Showing a model's eye movements in examples does not improve learning of problem-solving tasks

NARCIS (Netherlands)

van Marlen, Tim; van Wermeskerken, Margot; Jarodzka, Halszka; van Gog, Tamara

2016-01-01

Eye movement modeling examples (EMME) are demonstrations of a computer-based task by a human model (e.g., a teacher), with the model's eye movements superimposed on the task to guide learners' attention. EMME have been shown to enhance learning of perceptual classification tasks; however, it is an

Letter-case information and the identification of brand names.

Science.gov (United States)

Perea, Manuel; Jiménez, María; Talero, Fernanda; López-Cañada, Soraya

2015-02-01

A central tenet of most current models of visual-word recognition is that lexical units are activated on the basis of case-invariant abstract letter representations. Here, we examined this assumption by using a unique type of words: brand names. The rationale of the experiments is that brand names are archetypically printed either in lowercase (e.g., adidas) or uppercase (e.g., IKEA). This allows us to present the brand names in their standard or non-standard case configuration (e.g., adidas, IKEA vs. ADIDAS, ikea, respectively). We conducted two experiments with a brand-decision task ('is it a brand name?'): a single-presentation experiment and a masked priming experiment. Results in the single-presentation experiment revealed faster identification times of brand names in their standard case configuration than in their non-standard case configuration (i.e., adidas faster than ADIDAS; IKEA faster than ikea). In the masked priming experiment, we found faster identification times of brand names when they were preceded by an identity prime that matched its standard case configuration than when it did not (i.e., faster response times to adidas-adidas than to ADIDAS-adidas). Taken together, the present findings strongly suggest that letter-case information forms part of a brand name's graphemic information, thus posing some limits to current models of visual-word recognition. © 2014 The British Psychological Society.

Audiovisual communication of object-names improves the spatial accuracy of recalled object-locations in topographic maps.

Science.gov (United States)

Lammert-Siepmann, Nils; Bestgen, Anne-Kathrin; Edler, Dennis; Kuchinke, Lars; Dickmann, Frank

2017-01-01

Knowing the correct location of a specific object learned from a (topographic) map is fundamental for orientation and navigation tasks. Spatial reference systems, such as coordinates or cardinal directions, are helpful tools for any geometric localization of positions that aims to be as exact as possible. Considering modern visualization techniques of multimedia cartography, map elements transferred through the auditory channel can be added easily. Audiovisual approaches have been discussed in the cartographic community for many years. However, the effectiveness of audiovisual map elements for map use has hardly been explored so far. Within an interdisciplinary (cartography-cognitive psychology) research project, it is examined whether map users remember object-locations better if they do not just read the corresponding place names, but also listen to them as voice recordings. This approach is based on the idea that learning object-identities influences learning object-locations, which is crucial for map-reading tasks. The results of an empirical study show that the additional auditory communication of object names not only improves memory for the names (object-identities), but also for the spatial accuracy of their corresponding object-locations. The audiovisual communication of semantic attribute information of a spatial object seems to improve the binding of object-identity and object-location, which enhances the spatial accuracy of object-location memory.

Task-failure-driven rebalancing of disassembly lines

OpenAIRE

Altekin, Fatma Tevhide; Akkan, Can

2011-01-01

Many reverse-logistics systems that collect and reprocess end-of-life products require a disassembly stage. The nature of variability in incoming products, and damages, which are more likely to occur during disassembly than assembly, create a significant uncertainty in disassembly tasks, namely, possibility of failed tasks. Such failures may lead to some successor tasks being infeasible, which changes work contents of downstream stations. To improve the profitability of such a disassembly lin...

A dual-task investigation of automaticity in visual word processing

Science.gov (United States)

McCann, R. S.; Remington, R. W.; Van Selst, M.

2000-01-01

An analysis of activation models of visual word processing suggests that frequency-sensitive forms of lexical processing should proceed normally while unattended. This hypothesis was tested by having participants perform a speeded pitch discrimination task followed by lexical decisions or word naming. As the stimulus onset asynchrony between the tasks was reduced, lexical-decision and naming latencies increased dramatically. Word-frequency effects were additive with the increase, indicating that frequency-sensitive processing was subject to postponement while attention was devoted to the other task. Either (a) the same neural hardware shares responsibility for lexical processing and central stages of choice reaction time task processing and cannot perform both computations simultaneously, or (b) lexical processing is blocked in order to optimize performance on the pitch discrimination task. Either way, word processing is not as automatic as activation models suggest.

Gene name ambiguity of eukaryotic nomenclatures.

Science.gov (United States)

Chen, Lifeng; Liu, Hongfang; Friedman, Carol

2005-01-15

With more and more scientific literature published online, the effective management and reuse of this knowledge has become problematic. Natural language processing (NLP) may be a potential solution by extracting, structuring and organizing biomedical information in online literature in a timely manner. One essential task is to recognize and identify genomic entities in text. 'Recognition' can be accomplished using pattern matching and machine learning. But for 'identification' these techniques are not adequate. In order to identify genomic entities, NLP needs a comprehensive resource that specifies and classifies genomic entities as they occur in text and that associates them with normalized terms and also unique identifiers so that the extracted entities are well defined. Online organism databases are an excellent resource to create such a lexical resource. However, gene name ambiguity is a serious problem because it affects the appropriate identification of gene entities. In this paper, we explore the extent of the problem and suggest ways to address it. We obtained gene information from 21 organisms and quantified naming ambiguities within species, across species, with English words and with medical terms. When the case (of letters) was retained, official symbols displayed negligible intra-species ambiguity (0.02%) and modest ambiguities with general English words (0.57%) and medical terms (1.01%). In contrast, the across-species ambiguity was high (14.20%). The inclusion of gene synonyms increased intra-species ambiguity substantially and full names contributed greatly to gene-medical-term ambiguity. A comprehensive lexical resource that covers gene information for the 21 organisms was then created and used to identify gene names by using a straightforward string matching program to process 45,000 abstracts associated with the mouse model organism while ignoring case and gene names that were also English words. We found that 85.1% of correctly retrieved mouse

Why does picture naming take longer than word reading? The contribution of articulatory processes.

Science.gov (United States)

Riès, Stéphanie; Legou, Thierry; Burle, Borís; Alario, F-Xavier; Malfait, Nicole

2012-10-01

Since the 19th century, it has been known that response latencies are longer for naming pictures than for reading words aloud. While several interpretations have been proposed, a common general assumption is that this difference stems from cognitive word-selection processes and not from articulatory processes. Here we show that, contrary to this widely accepted view, articulatory processes are also affected by the task performed. To demonstrate this, we used a procedure that to our knowledge had never been used in research on language processing: response-latency fractionating. Along with vocal onsets, we recorded the electromyographic (EMG) activity of facial muscles while participants named pictures or read words aloud. On the basis of these measures, we were able to fractionate the verbal response latencies into two types of time intervals: premotor times (from stimulus presentation to EMG onset), mostly reflecting cognitive processes, and motor times (from EMG onset to vocal onset), related to motor execution processes. We showed that premotor and motor times are both longer in picture naming than in reading, although than in reading, although articulation is already initiated in the latter measure. Future studies based on this new approach should bring valuable clues for a better understanding of the relation between the cognitive and motor processes involved in speech production.

Children's mathematical performance: five cognitive tasks across five grades.

Science.gov (United States)

Moore, Alex M; Ashcraft, Mark H

2015-07-01

Children in elementary school, along with college adults, were tested on a battery of basic mathematical tasks, including digit naming, number comparison, dot enumeration, and simple addition or subtraction. Beyond cataloguing performance to these standard tasks in Grades 1 to 5, we also examined relationships among the tasks, including previously reported results on a number line estimation task. Accuracy and latency improved across grades for all tasks, and classic interaction patterns were found, for example, a speed-up of subitizing and counting, increasingly shallow slopes in number comparison, and progressive speeding of responses especially to larger addition and subtraction problems. Surprisingly, digit naming was faster than subitizing at all ages, arguing against a pre-attentive processing explanation for subitizing. Estimation accuracy and speed were strong predictors of children's addition and subtraction performance. Children who gave exponential responses on the number line estimation task were slower at counting in the dot enumeration task and had longer latencies on addition and subtraction problems. The results provided further support for the importance of estimation as an indicator of children's current and future mathematical expertise. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The Influence of Psycholinguistic Variables on Articulatory Errors in Naming in Progressive Motor Speech Degeneration

Science.gov (United States)

Code, Chris; Tree, Jeremy; Ball, Martin

2011-01-01

We describe an analysis of speech errors on a confrontation naming task in a man with progressive speech degeneration of 10-year duration from Pick's disease. C.S. had a progressive non-fluent aphasia together with a motor speech impairment and early assessment indicated some naming impairments. There was also an absence of significant…

Presurgical language localization with visual naming associated ECoG high- gamma modulation in pediatric drug-resistant epilepsy.

Science.gov (United States)

Arya, Ravindra; Wilson, J Adam; Fujiwara, Hisako; Rozhkov, Leonid; Leach, James L; Byars, Anna W; Greiner, Hansel M; Vannest, Jennifer; Buroker, Jason; Milsap, Griffin; Ervin, Brian; Minai, Ali; Horn, Paul S; Holland, Katherine D; Mangano, Francesco T; Crone, Nathan E; Rose, Douglas F

2017-04-01

This prospective study compared presurgical language localization with visual naming-associated high-γ modulation (HGM) and conventional electrical cortical stimulation (ECS) in children with intracranial electrodes. Patients with drug-resistant epilepsy who were undergoing intracranial monitoring were included if able to name pictures. Electrocorticography (ECoG) signals were recorded during picture naming (overt and covert) and quiet baseline. For each electrode the likelihood of high-γ (70-116 Hz) power modulation during naming task relative to the baseline was estimated. Electrodes with significant HGM were plotted on a three-dimensional (3D) cortical surface model. Sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy were calculated compared to clinical ECS. Seventeen patients with mean age of 11.3 years (range 4-19) were included. In patients with left hemisphere electrodes (n = 10), HGM during overt naming showed high specificity (0.81, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.78-0.85), and accuracy (0.71, 95% CI 0.66-0.75, p oral motor function was regarded as the gold standard. Similar results were reproduced by comparing covert naming-associated HGM with ECS naming sites. With right hemisphere electrodes (n = 7), no ECS-naming deficits were seen without interference with oral-motor function. HGM mapping showed a high specificity (0.81, 95% CI 0.78-0.84), and accuracy (0.76, 95% CI 0.71-0.81, p = 0.006), but modest sensitivity (0.44) compared to ECS interference with oral-motor function. Naming-associated ECoG HGM was consistently observed over Broca's area (left posterior inferior-frontal gyrus), bilateral oral/facial motor cortex, and sometimes over the temporal pole. This study supports the use of ECoG HGM mapping in children in whom adverse events preclude ECS, or as a screening method to prioritize electrodes for ECS testing. Wiley Periodicals, Inc. © 2017 International League Against Epilepsy.

Naming and Categorization in Healthy Participants: Crowded Domains and Blurred Effects of Gender.

Science.gov (United States)

Moreno-Martínez, Francisco Javier; Moratilla-Pérez, Iván

2016-09-20

The study of category-specific effects has produced compelling insights into the structure, organization and functioning of cognitive processes. According to some accounts, the greater intra-category structural similarity for living things (LT) contributes to faster access to superordinate pictorial information, making LT easier to classify than structurally dissimilar items (i.e., nonliving things: NLT). Conversely, LT would be harder to name than NLT, as they must compete with within-domain structurally similar items in order to be properly discriminated. Additionally, it has been reported that men perform better with NLT than women, whereas women surpass men with LT but the reasons for this remain unclear. In the current study, we explored both the visual crowding hypothesis and the effects of gender by testing the performance of 40 healthy participants in classification and naming tasks. Analyses revealed that LT were classified significantly faster than NLT (η p 2 = .11), but named significantly slower (η p 2 = .25). Interestingly, the same results persisted after removing atypical categories that are known to distort the interpretation of data from the analyses. Moreover, we did not find the expected effects of gender. Men were more accurate than women naming NLT (η p 2 = .13), and women did not surpass men in any task.

Musical training, bilingualism, and executive function: a closer look at task switching and dual-task performance.

Science.gov (United States)

Moradzadeh, Linda; Blumenthal, Galit; Wiseheart, Melody

2015-07-01

This study investigated whether musical training and bilingualism are associated with enhancements in specific components of executive function, namely, task switching and dual-task performance. Participants (n = 153) belonging to one of four groups (monolingual musician, bilingual musician, bilingual non-musician, or monolingual non-musician) were matched on age and socioeconomic status and administered task switching and dual-task paradigms. Results demonstrated reduced global and local switch costs in musicians compared with non-musicians, suggesting that musical training can contribute to increased efficiency in the ability to shift flexibly between mental sets. On dual-task performance, musicians also outperformed non-musicians. There was neither a cognitive advantage for bilinguals relative to monolinguals, nor an interaction between music and language to suggest additive effects of both types of experience. These findings demonstrate that long-term musical training is associated with improvements in task switching and dual-task performance. Copyright © 2014 Cognitive Science Society, Inc.

Color naming deficits and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: A retinal dopaminergic hypothesis

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Tannock Rosemary

2006-01-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background Individuals with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD have unexplained difficulties on tasks requiring speeded processing of colored stimuli. Color vision mechanisms, particularly short-wavelength (blue-yellow pathways, are highly sensitive to various diseases, toxins and drugs that alter dopaminergic neurotransmission. Thus, slow color processing might reflect subtle impairments in the perceptual encoding stage of stimulus color, which arise from hypodopaminergic functioning. Presentation of hypotheses 1 Color perception of blue-yellow (but not red-green stimuli is impaired in ADHD as a result of deficient retinal dopamine; 2 Impairments in the blue-yellow color mechanism in ADHD contribute to poor performance on speeded color naming tasks that include a substantial proportion of blue-yellow stimuli; and 3 Methylphenidate increases central dopamine and is also believed to increase retinal dopamine, thereby normalizing blue-yellow color perception, which in turn improves performance on the speeded color naming tasks. Testing the hypothesis Requires three approaches, including:1 direct assessment of color perception in individuals with ADHD to determine whether blue-yellow color perception is selectively impaired; 2 determination of relationship between performance on neuropsychological tasks requiring speeded color processing and color perception; and 3 randomized, controlled pharmacological intervention with stimulant medication to examine the effects of enhancing central dopamine on color perception and task performance Implications of hypothesis If substantiated, the findings of color perception problems would necessitate a re-consideration of current neuropsychological models of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, guide psycho-education, academic instruction, and require consideration of stimulus color in many of the widely used neuropsychological tests.

A name is a name is a name: some thoughts and personal opinions about molluscan scientific names

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Dance, S.P.

2009-01-01

Since 1758, with the publication of Systema Naturae by Linnaeus, thousands of scientific names have been proposed for molluscs. The derivation and uses of many of them are here examined from various viewpoints, beginning with names based on appearance, size, vertical distribution, and location.

Named Entity Extraction and Linking Challenge: University of Twente at #Microposts2014

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Habib, Mena Badieh; van Keulen, Maurice; Zhu, Zhemin; Rowe, Matthew; Stankovic, Milan; Dadzie, Aba-Sah

Twitter is a potentially rich source of continuously and instantly updated information. Shortness and informality of tweets are challenges for Natural Language Processing (NLP) tasks. In this paper, we present a hybrid approach for Named Entity Extraction (NEE)and Linking (NEL) for tweets. Although

On streamlining the Ukrainian names of plants. Information 7. Spelling the names of plant varieties.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

В. М. Меженський

2016-07-01

Full Text Available Purpose. To analyse the practice of transliteration of the Ukrainian cultivar names and rendering foreign names by means of the Ukrainian language, as well as special aspects of cultivar names spelling in special literature. Results. Cultivar names as a special category require preservation of primary graphics or sound type in the other language. This can be achieved by direct inclusion of the original name to the Ukrainian text or by practical transcribing, but not by transliteration or translation. Otherwise, Ukrainian names should be transliterated for inclusion to the texts in Latin characters. Transcription/transliteration in both directions is performed from the source language, though, as practice shows, in some Ukrainian publications the Russian is wrongly used as an intermediary language. Some national scientific publications ignore the recommendations of the International Code of Nomenclature for Cultivated Plants that is not conducive to the success of scientific communication in the globalized world. Conclusions. The foreign names of plant varieties should be entered into the Ukrainian text keeping the original spelling or by means of practical transcription. The loan of foreign names is performed by transcribing directly from the source language; if the language doesn’t have the Latin alphabet, Latinized name transcription is acceptable. Recommendations of the International Code of Nomenclature for Cultivated Plants that concern graphic highlighting of the cultivar names in the text enclosing them in single quotation marks and writing each word of a cultivar name with a capital letter should necessarily be applied in the foreign-language publications and extended to the Ukrainian special literature, at least, in terms of the use of single quotation marks. Ukrainian names should be transliterated only in accordance with the regulations.

Phonaesthemes and sound symbolism in Swedish brand names

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Åsa Abelin

2015-01-01

Full Text Available This study examines the prevalence of sound symbolism in Swedish brand names. A general principle of brand name design is that effective names should be distinctive, recognizable, easy to pronounce and meaningful. Much money is invested in designing powerful brand names, where the emotional impact of the names on consumers is also relevant and it is important to avoid negative connotations. Customers prefer brand names, which say something about the product, as this reduces product uncertainty (Klink, 2001. Therefore, consumers might prefer sound symbolic names. It has been shown that people associate the sounds of the nonsense words maluma and takete with round and angular shapes, respectively. By extension, more complex shapes and textures might activate words containing certain sounds. This study focuses on semantic dimensions expected to be relevant to product names, such as mobility, consistency, texture and shape. These dimensions are related to the senses of sight, hearing and touch and are also interesting from a cognitive linguistic perspective. Cross-modal assessment and priming experiments with pictures and written words were performed and the results analysed in relation to brand name databases and to sound symbolic sound combinations in Swedish (Abelin, 1999. The results show that brand names virtually never contain pejorative, i.e. depreciatory, consonant clusters, and that certain sounds and sound combinations are overrepresented in certain content categories. Assessment tests show correlations between pictured objects and phoneme combinations in newly created words (non-words. The priming experiment shows that object images prime newly created words as expected, based on the presence of compatible consonant clusters.

The Effect of Errorless Naming Treatment on Anomia in an Elderly Patient With Aphasia

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Atefe Yousefi

2015-10-01

Full Text Available Objectives: Anomia is one of the most common problems that aphasic patients and therapists are involved with it. Because of the disruptive effect of anomia on communicative efficiency of aphasic patients, this study aimed at examining the effect of errorless naming treatment on naming ability in an aphasic patient. Methods & Materials: The subject was selected using purposeful sampling method. This interventional single-subject study with ABA design was implemented on a 69-year-old woman with moderate Broca’s aphasia and phonological errors. The participant was a literate, right-handed Persian speaking patient with neither severe motor speech disorder nor significant auditory comprehension deficits. The patient underwent 10 sessions of treatment using errorless naming treatment protocol (Raymer et al., 2012. Based on this method, the patient was given multiple opportunities to rehearse the correct name of a picture supported by repetition and oral reading, while avoiding production of errors during training. Results: The effect size in confrontational naming task after intervention in this patient for trained and control words were 5.42 and 2.38, respectively. The linear trend line of correct responses percentage of trained and control words were 7.6 and 4.15, respectively. Improvements in the trained and control word sets remained at a higher level than baseline, one week later. Also improvements in Persian WAB and naming tests were noticed in posttreatment period. Conclusion: As a result of errorless naming treatment in the current study, the patient showed significant improvements in naming of trained words but generalization was not noticeable for control words. Based on this finding, this method might be useful as a therapeutic protocol in Persian speaking aphasic patients with anomia.

What Automaticity Deficit? Activation of Lexical Information by Readers with Dyslexia in a Rapid Automatized Naming Stroop-Switch Task

Science.gov (United States)

Jones, Manon W.; Snowling, Margaret J.; Moll, Kristina

2016-01-01

Reading fluency is often predicted by rapid automatized naming (RAN) speed, which as the name implies, measures the automaticity with which familiar stimuli (e.g., letters) can be retrieved and named. Readers with dyslexia are considered to have less "automatized" access to lexical information, reflected in longer RAN times compared with…

Control Deficit Subjects are Superior for Man-Made Objects on a Verbal Semantic Task

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Carlos Roncero

2014-04-01

Full Text Available When semantic deficits occur following brain damage, the subjects generally show anomia as well as deficits on semantic matching tasks such as the Camels and Cactus test. Such individuals can be further characterized as demonstrating either a semantic control deficit or a storage deficit (Jeffries & Lambon Ralph, 2006. Semantic control subjects show improved performance when responses are constrained, but storage subjects do not. In the present study, we categorized 17 subjects with neurodegenerative diseases – Alzheimer’s disease and Primary Progressive Aphasia - as Semantic Storage or Semantic Control patterns of deficit, based on their performance on three semantic tasks—Naming, Cued Naming, and Word-to-Picture Matching. This was done independent of both the subject’s localization of brain damage and clinical diagnosis. Subjects who demonstrated impaired performance on the Naming task, but showed normal performance on Cued Naming and Word-to-Picture Matching, were classified as showing a control deficit (N = 8, while subjects who were impaired on all three semantic tasks were classified as anomic subjects with a storage deficit (N = 9. Despite only using these three semantic tasks, the identified sub-groups demonstrated different patterns of semantic knowledge consistent with either a control deficit or a storage deficit. The identified sub-groups, for example, were comparable for letter fluency, but subjects with a storage deficit were significantly worse for animal fluency. Accessing subjects’ semantic knowledge with the word and picture versions of the Camels and Cactus test, we also found that storage deficit subjects’ performance was equally poor on both versions compared to normal elderly participants, whereas control deficit subjects were relatively impaired only in the word version. Finally, comparing FDG PET scans for these subjects, we noted storage deficit subjects typically had bilateral temporal damage—all but one

The naming impairment of living and nonliving items in Alzheimer's disease.

Science.gov (United States)

Montanes, P; Goldblum, M C; Boller, F

1995-01-01

Several studies of semantic abilities in Dementia of the Alzheimer Type (DAT) suggest that their semantic disorders may affect specific categories of knowledge. In particular, the existence of a category-specific semantic impairment affecting, selectively, living things has frequently been reported in association with DAT. We report here results from two naming tasks of 25 DAT patients and two subgroups within this population. The first naming task used 48 black and white line drawings from Snodgrass and Vanderwart (1980) which controlled the visual complexity of stimuli from living and nonliving categories. The second task used 44 colored pictures (to assess the influence of word frequency in living vs. nonliving categories). Within the set of black and white pictures, both DAT patients and controls obtained significantly lower scores on high visual complexity stimuli than on stimuli of low visual complexity. A clear effect of semantic category emerged for DAT patients and controls, with a lower performance on the living category. Within the colored set, pictures corresponding to high frequency words gave rise to significantly higher scores than pictures corresponding to low frequency words. No significant difference emerged between living versus nonliving categories, either in DAT patients or in controls. In the two tasks, the two subgroups of DAT patients presented a different profile of performance and error type. As color constitutes the main difference between the two sets of pictures, our results point to the relevance of this cue in the processing of semantic information, with visual complexity and frequency also being very relevant.

The interplay of bottom-up and top-down mechanisms in visual guidance during object naming.

Science.gov (United States)

Coco, Moreno I; Malcolm, George L; Keller, Frank

2014-01-01

An ongoing issue in visual cognition concerns the roles played by low- and high-level information in guiding visual attention, with current research remaining inconclusive about the interaction between the two. In this study, we bring fresh evidence into this long-standing debate by investigating visual saliency and contextual congruency during object naming (Experiment 1), a task in which visual processing interacts with language processing. We then compare the results of this experiment to data of a memorization task using the same stimuli (Experiment 2). In Experiment 1, we find that both saliency and congruency influence visual and naming responses and interact with linguistic factors. In particular, incongruent objects are fixated later and less often than congruent ones. However, saliency is a significant predictor of object naming, with salient objects being named earlier in a trial. Furthermore, the saliency and congruency of a named object interact with the lexical frequency of the associated word and mediate the time-course of fixations at naming. In Experiment 2, we find a similar overall pattern in the eye-movement responses, but only the congruency of the target is a significant predictor, with incongruent targets fixated less often than congruent targets. Crucially, this finding contrasts with claims in the literature that incongruent objects are more informative than congruent objects by deviating from scene context and hence need a longer processing. Overall, this study suggests that different sources of information are interactively used to guide visual attention on the targets to be named and raises new questions for existing theories of visual attention.

LINNAEUS: A species name identification system for biomedical literature

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Nenadic Goran

2010-02-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background The task of recognizing and identifying species names in biomedical literature has recently been regarded as critical for a number of applications in text and data mining, including gene name recognition, species-specific document retrieval, and semantic enrichment of biomedical articles. Results In this paper we describe an open-source species name recognition and normalization software system, LINNAEUS, and evaluate its performance relative to several automatically generated biomedical corpora, as well as a novel corpus of full-text documents manually annotated for species mentions. LINNAEUS uses a dictionary-based approach (implemented as an efficient deterministic finite-state automaton to identify species names and a set of heuristics to resolve ambiguous mentions. When compared against our manually annotated corpus, LINNAEUS performs with 94% recall and 97% precision at the mention level, and 98% recall and 90% precision at the document level. Our system successfully solves the problem of disambiguating uncertain species mentions, with 97% of all mentions in PubMed Central full-text documents resolved to unambiguous NCBI taxonomy identifiers. Conclusions LINNAEUS is an open source, stand-alone software system capable of recognizing and normalizing species name mentions with speed and accuracy, and can therefore be integrated into a range of bioinformatics and text-mining applications. The software and manually annotated corpus can be downloaded freely at http://linnaeus.sourceforge.net/.

Measuring implicit gender-role orientation: the gender initial preference task.

Science.gov (United States)

Stieger, Stefan; Burger, Christoph; Schiller, Franziska R; Schulze, Esther K; Voracek, Martin

2014-01-01

Individuals prefer their name letters over nonname letters, which is known as the name-letter effect (NLE). This research aimed to examine a possible NLE for gender-role orientation (GRO) by rating letters for their gender-typicality in an initial preference task (Gender-IPT). Indeed, a clear NLE appeared: Men rated their initials as more male-typical, whereas women rated them as more female-typical. The Gender-IPT showed good convergent validity with other direct and indirect (Gender Implicit Association Test) measures of GRO as well as predictive validity with sensation seeking and gender-typical everyday life behaviors. The Gender-IPT seems to be a useful and practical indirect measure to assess GRO in a short, convenient, and computer-independent way, complementing other indirect measures of GRO.

Hemispheric distribution of ERP components and word naming in preschool children.

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Licht, R.; Kok, A.; Bakker, D.J.; Bouma, A.

1986-01-01

Recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) at the left and right temporal and parietal sites of 61 children (aged 5.1-6.2 yrs) during a word-naming task. Ss were divided into fast and slow reading acquisition (RA) groups based on the number of trials they required to learn to read 4 words. Principal

Comparison of fMRI on the cortical organization using two language tasks in normal subjects

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Jiang Zhen; Zhang Caiyuan; Cai Wu; Shen Junkang; Gong Zhigang

2008-01-01

Objective: To comparatively study the cortical organization using two different language tasks by BOLD-fMRI in normal subjects: Methods: BOLD-fMRI scan was performed in 8 healthy volunteers with right handiness during executing the two language tasks: picture-naming and word-generation. The AFNI software was used to analyze the functional data and to generate the statistical parametric maps for comparatively studying the activation areas of each task. Results: Both activation patterns for two language tasks shared a common brain network dispersed in frontal, parietal, and occipital lobe. The activation areas of occipital lobe for picture-naming was more obvious than those for word-generation. By contraries, the areas related to language processing for word-generation was more active than picture-imaging. Compared with picture naming, the activation patterns for word-generation was mainly left-lateralized. Conclusion: Both of two tasks can activate the brain network which dedicate to language processing, but each of them has its own characteristics according to the processing patterns. (authors)

Al Hirschfeld's NINA as a prototype search task for studying perceptual error in radiology

Science.gov (United States)

Nodine, Calvin F.; Kundel, Harold L.

1997-04-01

Artist Al Hirschfeld has been hiding the word NINA (his daughter's name) in line drawings of theatrical scenes that have appeared in the New York Times for over 50 years. This paper shows how Hirschfeld's search task of finding the name NINA in his drawings illustrates basic perceptual principles of detection, discrimination and decision-making commonly encountered in radiology search tasks. Hirschfeld's hiding of NINA is typically accomplished by camouflaging the letters of the name and blending them into scenic background details such as wisps of hair and folds of clothing. In a similar way, pulmonary nodules and breast lesions are camouflaged by anatomic features of the chest or breast image. Hirschfeld's hidden NINAs are sometimes missed because they are integrated into a Gestalt overview rather than differentiated from background features during focal scanning. This may be similar to overlooking an obvious nodule behind the heart in a chest x-ray image. Because it is a search game, Hirschfeld assigns a number to each drawing to indicate how many NINAs he has hidden so as not to frustrate his viewers. In the radiologists' task, the number of targets detected in a medical image is determined by combining perceptual input with probabilities generated from clinical history and viewing experience. Thus, in the absence of truth, searching for abnormalities in x-ray images creates opportunities for recognition and decision errors (e.g. false positives and false negatives). We illustrate how camouflage decreases the conspicuity of both artistic and radiographic targets, compare detection performance of radiologists with lay persons searching for NINAs, and, show similarities and differences between scanning strategies of the two groups based on eye-position data.

WHY ADULTS LEARN: INTERPRETING ADULTS’ REASONS TO PARTICIPATE IN EDUCATION IN TERMS OF ECCLES’ SUBJECTIVE TASK VALUE

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Julia Gorges

2016-01-01

Full Text Available Psychological research shows that subjective task value, a basic component of expectancyvalue theory as outlined by Eccles, predicts task choice (e.g., going to graduate school. However, Eccles’ approach has not been used to investigate adult learning so far. Therefore, the present study investigated a specific form of subjective task value and task choice, namely adults’ subjective task value of participation in education. Based on expectancy-value theory, qualitative content analyses of 16 interviews with adult learners (aged between 21 and 67 from varying age groups and educational backgrounds show a differentiation of positive value according to points of reference and a revised conceptualisation of cost as an independent component of subjective task value with four subcomponents. Apparently people estimate positive value and cost separately at first and only later weigh these components against each other to arrive at an overall evaluation of subjective task value, which, in turn, predicts participation in education. Moreover, results suggest a distinction between anticipated subjective task value prior to participation and subjective task value based on experience (i.e., in hindsight. Benefits of using expectancy-value theory for future research on adults’ participation in education are discussed.

[Usefulness and limitations of rapid automatized naming to predict reading difficulties after school entry in preschool children].

Science.gov (United States)

Kaneko, Masato; Uno, Akira; Haruhara, Noriko; Awaya, Noriko

2012-01-01

We investigated the usability and limitations of Rapid Automatized Naming (RAN) results in 6-year-old Japanese preschool children to estimate whether reading difficulties will be encountered after school entry. We administered a RAN task to 1,001 preschool children. Then after they had entered school, we performed follow-up surveys yearly to assess their reading performance when these children were in the first, second, third and fourth grades. Also, we examined Hiragana non-words and Kanji words at each time point to detect the children who were having difficulty with reading Hiragana and Kanji. Results by Receiver Operating Characteristic analysis showed that the RAN result in 6-year-old preschool children was predictive of Kanji reading difficulty in the lower grades of elementary school, especially in the second grade with a probability of 0.86, and the area under the curve showed a probability of 0.84 in the third grade. These results suggested that the RAN task was useful as a screening tool.

NetiNeti: discovery of scientific names from text using machine learning methods

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Akella Lakshmi

2012-08-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background A scientific name for an organism can be associated with almost all biological data. Name identification is an important step in many text mining tasks aiming to extract useful information from biological, biomedical and biodiversity text sources. A scientific name acts as an important metadata element to link biological information. Results We present NetiNeti (Name Extraction from Textual Information-Name Extraction for Taxonomic Indexing, a machine learning based approach for recognition of scientific names including the discovery of new species names from text that will also handle misspellings, OCR errors and other variations in names. The system generates candidate names using rules for scientific names and applies probabilistic machine learning methods to classify names based on structural features of candidate names and features derived from their contexts. NetiNeti can also disambiguate scientific names from other names using the contextual information. We evaluated NetiNeti on legacy biodiversity texts and biomedical literature (MEDLINE. NetiNeti performs better (precision = 98.9% and recall = 70.5% compared to a popular dictionary based approach (precision = 97.5% and recall = 54.3% on a 600-page biodiversity book that was manually marked by an annotator. On a small set of PubMed Central’s full text articles annotated with scientific names, the precision and recall values are 98.5% and 96.2% respectively. NetiNeti found more than 190,000 unique binomial and trinomial names in more than 1,880,000 PubMed records when used on the full MEDLINE database. NetiNeti also successfully identifies almost all of the new species names mentioned within web pages. Conclusions We present NetiNeti, a machine learning based approach for identification and discovery of scientific names. The system implementing the approach can be accessed at http://namefinding.ubio.org.

Rats socially-reared and full fed learned an autoshaping task, showing less levels of fear-like behaviour than fasted or singly-reared rats.

Science.gov (United States)

Molina-Hernández, Miguel; Téllez-Alcántara, N Patricia

2004-07-01

During the learning of instrumental tasks, rats are usually fasted to increase reinforced learning. However, fasting produces several undesirable side effects. The aim of this study was to test the hypothesis that control rats, i.e. full-fed and group-reared rats, will learn an autoshaping task to the same level as fasted or singly-reared rats. The interaction between fasting and single-rearing of rats was also tested. Results showed that control rats and fasted rats acquired the autoshaping task similarly, independently of rearing condition or gender. However, fasted or singly-reared rats produced fear-like behaviour, since male rats group-reared and fasted (85% body/wt, P autoshaping task to the same level as fasted or singly-reared rats. However, fasting or single-rearing produced fear-like behaviour. Thus, the training of control rats in autoshaping tasks may be an option that improves animal welfare.

The Relationship Between Confrontation Naming and Story Gist Production in Aphasia.

Science.gov (United States)

Richardson, Jessica D; Dalton, Sarah Grace; Fromm, Davida; Forbes, Margaret; Holland, Audrey; MacWhinney, Brian

2018-03-01

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between picture naming performance and the ability to communicate the gist, or essential elements, of a story. We also sought to determine if this relationship varied according to Western Aphasia Battery-Revised (WAB-R; Kertesz, 2007) aphasia subtype. Demographic information, test scores, and transcripts of 258 individuals with aphasia completing 3 narrative tasks were retrieved from the AphasiaBank database. Narratives were subjected to a main concept analysis to determine gist production. A correlation analysis was used to investigate the relationship between naming scores and main concept production for the whole group of persons with aphasia and for WAB-R subtypes separately. We found strong correlations between naming test scores and narrative gist production for the large sample of persons with aphasia. However, the strength of the correlations varied by WAB-R subtype. Picture naming may accurately predict gist production for individuals with Broca's and Wernicke's aphasia, but not for other WAB-R subtypes. Given the current reprioritization of outcome measurement, picture naming may not be an appropriate surrogate measure for functional communication for all persons with aphasia. https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.5851848.

Game elements improve performance in a working memory training task

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Manuel Ninaus

2015-02-01

Full Text Available The utilization of game elements in a non-game context is currently used in a vast range of different domains. However, research on game elements’ effects in cognitive tasks is still sparse. Thus, in this study we implemented three game elements, namely, progress bar, level indicator, and a thematic setting, in a working memory training task. We evaluated the impact of game elements on user performance and perceived state of flow when compared to a conventional version of the task. Participants interacting with game elements showed higher scores in the working memory training task than participants from a control group who completed the working memory training task without the game elements. Moreover, game elements facilitated the individuals’ performance closer to their maximum working memory capacity. Finally, the perceived flow did not differ between the two groups, which indicates that game elements can induce better performance without changing the perception of being “in the zone”, that is without an increase in anxiety or boredom. This empirical study indicates that certain game elements can improve the performance and efficiency in a working memory task by increasing users’ ability and willingness to train at their optimal performance level. 

Atypical neural responding to hearing one's own name in adults with ASD.

Science.gov (United States)

Nijhof, Annabel D; Dhar, Monica; Goris, Judith; Brass, Marcel; Wiersema, Jan R

2018-01-01

Diminished responding to hearing one's own name is one of the earliest and strongest predictors of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Here, we studied, for the first time, the neural correlates of hearing one's own name in ASD. Based on existing research, we hypothesized enhancement of late parietal positive activity specifically for the own name in neurotypicals, and for this effect to be reduced in adults with ASD. Source localization analyses were conducted to estimate group differences in brain regions underlying this effect. Twenty-one adults with ASD, and 21 age- and gender-matched neurotypicals were presented with 3 categories of names (own name, close other, unknown other) as task-irrelevant deviant stimuli in an auditory oddball paradigm while electroencephalogram was recorded. As expected, late parietal positivity was observed specifically for own names in neurotypicals, indicating enhanced attention to the own name. This preferential effect was absent in the ASD group. This group difference was associated with diminished activation in the right temporoparietal junction (rTPJ) in adults with ASD. Further, a familiarity effect was found for N1 amplitude, with larger amplitudes for familiar names (own name and close other). However, groups did not differ for this effect. These findings provide evidence of atypical neural responding to hearing one's own name in adults with ASD, suggesting a deficit in self-other distinction associated with rTPJ dysfunction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

The Influence of Reward Associations on Conflict Processing in the Stroop Task

Science.gov (United States)

Krebs, Ruth M.; Boehler, Carsten N.; Woldorff, Marty G.

2010-01-01

Performance in a behavioral task can be facilitated by associating stimulus properties with reward. In contrast, conflicting information is known to impede task performance. Here we investigated how reward associations influence the within-trial processing of conflicting information using a color-naming Stroop task in which a subset of ink colors…

Lexical Retrieval is not by Competition: Evidence from the Blocked Naming Paradigm

Science.gov (United States)

Navarrete, Eduardo; Del Prato, Paul; Peressotti, Francesca; Mahon, Bradford Z.

2014-01-01

A central issue in research on speech production is whether or not the retrieval of words from the mental lexicon is a competitive process. An important experimental paradigm to study the dynamics of lexical retrieval is the blocked naming paradigm, in which participants name pictures of objects that are grouped by semantic category (‘homogenous’ or ‘related’ blocks) or not grouped by semantic category (‘heterogeneous’ or ‘unrelated’ blocks). Typically, pictures are repeated multiple times (or cycles) within both related and unrelated blocks. It is known that participants are slower in related than in unrelated blocks when the data are collapsed over all within-block repetitions. This semantic interference effect, as observed in the blocked naming task, is the strongest empirical evidence for the hypothesis of lexical selection by competition. Here we show, contrary to the accepted view, that the default polarity of semantic context effects in the blocked naming paradigm is facilitation, rather than interference. In a series of experiments we find that interference arises only when items repeat within a block, and only because of that repetition: What looks to be ‘semantic interference’ in the blocked naming paradigm is actually less repetition priming in related compared to unrelated blocks. These data undermine the theory of lexical selection by competition and indicate a model in which the most highly activated word is retrieved, regardless of the activation levels of nontarget words. We conclude that the theory of lexical selection by competition, and by extension the important psycholinguistic models based on that assumption, are no longer viable, and frame a new way to approach the question of how words are retrieved in spoken language production. PMID:25284954

Establishing requirements for information gathering tasks

NARCIS (Netherlands)

A.K. Amin (Alia)

2009-01-01

htmlabstractThis PhD project aims at understanding and supporting the complex activities of information gathering. To date, most search applications support one aspect of search namely low-level keyword-based search to find documents. However, in reality, users search tasks are often high-level

Assessment for Learning Tasks and the Peer Assessment Process

Science.gov (United States)

Lauf, Lorraine; Dole, Shelley

2010-01-01

A program of Assessment for Learning (AfL) was implemented with 107 Year 12 students as part of their preparation for a major external test. Students completed extended mathematics tasks and selected student responses were used for peer assessment purposes. This paper reports on two of the AfL elements, namely task selection and peer assessment as…

Gender differences in colour naming performance for gender specific body shape images.

Science.gov (United States)

Elliman, N A; Green, M W; Wan, W K

1998-03-01

Males are increasingly subjected to pressures to conform to aesthetic body stereotypes. There is, however, comparatively little published research on the aetiology of male body shape concerns. Two experiments are presented, which investigate the relationship between gender specific body shape concerns and colour-naming performance. Each study comprised a between subject design, in which each subject was tested on a single occasion. A pictorial version of a modified Stroop task was used in both studies. Subjects colour-named gender specific obese and thin body shape images and semantically homogeneous neutral images (birds) presented in a blocked format. The first experiment investigated female subjects (N = 68) and the second investigated males (N = 56). Subjects also completed a self-report measure of eating behaviour. Currently dieting female subjects exhibited significant colour-naming differences between obese and neutral images. A similar pattern of colour-naming performance was found to be related to external eating in the male subjects.

Intentional Forgetting Reduces Color-Naming Interference: Evidence from Item-Method Directed Forgetting

Science.gov (United States)

Lee, Yuh-shiow; Lee, Huang-mou; Fawcett, Jonathan M.

2013-01-01

In an item-method-directed forgetting task, Chinese words were presented individually, each followed by an instruction to remember or forget. Colored probe items were presented following each memory instruction requiring a speeded color-naming response. Half of the probe items were novel and unrelated to the preceding study item, whereas the…

Semantic Feature Analysis (SFA in the Treatment of Naming Deficits: Evidence from a Malay Speaker with Non-Fluent Aphasia

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Mohd Azmarul A Aziz

2015-04-01

Full Text Available Introduction Semantic Feature Analysis (SFA is a treatment for lexical retrieval impairment in which participants are cued by providing semantic information regarding concepts they have difficulty with in naming tasks in an effort to facilitate accurate lexical retrieval (Boyle & Coelho, 1995. People with aphasia are commonly found to have naming deficits and speech-language therapists (SLTs face difficulties in providing an effective treatment method to treat this deficit. This study aims to examine the use of SFA to address naming deficits for nouns and verbs in a Malay patient (KM with non-fluent aphasia. Methods The following tests were administered to the subject pre- and post- treatment: 1 Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Examination (BDAE; 2 Malay Object and Action Test (MOAT; and 3 A series of comprehension and production assessments in Malay. Subject was asked to name 101 and 50 pictures from MOAT. The stimuli were coloured photograph pictures. Treatment and probe (untrained stimuli were selected from pictures that a subject could not name, yielding 40 nouns and 30 verbs. From these, 20 stimuli were randomly chosen as probe items and 20 as treatment stimuli (nouns, 15 treatment and 15 probes (verbs. For the treatment study, single subject A-B-A design was implemented. Three baseline sessions were completed prior to treatment initiation naming for both probe and treatment pictures. Subject attended once-weekly therapy sessions over 8 months. Probes assessing generalizations to untrained pictures were presented at 4th, 8th, and 12th and so on until the end of the programme. Results Results showed that KM’s ability to name trained and untrained picture stimuli improved for both nouns and verbs. KM demonstrated steady improvement in the SFA treatment of trained nouns and verbs: from 5% baseline accuracy to over 90% accuracy at treatment end for nouns and from 0% baseline accuracy to 90% accuracy at treatment end for verbs. Generalizations to

The SPECIES and ORGANISMS Resources for Fast and Accurate Identification of Taxonomic Names in Text

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Pafilis, Evangelos; Pletscher-Frankild, Sune; Fanini, Lucia

2013-01-01

The exponential growth of the biomedical literature is making the need for efficient, accurate text-mining tools increasingly clear. The identification of named biological entities in text is a central and difficult task. We have developed an efficient algorithm and implementation of a dictionary......-based approach to named entity recognition, which we here use to identify names of species and other taxa in text. The tool, SPECIES, is more than an order of magnitude faster and as accurate as existing tools. The precision and recall was assessed both on an existing gold-standard corpus and on a new corpus...

Medieval Karelian Calendar Names: A Cognitive Perspective

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Irina A. Kyurshunova

2013-11-01

Full Text Available The article focuses on calendar personal names recorded in the 15–17th centuries Russian and Swedish manuscripts written in Karelia. Revealing the cognitive potential of this historical stratum of names, the author analyzes the frequency of full (official and modified forms of calendar names, the regional peculiarities of their linguistic adaptation, their ethnolinguisitic and social status, as well as the functioning of calendar names in the regional onomastic system. The analysis shows that the calendar onomasticon holds the leading positions, which reflects important axiological and mental shifts in the people’s culture. The list of most frequent Christian names of the region generally coincides with the onomastic data related to other Russian territories of the same period. The conservation of the name nomenclature is due to family traditions, namely, to familial practices of naming. However, the adaptation and distribution of names display some regional features, particularly in the frequency of different groups of anthroponyms. The peripheral situation of the region and the presence of Balto-Fennic population which adapted the Russian calendar athroponymicon determined the “conservatism” of the calendar names nomenclature: for naming, they selected the names which were better adapted and more extensively used among Russians. The formation of modified names depended mostly on the morphemic structure of the Russian language, regional features being relatively insignificant. The frequency of modified forms of names correlates with the genre of the manuscript and the scribe’s arbitrariness.

Enhanced Source Memory for Names of Cheaters

OpenAIRE

Raoul Bell; Axel Buchner

2009-01-01

The present experiment shows that source memory for names associated with a history of cheating is better than source memory for names associated with irrelevant or trustworthy behavior, whereas old-new discrimination is not affected by whether a name was associated with cheating. This data pattern closely replicates findings obtained in previous experiments using facial stimuli, thus demonstrating that enhanced source memory for cheaters is not due to a cheater-detection module closely tied ...

Taxonomic and Thematic Organisation of Proper Name Conceptual Knowledge

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Sebastian J. Crutch

2011-01-01

Full Text Available We report the investigation of the organisation of proper names in two aphasic patients (NBC and FBI. The performance of both patients on spoken word to written word matching tasks was inconsistent, affected by presentation rate and semantic relatedness of the competing responses, all hallmarks of a refractory semantic access dysphasia. In a series of experiments we explored the semantic relatedness effects within their proper name vocabulary, including brand names and person names. First we demonstrated the interaction between very fine grain organisation and personal experience, with one patient with a special interest in the cinema demonstrating higher error rates when identifying the names of actors working in a similar film genre (e.g. action movies: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, Sylvester Stallone, Mel Gibson than those working in different genres (e.g. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Gregory Peck, Robin Williams, Gene Kelly. Second we compared directly two potential principles of semantic organisation – taxonomic and thematic. Furthermore we considered these principles of organisation in the context of the individuals' personal knowledge base. We selected topics matching the interests and experience of each patient, namely cinema and literature (NBC and naval history (FBI. The stimulus items were arranged in taxonomic arrays (e.g. Jane Austen, Emily Bronte, Agatha Christie, thematic arrays (e.g. Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Mr Darcy, and unrelated arrays (e.g. Jane Austen, Wuthering Heights, Hercule Poirot. We documented that different patterns of taxonomic and thematic organisation were constrained by whether the individual has limited knowledge, moderate knowledge or detailed knowledge of a particular vocabulary. It is suggested that moderate proper name knowledge is primarily organised by taxonomy whereas extensive experience results in a more detailed knowledge base in which theme is a powerful organising principle.

Taxonomic and thematic organisation of proper name conceptual knowledge.

Science.gov (United States)

Crutch, Sebastian J; Warrington, Elizabeth K

2011-01-01

We report the investigation of the organisation of proper names in two aphasic patients (NBC and FBI). The performance of both patients on spoken word to written word matching tasks was inconsistent, affected by presentation rate and semantic relatedness of the competing responses, all hallmarks of a refractory semantic access dysphasia. In a series of experiments we explored the semantic relatedness effects within their proper name vocabulary, including brand names and person names. First we demonstrated the interaction between very fine grain organisation and personal experience, with one patient with a special interest in the cinema demonstrating higher error rates when identifying the names of actors working in a similar film genre (e.g., action movies: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, Sylvester Stallone, Mel Gibson) than those working in different genres (e.g., Arnold Schwarzenegger, Gregory Peck, Robin Williams, Gene Kelly). Second we compared directly two potential principles of semantic organisation - taxonomic and thematic. Furthermore we considered these principles of organisation in the context of the individuals' personal knowledge base. We selected topics matching the interests and experience of each patient, namely cinema and literature (NBC) and naval history (FBI). The stimulus items were arranged in taxonomic arrays (e.g., Jane Austen, Emily Bronte, Agatha Christie), thematic arrays (e.g., Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Mr Darcy), and unrelated arrays (e.g., Jane Austen, Wuthering Heights, Hercule Poirot). We documented that different patterns of taxonomic and thematic organisation were constrained by whether the individual has limited knowledge, moderate knowledge or detailed knowledge of a particular vocabulary. It is suggested that moderate proper name knowledge is primarily organised by taxonomy whereas extensive experience results in a more detailed knowledge base in which theme is a powerful organising principle.

The three names

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Bas Jongenelen

2011-01-01

Two spectators are each asked to think of a girl's name (because your sister in law is pregnant and names are a big issue at the moment in your family.) You explain that you have a boy's name in your head, and you ask the spectators to think what this boy's name might be. You write three names on a

Project Scheduling Heuristics-Based Standard PSO for Task-Resource Assignment in Heterogeneous Grid

OpenAIRE

Chen, Ruey-Maw; Wang, Chuin-Mu

2011-01-01

The task scheduling problem has been widely studied for assigning resources to tasks in heterogeneous grid environment. Effective task scheduling is an important issue for the performance of grid computing. Meanwhile, the task scheduling problem is an NP-complete problem. Hence, this investigation introduces a named “standard“ particle swarm optimization (PSO) metaheuristic approach to efficiently solve the task scheduling problems in grid. Meanwhile, two promising heuristics based on multimo...

Slowing in reading and picture naming: the effects of aging and developmental dyslexia.

Science.gov (United States)

De Luca, Maria; Marinelli, Chiara Valeria; Spinelli, Donatella; Zoccolotti, Pierluigi

2017-10-01

We examined the slowing in vocal reaction times shown by dyslexic (compared to control) children with that of older (compared to younger) adults using an approach focusing on the detection of global, non-task-specific components. To address this aim, data were analyzed with reference to the difference engine (DEM) and rate and amount (RAM) models. In Experiment 1, typically developing children, children with dyslexia (both attending sixth grade), younger adults and older adults read words and non-words and named pictures. In Experiment 2, word and picture conditions were presented to dyslexic and control children attending eighth grade. In both experiments, dyslexic children were delayed in reading conditions, while they were unimpaired in naming pictures (a finding which indicates spared access to the phonological lexicon). The reading difficulty was well accounted for by a single multiplicative factor while only the residual effect of length (but not frequency and lexicality) was present after controlling for over-additivity using a linear mixed effects model with random slopes on critical variables. Older adults were slower than younger adults across reading and naming conditions. This deficit was well described by a single multiplicative factor. Thus, while slowing of information processing is limited to orthographic stimuli in dyslexic children, it cuts across verbal tasks in older adults. Overall, speed differences in groups such as dyslexic children and older adults can be effectively described with reference to deficits in domains encompassing a variety of experimental conditions rather than deficits in single specific task/conditions. The DEM and RAM prove effective in teasing out global vs. specific components of performance.

Electrophysiological evidence for colour effects on the naming of colour diagnostic and noncolour diagnostic objects

OpenAIRE

Bramão, I.; Francisco, A.; Inácio , F.; Faísca, L.; Reis, A.; Petersson, K.

2012-01-01

In this study, we investigated the level of visual processing at which surface colour information improves the naming of colour diagnostic and noncolour diagnostic objects. Continuous electroencephalograms were recorded while participants performed a visual object naming task in which coloured and black-and-white versions of both types of objects were presented. The black-and-white and the colour presentations were compared in two groups of event-related potentials (ERPs): (1) The P1 and N1 c...

Advantages and disadvantages of intraoperative language tasks in awake surgery: a three-task approach for prefrontal tumors.

Science.gov (United States)

Rofes, A; Spena, G; Miozzo, A; Fontanella, M M; Miceli, G

2015-12-01

Multidisciplinary efforts are being made to provide surgical teams with sensitive and specific tasks for language mapping in awake surgery. Researchers and clinicians have elaborated different tasks over time. A fair amount of work has been directed to study the neurofunctional correlates of some of these tasks, and there is recent interest in their standardization. However, little discussion exists on the advantages and disadvantages that each task poses from the perspective of the cognitive neuroscience of language. Such an approach may be a relevant step to assess task validity, to avoid using tasks that tap onto similar processes, and to provide patients with a surgical treatment that ensures maximal tumor resection while avoiding postoperative language deficits. An understanding of the language components that each task entails may also be relevant to improve the current assessments and the ways in which tasks are administered, and to disentangle neurofunctional questions. We reviewed 17 language mapping tasks that have been used in awake surgery. Overt production tasks have been a preferred choice over comprehension tasks. Tasks tapping lexico-semantic processes, particularly object-naming, maintain their role as gold standards. Automated speech tasks are used to detect speech errors and to set the amplitude of the stimulator. Comprehension tasks, reading and writing tasks, and tasks that assess grammatical aspects of language may be regularly administered in the near future. We provide examples of a three-task approach we are administering to patients with prefrontal lesions. We believe that future advances in this area are contingent upon reviewing gold standards and introducing new assessment tools.

Knowledge Pipeline: A Task Oriented Way to Implement Knowledge Management

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Pan Jiajie

2014-01-01

Concept of knowledge pipeline: There are many pipelines named by tasks or business processes in an organization. Knowledge contributors put knowledge to its corresponding pipelines. A maintenance team could keep the knowledge in pipelines clear and valid. Users could get knowledge just like opening a faucet in terms of their tasks or business processes

Parents accidentally substitute similar sounding sibling names more often than dissimilar names.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Zenzi M Griffin

Full Text Available When parents select similar sounding names for their children, do they set themselves up for more speech errors in the future? Questionnaire data from 334 respondents suggest that they do. Respondents whose names shared initial or final sounds with a sibling's reported that their parents accidentally called them by the sibling's name more often than those without such name overlap. Having a sibling of the same gender, similar appearance, or similar age was also associated with more frequent name substitutions. Almost all other name substitutions by parents involved other family members and over 5% of respondents reported a parent substituting the name of a pet, which suggests a strong role for social and situational cues in retrieving personal names for direct address. To the extent that retrieval cues are shared with other people or animals, other names become available and may substitute for the intended name, particularly when names sound similar.

WHAT’S IN A NAME: The Amateur‘s View of Good Practices in Naming an Online Educational Program

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Michael J. ROSZKOWSKI

2013-07-01

Full Text Available Branding is considered to be particularly important in the marketing of online educational programs. A critical step to establishing the brand is naming the product appropriately. To this end, one can secure the services of professionals or rely on a do-it-yourself approach. The research reported here aimed to identify the features that non-professionals (graduate students consider to be important in the name for an online educational product, and to compare these to the recommendations made by naming professionals (as reported in the literature. A survey directed at current and prospective graduate students at a traditional university asked about the desirability of 16 characteristics in the name of a new line of online courses. The six characteristics that were deemed most critical are (in order of importance: self-explanatory, memorable, easy to pronounce, has appealing associations, suggests/hints at the key features, and short. These are the same features that professionals in the business of creating new product names generally consider as best practices in creating a name. The results show that contrary to the concerns expressed by some practitioners in the naming industry, college-educated individuals who do not create names for a living nonetheless demonstrate an awareness and appreciation for the features of a good name in an Internet-based course delivery system.

The role of typography in differentiating look-alike/sound-alike drug names.

Science.gov (United States)

Gabriele, Sandra

2006-01-01

Until recently, when errors occurred in the course of caring for patients, blame was assigned to the healthcare professionals closest to the incident rather than examining the larger system and the actions that led up to the event. Now, the medical profession is embracing expertise and methodologies used in other fields to improve its own systems in relation to patient safety issues. This exploratory study, part of a Master's of Design thesis project, was a response to the problem of errors that occur due to confusion between look-alike/sound-alike drug names (medication names that have orthographic and/or phonetic similarities). The study attempts to provide a visual means to help differentiate problematic names using formal typographic and graphic cues. The FDA's Name Differentiation Project recommendations and other typographic alternatives were considered to address issues of attention and cognition. Eleven acute care nurses participated in testing that consisted of word-recognition tasks and questions intended to elicit opinions regarding the visual treatment of look-alike/sound-alike names in the context of a label prototype. Though limited in sample size, testing provided insight into the kinds of typographic differentiation that might be effective in a high-risk situation.

Haptic subjective vertical shows context dependence: task and vision play a role during dynamic tilt stimulation.

Science.gov (United States)

Wright, William Geoffrey; Glasauer, Stefan

2003-10-01

Perceiving one's vertical is an integral part of efficiently functioning in an environment physically polarized along that dimension. How one determines the direction of gravity is not a task left only to inertial sensors, such as the vestibular organs, rather as numerous studies have shown, this task is influenced visually and somatosensorily. In addition, there is evidence that higher order cognitive effects such as expectancies and context are critical in perception of the vertical. One's ability to integrate these various inputs during normal activity is not generally questioned, one's doubts being satisfied by observing a waiter navigating a crowded restaurant with a tray balanced on one hand, neither tripping or dropping an entree. But how these various sources are integrated is still debated. Most research focuses on subjective vertical perception used visual matching/alignment tasks, verbal reports, or saccadic eye movements as a dependent measure. Although a motor task involving a joystick or indicator to be aligned with gravity without visual feedback is used much less frequently, there is good evidence that individuals easily orient limbs to an external gravity-aligned coordinate axis while being statically tilted. By exposure to a dynamic situation, the central nervous system should be no more challenged by the task of determining the subjective vertical than during static conditions, because our spatial orientation systems were likely selected for just that. In addition, the sensitive calibration between visual and other sensory input also must have been key to its selection. This sensory interaction can be tested by changing the relation between the various sources. With the advent of virtual reality technology, a complex and "natural" visual stimulus is achievable and is easily manipulable. How one tests perception of verticality is also a pertinent question when researching spatial orientation systems. The system's performance may be better

Cell line name recognition in support of the identification of synthetic lethality in cancer from text

Science.gov (United States)

Kaewphan, Suwisa; Van Landeghem, Sofie; Ohta, Tomoko; Van de Peer, Yves; Ginter, Filip; Pyysalo, Sampo

2016-01-01

Motivation: The recognition and normalization of cell line names in text is an important task in biomedical text mining research, facilitating for instance the identification of synthetically lethal genes from the literature. While several tools have previously been developed to address cell line recognition, it is unclear whether available systems can perform sufficiently well in realistic and broad-coverage applications such as extracting synthetically lethal genes from the cancer literature. In this study, we revisit the cell line name recognition task, evaluating both available systems and newly introduced methods on various resources to obtain a reliable tagger not tied to any specific subdomain. In support of this task, we introduce two text collections manually annotated for cell line names: the broad-coverage corpus Gellus and CLL, a focused target domain corpus. Results: We find that the best performance is achieved using NERsuite, a machine learning system based on Conditional Random Fields, trained on the Gellus corpus and supported with a dictionary of cell line names. The system achieves an F-score of 88.46% on the test set of Gellus and 85.98% on the independently annotated CLL corpus. It was further applied at large scale to 24 302 102 unannotated articles, resulting in the identification of 5 181 342 cell line mentions, normalized to 11 755 unique cell line database identifiers. Availability and implementation: The manually annotated datasets, the cell line dictionary, derived corpora, NERsuite models and the results of the large-scale run on unannotated texts are available under open licenses at http://turkunlp.github.io/Cell-line-recognition/. Contact: sukaew@utu.fi PMID:26428294

What Do We Really Know about Cognitive Inhibition? Task Demands and Inhibitory Effects across a Range of Memory and Behavioural Tasks.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Saima Noreen

Full Text Available Our study explores inhibitory control across a range of widely recognised memory and behavioural tasks. Eighty-seven never-depressed participants completed a series of tasks designed to measure inhibitory control in memory and behaviour. Specifically, a variant of the selective retrieval-practice and the Think/No-Think tasks were employed as measures of memory inhibition. The Stroop-Colour Naming and the Go/No-Go tasks were used as measures of behavioural inhibition. Participants completed all 4 tasks. Task presentation order was counterbalanced across 3 separate testing sessions for each participant. Standard inhibitory forgetting effects emerged on both memory tasks but the extent of forgetting across these tasks was not correlated. Furthermore, there was no relationship between memory inhibition tasks and either of the main behavioural inhibition measures. At a time when cognitive inhibition continues to gain acceptance as an explanatory mechanism, our study raises fundamental questions about what we actually know about inhibition and how it is affected by the processing demands of particular inhibitory tasks.

Official Naming in Hå, Klepp and Time

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Inge Særheim

2012-08-01

Full Text Available Toponyms localize, reflect and give information about historical traditions and various phenomena in an area. They form part of the local heritage and culture. The relationship between place names, heritage and identity is often underlined in guidelines regarding official naming of streets and roads. In what way is heritage and local identity reflected in the road names of the three municipalities Hå, Klepp and Time (Southwest-Norway, and how is the special character of this area expressed in the names? More than half of the official road names in the three municipalities are either identical with a local toponym, or they consist of a word for ‘road’ and a local toponym (or an appellative describing the location. This shows that there is a strong commitment to base the official naming on local tradition and thus contribute to identity. Quite a few elements from the dialect, e.g. special pronunciation, grammatical forms or local words, appear in the names, especially in the road names from Hå, reflecting that the names are part of the local culture, and due to the fact that the dialect is unique. Consistency is a challenge, however; the same word is sometimes spelled in different ways in different names. It appears that, with some exceptions, cultural heritage and local tradition have been preferred principles and guidelines with regard to naming of roads in the three municipalities, due to a consciousness that heritage and tradition create identity.

Errors and conflict at the task level and the response level.

Science.gov (United States)

Desmet, Charlotte; Fias, Wim; Hartstra, Egbert; Brass, Marcel

2011-01-26

In the last decade, research on error and conflict processing has become one of the most influential research areas in the domain of cognitive control. There is now converging evidence that a specific part of the posterior frontomedian cortex (pFMC), the rostral cingulate zone (RCZ), is crucially involved in the processing of errors and conflict. However, error-related research has focused primarily on a specific error type, namely, response errors. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether errors on the task level rely on the same neural and functional mechanisms. Here we report a dissociation of both error types in the pFMC: whereas response errors activate the RCZ, task errors activate the dorsal frontomedian cortex. Although this last region shows an overlap in activation for task and response errors on the group level, a closer inspection of the single-subject data is more in accordance with a functional anatomical dissociation. When investigating brain areas related to conflict on the task and response levels, a clear dissociation was perceived between areas associated with response conflict and with task conflict. Overall, our data support a dissociation between response and task levels of processing in the pFMC. In addition, we provide additional evidence for a dissociation between conflict and errors both at the response level and at the task level.

Geographic Names

Data.gov (United States)

Minnesota Department of Natural Resources — The Geographic Names Information System (GNIS), developed by the United States Geological Survey in cooperation with the U.S. Board of Geographic Names, provides...

The role of selected lexical factors on confrontation naming accuracy, speed, and fluency in adults who do and do not stutter.

Science.gov (United States)

Newman, Rochelle S; Bernstein Ratner, Nan

2007-02-01

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether lexical access in adults who stutter (AWS) differs from that in people who do not stutter. Specifically, the authors examined the role of 3 lexical factors on naming speed, accuracy, and fluency: word frequency, neighborhood density, and neighborhood frequency. If stuttering results from an impairment in lexical access, these factors were hypothesized to differentially affect AWS performance on a confrontation naming task. Twenty-five AWS and 25 normally fluent comparison speakers, matched for age and education, participated in a confrontation naming task designed to explore within-speaker performance on naming accuracy, speed, and fluency based on stimulus word frequency and neighborhood characteristics. Accuracy, fluency, and reaction time (from acoustic waveform analysis) were computed. In general, AWS demonstrated the same effects of lexical factors on their naming as did adults who do not stutter. However, accuracy of naming was reduced for AWS. Stuttering rate was influenced by word frequency but not other factors. Results suggest that AWS could have a fundamental deficit in lexical retrieval, but this deficit is unlikely to be at the level of the word's abstract phonological representation. Implications for further research are discussed.

The strength of co-authorship in gene name disambiguation

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Farkas Richárd

2008-01-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background A biomedical entity mention in articles and other free texts is often ambiguous. For example, 13% of the gene names (aliases might refer to more than one gene. The task of Gene Symbol Disambiguation (GSD – a special case of Word Sense Disambiguation (WSD – is to assign a unique gene identifier for all identified gene name aliases in biology-related articles. Supervised and unsupervised machine learning WSD techniques have been applied in the biomedical field with promising results. We examine here the utilisation potential of the fact – one of the special features of biological articles – that the authors of the documents are known through graph-based semi-supervised methods for the GSD task. Results Our key hypothesis is that a biologist refers to each particular gene by a fixed gene alias and this holds for the co-authors as well. To make use of the co-authorship information we decided to build the inverse co-author graph on MedLine abstracts. The nodes of the inverse co-author graph are articles and there is an edge between two nodes if and only if the two articles have a mutual author. We introduce here two methods using distances (based on the graph of abstracts for the GSD task. We found that a disambiguation decision can be made in 85% of cases with an extremely high (99.5% precision rate just by using information obtained from the inverse co-author graph. We incorporated the co-authorship information into two GSD systems in order to attain full coverage and in experiments our procedure achieved precision of 94.3%, 98.85%, 96.05% and 99.63% on the human, mouse, fly and yeast GSD evaluation sets, respectively. Conclusion Based on the promising results obtained so far we suggest that the co-authorship information and the circumstances of the articles' release (like the title of the journal, the year of publication can be a crucial building block of any sophisticated similarity measure among biological articles

Precedent Proper Names in Informal Oikonymy

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Maria V. Akhmetova

2013-06-01

Full Text Available The paper deals with the Russian language informal city names (oikonyms motivated by other toponyms (with reference to Russia and the CIS. The author shows that the motivating proper name can replace the city name (e. g. Глазго < Glasgow ‘Glazov’ or contaminate with it (e. g. Экибостон < Ekibastuz + Boston, the “alien” onym being attracted to construct an informal oikonym due to its phonetic similarity or, on occasion, due to an affinity, either real or imaginary, between the two settlements. The author argues that the phonetic motivation is more characteristic for the modern urban tradition, than for popular dialects.

Brand Suicide? Memory and Liking of Negative Brand Names.

Science.gov (United States)

Guest, Duncan; Estes, Zachary; Gibbert, Michael; Mazursky, David

2016-01-01

Negative brand names are surprisingly common in the marketplace (e.g., Poison perfume; Hell pizza, and Monster energy drink), yet their effects on consumer behavior are currently unknown. Three studies investigated the effects of negative brand name valence on brand name memory and liking of a branded product. Study 1 demonstrates that relative to non-negative brand names, negative brand names and their associated logos are better recognised. Studies 2 and 3 demonstrate that negative valence of a brand name tends to have a detrimental influence on product evaluation with evaluations worsening as negative valence increases. However, evaluation is also dependent on brand name arousal, with high arousal brand names resulting in more positive evaluations, such that moderately negative brand names are equally as attractive as some non-negative brand names. Study 3 shows evidence for affective habituation, whereby the effects of negative valence reduce with repeated exposures to some classes of negative brand name.

Brand Suicide? Memory and Liking of Negative Brand Names

Science.gov (United States)

Guest, Duncan; Estes, Zachary; Gibbert, Michael; Mazursky, David

2016-01-01

Negative brand names are surprisingly common in the marketplace (e.g., Poison perfume; Hell pizza, and Monster energy drink), yet their effects on consumer behavior are currently unknown. Three studies investigated the effects of negative brand name valence on brand name memory and liking of a branded product. Study 1 demonstrates that relative to non-negative brand names, negative brand names and their associated logos are better recognised. Studies 2 and 3 demonstrate that negative valence of a brand name tends to have a detrimental influence on product evaluation with evaluations worsening as negative valence increases. However, evaluation is also dependent on brand name arousal, with high arousal brand names resulting in more positive evaluations, such that moderately negative brand names are equally as attractive as some non-negative brand names. Study 3 shows evidence for affective habituation, whereby the effects of negative valence reduce with repeated exposures to some classes of negative brand name. PMID:27023872

What Klein’s semantic gradient does and does not really show: decomposing Stroop interference into task and informational conflict components

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Yulia eLevin

2016-02-01

Full Text Available The present study suggests that the idea that Stroop interference originates from multiple components may gain theoretically from integrating two independent frameworks. The first framework is represented by the well-known notion of semantic gradient of interference and the second one is the distinction between two types of conflict – the task and the informational conflict – giving rise to the interference (Goldfarb & Henik, 2007; McLeod & MacDonald, 2000. The proposed integration led to the conclusion that two (i.e., orthographic and lexical components of the four theoretically distinct components represent task conflict, and the other two (i.e., indirect and direct informational conflict components represent informational conflict. The four components were independently estimated in a series of experiments. The results confirmed the contribution of task conflict (estimated by a robust orthographic component and of informational conflict (estimated by a strong direct informational conflict component to Stroop interference. However, the performed critical review of the relevant literature (see General Discussion, as well as the results of the experiments reported, showed that the other two components expressing each type of conflict (i.e., the lexical component of task conflict and the indirect informational conflict were small, and unstable. The present analysis refines our knowledge of the origins of Stroop interference by providing evidence that each type of conflict has its major and minor contributions. The implications for cognitive control of an automatic reading process are also discussed.

Named Entity Recognition for Spanish language and applications in technology forecasting

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Raúl Gutiérrez

2015-12-01

Full Text Available Named Entity Recognition (NER is a main task into Natural Language Processing. On the one hand, supporting the extraction of the information on unstructured data. On the other hand, The NER is a probabilistic graphical model that allows us to represent the conditional independency assumptions into the sequential labelling. In this paper, we propose a discriminative graphical model by using linear-chain Conditional Random Fields (CRFs. We present the experiments based on the Conll-2002 shared task and Ancora corpus according to the following criteria: recall, precision and F-score. Our contributions in this work are the following: first, we tested our baseline on the CoNLL-2002 shared task obtaining 80% F1-measure, and 59% F1-measure on AnCora corpus respectively. Finally, the application Vigtech allow us to identify information and patterns in the cancer topic, we discuss the results according to the model performance and the useful information to support the forecasting process

Game elements improve performance in a working memory training task

OpenAIRE

Manuel Ninaus; Gonçalo Pereira; René Stefitz; Rui Prada; Ana Paiva; Christa Neuper; Guilherme Wood

2015-01-01

The utilization of game elements in a non-game context is currently used in a vast range of different domains. However, research on game elements’ effects in cognitive tasks is still sparse. Thus, in this study we implemented three game elements, namely, progress bar, level indicator, and a thematic setting, in a working memory training task. We evaluated the impact of game elements on user performance and perceived state of flow when compared to a conventional version of the task. Participan...

What's in a Name? Interlocutors Dynamically Update Expectations about Shared Names.

Science.gov (United States)

Gegg-Harrison, Whitney M; Tanenhaus, Michael K

2016-01-01

In order to refer using a name, speakers must believe that their addressee knows about the link between the name and the intended referent. In cases where speakers and addressees learned a subset of names together, speakers are adept at using only the names their partner knows. But speakers do not always share such learning experience with their conversational partners. In these situations, what information guides speakers' choice of referring expression? A speaker who is uncertain about a names' common ground (CG) status often uses a name and description together. This N+D form allows speakers to demonstrate knowledge of a name, and could provide, even in the absence of miscommunication, useful evidence to the addressee regarding the speaker's knowledge. In cases where knowledge of one name is associated with knowledge of other names, this could provide indirect evidence regarding knowledge of other names that could support generalizations used to update beliefs about CG. Using Bayesian approaches to language processing as a guiding framework, we predict that interlocutors can use their partner's choice of referring expression, in particular their use of an N+D form, to generate more accurate beliefs regarding their partner's knowledge of other names. In Experiment 1, we find that domain experts are able to use their partner's referring expression choices to generate more accurate estimates of CG. In Experiment 2, we find that interlocutors are able to infer from a partner's use of an N+D form which other names that partner is likely to know or not know. Our results suggest that interlocutors can use the information conveyed in their partner's choice of referring expression to make generalizations that contribute to more accurate beliefs about what is shared with their partner, and further, that models of CG for reference need to account not just for the status of referents, but the status of means of referring to those referents.

Effects of noise and task loading on a communication task loading on a communication task

Science.gov (United States)

Orrell, Dean H., II

Previous research had shown the effect of noise on a single communication task. This research has been criticized as not being representative of a real world situation since subjects allocated all of their attention to only one task. In the present study, the effect of adding a loading task to a standard noise-communication paradigm was investigated. Subjects performed both a communication task (Modified Rhyme Test; House et al. 1965) and a short term memory task (Sternberg, 1969) in simulated levels of aircraft noise (95, 105 and 115 dB overall sound pressure level (OASPL)). Task loading was varied with Sternberg's task by requiring subjects to memorize one, four, or six alphanumeric characters. Simulated aircraft noise was varied between levels of 95, 105 and 115 dB OASPL using a pink noise source. Results show that the addition of Sternberg's task and little effect on the intelligibility of the communication task while response time for the communication task increased.

Comparing the Contribution of Two Tests of Working Memory to Reading in Relation to Phonological Awareness and Rapid Naming Speed

Science.gov (United States)

Georgiou, George K.; Das, J. P.; Hayward, Denyse V.

2008-01-01

The purpose of this study was to compare the contribution of two different versions of working memory to word reading and reading comprehension in relation to phonological awareness and rapid naming speed. Fifty children were administered two measures of working memory, namely an adaptation of the Daneman and Carpenter sentence span task and…

Contributions of Emergent Literacy Skills to Name Writing, Letter Writing, and Spelling in Preschool Children

Science.gov (United States)

Puranik, Cynthia S.; Lonigan, Christopher J.; Kim, Young-Suk

2011-01-01

The purpose of this study was to examine which emergent literacy skills contribute to preschool children’s emergent writing (name-writing, letter-writing, and spelling) skills. Emergent reading and writing tasks were administered to 296 preschool children aged 4–5 years. Print knowledge and letter-writing skills made positive contributions to name writing; whereas alphabet knowledge, print knowledge, and name writing made positive contributions to letter writing. Both name-writing and letter-writing skills made significant contributions to the prediction of spelling after controlling for age, parental education, print knowledge, phonological awareness, and letter-name and letter-sound knowledge; however, only letter-writing abilities made a significant unique contribution to the prediction of spelling when both letter-writing and name-writing skills were considered together. Name writing reflects knowledge of some letters rather than a broader knowledge of letters that may be needed to support early spelling. Children’s letter-writing skills may be a better indicator of children’s emergent literacy and developing spelling skills than are their name-writing skills at the end of the preschool year. Spelling is a developmentally complex skill beginning in preschool and includes letter writing and blending skills, print knowledge, and letter-name and letter-sound knowledge. PMID:21927537

Improving Naming Abilities among Healthy Young-Old Adults Using Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation

Science.gov (United States)

Lifshitz-Ben-Basat, Adi; Mashal, Nira

2018-01-01

Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is a noninvasive tool to facilitate brain plasticity and enhance language abilities. Our study aims to search for a potential beneficial influence of tDCS on a cognitive linguistic task of naming which found to decline during aging. A group of fifteen healthy old adults (M = 64.93 ± 5.09 years) were…

Production does not improve memory for face-name associations.

Science.gov (United States)

Hourihan, Kathleen L; Smith, Alexis R S

2016-06-01

Strategies for learning face-name associations are generally difficult and time-consuming. However, research has shown that saying a word aloud improves our memory for that word relative to words from the same set that were read silently. Such production effects have been shown for words, pictures, text material, and even word pairs. Can production improve memory for face-name associations? In Experiment 1, participants studied face-name pairs by reading half of the names aloud and half of the names silently, and were tested with cued recall. In Experiment 2, names were repeated aloud (or silently) for the full trial duration. Neither experiment showed a production effect in cued recall. Bayesian analyses showed positive support for the null effect. One possibility is that participants spontaneously implemented more elaborate encoding strategies that overrode any influence of production. However, a more likely explanation for the null production effect is that only half of each stimulus pair was produced-the name, but not the face. Consistent with this explanation, in Experiment 3 a production effect was not observed in cued recall of word-word pairs in which only the target words were read aloud or silently. Averaged across all 3 experiments, aloud targets were more likely to be recalled than silent targets (though not associated with the correct cue). The production effect in associative memory appears to require both members of a pair to be produced. Surprisingly, production shows little promise as a strategy for improving memory for the names of people we have just met. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

What’s in a Name? – Consequences of Naming Non-Human Animals

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Borkfelt, Sune

2011-01-01

have consequences for the way we think about animals (human and non-human), peoples, species, places, things etc. Through a blend of history, philosophy and representational theory—and using examples from, among other things, the Bible, Martin Luther, colonialism/imperialism and contemporary ways......The act of naming is among the most basic actions of language. Indeed, it is naming something that enables us to communicate about it in specific terms, whether the object named is human or non-human, animate or inanimate. However, naming is not as uncomplicated as we may usually think and names...... of keeping and regarding non-human animals—this paper attempts to trace the importance of (both specific and generic) naming to our relationships with the non-human. It explores this topic from the naming of the animals in Genesis to the names given and used by scientists, keepers of companion animals, media...

Enhanced Source Memory for Names of Cheaters

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Raoul Bell

2009-04-01

Full Text Available The present experiment shows that source memory for names associated with a history of cheating is better than source memory for names associated with irrelevant or trustworthy behavior, whereas old-new discrimination is not affected by whether a name was associated with cheating. This data pattern closely replicates findings obtained in previous experiments using facial stimuli, thus demonstrating that enhanced source memory for cheaters is not due to a cheater-detection module closely tied to the face processing system, but is rather due to a more general bias towards remembering the source of information associated with cheating.

Hard Real-Time Task Scheduling in Cloud Computing Using an Adaptive Genetic Algorithm

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Amjad Mahmood

2017-04-01

Full Text Available In the Infrastructure-as-a-Service cloud computing model, virtualized computing resources in the form of virtual machines are provided over the Internet. A user can rent an arbitrary number of computing resources to meet their requirements, making cloud computing an attractive choice for executing real-time tasks. Economical task allocation and scheduling on a set of leased virtual machines is an important problem in the cloud computing environment. This paper proposes a greedy and a genetic algorithm with an adaptive selection of suitable crossover and mutation operations (named as AGA to allocate and schedule real-time tasks with precedence constraint on heterogamous virtual machines. A comprehensive simulation study has been done to evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithms in terms of their solution quality and efficiency. The simulation results show that AGA outperforms the greedy algorithm and non-adaptive genetic algorithm in terms of solution quality.

Memory Training for Individuals with Alzheimer’s Disease Improves Name Recall

OpenAIRE

Kesslak, J. P.; Nackoul, K.; Sandman, C. A.

1997-01-01

Alzheimer’s disease is clinically characterized by a variety of progressive cognitive deficits, most notably an impaired ability to acquire new information, such as name recall. Eleven demented patients and 11 controls participated in a 4 week memory program that included training in name–face recall. Individuals were taught strategies for name–face rehearsal, and administered task specific and standardized tests to assess the intervention efficacy. During the memory training patients improve...

Plants and geographical names in Croatia.

Science.gov (United States)

Cargonja, Hrvoje; Daković, Branko; Alegro, Antun

2008-09-01

The main purpose of this paper is to present some general observations, regularities and insights into a complex relationship between plants and people through symbolic systems like geographical names on the territory of Croatia. The basic sources of data for this research were maps from atlas of Croatia of the scale 1:100000. Five groups of maps or areas were selected in order to represent main Croatian phytogeographic regions. A selection of toponyms from each of the map was made in which the name for a plant in Croatian language was recognized (phytotoponyms). Results showed that of all plant names recognized in geographical names the most represented are trees, and among them birch and oak the most. Furthermore, an attempt was made to explain the presence of the most represented plant species in the phytotoponyms in the light of general phytogeographical and sociocultural differences and similarities of comparing areas. The findings confirm an expectation that the genera of climazonal vegetation of particular area are the most represented among the phytotoponyms. Nevertheless, there are ample examples where representation of a plant name in the names of human environment can only be ascribed to ethno-linguistic and socio-cultural motives. Despite the reductionist character of applied methodology, this research also points out some advantages of this approach for ethnobotanic and ethnolinguistic studies of greater areas of human environment.

Task demands and individual variation in referring expressions

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Baltaretu, Adriana-Alexandra; Castro Ferreira, Thiago

Aiming to improve the human-likeness of natural language generation systems, this study investigates different sources of variation that might influence the production of referring expressions (REs), namely the effect of task demands and inter- intra- individual variation. We collected REs using a

Pen- Name in Persian and Arabic Poetry

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ebrahim Khodayar

2012-03-01

Full Text Available  Abstract Pen-name (Takhalloss is one of the main features of Persian poetry. It has been a matter of concern among many of Persian language geography poets in the orient at least up to the Mashrouteh era. Pen-name has been promoted among the other Muslim nations throuph Persian poetry. Although it is not as famous in the Arab nations as in the Persian speaking nations, it is known as “Alqab-o-shoara” among the Arab nations and, through this way, it has affected the poetrical wealth of the Arabic poets.   The Present paper, using description-analystic approach, compares the pen-names of Persian and Arabic poets under the title of “pen-names” and investigates their features in both cultures. The main research question is: What are the similarities and differences of poetic-names, in Persian and Arabic poets in terms of the type of name, position and importance? The results showed that Pseudonym by its amazing expansion in Persian poetry has also influenced Arabic poetry. In addition to the factors affecting in the choice of pen-names (like pseudonym, pen-name, nickname..., sometimes such external factors as events, commends, community benefactors and climate, as well as internal factors including the poets’ inner beliefs are associated too. .

Attention, gaze shifting, and dual-task interference from phonological encoding in spoken word planning

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Roelofs, A.P.A.

2008-01-01

Controversy exists about whether dual-task interference from word planning reflects structural bottleneck or attentional control factors. Here, participants named pictures whose names could or could not be phonologically prepared. and they manually responded to arrows presented away from (Experiment

What's in a Name? Interlocutors dynamically update expectations about shared names

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Whitney Marie Gegg-Harrison

2016-02-01

Full Text Available In order to refer using a name, speakers must know that their addressee knows about the link between the name and the intended referent. In cases where speakers and addressees learned names together, speakers are adept at using names only when their addressee knows them. But speakers do not always share such learning experience with their conversational partners. In these situations, what information guides speakers’ choice of referring expression? A speaker who is uncertain about a names’ common ground (CG status often uses a name and description together. This N+D form allows speakers to demonstrate knowledge of a name, and could provide, even in the absence of miscommunication, useful evidence to the addressee regarding the speaker’s knowledge. In cases where knowledge of one name is associated with knowledge of other names, could provide indirect evidence regarding knowledge of other names that could support generalizations used to update beliefs about CG. Using data explanation approaches to language processing as a guiding framework, we predict that interlocutors can use their partner’s choice of referring expression, in particular their use of an N+D form, to generate more accurate beliefs regarding their partner’s knowledge of other names. In Experiment 1, we find that domain experts are able to use their partner’s referring expression choices to generate more accurate estimates of CG. In Experiment 2, we find that interlocutors are able to infer from a partner’s use of an N+D form which other names that partner is likely to know or not know. Our results suggest that interlocutors can use the information conveyed in their partner’s choice of referring expression to make generalizations that contribute to more accurate beliefs about what is shared with their partner, and further, that models of CG for reference need to account not just for the status of referents, but the status of means of referring to those referents.

Names of Southern African grasses: Name changes and additional ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

The main reasons for changes in botanical names are briefly reviewed, with examples from the lists. At this time, about 1040 grass species and subspecific taxa are recognized in the subcontinent. Keywords: botanical research; botanical research institute; botany; grass; grasses; identification; name change; nomenclature; ...

Studying different tasks of implicit learning across multiple test sessions conducted on the web

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Werner eSævland

2016-06-01

Full Text Available Implicit learning is usually studied through individual performance on a single task, with the most common tasks being Serial Reaction Time task (SRT; Nissen and Bullemer, 1987, Dynamic System Control task (DSC; (Berry and Broadbent, 1984 and artificial Grammar Learning task (AGL; (Reber, 1967. Few attempts have been made to compare performance across different implicit learning tasks within the same experiment. The current experiment was designed study the relationship between performance on the DSC Sugar factory task (Berry and Broadbent, 1984 and the Alternating Serial Reaction Time task (ASRT; (Howard and Howard, 1997. We also addressed another limitation to traditional implicit learning experiments, namely that implicit learning is usually studied in laboratory settings over a restricted time span lasting for less than an hour (Berry and Broadbent, 1984; Nissen and Bullemer, 1987; Reber, 1967. In everyday situations, implicit learning is assumed to involve a gradual accumulation of knowledge across several learning episodes over a larger time span (Norman and Price, 2012. One way to increase the ecological validity of implicit learning experiments could be to present the learning material repeatedly across shorter experimental sessions (Howard and Howard, 1997; Cleeremans and McClelland, 1991. This can most easily be done by using a web-based setup that participants can access from home. We therefore created an online web-based system for measuring implicit learning that could be administered in either single or multiple sessions. Participants (n = 66 were assigned to either a single-session or a multi-session condition. Learning and the degree of conscious awareness of the learned regularities was compared across condition (single vs. multiple sessions and tasks (DSC vs. ASRT. Results showed that learning on the two tasks was not related. However, participants in the multiple sessions condition did show greater improvements in reaction

Effects of pointing compared with naming and observing during encoding on item and source memory in young and older adults.

Science.gov (United States)

Ouwehand, Kim; van Gog, Tamara; Paas, Fred

2016-10-01

Research showed that source memory functioning declines with ageing. Evidence suggests that encoding visual stimuli with manual pointing in addition to visual observation can have a positive effect on spatial memory compared with visual observation only. The present study investigated whether pointing at picture locations during encoding would lead to better spatial source memory than naming (Experiment 1) and visual observation only (Experiment 2) in young and older adults. Experiment 3 investigated whether response modality during the test phase would influence spatial source memory performance. Experiments 1 and 2 supported the hypothesis that pointing during encoding led to better source memory for picture locations than naming or observation only. Young adults outperformed older adults on the source memory but not the item memory task in both Experiments 1 and 2. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants manually responded in the test phase. Experiment 3 showed that if participants had to verbally respond in the test phase, the positive effect of pointing compared with naming during encoding disappeared. The results suggest that pointing at picture locations during encoding can enhance spatial source memory in both young and older adults, but only if the response modality is congruent in the test phase.

Using Serial and Discrete Digit Naming to Unravel Word Reading Processes.

Science.gov (United States)

Altani, Angeliki; Protopapas, Athanassios; Georgiou, George K

2018-01-01

During reading acquisition, word recognition is assumed to undergo a developmental shift from slow serial/sublexical processing of letter strings to fast parallel processing of whole word forms. This shift has been proposed to be detected by examining the size of the relationship between serial- and discrete-trial versions of word reading and rapid naming tasks. Specifically, a strong association between serial naming of symbols and single word reading suggests that words are processed serially, whereas a strong association between discrete naming of symbols and single word reading suggests that words are processed in parallel as wholes. In this study, 429 Grade 1, 3, and 5 English-speaking Canadian children were tested on serial and discrete digit naming and word reading. Across grades, single word reading was more strongly associated with discrete naming than with serial naming of digits, indicating that short high-frequency words are processed as whole units early in the development of reading ability in English. In contrast, serial naming was not a unique predictor of single word reading across grades, suggesting that within-word sequential processing was not required for the successful recognition for this set of words. Factor mixture analysis revealed that our participants could be clustered into two classes, namely beginning and more advanced readers. Serial naming uniquely predicted single word reading only among the first class of readers, indicating that novice readers rely on a serial strategy to decode words. Yet, a considerable proportion of Grade 1 students were assigned to the second class, evidently being able to process short high-frequency words as unitized symbols. We consider these findings together with those from previous studies to challenge the hypothesis of a binary distinction between serial/sublexical and parallel/lexical processing in word reading. We argue instead that sequential processing in word reading operates on a continuum

Do people access meaning when they name banknotes?

Science.gov (United States)

Macizo, Pedro; Herrera, Amparo

2013-03-01

Do people access the monetary value of banknotes when they say them aloud? In this study, we evaluated this question by asking people to name sequences of euro banknotes blocked by category or mixed with exemplars of other categories. The participants did not show an interference effect in the blocked context. The absence of semantic interference effect was also observed when participants named euro banknotes that did not have imprinted monetary value. These results suggest a direct connection between perceiving banknotes and accessing their names.

"Piedra Franca": the same name for many different natural stones.

Science.gov (United States)

Pereira, Dolores; Navarro, Rafael; Baltuille, Jose Manuel

2014-05-01

The Spanish name "Piedra Franca" refers to all the stones of sedimentary origin that have uniform coloration and easeof cutting/carving in order to obtain dimensional blocks for construction. The first references to this denomination occurred during medieval times, when builders had to choose the best materials to construct magnificent cathedrals. The largest volume of such natural stones were extracted from Caen, northern France, and historic records use the English term, "freestone", ie stone easy to cut, and to work by the masons dedicated to build cathedrals ("freemasons") in contrast to the "roughstone", hard stones worked by the hard hewers or "rough masons". The original French name referred to the limestones extracted at Caen, but over time, the original meaning expanded to include other natural stones with similar coloration and ease to carve. Notably this included many sandstones that were used in adjacent countries such as Spain. In the latter, although the most popular for its importance in architectural heritage is the Villamayor sandstone from Salamanca, other historically important natural stones are also known as "Piedra Franca" including the calcarenite from Santa Pudia (Granada), the limestone from Alava, the sandstone from Jaen and the sandstone from Cádiz. All of them were used in the construction of Spanish architectonic heritage and share similar exterior characteristics. In fact, several are known as golden stones. However when conservation and restoration of architectonic heritage is involved, the correct and original material should be used. The existence of national networks (e.g. CONSTRUROCK) and international task groups (e.g. IUGS Heritage Stone Task Group) can help to properly characterize, document, and differentiate between the varieties of "Piedra Franca" and they should be consulted by builders, architects and any other stone professsionals involved in such activities. An error in choosing the natural stone can result in

Evidence for the Modulation of Sub-Lexical Processing in Go No-Go Naming: The Elimination of the Frequency x Regularity Interaction

Science.gov (United States)

Cummine, Jacqueline; Amyotte, Josee; Pancheshen, Brent; Chouinard, Brea

2011-01-01

The Frequency (high vs. low) x Regularity (regular vs. exception) interaction found on naming response times is often taken as evidence for parallel processing of sub-lexical and lexical systems. Using a Go/No-go naming task, we investigated the effect of nonword versus pseudohomophone foils on sub-lexical processing and the subsequent Frequency x…

Domain learning naming game for color categorization.

Science.gov (United States)

Li, Doujie; Fan, Zhongyan; Tang, Wallace K S

2017-01-01

Naming game simulates the evolution of vocabulary in a population of agents. Through pairwise interactions in the games, agents acquire a set of vocabulary in their memory for object naming. The existing model confines to a one-to-one mapping between a name and an object. Focus is usually put onto name consensus in the population rather than knowledge learning in agents, and hence simple learning model is usually adopted. However, the cognition system of human being is much more complex and knowledge is usually presented in a complicated form. Therefore, in this work, we extend the agent learning model and design a new game to incorporate domain learning, which is essential for more complicated form of knowledge. In particular, we demonstrate the evolution of color categorization and naming in a population of agents. We incorporate the human perceptive model into the agents and introduce two new concepts, namely subjective perception and subliminal stimulation, in domain learning. Simulation results show that, even without any supervision or pre-requisition, a consensus of a color naming system can be reached in a population solely via the interactions. Our work confirms the importance of society interactions in color categorization, which is a long debate topic in human cognition. Moreover, our work also demonstrates the possibility of cognitive system development in autonomous intelligent agents.

Task complexity, student perceptions of vocabulary learning in EFL, and task performance.

Science.gov (United States)

Wu, Xiaoli; Lowyck, Joost; Sercu, Lies; Elen, Jan

2013-03-01

The study deepened our understanding of how students' self-efficacy beliefs contribute to the context of teaching English as a foreign language in the framework of cognitive mediational paradigm at a fine-tuned task-specific level. The aim was to examine the relationship among task complexity, self-efficacy beliefs, domain-related prior knowledge, learning strategy use, and task performance as they were applied to English vocabulary learning from reading tasks. Participants were 120 second-year university students (mean age 21) from a Chinese university. This experiment had two conditions (simple/complex). A vocabulary level test was first conducted to measure participants' prior knowledge of English vocabulary. Participants were then randomly assigned to one of the learning tasks. Participants were administered task booklets together with the self-efficacy scales, measures of learning strategy use, and post-tests. Data obtained were submitted to multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) and path analysis. Results from the MANOVA model showed a significant effect of vocabulary level on self-efficacy beliefs, learning strategy use, and task performance. Task complexity showed no significant effect; however, an interaction effect between vocabulary level and task complexity emerged. Results from the path analysis showed self-efficacy beliefs had an indirect effect on performance. Our results highlighted the mediating role of self-efficacy beliefs and learning strategy use. Our findings indicate that students' prior knowledge plays a crucial role on both self-efficacy beliefs and task performance, and the predictive power of self-efficacy on task performance may lie in its association with learning strategy use. © 2011 The British Psychological Society.

Distribution of Chinese names

Science.gov (United States)

Huang, Ding-wei

2013-03-01

We present a statistical model for the distribution of Chinese names. Both family names and given names are studied on the same basis. With naive expectation, the distribution of family names can be very different from that of given names. One is affected mostly by genealogy, while the other can be dominated by cultural effects. However, we find that both distributions can be well described by the same model. Various scaling behaviors can be understood as a result of stochastic processes. The exponents of different power-law distributions are controlled by a single parameter. We also comment on the significance of full-name repetition in Chinese population.

A fresh look at the predictors of naming accuracy and errors in Alzheimer's disease.

Science.gov (United States)

Cuetos, Fernando; Rodríguez-Ferreiro, Javier; Sage, Karen; Ellis, Andrew W

2012-09-01

In recent years, a considerable number of studies have tried to establish which characteristics of objects and their names predict the responses of patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) in the picture-naming task. The frequency of use of words and their age of acquisition (AoA) have been implicated as two of the most influential variables, with naming being best preserved for objects with high-frequency, early-acquired names. The present study takes a fresh look at the predictors of naming success in Spanish and English AD patients using a range of measures of word frequency and AoA along with visual complexity, imageability, and word length as predictors. Analyses using generalized linear mixed modelling found that naming accuracy was better predicted by AoA ratings taken from older adults than conventional ratings from young adults. Older frequency measures based on written language samples predicted accuracy better than more modern measures based on the frequencies of words in film subtitles. Replacing adult frequency with an estimate of cumulative (lifespan) frequency did not reduce the impact of AoA. Semantic error rates were predicted by both written word frequency and senior AoA while null response errors were only predicted by frequency. Visual complexity, imageability, and word length did not predict naming accuracy or errors. ©2012 The British Psychological Society.

British Sign Name Customs

Science.gov (United States)

Day, Linda; Sutton-Spence, Rachel

2010-01-01

Research presented here describes the sign names and the customs of name allocation within the British Deaf community. While some aspects of British Sign Language sign names and British Deaf naming customs differ from those in most Western societies, there are many similarities. There are also similarities with other societies outside the more…

Incorporating rich background knowledge for gene named entity classification and recognition

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Yang Zhihao

2009-07-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background Gene named entity classification and recognition are crucial preliminary steps of text mining in biomedical literature. Machine learning based methods have been used in this area with great success. In most state-of-the-art systems, elaborately designed lexical features, such as words, n-grams, and morphology patterns, have played a central part. However, this type of feature tends to cause extreme sparseness in feature space. As a result, out-of-vocabulary (OOV terms in the training data are not modeled well due to lack of information. Results We propose a general framework for gene named entity representation, called feature coupling generalization (FCG. The basic idea is to generate higher level features using term frequency and co-occurrence information of highly indicative features in huge amount of unlabeled data. We examine its performance in a named entity classification task, which is designed to remove non-gene entries in a large dictionary derived from online resources. The results show that new features generated by FCG outperform lexical features by 5.97 F-score and 10.85 for OOV terms. Also in this framework each extension yields significant improvements and the sparse lexical features can be transformed into both a lower dimensional and more informative representation. A forward maximum match method based on the refined dictionary produces an F-score of 86.2 on BioCreative 2 GM test set. Then we combined the dictionary with a conditional random field (CRF based gene mention tagger, achieving an F-score of 89.05, which improves the performance of the CRF-based tagger by 4.46 with little impact on the efficiency of the recognition system. A demo of the NER system is available at http://202.118.75.18:8080/bioner.

Effect of a synesthete's photisms on name recall.

Science.gov (United States)

Mills, Carol Bergfeld; Innis, Joanne; Westendorf, Taryn; Owsianiecki, Lauren; McDonald, Angela

2006-02-01

A multilingual, colored-letter synesthete professor (MLS), 9 nonsynesthete multilingual professors and 4 nonsynesthete art professors learned 30 names of individuals (first and last name pairs) in three trials. They recalled the names after each trial and six months later, as well as performed cued recall trials initially and after six months. As hypothesized, MLS recalled significantly more names than control groups on all free recall tests (except after the first trial) and on cued recall tests. In addition, MLS gave qualitatively different reasons for remembering names than any individual control participant. MLS gave mostly color reasons for remembering the names, whereas nonsynesthetes gave reasons based on familiarity or language or art knowledge. Results on standardized memory tests showed that MLS had average performance on non-language visual memory tests (the Benton Visual Retention Test-Revised--BURT-R, and the Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure Test--CFT), but had superior memory performance on a verbal test consisting of lists of nouns (Rey Auditory-Verbal Learning Test--RAVLT). MLS's synesthesia seems to aid memory for visually or auditorily presented language stimuli (names and nouns), but not for non-language visual stimuli (simple and complex figures).

What's in a Name

Science.gov (United States)

Bush, Sarah B.; Albanese, Judith; Karp, Karen S.

2016-01-01

Historically, some baby names have been more popular during a specific time span, whereas other names are considered timeless. The Internet article, "How to Tell Someone's Age When All You Know Is Her Name" (Silver and McCann 2014), describes the phenomenon of the rise and fall of name popularity, which served as a catalyst for the…

The effect of fMRI task combinations on determining the hemispheric dominance of language functions

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Niskanen, Eini; Koenoenen, Mervi; Villberg, Ville; Aeikiae, Marja; Nissi, Mikko; Ranta-aho, Perttu; Karjalainen, Pasi; Saeisaenen, Laura; Mervaala, Esa; Kaelviaeinen, Reetta; Vanninen, Ritva

2012-01-01

The purpose of this study is to establish the most suitable combination of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) language tasks for clinical use in determining language dominance and to define the variability in laterality index (LI) and activation power between different combinations of language tasks. Activation patterns of different fMRI analyses of five language tasks (word generation, responsive naming, letter task, sentence comprehension, and word pair) were defined for 20 healthy volunteers (16 right-handed). LIs and sums of T values were calculated for each task separately and for four combinations of tasks in predefined regions of interest. Variability in terms of activation power and lateralization was defined in each analysis. In addition, the visual assessment of lateralization of language functions based on the individual fMRI activation maps was conducted by an experienced neuroradiologist. A combination analysis of word generation, responsive naming, and sentence comprehension was the most suitable in terms of activation power, robustness to detect essential language areas, and scanning time. In general, combination analyses of the tasks provided higher overall activation levels than single tasks and reduced the number of outlier voxels disturbing the calculation of LI. A combination of auditory and visually presented tasks that activate different aspects of language functions with sufficient activation power may be a useful task battery for determining language dominance in patients. (orig.)

The effect of fMRI task combinations on determining the hemispheric dominance of language functions

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Niskanen, Eini [University of Eastern Finland, Department of Applied Physics, Kuopio (Finland); Kuopio University Hospital, Department of Clinical Radiology, Kuopio (Finland); Koenoenen, Mervi [Kuopio University Hospital, Department of Clinical Radiology, Kuopio (Finland); Kuopio University Hospital, Department of Clinical Neurophysiology, Kuopio (Finland); Villberg, Ville; Aeikiae, Marja [Kuopio University Hospital, Department of Neurology, Kuopio (Finland); Nissi, Mikko; Ranta-aho, Perttu; Karjalainen, Pasi [University of Eastern Finland, Department of Applied Physics, Kuopio (Finland); Saeisaenen, Laura; Mervaala, Esa [Kuopio University Hospital, Department of Clinical Neurophysiology, Kuopio (Finland); University of Eastern Finland, Institute of Clinical Medicine, Clinical Neurophysiology, Kuopio (Finland); Kaelviaeinen, Reetta [Kuopio University Hospital, Department of Neurology, Kuopio (Finland); University of Eastern Finland, Institute of Clinical Medicine, Neurology, Kuopio (Finland); Vanninen, Ritva [Kuopio University Hospital, Department of Clinical Radiology, Kuopio (Finland); University of Eastern Finland, Institute of Clinical Medicine, Clinical Radiology, Kuopio (Finland)

2012-04-15

The purpose of this study is to establish the most suitable combination of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) language tasks for clinical use in determining language dominance and to define the variability in laterality index (LI) and activation power between different combinations of language tasks. Activation patterns of different fMRI analyses of five language tasks (word generation, responsive naming, letter task, sentence comprehension, and word pair) were defined for 20 healthy volunteers (16 right-handed). LIs and sums of T values were calculated for each task separately and for four combinations of tasks in predefined regions of interest. Variability in terms of activation power and lateralization was defined in each analysis. In addition, the visual assessment of lateralization of language functions based on the individual fMRI activation maps was conducted by an experienced neuroradiologist. A combination analysis of word generation, responsive naming, and sentence comprehension was the most suitable in terms of activation power, robustness to detect essential language areas, and scanning time. In general, combination analyses of the tasks provided higher overall activation levels than single tasks and reduced the number of outlier voxels disturbing the calculation of LI. A combination of auditory and visually presented tasks that activate different aspects of language functions with sufficient activation power may be a useful task battery for determining language dominance in patients. (orig.)

The effect of fMRI task combinations on determining the hemispheric dominance of language functions.

Science.gov (United States)

Niskanen, Eini; Könönen, Mervi; Villberg, Ville; Nissi, Mikko; Ranta-Aho, Perttu; Säisänen, Laura; Karjalainen, Pasi; Aikiä, Marja; Kälviäinen, Reetta; Mervaala, Esa; Vanninen, Ritva

2012-04-01

The purpose of this study is to establish the most suitable combination of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) language tasks for clinical use in determining language dominance and to define the variability in laterality index (LI) and activation power between different combinations of language tasks. Activation patterns of different fMRI analyses of five language tasks (word generation, responsive naming, letter task, sentence comprehension, and word pair) were defined for 20 healthy volunteers (16 right-handed). LIs and sums of T values were calculated for each task separately and for four combinations of tasks in predefined regions of interest. Variability in terms of activation power and lateralization was defined in each analysis. In addition, the visual assessment of lateralization of language functions based on the individual fMRI activation maps was conducted by an experienced neuroradiologist. A combination analysis of word generation, responsive naming, and sentence comprehension was the most suitable in terms of activation power, robustness to detect essential language areas, and scanning time. In general, combination analyses of the tasks provided higher overall activation levels than single tasks and reduced the number of outlier voxels disturbing the calculation of LI. A combination of auditory and visually presented tasks that activate different aspects of language functions with sufficient activation power may be a useful task battery for determining language dominance in patients.

Opening a Pandora's Box: Proper Names in English Phraseology

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Pierini, Patrizia

2008-01-01

Full Text Available This article explores the linguistic-cultural aspects and usage of phraseological units involving personal and place names in English. The introductory sections outline the linguistic features of proper names and phraseological units. The qualitative part of this study provides a list of units belonging to four phraseological types (idioms, stereotyped similes, binomials, formulae, drawn from idiom dictionaries. An investigation of the sources of names shows that the personal and place names involved are historically, socially or culturally prominent in British culture. Here is noted a predominance of personal over place names, and within the former, a predominance of male over female names, and first names over family names, with a number of hypocorisms. The quantitative part of the study consists of a corpus search of the selected units in the British National Corpus in order to find their frequency and distribution across registers. The search reveals that they have very low levels of occurrence, and are more commonly used in written registers, in particular, in fiction, journalism and miscellaneous texts.

Task Phase Recognition for Highly Mobile Workers in Large Building Complexes

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Stisen, Allan; Mathisen, Andreas; Krogh, Søren

2016-01-01

requirements on the accuracy of the indoor positioning, and thus come with low deployment and maintenance effort in real-world settings. We evaluated the proposed methods in a large hospital complex, where the highly mobile workers were recruited among the non-clinical workforce. The evaluation is based......-scale indoor work environments, namely from a WiFi infrastructure providing coarse grained indoor positioning, from inertial sensors in the workers’ mobile phones, and from a task management system yielding information about the scheduled tasks’ start and end locations. The methods presented have low...... on manually labelled real-world data collected over 4 days of regular work life of the mobile workforce. The collected data yields 83 tasks in total involving 8 different orderlies from a major university hospital with a building area of 160, 000 m2. The results show that the proposed methods can distinguish...

Task-set inertia and memory-consolidation bottleneck in dual tasks.

Science.gov (United States)

Koch, Iring; Rumiati, Raffaella I

2006-11-01

Three dual-task experiments examined the influence of processing a briefly presented visual object for deferred verbal report on performance in an unrelated auditory-manual reaction time (RT) task. RT was increased at short stimulus-onset asynchronies (SOAs) relative to long SOAs, showing that memory consolidation processes can produce a functional processing bottleneck in dual-task performance. In addition, the experiments manipulated the spatial compatibility of the orientation of the visual object and the side of the speeded manual response. This cross-task compatibility produced relative RT benefits only when the instruction for the visual task emphasized overlap at the level of response codes across the task sets (Experiment 1). However, once the effective task set was in place, it continued to produce cross-task compatibility effects even in single-task situations ("ignore" trials in Experiment 2) and when instructions for the visual task did not explicitly require spatial coding of object orientation (Experiment 3). Taken together, the data suggest a considerable degree of task-set inertia in dual-task performance, which is also reinforced by finding costs of switching task sequences (e.g., AC --> BC vs. BC --> BC) in Experiment 3.

Dictionary of Alaska place names

Science.gov (United States)

Orth, Donald J.

1971-01-01

This work is an alphabetical list of the geographic names that are now applied and have been applied to places and features of the Alaska landscape. Principal names, compiled from modem maps and charts and printed in boldface type, generally reflect present-day local usage. They conform to the principles of the U.S. Board on Geographic Names for establishing standard names for use on Government maps and in other Government publications. Each name entry gives the present-day spelling along with variant spellings and names; identifies the feature named; presents the origin and history of the name; and, where possible, gives the meaning of an Eskimo, Aleut, Indian, or foreign name. Variant, obsolete, and doubtful names are alphabetically listed and are cross referenced, where necessary, to the principal entries.

Resolving task rule incongruence during task switching by competitor rule suppression.

Science.gov (United States)

Meiran, Nachshon; Hsieh, Shulan; Dimov, Eduard

2010-07-01

Task switching requires maintaining readiness to execute any task of a given set of tasks. However, when tasks switch, the readiness to execute the now-irrelevant task generates interference, as seen in the task rule incongruence effect. Overcoming such interference requires fine-tuned inhibition that impairs task readiness only minimally. In an experiment involving 2 object classification tasks and 2 location classification tasks, the authors show that irrelevant task rules that generate response conflicts are inhibited. This competitor rule suppression (CRS) is seen in response slowing in subsequent trials, when the competing rules become relevant. CRS is shown to operate on specific rules without affecting similar rules. CRS and backward inhibition, which is another inhibitory phenomenon, produced additive effects on reaction time, suggesting their mutual independence. Implications for current formal theories of task switching as well as for conflict monitoring theories are discussed. (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved

Intentional forgetting reduces color-naming interference: evidence from item-method directed forgetting.

Science.gov (United States)

Lee, Yuh-Shiow; Lee, Huang-Mou; Fawcett, Jonathan M

2013-01-01

In an item-method-directed forgetting task, Chinese words were presented individually, each followed by an instruction to remember or forget. Colored probe items were presented following each memory instruction requiring a speeded color-naming response. Half of the probe items were novel and unrelated to the preceding study item, whereas the remaining half of the probe items were a repetition of the preceding study item. Repeated probe items were either identical to the preceding study item (E1, E2), a phonetic reproduction of the preceding study item (E3), or perceptually matched to the preceding study item (E4). Color-naming interference was calculated by subtracting color-naming reaction times made in response to a string of meaningless symbols from that of the novel and repeated conditions. Across all experiments, participants recalled more to-be-remembered (TBR) than to-be-forgotten (TBF) study words. More importantly, Experiments 1 and 2 found that color-naming interference was reduced for repeated TBF words relative to repeated TBR words. Experiments 3 and 4 further found that this effect occurred at the perceptual rather than semantic level. These findings suggest that participants may bias processing resources away from the perceptual representation of to-be-forgotten information.

A Preliminary Study of the Practices of Personal Naming in Konso

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ongaye Oda Orkaydo

2016-05-01

Full Text Available This article presents the personal naming practices in Konso, a Cushitic-speaking people in southwest Ethiopia. Personal naming in Konso can be formal or informal. Formal personal names are given during a ceremony called sookata, while informal names are given either before or after the sookata ceremony. This article argues that the Konso have family names in their naming practice. This article analyses the typology of personal names in Konso and shows an intrinsic interplay between poetry, songs and personal names. The unitary state policies of the previous regimes and the proliferation of religions have resulted in trends in which people give Amharic or religious names to their children or replace indigenous Konso personal names either by Amharic or religious names. The new trends of changing indigenous names into Amharic and/or religious (mainly biblical names compromise the knowledge and role of the Konso language as an expression of culture and an identity marker.

Emotion-induced impairments in speeded word recognition tasks.

Science.gov (United States)

Zeelenberg, René; Bocanegra, Bruno R; Pecher, Diane

2011-01-01

Recent studies show that emotional stimuli impair the identification of subsequently presented, briefly flashed stimuli. In the present study, we investigated whether emotional distractors (primes) impaired target processing when presentation of the target stimulus was not impoverished. In lexical decision, animacy decision, rhyme decision, and nonword naming, targets were presented in such a manner that they were clearly visible (i.e., targets were not masked and presented until participants responded). In all tasks taboo-sexual distractors caused a slowdown in responding to the subsequent neutral target. Our results indicate that the detrimental effects of emotional distractors are not confined to paradigms in which visibility of the target is limited. Moreover, impairments were obtained even when semantic processing of stimuli was not required.

Transfer of an induced preferred retinal locus of fixation to everyday life visual tasks.

Science.gov (United States)

Barraza-Bernal, Maria J; Rifai, Katharina; Wahl, Siegfried

2017-12-01

Subjects develop a preferred retinal locus of fixation (PRL) under simulation of central scotoma. If systematic relocations are applied to the stimulus position, PRLs manifest at a location in favor of the stimulus relocation. The present study investigates whether the induced PRL is transferred to important visual tasks in daily life, namely pursuit eye movements, signage reading, and text reading. Fifteen subjects with normal sight participated in the study. To develop a PRL, all subjects underwent a scotoma simulation in a prior study, where five subjects were trained to develop the PRL in the left hemifield, five different subjects on the right hemifield, and the remaining five subjects could naturally chose the PRL location. The position of this PRL was used as baseline. Under central scotoma simulation, subjects performed a pursuit task, a signage reading task, and a reading-text task. In addition, retention of the behavior was also studied. Results showed that the PRL position was transferred to the pursuit task and that the vertical location of the PRL was maintained on the text reading task. However, when reading signage, a function-driven change in PRL location was observed. In addition, retention of the PRL position was observed over weeks and months. These results indicate that PRL positions can be induced and may further transferred to everyday life visual tasks, without hindering function-driven changes in PRL position.

Directory of awardee names

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

1999-07-01

Standardization of grant and contract awardee names has been an area of concern since the development of the Department`s Procurement and Assistance Data System (PADS). A joint effort was begun in 1983 by the Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI) and the Office of Procurement and Assistance Management/Information Systems and Analysis Division to develop a means for providing uniformity of awardee names. As a result of this effort, a method of assigning vendor identification codes to each unique awardee name, division, city, and state combination was developed and is maintained by OSTI. Changes to vendor identification codes or awardee names contained in PADS can be made only by OSTI. Awardee names in the Directory indicate that the awardee has had a prime contract (excluding purchase orders of $10,000 or less) with, or a financial assistance award from, the Department. Award status--active, inactive, or retired--is not shown. The Directory is in alphabetic sequence based on awardee name and reflects the OSTI-assigned vendor identification code to the right of the name. A vendor identification code is assigned to each unique awardee name, division, city, and state (for place of performance). The same vendor identification code is used for awards throughout the Department.

Task demand, task management, and teamwork

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Braarud, Per Oeivind; Brendryen, Haavar

2001-03-15

The current approach to mental workload assessment in process control was evaluated in 3 previous HAMMLAB studies, by analysing the relationship between workload related measures and performance. The results showed that subjective task complexity rating was related to team's control room performance, that mental effort (NASA-TLX) was weakly related to performance, and that overall activity level was unrelated to performance. The results support the argument that general cognitive measures, i.e., mental workload, are weakly related to performance in the process control domain. This implies that other workload concepts than general mental workload are needed for valid assessment of human reliability and for valid assessment of control room configurations. An assessment of task load in process control suggested that how effort is used to handle task demand is more important then the level of effort invested to solve the task. The report suggests two main workload related concepts with a potential as performance predictors in process control: task requirements, and the work style describing how effort is invested to solve the task. The task requirements are seen as composed of individual task demand and team demand. In a similar way work style are seen as composed of individual task management and teamwork style. A framework for the development of the concepts is suggested based on a literature review and experiences from HAMMLAB research. It is suggested that operational definitions of workload concepts should be based on observable control room behaviour, to assure a potential for developing performance-shaping factors. Finally an explorative analysis of teamwork measures and performance in one study indicated that teamwork concepts are related to performance. This lends support to the suggested development of team demand and teamwork style as elements of a framework for the analysis of workload in process control. (Author)

How two word-trained dogs integrate pointing and naming

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Grassmann, Susanne; Kaminski, Juliane; Tomasello, Michael

Two word-trained dogs were presented with acts of reference in which a human pointed, named objects, or simultaneously did both. The question was whether these dogs would assume co-reference of pointing and naming and thus pick the pointed-to object. Results show that the dogs did indeed assume

Memory systems, processes, and tasks: taxonomic clarification via factor analysis.

Science.gov (United States)

Bruss, Peter J; Mitchell, David B

2009-01-01

The nature of various memory systems was examined using factor analysis. We reanalyzed data from 11 memory tasks previously reported in Mitchell and Bruss (2003). Four well-defined factors emerged, closely resembling episodic and semantic memory and conceptual and perceptual implicit memory, in line with both memory systems and transfer-appropriate processing accounts. To explore taxonomic issues, we ran separate analyses on the implicit tasks. Using a cross-format manipulation (pictures vs. words), we identified 3 prototypical tasks. Word fragment completion and picture fragment identification tasks were "factor pure," tapping perceptual processes uniquely. Category exemplar generation revealed its conceptual nature, yielding both cross-format priming and a picture superiority effect. In contrast, word stem completion and picture naming were more complex, revealing attributes of both processes.

Dual-tasking and gait in people with Mild Cognitive Impairment. The effect of working memory

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Phillips Natalie A

2009-09-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background Cognition and mobility in older adults are closely associated and they decline together with aging. Studies evaluating associations between cognitive factors and gait performance in people with Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI are scarce. In this study, our aim was to determine whether specific cognitive factors have a more identifiable effect on gait velocity during dual-tasking in people with MCI. Methods Fifty-five participants, mean age 77.7 (SD = 5.9, 45% women, with MCI were evaluated for global cognition, working memory, executive function, and attention. Gait Velocity (GV was measured under a single-task condition (single GV and under two dual-task conditions: 1 while counting backwards (counting GV, 2 while naming animals (verbal GV. Multivariable linear regression analysis was used to examine associations with an alpha-level of 0.05. Results Participants experienced a reduction in GV while engaging in dual-task challenges (p Conclusion In older adults with MCI, low working memory performance was associated with slow GV. Dual-task conditions showed the strongest associations with gait slowing. Our findings suggest that cortical control of gait is associated with decline in working memory in people with MCI.

The vegetative state--a syndrome in search of a name.

Science.gov (United States)

von Wild, K; Laureys, S T; Gerstenbrand, F; Dolce, G; Onose, G

2012-02-22

In 2002, Bryan Jennett chose the caption "A syndrome in search of a name" for the first chapter of his book "The vegetative state--medical facts, ethical and legal dilemmas", which, in summary, can be taken as his legacy. Jennett coined the term "VegetativeState" (VS), which became the preferential name for the syndrome of wakeful unresponsiveness in the English literature, with the intention to specify the concern and dilemmas in connection with the naming "vegetative", "persistent" and "permanent". In Europe, Apallic Syndrome (AS) is still in use. The prevalence of VS/AS in hospital settings in Europe is 0.5-2/100.000 population year; one-third traumatic brain damage, 70% following intracranial haemorrhages, tumours, cerebral hypoxemia after cardiac arrest, and end stage of certain progressive neurological diseases. VS/AS reflects brain pathology of (a) consciousness, self-awareness, (b) behaviour, and (c) certain brain structures, so that patients are awake but total unresponsive. The ambiguity of the naming "vegetative" (meant to refer to the preserved vegetative (autonomous nervous system) can suggest that the patient is no more a human but "vegetable" like. And "apallic" does not mean being definitively and completely anatomically disconnected from neocortical structures. In 2009, having joined the International Task Force on the Vegetative State, we proposed the new term "Unresponsive Wakefulness Syndrome" (UWS) to enable (neuro-)scientists, the medical community, and the public to assess and define all stages accurately in a human way. The Unresponsive Wakefulness Syndrome (UWS) could replace the VS/AS nomenclature in science and public with social competence.

One Night of Sleep Deprivation Affects Reaction Time, but Not Interference or Facilitation in a Stroop Task

Science.gov (United States)

Cain, Sean W.; Silva, Edward J.; Chang, Anne-Marie; Ronda, Joseph M.; Duffy, Jeanne F.

2011-01-01

The Stroop color-naming task is one of the most widely studied tasks involving the inhibition of a prepotent response, regarded as an executive function. Several studies have examined performance on versions of the Stroop task under conditions of acute sleep deprivation. Though these studies revealed effects on Stroop performance, the results…

Marine Place Names

Data.gov (United States)

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce — This data set contains the geographic place names for features in the U.S territorial waters and outer continental shelf. These names can be used to find or define a...

By which name should I call thee? The consequences of having multiple names.

Science.gov (United States)

Stevenage, Sarah V; Lewis, Hugh G

2005-11-01

The nominal competitor effect suggests that, when a person has two names associated with them, recall of either name is more difficult than if they just had one name. Drawing on a connectionist framework, this effect could arise either if multiple names were represented as being connected to a single person identity node (PIN), or if multiple names were represented as being connected via one-to-one links to multiple PINs. Whilst the latter has intuitive appeal, results from two experiments support the former architecture. Having two names connected to a single PIN not only gives rise to a nominal competitor effect (Experiment 1), but also gives rise to a familiarity enhancement effect (Experiment 2). These empirical results are simulated using an extension of Brédart, Valentine, Calder, and Gassi's (1995) connectionist architecture, which reveals that both effects hold even when the association of both names to the PIN is unequal. These results are presented in terms of a more complete model for person recognition, and the representation of semantic information within such a model is examined.

Abstinent adult daily smokers show reduced anticipatory but elevated saccade-related brain responses during a rewarded antisaccade task.

Science.gov (United States)

Geier, Charles F; Sweitzer, Maggie M; Denlinger, Rachel; Sparacino, Gina; Donny, Eric C

2014-08-30

Chronic smoking may result in reduced sensitivity to non-drug rewards (e.g., money), a phenomenon particularly salient during abstinence. During a quit attempt, this effect may contribute to biased decision-making (smoking>alternative reinforcers) and relapse. Although relevant for quitting, characterization of reduced reward function in abstinent smokers remains limited. Moreover, how attenuated reward function affects other brain systems supporting decision-making has not been established. Here, we use a rewarded antisaccade (rAS) task to characterize non-drug reward processing and its influence on inhibitory control, key elements underlying decision-making, in abstinent smokers vs. non-smokers. Abstinent (12-hours) adult daily smokers (N=23) and non-smokers (N=11) underwent fMRI while performing the rAS. Behavioral performances improved on reward vs. neutral trials. Smokers showed attenuated activation in ventral striatum during the reward cue and in superior precentral sulcus and posterior parietal cortex during response preparation, but greater responses during the saccade response in posterior cingulate and parietal cortices. Smokers' attenuated anticipatory responses suggest reduced motivation from monetary reward, while heightened activation during the saccade response suggests that additional circuitry may be engaged later to enhance inhibitory task performance. Overall, this preliminary study highlights group differences in decision-making components and the utility of the rAS to characterize these effects. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Place Names of Brazil : Research, Reflections and Important Aspects

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Paulo Márcio Leal de Menezes

2006-08-01

Full Text Available Place names are testimonies of culture settlement and occupation of a territory. The historical study of the toponimy, which the term geonimy will be associated from now, allows establishing the genealogy of human occupation, as well as showing an evolution of area occupation, through its density.The natural link between Geonimy and Cartography goes to historical and old maps study, once they are characterized as temporary storage files.This paper aims to show the importance of place names study in all relevant aspects, as well as to motivate the retaking studies and researches on Brazilian Geonimy. In this way, the researches will be taken cartographical, geographical, historical, ethnographical and etymological aspects of geonimy in Brazilian territory genesis. It will be considered also geographical indications and its economical importance.At the end it is showed the importance to creating a National Authority of Geographical Names in Brazil , coming to normalize and to protect the national geonimy.

Tai Chi practitioners have better postural control and selective attention in stepping down with and without a concurrent auditory response task.

Science.gov (United States)

Lu, Xi; Siu, Ka-Chun; Fu, Siu N; Hui-Chan, Christina W Y; Tsang, William W N

2013-08-01

To compare the performance of older experienced Tai Chi practitioners and healthy controls in dual-task versus single-task paradigms, namely stepping down with and without performing an auditory response task, a cross-sectional study was conducted in the Center for East-meets-West in Rehabilitation Sciences at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong. Twenty-eight Tai Chi practitioners (73.6 ± 4.2 years) and 30 healthy control subjects (72.4 ± 6.1 years) were recruited. Participants were asked to step down from a 19-cm-high platform and maintain a single-leg stance for 10 s with and without a concurrent cognitive task. The cognitive task was an auditory Stroop test in which the participants were required to respond to different tones of voices regardless of their word meanings. Postural stability after stepping down under single- and dual-task paradigms, in terms of excursion of the subject's center of pressure (COP) and cognitive performance, was measured for comparison between the two groups. Our findings demonstrated significant between-group differences in more outcome measures during dual-task than single-task performance. Thus, the auditory Stroop test showed that Tai Chi practitioners achieved not only significantly less error rate in single-task, but also significantly faster reaction time in dual-task, when compared with healthy controls similar in age and other relevant demographics. Similarly, the stepping-down task showed that Tai Chi practitioners not only displayed significantly less COP sway area in single-task, but also significantly less COP sway path than healthy controls in dual-task. These results showed that Tai Chi practitioners achieved better postural stability after stepping down as well as better performance in auditory response task than healthy controls. The improved performance that was magnified by dual motor-cognitive task performance may point to the benefits of Tai Chi being a mind-and-body exercise.

Naming as Strategic Communication

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Schmeltz, Line; Kjeldsen, Anna Karina

2016-01-01

This article presents a framework for understanding corporate name change as strategic communication. From a corporate branding perspective, the choice of a new name can be seen as a wish to stand out from a group of similar organizations. Conversely, from an institutional perspective, name change...

What's in a Name? Sound Symbolism and Gender in First Names.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

David M Sidhu

Full Text Available Although the arbitrariness of language has been considered one of its defining features, studies have demonstrated that certain phonemes tend to be associated with certain kinds of meaning. A well-known example is the Bouba/Kiki effect, in which nonwords like bouba are associated with round shapes while nonwords like kiki are associated with sharp shapes. These sound symbolic associations have thus far been limited to nonwords. Here we tested whether or not the Bouba/Kiki effect extends to existing lexical stimuli; in particular, real first names. We found that the roundness/sharpness of the phonemes in first names impacted whether the names were associated with round or sharp shapes in the form of character silhouettes (Experiments 1a and 1b. We also observed an association between femaleness and round shapes, and maleness and sharp shapes. We next investigated whether this association would extend to the features of language and found the proportion of round-sounding phonemes was related to name gender (Analysis of Category Norms. Finally, we investigated whether sound symbolic associations for first names would be observed for other abstract properties; in particular, personality traits (Experiment 2. We found that adjectives previously judged to be either descriptive of a figuratively 'round' or a 'sharp' personality were associated with names containing either round- or sharp-sounding phonemes, respectively. These results demonstrate that sound symbolic associations extend to existing lexical stimuli, providing a new example of non-arbitrary mappings between form and meaning.

Qualitative differences between bilingual language control and executive control: evidence from task switching

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Marco eCalabria

2012-01-01

Full Text Available Previous research has shown that highly-proficient bilinguals have comparable switch costs in both directions when they switch between languages (L1 and L2, the so called ‘symmetrical switch cost’ effect. Interestingly, the same symmetry is also present when they switch between L1 and a much weaker L3. These findings suggest that highly proficient bilinguals develop a language control system that seems to be insensitive to language proficiency. In the present study, we explore whether the pattern of symmetrical switch costs in language switching tasks generalizes to a non-linguistic switching task in the same group of highly-proficient bilinguals. The end goal of this is to assess whether bilingual language control (bLC can be considered as subsidiary to domain-general executive control (EC. We tested highly-proficient Catalan-Spanish bilinguals both in a linguistic switching task and in a non-linguistic switching task. In the linguistic task, participants named pictures in L1 and L2 (Experiment 1 or L3 (Experiment 2 depending on a cue presented with the picture (a flag. In the non-linguistic task, the same participants had to switch between two card sorting rule-sets (colour and shape. Overall, participants showed symmetrical switch costs in the linguistic switching task, but not in the non-linguistic switching task. In a further analysis, we observed that in the linguistic switching task the asymmetry of the switch costs changed across blocks, while in the non-linguistic switching task an asymmetrical switch cost was observed throughout the task. The observation of different patterns of switch costs in the linguistic and the non-linguistic switching tasks suggest that the bLC system is not completely subsidiary to the domain-general EC system.

SMC 1 or What's in a Name?

Science.gov (United States)

Dickel, H. R.

What's in a name? everything! SMC 1 is a planetary nebula in the Large Magellanic Cloud! This new planetary nebula near the LMC was noted by Savage, Murdin and Clark (in The Observatory 1982); it is also known as SMP LMC 104A (Sanduleak, MacConnell, and Philip in PASP 1978). In an effort to promote clear and unambiguous identification of all astronomical objects outside the solar system, the IAU Task Group on Designations attempts to clarify existing astronomical designations and the TG reviews, updates, and advertises the IAU Recommendations for Nomenclature. The following documents on the Web are provided as a service to astronomers to help them with designating astronomical sources of radiation outside the solar system: How to refer to a source or designate a new one: instructions IAU Recommendations for Nomenclature: nomenclature Second Reference Dictionary of Nomenclature of Celestial Objects: dictionary **NEW** (pre-)Registry of New Acronyms: acronym registry The Task Group in collaboration with several editors of astronomical journals and managers of large data archives is now studying the feasibility of an automated system to detect nonconforming designations when an article and/or survey data are submitted for publication and/or to an electronic archive. H. Dickel is available during the Symposium to discuss your designation concerns and to offer possible solutions.

A Space-Time Periodic Task Model for Recommendation of Remote Sensing Images

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Xiuhong Zhang

2018-01-01

Full Text Available With the rapid development of remote sensing technology, the quantity and variety of remote sensing images are growing so quickly that proactive and personalized access to data has become an inevitable trend. One of the active approaches is remote sensing image recommendation, which can offer related image products to users according to their preference. Although multiple studies on remote sensing retrieval and recommendation have been performed, most of these studies model the user profiles only from the perspective of spatial area or image features. In this paper, we propose a spatiotemporal recommendation method for remote sensing data based on the probabilistic latent topic model, which is named the Space-Time Periodic Task model (STPT. User retrieval behaviors of remote sensing images are represented as mixtures of latent tasks, which act as links between users and images. Each task is associated with the joint probability distribution of space, time and image characteristics. Meanwhile, the von Mises distribution is introduced to fit the distribution of tasks over time. Then, we adopt Gibbs sampling to learn the random variables and parameters and present the inference algorithm for our model. Experiments show that the proposed STPT model can improve the capability and efficiency of remote sensing image data services.

Effects of Word Recognition Training in a Picture-Word Interference Task: Automaticity vs. Speed.

Science.gov (United States)

Ehri, Linnea C.

First and second graders were taught to recognize a set of written words either more accurately or more rapidly. Both before and after word training, they named pictures printed with and without these words as distractors. Of interest was whether training would enhance or diminish the interference created by these words in the picture naming task.…

Sex-Biased Sound Symbolism in English-Language First Names

Science.gov (United States)

Pitcher, Benjamin J.; Mesoudi, Alex; McElligott, Alan G.

2013-01-01

Sexual selection has resulted in sex-based size dimorphism in many mammals, including humans. In Western societies, average to taller stature men and comparatively shorter, slimmer women have higher reproductive success and are typically considered more attractive. This size dimorphism also extends to vocalisations in many species, again including humans, with larger individuals exhibiting lower formant frequencies than smaller individuals. Further, across many languages there are associations between phonemes and the expression of size (e.g. large /a, o/, small /i, e/), consistent with the frequency-size relationship in vocalisations. We suggest that naming preferences are a product of this frequency-size relationship, driving male names to sound larger and female names smaller, through sound symbolism. In a 10-year dataset of the most popular British, Australian and American names we show that male names are significantly more likely to contain larger sounding phonemes (e.g. “Thomas”), while female names are significantly more likely to contain smaller phonemes (e.g. “Emily”). The desire of parents to have comparatively larger, more masculine sons, and smaller, more feminine daughters, and the increased social success that accompanies more sex-stereotyped names, is likely to be driving English-language first names to exploit sound symbolism of size in line with sexual body size dimorphism. PMID:23755148

Language production in a shared task: Cumulative semantic interference from self- and other-produced context words

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Hoedemaker, R.S.; Ernst, J.; Meyer, A.S.; Belke, E.

2017-01-01

This study assessed the effects of semantic context in the form of self-produced and other-produced words on subsequent language production. Pairs of participants performed a joint picture naming task, taking turns while naming a continuous series of pictures. In the single-speaker version of this

MATHEMATICAL BASES DECISION OF OLYMPIAD TASKS FROM INFORMATICS ON SITE E-OLIMP

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

T.A. Vakalyuk

2010-08-01

Full Text Available In the article a new section is examined on a portal from the sporting programming of e-olimp, namely mathematical bases during uniting of olympiads them tasks from an informatics.

Preschoolers' knowledge about the appearance of proper names.

Science.gov (United States)

Stewart, Kathryn Maycumber; Pasnak, Robert

2010-10-01

Preschoolers' knowledge of the appearance of proper names was tested in three experiments with 25 boys and 22 girls from low-income families. Children from a Head Start program, whose parents signed a permission letter, participated. Their ages ranged from 3 yr. 6 mo. to 5 yr. 6 mo. (M = 52.2 mo., SD = 4.9). When shown consonant-vowel-consonant trigrams such as Rit or baF or dEg with various capitalization patterns, the children showed a tendency to recognize that CVC trigrams with the first letter capitalized or all letters capitalized were the ones most likely to represent a person's name. When their own names were substituted, which typically contained more than three letters, their performance was markedly better. Children also had a strong tendency to consider trigrams of Latin letters as more likely to be a person's name than trigrams of non-Latin characters (e.g., Sanskrit).

Blink activity and task difficulty.

Science.gov (United States)

Tanaka, Y; Yamaoka, K

1993-08-01

This study investigated the relationship between task difficulty and blink activity, which includes blink rate, blink amplitude, and blink duration. Two kinds of tasks established two levels of difficulty. In Exp. 1, a mental arithmetic task was used to examine the relationship. Analysis showed that blink rate for a difficult task was significantly higher than that for an easier one. In Exp. 2, a letter-search task (hiragana Japanese alphabet) was used while the other conditions were the same as those in Exp. 1; however, the results of this experiment were not influenced by the difficulty of the task. As results indicate that blink rate is related to not only difficulty but also the nature of the task, the nature of the task is probably dependent on a mechanism in information processing. The results for blink amplitude and blink duration showed no systematic change during either experiment.

Board Task Performance

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Minichilli, Alessandro; Zattoni, Alessandro; Nielsen, Sabina

2012-01-01

identify three board processes as micro-level determinants of board effectiveness. Specifically, we focus on effort norms, cognitive conflicts and the use of knowledge and skills as determinants of board control and advisory task performance. Further, we consider how two different institutional settings....... The findings show that: (i) Board processes have a larger potential than demographic variables to explain board task performance; (ii) board task performance differs significantly between boards operating in different contexts; and (iii) national context moderates the relationships between board processes...... and board task performance....

Double dissociation between syntactic gender and picture naming processing: a brain stimulation mapping study.

Science.gov (United States)

Vidorreta, Jose Garbizu; Garcia, Roser; Moritz-Gasser, Sylvie; Duffau, Hugues

2011-03-01

Neural foundations of syntactic gender processing remain poorly understood. We used electrostimulation mapping in nine right-handed awake patients during surgery for a glioma within the left hemisphere, to study whether the cortico-subcortical structures involved in naming versus syntactic gender processing are common or distinct. In French, the article determines the grammatical gender. Thus, the patient was asked to perform a picture naming task and to give the appropriate article for each picture, with and without stimulation. Cortical stimulation elicited reproducible syntactic gender disturbances in six patients, in the inferior frontal gyrus (three cases), and in the posterior middle temporal gyrus (three cases). Interestingly, no naming disorders were generated during stimulation of the syntactic sites, while cortical areas inducing naming disturbances never elicited grammatical gender errors when stimulated. Moreover, at the subcortical level, stimulation of the white matter lateral to the caudate nucleus induced gender errors in three patients, with no naming disorders. Using cortico-subcortical electrical mapping in awake patients, we demonstrate for the first time (1) a double dissociation between syntactic gender and naming processing, supporting independent network model rather than serial theory, (2) the involvement of the left inferior frontal gyrus, especially the pars triangularis, and the posterior left middle temporal gyrus in grammatical gender processing, (3) the existence of white matter pathways, likely a sub-part of the left superior longitudinal fasciculus, underlying a large-scale distributed cortico-subcortical circuit which might selectively sub-serve syntactic gender processing, even if interconnected with parallel sub-networks involved in naming (semantic and phonological) processing. Copyright © 2010 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

Subjective Significance Shapes Arousal Effects on Modified Stroop Task Performance: A Duality of Activation Mechanisms Account.

Science.gov (United States)

Imbir, Kamil K

2016-01-01

Activation mechanisms such as arousal are known to be responsible for slowdown observed in the Emotional Stroop and modified Stroop tasks. Using the duality of mind perspective, we may conclude that both ways of processing information (automatic or controlled) should have their own mechanisms of activation, namely, arousal for an experiential mind, and subjective significance for a rational mind. To investigate the consequences of both, factorial manipulation was prepared. Other factors that influence Stroop task processing such as valence, concreteness, frequency, and word length were controlled. Subjective significance was expected to influence arousal effects. In the first study, the task was to name the color of font for activation charged words. In the second study, activation charged words were, at the same time, combined with an incongruent condition of the classical Stroop task around a fixation point. The task was to indicate the font color for color-meaning words. In both studies, subjective significance was found to shape the arousal impact on performance in terms of the slowdown reduction for words charged with subjective significance.

Subjective Significance Shapes Arousal Effects on Modified Stroop Task Performance: a Duality of Activation Mechanisms Account

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Kamil Konrad Imbir

2016-02-01

Full Text Available Activation mechanisms such as arousal are known to be responsible for slowdown observed in the Emotional Stroop (EST and modified Stroop tasks. Using the duality of mind perspective, we may conclude that both ways of processing information (automatic or controlled should have their own mechanisms of activation, namely, arousal for an experiential mind, and subjective significance for a rational mind. To investigate the consequences of both, factorial manipulation was prepared. Other factors that influence Stroop task processing such as valence, concreteness, frequency and word length were controlled. Subjective significance was expected to influence arousal effects. In the first study, the task was to name the color of font for activation charged words. In the second study, activation charged words were, at the same time, combined with an incongruent condition of the classical Stroop task around a fixation point. The task was to indicate the font color for color-meaning words. In both studies, subjective significance was found to shape the arousal impact on performance in terms of the slowdown reduction for words charged with subjective significance.

Proposal for the systematic naming of mesons and baryons

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Porter, F.C.; Hernandez, J.J.; Montanet, L.

1984-10-01

Twenty years ago, the Particle Data Group adopted a systematic naming convention for baryons: the symbols N, Δ, Λ, Σ, Ψ, and Ω were to identify the isospin and strangeness, The mesons, by contrast, have become an alphabet soup of uninformative names - theta, iota, xi, zeta, g/sub T/, g/sub s/, H, E, delta, h, g, r, kappa, etc. -, and in some cases identical names are used for mesons with different quantum numbers (A, B, and D). Furthermore, experimentalists are now discovering baryons that contain heavy quarks. It is therefore timely to consider systematic naming conventions both for mesons and for baryons with heavy quarks. The Particle Data Group is circulating this proposal in the hope of generating feedback, and we attach a sheet for responses. It should be emphasized that the Particle Tables would show both the old and new names for some time

Socioeconomic determinants of first names

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Bloothooft, G.; Onland, D.

2011-01-01

Modern naming practices in the Netherlands between 1982 and 2005 were studied on the basis of 1409 popular first names, divided into fourteen name groups determined by the common preferences of parents for the names involved. Socioeconomic variables such as family income, parents' level of

Elemental Etymology: What's in a Name?

Science.gov (United States)

Ball, David W.

1985-01-01

Examines the origin of the names (or etymologies) of the chemical elements. Includes tables listing elements: (1) with names of obscure origin; (2) named for colors; (3) named after real or mythical people; (4) named after places; (5) named after heavenly bodies; and (6) having names of miscellaneous origin. (JN)

BRAND NAMING: SOUND SYMBOLISM, BRAND PREFERENCE AND BRAND PERFORMANCE

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Alina Catalina Duduciuc

2015-01-01

Full Text Available The aim of this study is to highlight the importance of sound symbolism for Romanian marketing and advertising applied research. Previous research showed that the phonetic structure of brand name communicates its characteristics, i.e. it drives consumers to assess certain features and performance of the product. We assumed that when consumers encounter an unknown brand name, they automatically infer characteristics from the meaning conveyed by the sounds (e.g. phonemes. Therefore, we supposed that a brand name for a shampoo (artificially created on experimental purpose containing back vowels is evaluated better by consumers when they compare it to another brand name with front vowels. Furthermore, we tested the influence of the stops and fricatives consonants in inferring certain attributes of product. To this end, fifty nine students (N=59 participated in a research based on questionnaire. The results revealed that subjects evaluated better the brand names containing back vowels than brand names with front vowel. No effect was obtained regarding the presence of stops and fricatives consonants in assessing the brand performance.

Exploring the role of task performance and learning style on prefrontal hemodynamics during a working memory task.

Science.gov (United States)

Anderson, Afrouz A; Parsa, Kian; Geiger, Sydney; Zaragoza, Rachel; Kermanian, Riley; Miguel, Helga; Dashtestani, Hadis; Chowdhry, Fatima A; Smith, Elizabeth; Aram, Siamak; Gandjbakhche, Amir H

2018-01-01

Existing literature outlines the quality and location of activation in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) during working memory (WM) tasks. However, the effects of individual differences on the underlying neural process of WM tasks are still unclear. In this functional near infrared spectroscopy study, we administered a visual and auditory n-back task to examine activation in the PFC while considering the influences of task performance, and preferred learning strategy (VARK score). While controlling for age, results indicated that high performance (HP) subjects (accuracy > 90%) showed task dependent lower activation compared to normal performance subjects in PFC region Specifically HP groups showed lower activation in left dorsolateral PFC (DLPFC) region during performance of auditory task whereas during visual task they showed lower activation in the right DLPFC. After accounting for learning style, we found a correlation between visual and aural VARK score and level of activation in the PFC. Subjects with higher visual VARK scores displayed lower activation during auditory task in left DLPFC, while those with higher visual scores exhibited higher activation during visual task in bilateral DLPFC. During performance of auditory task, HP subjects had higher visual VARK scores compared to NP subjects indicating an effect of learning style on the task performance and activation. The results of this study show that learning style and task performance can influence PFC activation, with applications toward neurological implications of learning style and populations with deficits in auditory or visual processing.

Control adjustments in speaking: Electrophysiology of the Gratton effect in picture naming.

Science.gov (United States)

Shitova, Natalia; Roelofs, Ardi; Schriefers, Herbert; Bastiaansen, Marcel; Schoffelen, Jan-Mathijs

2017-07-01

Accumulating evidence suggests that spoken word production requires different amounts of top-down control depending on the prevailing circumstances. For example, during Stroop-like tasks, the interference in response time (RT) is typically larger following congruent trials than following incongruent trials. This effect is called the Gratton effect, and has been taken to reflect top-down control adjustments based on the previous trial type. Such control adjustments have been studied extensively in Stroop and Eriksen flanker tasks (mostly using manual responses), but not in the picture-word interference (PWI) task, which is a workhorse of language production research. In one of the few studies of the Gratton effect in PWI, Van Maanen and Van Rijn (2010) examined the effect in picture naming RTs during dual-task performance. Based on PWI effect differences between dual-task conditions, they argued that the functional locus of the PWI effect differs between post-congruent trials (i.e., locus in perceptual and conceptual encoding) and post-incongruent trials (i.e., locus in word planning). However, the dual-task procedure may have contaminated the results. We therefore performed an electroencephalography (EEG) study on the Gratton effect in a regular PWI task. We observed a PWI effect in the RTs, in the N400 component of the event-related brain potentials, and in the midfrontal theta power, regardless of the previous trial type. Moreover, the RTs, N400, and theta power reflected the Gratton effect. These results provide evidence that the PWI effect arises at the word planning stage following both congruent and incongruent trials, while the amount of top-down control changes depending on the previous trial type. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

A statistical approach for segregating cognitive task stages from multivariate fMRI BOLD time series

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Charmaine eDemanuele

2015-10-01

Full Text Available Multivariate pattern analysis can reveal new information from neuroimaging data to illuminate human cognition and its disturbances. Here, we develop a methodological approach, based on multivariate statistical/machine learning and time series analysis, to discern cognitive processing stages from fMRI blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD time series. We apply this method to data recorded from a group of healthy adults whilst performing a virtual reality version of the delayed win-shift radial arm maze task. This task has been frequently used to study working memory and decision making in rodents. Using linear classifiers and multivariate test statistics in conjunction with time series bootstraps, we show that different cognitive stages of the task, as defined by the experimenter, namely, the encoding/retrieval, choice, reward and delay stages, can be statistically discriminated from the BOLD time series in brain areas relevant for decision making and working memory. Discrimination of these task stages was significantly reduced during poor behavioral performance in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC, but not in the primary visual cortex (V1. Experimenter-defined dissection of time series into class labels based on task structure was confirmed by an unsupervised, bottom-up approach based on Hidden Markov Models. Furthermore, we show that different groupings of recorded time points into cognitive event classes can be used to test hypotheses about the specific cognitive role of a given brain region during task execution. We found that whilst the DLPFC strongly differentiated between task stages associated with different memory loads, but not between different visual-spatial aspects, the reverse was true for V1. Our methodology illustrates how different aspects of cognitive information processing during one and the same task can be separated and attributed to specific brain regions based on information contained in multivariate patterns of voxel

True and false memory for colour names versus actual colours: support for the visual distinctiveness heuristic in memory for colour information.

Science.gov (United States)

Eslick, Andrea N; Kostic, Bogdan; Cleary, Anne M

2010-06-01

In a colour variation of the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) false memory paradigm, participants studied lists of words critically related to a nonstudied colour name (e.g., "blood, cherry, scarlet, rouge ... "); they later showed false memory for the critical colour name (e.g., "red"). Two additional experiments suggest that participants generate colour imagery in response to such colour-related DRM lists. First, participants claim to experience colour imagery more often following colour-related than standard non-colour-related DRM lists; they also rate their colour imagery as more vivid following colour-related lists. Second, participants exhibit facilitative priming for critical colours in a dot selection task that follows words in the colour-related DRM list, suggesting that colour-related DRM lists prime participants for the actual critical colours themselves. Despite these findings, false memory for critical colour names does not extend to the actual colours themselves (font colours). Rather than leading to source confusion about which colours were self-generated and which were studied, presenting the study lists in varied font colours actually worked to reduce false memory overall. Results are interpreted within the framework of the visual distinctiveness hypothesis.

Trends in First Names Foreshadowed Hillary Clinton’s Electoral Defeat

OpenAIRE

Ghirlanda, Stefano

2017-01-01

I examine trends in the popularity of first names around the years of USA presidential elections, showing that the names 'Hillary' and 'Hilary' decreased abruptly by more than 90% in popularity following the 1992 election of Hillary Clinton's husband Bill. I show that this outcome is unique to the 1992 election, and argue that it may evidence a "dislike" for Hillary Clinton's public image among both Democratic and Republican voters, which may have eventually contributed to Hillary Clinton's l...

MARKED PERSONAL NAMES: AN ANTROPONIMIC STUDY OF BALINESE STUDENTS’ NAMES IN DENPASAR

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ni Made Iwan Indrawan

2015-07-01

Full Text Available The research aims to account for the Marked Balinese Students’ Personal Names. Four research problems are studied, namely (1 the criteria used to distinguish the marked names (NDMBmk and the unmarked ones (NDMTBmk, (2 the functions of the markedness, (3 the factors that influence it, and (4 the ideologies that operate behind it. The markedness of personal names reflect a relation between the arbitrariness in language uses and the extralinguistic factors influencing it. In the context of Balinese, the tradition, legal practices, and the globalisation may affect the arbitrariness. In order to determine NDMBmk, criteria of markedness was constructed. According to the criteria, structurally, NDMBmk consist of at least five elements, as Anak Agung Arim Kasunu Arya Penarungan. Behaviorally, they may consist of names not derived from Balinese and/or Sanskrit, such as Giovani on I Gede Adeyaka Giovani, adopt a foreign spelling system as Chrisna on Ni Putu Chrisna Wulandari, or use no markers of Balinese ethnics or caste as Yunisari Wira Putri. Out of 698 sampled names, NDMBmk are found 54. Besides denoting, the marked elements also function to distinguish personal identities, to shape the existence of the name holder, to connote particular perception, and to reflect the changing era. The factors influencing the markedness are the need to express something new, a wish to acculturate, to raise status or keep a distance socially, and to demonstrate a linguistic expertise, or when seeing from the concept of imagery, the factors are the imagery on something new and on social status or distancing. The ideologies behind the phenomenon are globalist, nationalist, and the casteless-Balinese.

MARKED PERSONAL NAMES: AN ANTROPONIMIC STUDY OF BALINESE STUDENTS’ NAMES IN DENPASAR

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ni Made Iwan Indrawan

2012-07-01

Full Text Available The research aims to account for the Marked Balinese Students’ Personal Names. Four research problems are studied, namely (1 the criteria used to distinguish the marked names (NDMBmk and the unmarked ones (NDMTBmk, (2 the functions of the markedness, (3 the factors that influence it, and (4 the ideologies that operate behind it. The markedness of personal names reflect a relation between the arbitrariness in language uses and the extralinguistic factors influencing it. In the context of Balinese, the tradition, legal practices, and the globalisation may affect the arbitrariness. In order to determine NDMBmk, criteria of markedness was constructed. According to the criteria, structurally, NDMBmk consist of at least five elements, as Anak Agung Arim Kasunu Arya Penarungan. Behaviorally, they may consist of names not derived from Balinese and/or Sanskrit, such as Giovani on I Gede Adeyaka Giovani, adopt a foreign spelling system as Chrisna on Ni Putu Chrisna Wulandari, or use no markers of Balinese ethnics or caste as Yunisari Wira Putri. Out of 698 sampled names, NDMBmk are found 54. Besides denoting, the marked elements also function to distinguish personal identities, to shape the existence of the name holder, to connote particular perception, and to reflect the changing era. The factors influencing the markedness are the need to express something new, a wish to acculturate, to raise status or keep a distance socially, and to demonstrate a linguistic expertise, or when seeing from the concept of imagery, the factors are the imagery on something new and on social status or distancing. The ideologies behind the phenomenon are globalist, nationalist, and the casteless-Balinese.

Developmental change in cognitive organization underlying stroop tasks of Japanese orthographies.

Science.gov (United States)

Toma, C; Toshima, T

1989-01-01

Cognitive processes underlying Stroop interference tasks of two Japanese orthographies, hiragana (a phonetic orthography) and kanji (a logographic orthography) were studied from the developmental point of view. Four age groups (first, second, third graders, and university students) were employed as subjects. Significant interference was yielded both in the hiragana and in the kanji version. Performance time on interference task decreased with age. For elementary school children, the error frequency on the interference task was higher than that on the task of naming patch colors or on the task of reading words printed in black ink, but the error frequencies did not differ among tasks for university students. In the interference task more word reading errors were yielded in the kanji version than in the hiragana version during and after third grade. The findings suggested that (1) the recognition system of hiragana and of kanji becomes qualitatively different during and after third grade, (2) the integrative system, which organizes cognitive processes underlying Stroop task, develops with age, and (3) efficiency of the organization increases with age.

Task conflict and proactive control: A computational theory of the Stroop task.

Science.gov (United States)

Kalanthroff, Eyal; Davelaar, Eddy J; Henik, Avishai; Goldfarb, Liat; Usher, Marius

2018-01-01

The Stroop task is a central experimental paradigm used to probe cognitive control by measuring the ability of participants to selectively attend to task-relevant information and inhibit automatic task-irrelevant responses. Research has revealed variability in both experimental manipulations and individual differences. Here, we focus on a particular source of Stroop variability, the reverse-facilitation (RF; faster responses to nonword neutral stimuli than to congruent stimuli), which has recently been suggested as a signature of task conflict. We first review the literature that shows RF variability in the Stroop task, both with regard to experimental manipulations and to individual differences. We suggest that task conflict variability can be understood as resulting from the degree of proactive control that subjects recruit in advance of the Stroop stimulus. When the proactive control is high, task conflict does not arise (or is resolved very quickly), resulting in regular Stroop facilitation. When proactive control is low, task conflict emerges, leading to a slow-down in congruent and incongruent (but not in neutral) trials and thus to Stroop RF. To support this suggestion, we present a computational model of the Stroop task, which includes the resolution of task conflict and its modulation by proactive control. Results show that our model (a) accounts for the variability in Stroop-RF reported in the experimental literature, and (b) solves a challenge to previous Stroop models-their ability to account for reaction time distributional properties. Finally, we discuss theoretical implications to Stroop measures and control deficits observed in some psychopathologies. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

Personal Names in Children's Speech: The Process of Acquisition

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Galina R. Dobrova

2014-12-01

Full Text Available The article discusses the process of children’s understanding of the differences between proper and common names. The author emphasizes the role of the anthropocentric approach to personal names, especially when it is based on the study of the ontogenetic development of linguistic capacity focusing on the mechanisms of the formation of mental patterns of proper names, in particular — of personal names, and of their special linguistic status as (relatively “strict” designators. Analyzing recordings of children’s spontaneous speech and experimental data, the author argues that the study of the early stages of personal names acquisition, in comparison with the acquisition of common nouns, highlights such significant features of a child’s developing mind as the ability to distinguish between identifying and generalizing linguistic signs, to construct hyponym/hyperonym relations going from individual to the most generalized designations (from personal name to common nouns of different kinds, including relative, completely depending on the reference point, and reciprocal ones, e. g. kinship terms. Additionally, the author shows that the anthropocentric approach emphasizes such properties of personal names as their coreferentiality, relativity and their capacity to act as semiotic shifters as far as the choice of the form of a name depends on the social relations between the speaker and his addressee and their respective positions in the social hierarchy.

Learning the Students' Names: Does it Matter?

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Jørgensen, Anker Helms

2014-01-01

on the effect of learning the students' names are sparse. Against this background, this paper reports on a method for learning all the students' names and two studies of the effect, based on my use of the method in my teaching. The two survey studies were carried in 2011 and in 2014. A survey was in the first...... sent to 50 students and I received 18 answers (38%). The second survey was sent to 86 students and I received 48 answers (56%). These figures provides a good indication.The answers showed a marked positive effect: the students felt welcome, accepted and respected; the learning environment was more......A key factor in successful teaching and learning is the relationship between the students and the teacher. A simple approach nurturing this relationship is learning the students' names. This is often suggested in the literature, but seems rarely practised. Substantial reports in the literature...

Naming names: the first women taxonomists in mycology

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Sara Maroske

2018-03-01

Full Text Available The transition from amateur to professional in natural history is generally regarded as having taken place in the nineteenth century, but landmark events such as the 1917 appointment of mycologist Johanna Westerdijk (1883–1961 as the first female professor in the Netherlands indicate that the pattern of change for women was more varied and delayed than for men. We investigate this transition in mycology, and identify only 43 women in the Western World who published scientific mycological literature pre-1900, of whom twelve published new fungal taxa. By charting the emergence of these women over time, and comparing the output of self-taught amateurs and university graduates, we establish the key role of access to higher education in female participation in mycology. Using a suite of strategies, six of the self-taught amateurs managed to overcome their educational disadvantages and name names — Catharina Dörrien (the first to name a fungal taxon, Marie-Anne Libert, Mary Elizabeth Banning, Élise-Caroline Bommer, Mariette Rousseau, and Annie Lorrain Smith. By 1900, the professional era for women in mycology was underway, and increasing numbers published new taxa. Parity with male colleagues in recognition and promotion, however, remains an ongoing issue. Key words: Amateurs, Fungi, Gender studies, History of science, Plant pathology

Blocking-out auditory distracters while driving : A cognitive strategy to reduce task-demands on the road

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Unal, Ayca Berfu; Platteel, Samantha; Steg, Linda; Epstude, Kai

The current research examined how drivers handle task-demands induced by listening to the radio while driving. In particular, we explored the traces of a possible cognitive strategy that might be used by drivers to cope with task-demands, namely blocking-out auditory distracters. In Study 1 (N =

Enhancing of chemical compound and drug name recognition using representative tag scheme and fine-grained tokenization.

Science.gov (United States)

Dai, Hong-Jie; Lai, Po-Ting; Chang, Yung-Chun; Tsai, Richard Tzong-Han

2015-01-01

The functions of chemical compounds and drugs that affect biological processes and their particular effect on the onset and treatment of diseases have attracted increasing interest with the advancement of research in the life sciences. To extract knowledge from the extensive literatures on such compounds and drugs, the organizers of BioCreative IV administered the CHEMical Compound and Drug Named Entity Recognition (CHEMDNER) task to establish a standard dataset for evaluating state-of-the-art chemical entity recognition methods. This study introduces the approach of our CHEMDNER system. Instead of emphasizing the development of novel feature sets for machine learning, this study investigates the effect of various tag schemes on the recognition of the names of chemicals and drugs by using conditional random fields. Experiments were conducted using combinations of different tokenization strategies and tag schemes to investigate the effects of tag set selection and tokenization method on the CHEMDNER task. This study presents the performance of CHEMDNER of three more representative tag schemes-IOBE, IOBES, and IOB12E-when applied to a widely utilized IOB tag set and combined with the coarse-/fine-grained tokenization methods. The experimental results thus reveal that the fine-grained tokenization strategy performance best in terms of precision, recall and F-scores when the IOBES tag set was utilized. The IOBES model with fine-grained tokenization yielded the best-F-scores in the six chemical entity categories other than the "Multiple" entity category. Nonetheless, no significant improvement was observed when a more representative tag schemes was used with the coarse or fine-grained tokenization rules. The best F-scores that were achieved using the developed system on the test dataset of the CHEMDNER task were 0.833 and 0.815 for the chemical documents indexing and the chemical entity mention recognition tasks, respectively. The results herein highlight the importance

Cultural evolution: The case of babies’ first names

Science.gov (United States)

Xi, Ning; Zhang, Zi-Ke; Zhang, Yi-Cheng; Ge, Zehui; She, Li; Zhang, Kui

2014-07-01

In social sciences, there is currently rare consensus on the underlying mechanism for cultural evolution, partially due to lack of suitable data. The evolution of first names of newborn babies offers a remarkable example for such researches. In this paper, we employ the historical data on baby names from the United States to investigate the evolutionary process of culture, in particular focusing on how inequality among baby names changes over time. Then we propose a stochastic model where individual choice is determined by both individual preference and social influence, and show that the decrease in the strength of social influence can account for all the observed empirical features. Therefore, we claim that the weakening of social influence drives cultural evolution.

GEOGRAPHIC NAMES INFORMATION SYSTEM (GNIS) ...

Science.gov (United States)

The Geographic Names Information System (GNIS), developed by the U.S. Geological Survey in cooperation with the U.S. Board on Geographic Names (BGN), contains information about physical and cultural geographic features in the United States and associated areas, both current and historical, but not including roads and highways. The database also contains geographic names in Antarctica. The database holds the Federally recognized name of each feature and defines the location of the feature by state, county, USGS topographic map, and geographic coordinates. Other feature attributes include names or spellings other than the official name, feature designations, feature class, historical and descriptive information, and for some categories of features the geometric boundaries. The database assigns a unique feature identifier, a random number, that is a key for accessing, integrating, or reconciling GNIS data with other data sets. The GNIS is our Nation's official repository of domestic geographic feature names information.

Automatic Retrieval of Newly Instructed Cue-Task Associations Seen in Task-Conflict Effects in the First Trial after Cue-Task Instructions.

Science.gov (United States)

Meiran, Nachshon; Pereg, Maayan

2017-01-01

Novel stimulus-response associations are retrieved automatically even without prior practice. Is this true for novel cue-task associations? The experiment involved miniblocks comprising three phases and task switching. In the INSTRUCTION phase, two new stimuli (or familiar cues) were arbitrarily assigned as cues for up-down/right-left tasks performed on placeholder locations. In the UNIVALENT phase, there was no task cue since placeholder's location afforded one task but the placeholders were the stimuli that we assigned as task cues for the following BIVALENT phase (involving target locations affording both tasks). Thus, participants held the novel cue-task associations in memory while executing the UNIVALENT phase. Results show poorer performance in the first univalent trial when the placeholder was associated with the opposite task (incompatible) than when it was compatible, an effect that was numerically larger with newly instructed cues than with familiar cues. These results indicate automatic retrieval of newly instructed cue-task associations.

BioNLP Shared Task--The Bacteria Track.

Science.gov (United States)

Bossy, Robert; Jourde, Julien; Manine, Alain-Pierre; Veber, Philippe; Alphonse, Erick; van de Guchte, Maarten; Bessières, Philippe; Nédellec, Claire

2012-06-26

We present the BioNLP 2011 Shared Task Bacteria Track, the first Information Extraction challenge entirely dedicated to bacteria. It includes three tasks that cover different levels of biological knowledge. The Bacteria Gene Renaming supporting task is aimed at extracting gene renaming and gene name synonymy in PubMed abstracts. The Bacteria Gene Interaction is a gene/protein interaction extraction task from individual sentences. The interactions have been categorized into ten different sub-types, thus giving a detailed account of genetic regulations at the molecular level. Finally, the Bacteria Biotopes task focuses on the localization and environment of bacteria mentioned in textbook articles. We describe the process of creation for the three corpora, including document acquisition and manual annotation, as well as the metrics used to evaluate the participants' submissions. Three teams submitted to the Bacteria Gene Renaming task; the best team achieved an F-score of 87%. For the Bacteria Gene Interaction task, the only participant's score had reached a global F-score of 77%, although the system efficiency varies significantly from one sub-type to another. Three teams submitted to the Bacteria Biotopes task with very different approaches; the best team achieved an F-score of 45%. However, the detailed study of the participating systems efficiency reveals the strengths and weaknesses of each participating system. The three tasks of the Bacteria Track offer participants a chance to address a wide range of issues in Information Extraction, including entity recognition, semantic typing and coreference resolution. We found common trends in the most efficient systems: the systematic use of syntactic dependencies and machine learning. Nevertheless, the originality of the Bacteria Biotopes task encouraged the use of interesting novel methods and techniques, such as term compositionality, scopes wider than the sentence.

The Name Game.

Science.gov (United States)

Crawley, Sharon J.

Described is a game which provides a method for teaching students to locate cities and towns on a map. Students are provided with a list of descriptive phrases which stand for the name of a city, e.g., hot weather town (Summerville, Georgia); a chocolate candy bar (Hershey, Pennsylvania). Using a map, students must then try to find the name of a…

Language production in a shared task: Cumulative semantic interference from self- and other-produced context words

OpenAIRE

Hoedemaker, R.; Ernst, J.; Meyer, A.; Belke, E.

2017-01-01

This study assessed the effects of semantic context in the form of self-produced and other-produced words on subsequent language production. Pairs of participants performed a joint picture naming task, taking turns while naming a continuous series of pictures. In the single-speaker version of this paradigm, naming latencies have been found to increase for successive presentations of exemplars from the same category, a phenomenon known as Cumulative Semantic Interference (CSI). As expected, th...

Investigating executive functions in children with severe speech and movement disorders using structured tasks

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Kristine eStadskleiv

2014-09-01

Full Text Available Executive functions are the basis for goal-directed activity and include planning, monitoring, and inhibition, and language seems to play a role in the development of these functions. There is a tradition of studying executive function in both typical and atypical populations, and the present study investigates executive functions in children with severe speech and motor impairments who are communicating using communication aids with graphic symbols, letters and/or words. There are few neuropsychological studies of children in this group and little is known about their cognitive functioning, including executive functions. It was hypothesized that aided communication would tax executive functions more than speech. 29 children using communication aids and 27 naturally speaking children participated. Structured tasks resembling everyday activities, where the action goals had to be reached through communication with a partner, were used to get information about executive functions. The children a directed the partner to perform actions like building a Lego tower from a model the partner could not see and b gave information about an object without naming it to a person who had to guess what object it was. The executive functions of planning, monitoring and impulse control were coded from the children’s on-task behavior. Both groups solved most of the tasks correctly, indicating that aided communicators are able to use language to direct another person to do a complex set of actions. Planning and lack of impulsivity was positively related to task success in both groups. The aided group completed significantly fewer tasks, spent longer time and showed more variation in performance than the comparison group. The aided communicators scored lower on planning and showed more impulsivity than the comparison group, while both groups showed an equal degree of monitoring of the work progress. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that aided language

Photographs of manipulable objects are named more quickly than the same objects depicted as line-drawings: Evidence that photographs engage embodiment more than line-drawings.

Science.gov (United States)

Salmon, Joshua P; Matheson, Heath E; McMullen, Patricia A

2014-01-01

Previous research has shown that photographs of manipulable objects (i.e., those that can be grasped for use with one hand) are named more quickly than non-manipulable objects when they have been matched for object familiarity and age of acquisition. The current study tested the hypothesis that the amount of visual detail present in object depictions moderates these "manipulability" effects on object naming. The same objects were presented as photographs and line-drawings during a speeded naming task. Forty-six participants named 222 objects depicted in both formats. A significant object depiction (photographs versus line drawing) by manipulability interaction confirmed our hypothesis that manipulable objects are identified more quickly when shown as photographs; whereas, non-manipulable objects are identified equally quickly when shown as photographs versus line-drawings. These results indicate that factors such as surface detail and texture moderate the role of "action" and/or "manipulability" effects during object identification tasks, and suggest that photographs of manipulable objects are associated with more embodied representations of those objects than when they are depicted as line-drawings.

Recognition of Famous Names in Psychology by Students and Staff.

Science.gov (United States)

Bunnell, Julie K.

1992-01-01

Presents results of a name recognition questionnaire testing the historical awareness of psychology majors and faculty members. Reports that students showed a low level of name recognition prior to taking a course in the history of psychology. Concludes that explicit instruction is required to impart knowledge of the history of the discipline. (DK)

By any other name: when will preschoolers produce several labels for a referent?

OpenAIRE

Deak, Gedeon O; Yen, Loulee; Pettit, Jeremy W.

2001-01-01

Two experiments investigated why preschool children sometimes produce multiple words for a referent (i.e. polynomy), but other times seem to allow only one word. In Experiment 1, 40 three- and four-year-olds completed a modi®cation of Dea! k & Maratsos' (1998) naming task. Although social demands to produce multiple words were reduced, children produced, on average, more than two words per object. Number of words produced was predicted by receptive vocabulary. Lexical insight (i.e. knowing th...

Control over the Strength of Connections Between Modules: A Double Dissociation Between Stimulus Format and Task Revealed by Granger Causality Mapping in fMRI

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Britt eAnderson

2015-03-01

Full Text Available Drawing on theoretical and computational work with the localist Dual Route reading model and results from behavioral studies, Besner, Moroz, and O'Malley (2011 proposed that the ability to perform tasks that require overriding stimulus-specific defaults (e.g., semantics when naming Arabic numerals, and phonology when evaluating the parity of number words necessitate the ability to modulate the strength of connections between cognitive modules for lexical representation, semantics, and phonology on a task- and stimulus-specific basis. We used fMRI to evaluate this account by assessing changes in functional connectivity while participants performed tasks that did and did not require such stimulus-task default overrides. The occipital region showing the greatest modulation of BOLD signal strength for the two stimulus types was used as the seed region for Granger Causality Mapping (GCM. Our GCM analysis revealed a region of rostromedial frontal cortex with a crossover interaction. When participants performed tasks that required overriding stimulus type defaults (i.e., parity judgments of number words and naming Arabic numerals functional connectivity between the occipital region and rostromedial frontal cortex was present. Statistically significant functional connectivity was absent when the tasks were the default for the stimulus type (i.e., parity judgments of Arabic numerals and reading number words. This frontal region (BA 10 has previously been shown to be involved in goal-directed behaviour and maintenance of a specific task-set. We conclude that overriding stimulus-task defaults requires a modulation of connection strengths between cognitive modules and that the override mechanism predicted from cognitive theory is instantiated by frontal modulation of neural activity of brain regions specialized for sensory processing.

Rheem: Enabling Multi-Platform Task Execution

KAUST Repository

Agrawal, Divy; Kruse, Sebastian; Ouzzani, Mourad; Papotti, Paolo; Quiane-Ruiz, Jorge-Arnulfo; Tang, Nan; Zaki, Mohammed J.; Ba, Lamine; Berti-Equille, Laure; Chawla, Sanjay; Elmagarmid, Ahmed; Hammady, Hossam; Idris, Yasser; Kaoudi, Zoi; Khayyat, Zuhair

2016-01-01

Many emerging applications, from domains such as healthcare and oil & gas, require several data processing systems for complex analytics. This demo paper showcases Rheem, a framework that provides multi-platform task execution for such applications. It features a three-layer data processing abstraction and a new query optimization approach for multi-platform settings. We will demonstrate the strengths of Rheem by using real-world scenarios from three different applications, namely, machine learning, data cleaning, and data fusion. © 2016 ACM.

Rheem: Enabling Multi-Platform Task Execution

KAUST Repository

Agrawal, Divy

2016-06-16

Many emerging applications, from domains such as healthcare and oil & gas, require several data processing systems for complex analytics. This demo paper showcases Rheem, a framework that provides multi-platform task execution for such applications. It features a three-layer data processing abstraction and a new query optimization approach for multi-platform settings. We will demonstrate the strengths of Rheem by using real-world scenarios from three different applications, namely, machine learning, data cleaning, and data fusion. © 2016 ACM.

On the importance of Task 1 and error performance measures in PRP dual-task studies

Science.gov (United States)

Strobach, Tilo; Schütz, Anja; Schubert, Torsten

2015-01-01

The psychological refractory period (PRP) paradigm is a dominant research tool in the literature on dual-task performance. In this paradigm a first and second component task (i.e., Task 1 and Task 2) are presented with variable stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) and priority to perform Task 1. The main indicator of dual-task impairment in PRP situations is an increasing Task 2-RT with decreasing SOAs. This impairment is typically explained with some task components being processed strictly sequentially in the context of the prominent central bottleneck theory. This assumption could implicitly suggest that processes of Task 1 are unaffected by Task 2 and bottleneck processing, i.e., decreasing SOAs do not increase reaction times (RTs) and error rates of the first task. The aim of the present review is to assess whether PRP dual-task studies included both RT and error data presentations and statistical analyses and whether studies including both data types (i.e., RTs and error rates) show data consistent with this assumption (i.e., decreasing SOAs and unaffected RTs and/or error rates in Task 1). This review demonstrates that, in contrast to RT presentations and analyses, error data is underrepresented in a substantial number of studies. Furthermore, a substantial number of studies with RT and error data showed a statistically significant impairment of Task 1 performance with decreasing SOA. Thus, these studies produced data that is not primarily consistent with the strong assumption that processes of Task 1 are unaffected by Task 2 and bottleneck processing in the context of PRP dual-task situations; this calls for a more careful report and analysis of Task 1 performance in PRP studies and for a more careful consideration of theories proposing additions to the bottleneck assumption, which are sufficiently general to explain Task 1 and Task 2 effects. PMID:25904890

On the importance of Task 1 and error performance measures in PRP dual-task studies.

Science.gov (United States)

Strobach, Tilo; Schütz, Anja; Schubert, Torsten

2015-01-01

The psychological refractory period (PRP) paradigm is a dominant research tool in the literature on dual-task performance. In this paradigm a first and second component task (i.e., Task 1 and Task 2) are presented with variable stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) and priority to perform Task 1. The main indicator of dual-task impairment in PRP situations is an increasing Task 2-RT with decreasing SOAs. This impairment is typically explained with some task components being processed strictly sequentially in the context of the prominent central bottleneck theory. This assumption could implicitly suggest that processes of Task 1 are unaffected by Task 2 and bottleneck processing, i.e., decreasing SOAs do not increase reaction times (RTs) and error rates of the first task. The aim of the present review is to assess whether PRP dual-task studies included both RT and error data presentations and statistical analyses and whether studies including both data types (i.e., RTs and error rates) show data consistent with this assumption (i.e., decreasing SOAs and unaffected RTs and/or error rates in Task 1). This review demonstrates that, in contrast to RT presentations and analyses, error data is underrepresented in a substantial number of studies. Furthermore, a substantial number of studies with RT and error data showed a statistically significant impairment of Task 1 performance with decreasing SOA. Thus, these studies produced data that is not primarily consistent with the strong assumption that processes of Task 1 are unaffected by Task 2 and bottleneck processing in the context of PRP dual-task situations; this calls for a more careful report and analysis of Task 1 performance in PRP studies and for a more careful consideration of theories proposing additions to the bottleneck assumption, which are sufficiently general to explain Task 1 and Task 2 effects.

A Doctor's Name as a Brand: A Nationwide Survey on Registered Clinic Names in Taiwan.

Science.gov (United States)

Chu, Feng-Yuan; Dai, Ying-Xiu; Liu, Jui-Yao; Chen, Tzeng-Ji; Chou, Li-Fang; Hwang, Shinn-Jang

2018-06-01

In countries where the private clinics of physicians can be freely named, registering a clinic with a physician's name is one way to make patients familiar with the physician. No previous study had investigated how clinics make use of this method of personal branding. Therefore, the current study analyzed 10,847 private physician Western medicine clinics in Taiwan. Of those clinics, 31.0% ( n = 3363) were named with a physician's full name, 8.9% ( n = 960) with a surname, and 8.1% ( n = 884) with a given name. The proportion of clinics registered with a physician's name was lower in rural areas (37.3%) than in urban (48.5%) and suburban areas (49.2%), respectively. Among clinics with only one kind of specialist, a physician's name was used most frequently in clinics of obstetrics and gynecology (64.9%), otorhinolaryngology (64.1%), and dermatology (63.4%). In Taiwan, fewer than half of clinics used a physician's name as a brand. The sociocultural or strategic factors and real benefits of doing so could be further studied in the future for a better understanding of healthcare services management.

The List of Available Names (LAN): A new generation for stable taxonomic names in zoology?

Science.gov (United States)

Alonso-Zarazaga, Miguel A; Fautin, Daphne Gail; Michel, Ellinor

2016-01-01

The List of Available Names in Zoology (LAN) is an inventory of names with specific scope in time and content, presented and approved in parts, and constituted as a cumulative index of names available for use in zoological nomenclature. It was defined in Article 79 in the fourth edition of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature. The LAN is likely to gain importance with the development of the online Official Registry for Zoological Nomenclature (ZooBank) as it is potentially a source of many nomenclaturally certified names. Article 79 describes the deliberative process for adding large numbers of names to the LAN simultaneously, detailing steps and chronology for submission of a candidate Part to the LAN and consideration of a candidate Part by the public and Commission, but it is largely mute about the contents of a candidate Part. It does make clear that a name within the scope of a Part but not on the LAN has no nomenclatural standing, even if it had previously been considered available, thereby preventing long-forgotten names from displacing accepted ones and the accumulation of nomina dubia. Thus, for taxa on the LAN, nomenclatural archaeology - the resurrecting of old unused names to replace by priority names in current usage - will not be worthwhile. Beyond that, it has been unclear if Article 79 is intended to document every available name known within the scope of the Part, or if its intention is to pare the inventory of available names within the scope of the Part. Consideration by the Commission and two committees to deal with the LAN have defined steps to implement Article 79 with the latter intent. Procedures for consideration of a candidate Part are defined in a manual, published as an appendix in this volume.

Walking modality, but not task difficulty, influences the control of dual-task walking.

Science.gov (United States)

Wrightson, J G; Smeeton, N J

2017-10-01

During dual-task gait, changes in the stride-to-stride variability of stride time (STV) are suggested to represent the allocation of cognitive control to walking [1]. However, contrasting effects have been reported for overground and treadmill walking, which may be due to differences in the relative difficulty of the dual task. Here we compared the effect of overground and treadmill dual-task walking on STV in 18 healthy adults. Participants walked overground and on a treadmill for 120s during single-task (walking only) and dual-task (walking whilst performing serial subtractions in sevens) conditions. Dual-task effects on STV, cognitive task (serial subtraction) performance and perceived task difficulty were compared between walking modalities. STV was increased during overground dual-task walking, but was unchanged during treadmill dual-task walking. There were no differences in cognitive task performance or perceived task difficulty. These results show that gait is controlled differently during overground and treadmill dual-task walking. However, these differences are not solely due to differences in task difficulty, and may instead represent modality dependent control strategies. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Cooperative Scheduling of Imaging Observation Tasks for High-Altitude Airships Based on Propagation Algorithm

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

He Chuan

2012-01-01

Full Text Available The cooperative scheduling problem on high-altitude airships for imaging observation tasks is discussed. A constraint programming model is established by analyzing the main constraints, which takes the maximum task benefit and the minimum cruising distance as two optimization objectives. The cooperative scheduling problem of high-altitude airships is converted into a main problem and a subproblem by adopting hierarchy architecture. The solution to the main problem can construct the preliminary matching between tasks and observation resource in order to reduce the search space of the original problem. Furthermore, the solution to the sub-problem can detect the key nodes that each airship needs to fly through in sequence, so as to get the cruising path. Firstly, the task set is divided by using k-core neighborhood growth cluster algorithm (K-NGCA. Then, a novel swarm intelligence algorithm named propagation algorithm (PA is combined with the key node search algorithm (KNSA to optimize the cruising path of each airship and determine the execution time interval of each task. Meanwhile, this paper also provides the realization approach of the above algorithm and especially makes a detailed introduction on the encoding rules, search models, and propagation mechanism of the PA. Finally, the application results and comparison analysis show the proposed models and algorithms are effective and feasible.

On the importance of Task 1 and error performance measures in PRP dual-task studies

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Tilo eStrobach

2015-04-01

Full Text Available The Psychological Refractory Period (PRP paradigm is a dominant research tool in the literature on dual-task performance. In this paradigm a first and second component task (i.e., Task 1 and 2 are presented with variable stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs and priority to perform Task 1. The main indicator of dual-task impairment in PRP situations is an increasing Task 2-RT with decreasing SOAs. This impairment is typically explained with some task components being processed strictly sequentially in the context of the prominent central bottleneck theory. This assumption could implicitly suggest that processes of Task 1 are unaffected by Task 2 and bottleneck processing, i.e. decreasing SOAs do not increase RTs and error rates of the first task. The aim of the present review is to assess whether PRP dual-task studies included both RT and error data presentations and statistical analyses and whether studies including both data types (i.e., RTs and error rates show data consistent with this assumption (i.e., decreasing SOAs and unaffected RTs and/ or error rates in Task 1. This review demonstrates that, in contrast to RT presentations and analyses, error data is underrepresented in a substantial number of studies. Furthermore, a substantial number of studies with RT and error data showed a statistically significant impairment of Task 1 performance with decreasing SOA. Thus, these studies produced data that is not primarily consistent with the strong assumption that processes of Task 1 are unaffected by Task 2 and bottleneck processing in the context of PRP dual-task situations; this calls for a more careful report and analysis of Task 1 performance in PRP studies and for a more careful consideration of theories proposing additions to the bottleneck assumption, which are sufficiently general to explain Task 1 and Task 2 effects.

Color Naming Experiment in Mongolian Language

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Nandin-Erdene Osorjamaa

2015-11-01

Full Text Available There are numerous researches on color terms and names in many languages. In Mongolian language there are few doctoral theses on color naming. Cross cultural studies of color naming have demonstrated Semantic relevance in French and Mongolian color name Gerlee Sh. (2000; Comparisons of color naming across English and Mongolian Uranchimeg B. (2004; Semantic comparison between Russian and Mongolian idioms Enhdelger O. (1996; across symbolism Dulam S. (2007 and few others. Also a few articles on color naming by some Mongolian scholars are Tsevel, Ya. (1947, Baldan, L. (1979, Bazarragchaa, M. (1997 and others. Color naming studies are not sufficiently studied in Modern Mongolian. Our research is considered to be the first intended research on color naming in Modern Mongolian, because it is one part of Ph.D dissertation on color naming. There are two color naming categories in Mongolian, basic color terms and non- basic color terms. There are seven basic color terms in Mongolian. This paper aims to consider how Mongolian color names are derived from basic colors by using psycholinguistics associative experiment. It maintains the students and researchers to acquire the specific understanding of the differences and similarities of color naming in Mongolian and  English languages from the psycho-linguistic aspect.

An Observation Task Chain Representation Model for Disaster Process-Oriented Remote Sensing Satellite Sensor Planning: A Flood Water Monitoring Application

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Chao Yang

2018-03-01

Full Text Available An accurate and comprehensive representation of an observation task is a prerequisite in disaster monitoring to achieve reliable sensor observation planning. However, the extant disaster event or task information models do not fully satisfy the observation requirements for the accurate and efficient planning of remote-sensing satellite sensors. By considering the modeling requirements for a disaster observation task, we propose an observation task chain (OTChain representation model that includes four basic OTChain segments and eight-tuple observation task metadata description structures. A prototype system, namely OTChainManager, is implemented to provide functions for modeling, managing, querying, and visualizing observation tasks. In the case of flood water monitoring, we use a flood remote-sensing satellite sensor observation task for the experiment. The results show that the proposed OTChain representation model can be used in modeling process-owned flood disaster observation tasks. By querying and visualizing the flood observation task instances in the Jinsha River Basin, the proposed model can effectively express observation task processes, represent personalized observation constraints, and plan global remote-sensing satellite sensor observations. Compared with typical observation task information models or engines, the proposed OTChain representation model satisfies the information demands of the OTChain and its processes as well as impels the development of a long time-series sensor observation scheme.

27 CFR 5.34 - Brand names.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-04-01

... 27 Alcohol, Tobacco Products and Firearms 1 2010-04-01 2010-04-01 false Brand names. 5.34 Section... Spirits § 5.34 Brand names. (a) Misleading brand names. No label shall contain any brand name, which... officer finds that such brand name (when appropriately qualified if required) conveys no erroneous...

Metaheuristic Based Scheduling Meta-Tasks in Distributed Heterogeneous Computing Systems

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Hesam Izakian

2009-07-01

Full Text Available Scheduling is a key problem in distributed heterogeneous computing systems in order to benefit from the large computing capacity of such systems and is an NP-complete problem. In this paper, we present a metaheuristic technique, namely the Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO algorithm, for this problem. PSO is a population-based search algorithm based on the simulation of the social behavior of bird flocking and fish schooling. Particles fly in problem search space to find optimal or near-optimal solutions. The scheduler aims at minimizing makespan, which is the time when finishes the latest task. Experimental studies show that the proposed method is more efficient and surpasses those of reported PSO and GA approaches for this problem.

Can Your Institution's Name Influence Constituent Response? An Initial Assessment of Consumer Response to College Names.

Science.gov (United States)

Treadwell, D. F.

2003-01-01

Presents names of college and universities unfamiliar to potential students. Finds that one cluster of respondents had a clear preference for geographic or aspirational names while a second cluster had a preference for proper names. Notes that there was an overall preference for proper names. (SG)

Task conflict in the Stroop task: When Stroop interference decreases as Stroop facilitation increases in a low task conflict context

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Benjamin Andrew Parris

2014-10-01

Full Text Available In the present study participants completed two blocks of the Stroop task, one in which the Response-Stimulus Interval (RSI was 3500ms and one in which RSI was 200ms. It was expected that, in line with previous research, the shorter RSI would induce a low Task Conflict context by increasing focus on the colour identification goal in the Stroop task. Based on previous research showing the role of Task Conflict in the presence or absence Stroop facilitation, this was expected to lead to the novel finding of an increase in facilitation and simultaneous decrease in interference. Such a finding would be problematic for models of Stroop effects that predict these indices of performance should be affected in tandem. A crossover interaction is reported supporting these predictions. As predicted, the shorter RSI resulted in incongruent and congruent trial RTs decreasing relative to a static neutral baseline condition; hence interference decreased as facilitation increased. An explanatory model (expanding on the work of Goldfarb, Henik and colleagues is presented that: 1 Shows how under certain conditions the predictions from single mechanism models hold true (i.e. when Task conflict is held constant; 2 Shows how it is possible that interference can be affected by an experimental manipulation that leaves facilitation apparently untouched and; 3 Predicts that facilitation cannot be independently affected by an experimental manipulation.

What’s In Your Name? Associated Meanings of the Common Filipino Names Among Young Filipinos

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Shaira G. Castillo

2016-11-01

Full Text Available Name is important in knowing someone’s identity. By a person’s name someone can know his or her character. It is also possible that they bear a particular name because of their background and other factors that can lead to something important. This study aimed to find out the associative meanings of the most common Filipino male and female names among the Polytechnic University of the Philippines-Sta. Mesa students. Different factors such as character traits, physical appearance, and skills/talents were considered in determining meanings of the names. The study used quantitative and qualitative research approach, specifically the descriptive method, to analyze the gathered data. A selfadministered survey was distributed to 400 randomly selected respondents. General findings revealed that the respondents associated the most common Filipino male names in the same way regarding character traits and skills/talents. However, they have different associations to the male names in terms of physical appearance. On the other hand, the respondents associated the most common Filipino female names into similar character traits and physical appearance but associated them with different skills/talents. Results also revealed that the most common factors that influence the respondents’ associated meanings were relationships, experiences, popularity, and perception. The results imply that while young Filipinos associate similar character traits, physical appearances and skills to common Filipino names, they have different reasons in giving meanings to them.

Three tasks for physicists in the name of health

CERN Multimedia

CERN Bulletin

2011-01-01

The first “Physics for Health” workshop was organized at CERN in February 2010. It successfully showed the big potential that particle accelerators and detectors have in serving as instruments for early diagnosis and effective treatment of tumours. The conference participants expressed the wish that CERN be involved in three innovative projects. One year later, it’s time to touch base on the assignments and prepare for a new edition of the conference, which will be held in Geneva in February 2012.   The three actions that were discussed in the first Physics for Health workshop were very specific and included: a new research facility for biomedical uses, the launch of a new study for a compact and low-cost accelerator for hadron therapy, and the creation of a European distributed user facility for the production of innovative radioisotopes. “CERN has a lot of expertise in all of these fields and it is seen as a ‘neutral’ ground by the var...

Learning Task Knowledge from Dialog and Web Access

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Vittorio Perera

2015-06-01

Full Text Available We present KnoWDiaL, an approach for Learning and using task-relevant Knowledge from human-robot Dialog and access to the Web. KnoWDiaL assumes that there is an autonomous agent that performs tasks, as requested by humans through speech. The agent needs to “understand” the request, (i.e., to fully ground the task until it can proceed to plan for and execute it. KnoWDiaL contributes such understanding by using and updating a Knowledge Base, by dialoguing with the user, and by accessing the web. We believe that KnoWDiaL, as we present it, can be applied to general autonomous agents. However, we focus on our work with our autonomous collaborative robot, CoBot, which executes service tasks in a building, moving around and transporting objects between locations. Hence, the knowledge acquired and accessed consists of groundings of language to robot actions, and building locations, persons, and objects. KnoWDiaL handles the interpretation of voice commands, is robust regarding speech recognition errors, and is able to learn commands involving referring expressions in an open domain, (i.e., without requiring a lexicon. We present in detail the multiple components of KnoWDiaL, namely a frame-semantic parser, a probabilistic grounding model, a web-based predicate evaluator, a dialog manager, and the weighted predicate-based Knowledge Base. We illustrate the knowledge access and updates from the dialog and Web access, through detailed and complete examples. We further evaluate the correctness of the predicate instances learned into the Knowledge Base, and show the increase in dialog efficiency as a function of the number of interactions. We have extensively and successfully used KnoWDiaL in CoBot dialoguing and accessing the Web, and extract a few corresponding example sequences from captured videos.

What's in a Name ?The Effect of an Artist's Name on Aesthetic Judgements

OpenAIRE

Cleeremans, Axel; Ginsburgh, Victor; Klein, Olivier; Noury, Abdul Ghafar

2016-01-01

Both economists and art historians suggest that the name of the artist is important and belongs with the work. We carried out an experiment to explore the influence that the presence and knowledge of an artist’s name exert on aesthetic judgments. Forty participants (20 students majoring in psychology and 20 in art history) were asked to rank twelve works painted by different artists, some of which bore the name of their actual creators, others not. The results demonstrated that the presence o...

Phonotactic probability of brand names: I'd buy that!

Science.gov (United States)

Vitevitch, Michael S; Donoso, Alexander J

2012-11-01

Psycholinguistic research shows that word-characteristics influence the speed and accuracy of various language-related processes. Analogous characteristics of brand names influence the retrieval of product information and the perception of risks associated with that product. In the present experiment we examined how phonotactic probability-the frequency with which phonological segments and sequences of segments appear in a word-might influence consumer behavior. Participants rated brand names that varied in phonotactic probability on the likelihood that they would buy the product. Participants indicated that they were more likely to purchase a product if the brand name was comprised of common segments and sequences of segments rather than less common segments and sequences of segments. This result suggests that word-characteristics may influence higher-level cognitive processes, in addition to language-related processes. Furthermore, the benefits of using objective measures of word characteristics in the design of brand names are discussed.

Fictional names and fictional discourse

OpenAIRE

Panizza, Chiara

2017-01-01

[eng] In this dissertation I present a critical study of fiction, focusing on the semantics of fictional names and fictional discourse. I am concerned with the issue of whether fictional names need to refer, and also with the related issue of whether fictional characters need to exist, in order to best account for our linguistic practices involving fictional names. Fictional names like ‘Sherlock Holmes’, ‘Anna Karenina’, ‘Emma Woodhouse’ and ‘Don Quixote of La Mancha’ ordinarily occur in diff...

Measurement errors in voice-key naming latency for Hiragana.

Science.gov (United States)

Yamada, Jun; Tamaoka, Katsuo

2003-12-01

This study makes explicit the limitations and possibilities of voice-key naming latency research on single hiragana symbols (a Japanese syllabic script) by examining three sets of voice-key naming data against Sakuma, Fushimi, and Tatsumi's 1997 speech-analyzer voice-waveform data. Analysis showed that voice-key measurement errors can be substantial in standard procedures as they may conceal the true effects of significant variables involved in hiragana-naming behavior. While one can avoid voice-key measurement errors to some extent by applying Sakuma, et al.'s deltas and by excluding initial phonemes which induce measurement errors, such errors may be ignored when test items are words and other higher-level linguistic materials.

Can You Say My Name?

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Erz, Antonia; Christensen, Bo T.

Whereas brand name research has focused on the semantic meaning or sounds of names, processing fluency lends further support to the idea that meaning goes beyond semantics. Extant research has shown that phonological fluency, i.e., the ease or difficulty with which people pronounce names, can...

27 CFR 7.23 - Brand names.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-04-01

... 27 Alcohol, Tobacco Products and Firearms 1 2010-04-01 2010-04-01 false Brand names. 7.23 Section... Beverages § 7.23 Brand names. (a) General. The product shall bear a brand name, except that if not sold under a brand name, then the name of the person required to appear on the brand label shall be deemed a...

Brand Reputation and the Cost of Capital: Evidence of Adopting a Brand Name as the Corporate Name

OpenAIRE

YiLin Wu

2011-01-01

This paper studies how the capital market perceives brand name adoption. I distinguish between brand adoption and radical type of corporate name change. A brand adoption name change occurs when the firm adopts one of its well-established brands as its new corporate name and a radical type occurs when the new name is semantically unrelated to firm history. Improved profitability and increased net investment accompany brand name adoption. After controlling for changes in the competing informati...

Mediating Effects of Working Memory in the Relation Between Rapid Automatized Naming and Chinese Reading Comprehension.

Science.gov (United States)

Weng, Xiaoqian; Li, Guangze; Li, Rongbao

2016-08-01

This study examined the mediating role of working memory (WM) in the relation between rapid automatized naming (RAN) and Chinese reading comprehension. Three tasks assessing differentially visual and verbal components of WM were programmed by E-prime 2.0. Data collected from 55 Chinese college students were analyzed using correlations and hierarchical regression methods to determine the connection among RAN, reading comprehension, and WM components. Results showed that WM played a significant mediating role in the RAN-reading relation and that auditory WM made stronger contributions than visual WM. Taking into account of the multi-component nature of WM and the specificity of Chinese reading processing, this study discussed the mediating powers of the WM components, particularly auditory WM, further clarifying the possible components involved in the RAN-reading relation and thus providing some insight into the complicated Chinese reading process.

Ultra advanced projects. ; Naming hyper-hightech projects. (Cho) no tsuku project. ; Naming no shikumi

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Goto, Y. (Ministry of International Trade and Industry, Tokyo (Japan))

1992-10-05

Significance of using 'super' for naming a project of technological development is discussed. Functions of naming are classified into (1) recognition, (2) display and (3) sales-promotion, whereby mechanism of naming of merchandise that is developed through the technique of 3 is considered. Further, the mechanism of naming is discussed in relation to marketing. It is pointed out that naming of merchandise is determined on the basis of (1) concept of planned goods and (2) marketing-mixes composed of goods, price, sales-roots and sales-promotion. The same mechanism works also in a project for technological development. Technical trends are caught and projects are targetted by taking supposed regimes into account, thereby the most suitable mix is formed. The mix in the technological development is assumed to be composed of purpose, specification, regime and sales-promotion. Two examples of the governmental projects by Ministry of International Trade and Industry, 'the big regime for research and development on industrial technologies' and 'the regime for development of the fundamental technologies in the next generation' are introduced and the significance of their naming is described. 2 tabs.

Inventing and naming America:  Place and Place Names in Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Monica Manolescu-Oancea

2009-06-01

Full Text Available In the afterword to Lolita, Nabokov claimed that in this book he had to invent both Lolita and America after having invented Europe in his previous fiction. This paper focuses precisely on the various ways in which Nabokov “invented” America in his best-known novel. This invention is first of all the result of the author’s evolving stance on the complexity of what he called “average ‘reality’” in his works. Through a survey of Nabokov’s statements on the choice and role of place in the forewords to his Russian works and in his critical texts, I show that Lolita is indeed considered by Nabokov to be a “recreation” of American reality, to a much greater extent than his Russian works had been recreations of a given milieu. I take the metaphor of the “crazy quilt” mentioned in Lolita to suggest complexity, chromatic exuberance, hybridity. The invention of America is also the result of a process of naming. Place names will be examined, not only those which make up Quilty’s “cryptogrammic paperchase”, but also Humbert’s choice of place names. The problem of referentiality is discussed and the way recent criticism has dealt with it. Finally, the interplay between one and many is emphasized, the way in which the diversity of the “crazy quilt” is counterbalanced by the uniqueness of the mastermind having produced it. The American motto “From many make one” could be reinterpreted as “From one make many”.

A Pragmatic Analysis of Igbo Names in Adichie's Half of A Yellow Sun

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Using Leech's (1983) Socio-pragmatics and Pragmalinguistics, this paper shows how Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie uses naming to expand and limit the actions of her characters in Half of a Yellow Sun. The paper also shows how she uses naming in Igbo to create conflict, suspense, and foreshadowing. Based on the ...

Evolvix BEST Names for semantic reproducibility across code2brain interfaces.

Science.gov (United States)

Loewe, Laurence; Scheuer, Katherine S; Keel, Seth A; Vyas, Vaibhav; Liblit, Ben; Hanlon, Bret; Ferris, Michael C; Yin, John; Dutra, Inês; Pietsch, Anthony; Javid, Christine G; Moog, Cecilia L; Meyer, Jocelyn; Dresel, Jerdon; McLoone, Brian; Loberger, Sonya; Movaghar, Arezoo; Gilchrist-Scott, Morgaine; Sabri, Yazeed; Sescleifer, Dave; Pereda-Zorrilla, Ivan; Zietlow, Andrew; Smith, Rodrigo; Pietenpol, Samantha; Goldfinger, Jacob; Atzen, Sarah L; Freiberg, Erika; Waters, Noah P; Nusbaum, Claire; Nolan, Erik; Hotz, Alyssa; Kliman, Richard M; Mentewab, Ayalew; Fregien, Nathan; Loewe, Martha

2017-01-01

Names in programming are vital for understanding the meaning of code and big data. We define code2brain (C2B) interfaces as maps in compilers and brains between meaning and naming syntax, which help to understand executable code. While working toward an Evolvix syntax for general-purpose programming that makes accurate modeling easy for biologists, we observed how names affect C2B quality. To protect learning and coding investments, C2B interfaces require long-term backward compatibility and semantic reproducibility (accurate reproduction of computational meaning from coder-brains to reader-brains by code alone). Semantic reproducibility is often assumed until confusing synonyms degrade modeling in biology to deciphering exercises. We highlight empirical naming priorities from diverse individuals and roles of names in different modes of computing to show how naming easily becomes impossibly difficult. We present the Evolvix BEST (Brief, Explicit, Summarizing, Technical) Names concept for reducing naming priority conflicts, test it on a real challenge by naming subfolders for the Project Organization Stabilizing Tool system, and provide naming questionnaires designed to facilitate C2B debugging by improving names used as keywords in a stabilizing programming language. Our experiences inspired us to develop Evolvix using a flipped programming language design approach with some unexpected features and BEST Names at its core. © 2016 The Authors. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of New York Academy of Sciences.

Age-related decrements in dual-task performance: Comparison of different mobility and cognitive tasks. A cross sectional study.

Science.gov (United States)

Brustio, Paolo Riccardo; Magistro, Daniele; Zecca, Massimiliano; Rabaglietti, Emanuela; Liubicich, Monica Emma

2017-01-01

This cross-sectional study investigated the age-related differences in dual-task performance both in mobility and cognitive tasks and the additive dual-task costs in a sample of older, middle-aged and young adults. 74 older adults (M = 72.63±5.57 years), 58 middle-aged adults (M = 46.69±4.68 years) and 63 young adults (M = 25.34±3.00 years) participated in the study. Participants performed different mobility and subtraction tasks under both single- and dual-task conditions. Linear regressions, repeated-measures and one-way analyses of covariance were used, The results showed: significant effects of the age on the dual and mobility tasks (ptask costs (pperformance under dual-task conditions in all groups (pperformance in the older group (ptask activity affected mobility and cognitive performance, especially in older adults who showed a higher dual-task cost, suggesting that dual-tasks activities are affected by the age and consequently also mobility and cognitive tasks are negatively influenced.

Functional Measurement Analysis of Brand Equity: Does Brand Name affect Perceptions of Quality?

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

James Shanteau

2010-01-01

Full Text Available This research project used Functional Measurement to examine how the brand name of consumer products impacts intended purchasing decisions. Thirty undergraduate students tested actual products from three different product categories (crayons, tissues, and tortilla chips. Each product category consisted of three different brands; one with high brand value, one with medium, and one with low brand (generic value. For each brand, there were five conditions: 1 the product with the correct brand name; 2 the product with a switched brand name; 3 the product with another switched brand name; 4 the product alone with no brand name; and 5 the brand name alone with no product. Participants were unaware that products had been switched. After trying each product, participants rated their likelihood to purchase on a 9-point Likert scale: 1 being "definitely would not buy" and 9 being "definitely would buy." Results revealed that perceptions of quality were dependent on both perceived product quality and brand name. Unexpectedly, results also showed that the strength of the brand equity effect is dependent on product type, e.g., chips showed the strongest brand effect. For most product categories, main effects and interactions were significant. Functional measurement analyses revealed that brand name effects were independent of product quality. In conclusion, the brand name associated with a product led people to evaluate quality of that product as either higher or lower depending on the strength of the brand name.

Botanical name changes – nuisance or a quest for precision?

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Bruce G. Cook

2015-01-01

Full Text Available To understand the need for the seemingly regular changes to plant names applied to many tropical forage species, it is necessary to be aware of the rules that govern botanical nomenclature.  The binomial naming system, first proposed in 1753, is governed by rules defined in the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi and plants (ICN.  These rules have been strengthened as necessary over the years in the interest of providing practitioners with plant names that are unique for each species, and presented in an hierarchical format that shows the evolutionary relationships between plants.  This paper includes a table of name changes accepted by the USDA Germplasm Resources Information Network (GRIN for species used in tropical forage research and development over the last half century.  The need to use legitimate plant names is emphasized and suggestions are made on how practitioners might best deal with the changes.Keywords: Taxonomy, nomenclature, tropical forages.DOI: 10.17138/TGFT(334-40

Intracerebral stimulation of left and right ventral temporal cortex during object naming.

Science.gov (United States)

Bédos Ulvin, Line; Jonas, Jacques; Brissart, Hélène; Colnat-Coulbois, Sophie; Thiriaux, Anne; Vignal, Jean-Pierre; Maillard, Louis

2017-12-01

While object naming is traditionally considered asa left hemisphere function, neuroimaging studies have reported activations related to naming in the ventral temporal cortex (VTC) bilaterally. Our aim was to use intracerebral electrical stimulation to specifically compare left and right VTC in naming. In twenty-three epileptic patients tested for visual object naming during stimulation, the proportion of naming impairments was significantly higher in the left than in the right VTC (31.3% vs 13.6%). The highest proportions of positive naming sites were found in the left fusiform gyrus and occipito-temporal sulcus (47.5% and 31.8%). For 17 positive left naming sites, an additional semantic picture matching was carried out, always successfully performed. Our results showed the enhanced role of the left compared to the right VTC in naming and suggest that it may be involved in lexical retrieval rather than in semantic processing. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Exploring relations between task conflict and informational conflict in the Stroop task.

Science.gov (United States)

Entel, Olga; Tzelgov, Joseph; Bereby-Meyer, Yoella; Shahar, Nitzan

2015-11-01

In this study, we tested the proposal that the Stroop task involves two conflicts--task conflict and informational conflict. Task conflict was defined as the latency difference between color words and non-letter neutrals, and manipulated by varying the proportion of color words versus non-letter neutrals. Informational conflict was defined as the latency difference between incongruent and congruent trials and manipulated by varying the congruent-to-incongruent trial ratio. We replicated previous findings showing that increasing the ratio of incongruent-to-congruent trials reduces the latency difference between the incongruent and congruent condition (i.e., informational conflict), as does increasing the proportion of color words (i.e., task conflict). A significant under-additive interaction between the two proportion manipulations (congruent vs. incongruent and color words vs. neutrals) indicated that the effects of task conflict and informational conflict were not additive. By assessing task conflict as the contrast between color words and neutrals, we found that task conflict existed in all of our experimental conditions. Under specific conditions, when task conflict dominated behavior by explaining most of the variability between congruency conditions, we also found negative facilitation, thus demonstrating that this effect is a special case of task conflict.

Ethnicity and Population Structure in Personal Naming Networks

Science.gov (United States)

Mateos, Pablo; Longley, Paul A.; O'Sullivan, David

2011-01-01

Personal naming practices exist in all human groups and are far from random. Rather, they continue to reflect social norms and ethno-cultural customs that have developed over generations. As a consequence, contemporary name frequency distributions retain distinct geographic, social and ethno-cultural patterning that can be exploited to understand population structure in human biology, public health and social science. Previous attempts to detect and delineate such structure in large populations have entailed extensive empirical analysis of naming conventions in different parts of the world without seeking any general or automated methods of population classification by ethno-cultural origin. Here we show how ‘naming networks’, constructed from forename-surname pairs of a large sample of the contemporary human population in 17 countries, provide a valuable representation of cultural, ethnic and linguistic population structure around the world. This innovative approach enriches and adds value to automated population classification through conventional national data sources such as telephone directories and electoral registers. The method identifies clear social and ethno-cultural clusters in such naming networks that extend far beyond the geographic areas in which particular names originated, and that are preserved even after international migration. Moreover, one of the most striking findings of this approach is that these clusters simply ‘emerge’ from the aggregation of millions of individual decisions on parental naming practices for their children, without any prior knowledge introduced by the researcher. Our probabilistic approach to community assignment, both at city level as well as at a global scale, helps to reveal the degree of isolation, integration or overlap between human populations in our rapidly globalising world. As such, this work has important implications for research in population genetics, public health, and social science adding new

Middle-aged human apoE4 targeted-replacement mice show retention deficits on a wide range of spatial memory tasks.

Science.gov (United States)

Bour, Alexandra; Grootendorst, Jeannette; Vogel, Elise; Kelche, Christian; Dodart, Jean-Cosme; Bales, Kelly; Moreau, Pierre-Henri; Sullivan, Patrick M; Mathis, Chantal

2008-11-21

Apolipoprotein (apo) E4, one of three human apoE (h-apoE) isoforms, has been identified as a major genetic risk factor for Alzheimer's disease and for cognitive deficits associated with aging. However, the biological mechanisms involving apoE in learning and memory processes are unclear. A potential isoform-dependent role of apoE in cognitive processes was studied in human apoE targeted-replacement (TR) mice. These mice express either the human apoE3 or apoE4 gene under the control of endogenous murine apoE regulatory sequences, resulting in physiological expression of h-apoE in both a temporal and spatial pattern similar to humans. Male and female apoE3-TR, apoE4-TR, apoE-knockout and C57BL/6J mice (15-18 months) were tested with spatial memory and avoidance conditioning tasks. Compared to apoE3-TR mice, spatial memory in female apoE4-TR mice was impaired based on their poor performances in; (i) the probe test of the water-maze reference memory task, (ii) the water-maze working memory task and (iii) an active avoidance Y-maze task. Retention performance on a passive avoidance task was also impaired in apoE4-TR mice, but not in other genotypes. These deficits in both spatial and avoidance memory tasks may be related to the anatomical and functional abnormalities previously reported in the hippocampus and the amygdala of apoE4-TR mice. We conclude that the apoE4-TR mice provide an excellent model for understanding the mechanisms underlying apoE4-dependent susceptibility to cognitive decline.

A Doctor’s Name as a Brand: A Nationwide Survey on Registered Clinic Names in Taiwan

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Feng-Yuan Chu

2018-06-01

Full Text Available In countries where the private clinics of physicians can be freely named, registering a clinic with a physician’s name is one way to make patients familiar with the physician. No previous study had investigated how clinics make use of this method of personal branding. Therefore, the current study analyzed 10,847 private physician Western medicine clinics in Taiwan. Of those clinics, 31.0% (n = 3363 were named with a physician’s full name, 8.9% (n = 960 with a surname, and 8.1% (n = 884 with a given name. The proportion of clinics registered with a physician’s name was lower in rural areas (37.3% than in urban (48.5% and suburban areas (49.2%, respectively. Among clinics with only one kind of specialist, a physician’s name was used most frequently in clinics of obstetrics and gynecology (64.9%, otorhinolaryngology (64.1%, and dermatology (63.4%. In Taiwan, fewer than half of clinics used a physician’s name as a brand. The sociocultural or strategic factors and real benefits of doing so could be further studied in the future for a better understanding of healthcare services management.

Respiratory sinus arrhythmia responses to cognitive tasks: effects of task factors and RSA indices.

Science.gov (United States)

Overbeek, Thérèse J M; van Boxtel, Anton; Westerink, Joyce H D M

2014-05-01

Many studies show that respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) decreases while performing cognitive tasks. However, there is uncertainty about the role of contaminating factors such as physical activity and stress-inducing task variables. Different methods to quantify RSA may also contribute to variable results. In 83 healthy subjects, we studied RSA responses to a working memory task requiring varying levels of cognitive control and a perceptual attention task not requiring strong cognitive control. RSA responses were quantified in the time and frequency domain and were additionally corrected for differences in mean interbeat interval and respiration rate, resulting in eight different RSA indices. The two tasks were clearly differentiated by heart rate and facial EMG reference measures. Cognitive control induced inhibition of RSA whereas perceptual attention generally did not. However, the results show several differences between different RSA indices, emphasizing the importance of methodological variables. Age and sex did not influence the results. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Anterior medial prefrontal cortex exhibits activation during task preparation but deactivation during task execution.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Hideya Koshino

Full Text Available BACKGROUND: The anterior prefrontal cortex (PFC exhibits activation during some cognitive tasks, including episodic memory, reasoning, attention, multitasking, task sets, decision making, mentalizing, and processing of self-referenced information. However, the medial part of anterior PFC is part of the default mode network (DMN, which shows deactivation during various goal-directed cognitive tasks compared to a resting baseline. One possible factor for this pattern is that activity in the anterior medial PFC (MPFC is affected by dynamic allocation of attentional resources depending on task demands. We investigated this possibility using an event related fMRI with a face working memory task. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Sixteen students participated in a single fMRI session. They were asked to form a task set to remember the faces (Face memory condition or to ignore them (No face memory condition, then they were given 6 seconds of preparation period before the onset of the face stimuli. During this 6-second period, four single digits were presented one at a time at the center of the display, and participants were asked to add them and to remember the final answer. When participants formed a task set to remember faces, the anterior MPFC exhibited activation during a task preparation period but deactivation during a task execution period within a single trial. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: The results suggest that the anterior MPFC plays a role in task set formation but is not involved in execution of the face working memory task. Therefore, when attentional resources are allocated to other brain regions during task execution, the anterior MPFC shows deactivation. The results suggest that activation and deactivation in the anterior MPFC are affected by dynamic allocation of processing resources across different phases of processing.

Naming analog clocks conceptually facilitates naming digital clocks

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Meeuwissen, M.H.W.; Roelofs, A.P.A.; Levelt, W.J.M.

2004-01-01

Naming digital clocks (e.g., 2:45, say "quarter to three") requires conceptual operations on the minute and hour information displayed in the input for producing the correct relative time expression. The interplay of these conceptual operations was investigated using a repetition priming paradigm.

Analisi Pengaruh Store Name, Brand Name, Dan Price Discounts Terhadap Purchase Intentions Konsumen Infinite Tunjungan Plaza

OpenAIRE

Gunawan, Andy

2013-01-01

Andy Gunawan:SkripsiAnalisis pengaruh store name, brand name dan price discounts terhadap purchase intention konsumen infnite tunjungan plaza Di era globalisasi ini, persaingan dagang antara Perusahaan – Perusahaan baik lokal maupun global menjadi semakin ketat, oleh karena itu Perusahaan selalu berusaha untuk meningkatkan ketertarikan minat beli konsumen. Beberapa variabel yang menjadi fokus Perusahaan adalah store name, brand name, dan price discount. Tujuan penelitian ini adalah untuk meng...

Analysis of the "naming game" with learning errors in communications.

Science.gov (United States)

Lou, Yang; Chen, Guanrong

2015-07-16

Naming game simulates the process of naming an objective by a population of agents organized in a certain communication network. By pair-wise iterative interactions, the population reaches consensus asymptotically. We study naming game with communication errors during pair-wise conversations, with error rates in a uniform probability distribution. First, a model of naming game with learning errors in communications (NGLE) is proposed. Then, a strategy for agents to prevent learning errors is suggested. To that end, three typical topologies of communication networks, namely random-graph, small-world and scale-free networks, are employed to investigate the effects of various learning errors. Simulation results on these models show that 1) learning errors slightly affect the convergence speed but distinctively increase the requirement for memory of each agent during lexicon propagation; 2) the maximum number of different words held by the population increases linearly as the error rate increases; 3) without applying any strategy to eliminate learning errors, there is a threshold of the learning errors which impairs the convergence. The new findings may help to better understand the role of learning errors in naming game as well as in human language development from a network science perspective.

Predictable Locations Aid Early Object Name Learning

Science.gov (United States)

Benitez, Viridiana L.; Smith, Linda B.

2012-01-01

Expectancy-based localized attention has been shown to promote the formation and retrieval of multisensory memories in adults. Three experiments show that these processes also characterize attention and learning in 16- to 18-month old infants and, moreover, that these processes may play a critical role in supporting early object name learning. The…

Name signs in Danish Sign Language

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Bakken Jepsen, Julie

2018-01-01

in spoken languages, where a person working as a blacksmith by his friends might be referred to as ‘The Blacksmith’ (‘Here comes the Blacksmith!’) instead of using the person’s first name. Name signs are found not only in Danish Sign Language (DSL) but in most, if not all, sign languages studied to date....... This article provides examples of the creativity of the users of Danish Sign Language, including some of the processes in the use of metaphors, visual motivation and influence from Danish when name signs are created.......A name sign is a personal sign assigned to deaf, hearing impaired and hearing persons who enter the deaf community. The mouth action accompanying the sign reproduces all or part of the formal first name that the person has received by baptism or naming. Name signs can be compared to nicknames...

Laos Organization Name Using Cascaded Model Based on SVM and CRF

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Duan Shaopeng

2017-01-01

Full Text Available According to the characteristics of Laos organization name, this paper proposes a two layer model based on conditional random field (CRF and support vector machine (SVM for Laos organization name recognition. A layer of model uses CRF to recognition simple organization name, and the result is used to support the decision of the second level. Based on the driving method, the second layer uses SVM and CRF to recognition the complicated organization name. Finally, the results of the two levels are combined, And by a subsequent treatment to correct results of low confidence recognition. The results show that this approach based on SVM and CRF is efficient in recognizing organization name through open test for real linguistics, and the recalling rate achieve 80. 83％and the precision rate achieves 82. 75％.

27 CFR 4.33 - Brand names.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-04-01

... 27 Alcohol, Tobacco Products and Firearms 1 2010-04-01 2010-04-01 false Brand names. 4.33 Section... THE TREASURY LIQUORS LABELING AND ADVERTISING OF WINE Labeling Requirements for Wine § 4.33 Brand names. (a) General. The product shall bear a brand name, except that if not sold under a brand name...

By any other name: when will preschoolers produce several labels for a referent?

Science.gov (United States)

Deák, G O; Yen, L; Pettit, J

2001-10-01

Two experiments investigated why preschool children sometimes produce multiple words for a referent (i.e. polynomy), but other times seem to allow only one word. In Experiment 1, 40 three- and four-year-olds completed a modification of Deák & Maratsos' (1998) naming task. Although social demands to produce multiple words were reduced, children produced, on average, more than two words per object. Number of words produced was predicted by receptive vocabulary. Lexical insight (i.e. knowing that a word refers to function or appearance) and metalexical beliefs (i.e. that a hypothetical referent has one label, or more than one) were not preconditions of polynomy. Polynomy was independent of bias to map novel words to unfamiliar referents. In Experiment 2, 40 three- and four-year-olds learned new words for nameable objects. Children showed a correction effect, yet produced more than two words per object. Children do not have a generalized one-word-per-object bias, even during word learning. Other explanations (e.g. contextual restriction of lexical access) are discussed.

Improved Vocabulary Production after Naming Therapy in Aphasia: Can Gains in Picture Naming Generalise to Connected Speech?

Science.gov (United States)

Conroy, Paul; Sage, Karen; Ralph, Matt Lambon

2009-01-01

Background: Naming accuracy for nouns and verbs in aphasia can vary across different elicitation contexts, for example, simple picture naming, composite picture description, narratives, and conversation. For some people with aphasia, naming may be more accurate to simple pictures as opposed to naming in spontaneous, connected speech; for others,…

27 CFR 41.251 - Change in name.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-04-01

... corporate name. When there is a change in the corporate name of an importer of processed tobacco, the... 27 Alcohol, Tobacco Products and Firearms 2 2010-04-01 2010-04-01 false Change in name. 41.251... name. (a) Change in individual name. When there is a change in the name of an individual operating...

Assigned value improves memory of proper names.

Science.gov (United States)

Festini, Sara B; Hartley, Alan A; Tauber, Sarah K; Rhodes, Matthew G

2013-01-01

Names are more difficult to remember than other personal information such as occupations. The current research examined the influence of assigned point value on memory and metamemory judgements for names and occupations to determine whether incentive can improve recall of proper names. In Experiment 1 participants studied face-name and face-occupation pairs assigned 1 or 10 points, made judgements of learning, and were given a cued recall test. High-value names were recalled more often than low-value names. However, recall of occupations was not influenced by value. In Experiment 2 meaningless nonwords were used for both names and occupations. The name difficulty disappeared, and value influenced recall of both names and occupations. Thus value similarly influenced names and occupations when meaningfulness was held constant. In Experiment 3 participants were required to use overt rote rehearsal for all items. Value did not boost recall of high-value names, suggesting that differential processing could not be implemented to improve memory. Thus incentives may improve memory for proper names by motivating people to engage in selective rehearsal and effortful elaborative processing.

Project Scheduling Heuristics-Based Standard PSO for Task-Resource Assignment in Heterogeneous Grid

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ruey-Maw Chen

2011-01-01

Full Text Available The task scheduling problem has been widely studied for assigning resources to tasks in heterogeneous grid environment. Effective task scheduling is an important issue for the performance of grid computing. Meanwhile, the task scheduling problem is an NP-complete problem. Hence, this investigation introduces a named “standard“ particle swarm optimization (PSO metaheuristic approach to efficiently solve the task scheduling problems in grid. Meanwhile, two promising heuristics based on multimode project scheduling are proposed to help in solving interesting scheduling problems. They are the best performance resource heuristic and the latest finish time heuristic. These two heuristics applied to the PSO scheme are for speeding up the search of the particle and improving the capability of finding a sound schedule. Moreover, both global communication topology and local ring communication topology are also investigated for efficient study of proposed scheme. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed approach in this investigation can successfully solve the task-resource assignment problems in grid computing and similar scheduling problems.

Strategic Adaptation to Task Characteristics, Incentives, and Individual Differences in Dual-Tasking.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Christian P Janssen

Full Text Available We investigate how good people are at multitasking by comparing behavior to a prediction of the optimal strategy for dividing attention between two concurrent tasks. In our experiment, 24 participants had to interleave entering digits on a keyboard with controlling a randomly moving cursor with a joystick. The difficulty of the tracking task was systematically varied as a within-subjects factor. Participants were also exposed to different explicit reward functions that varied the relative importance of the tracking task relative to the typing task (between-subjects. Results demonstrate that these changes in task characteristics and monetary incentives, together with individual differences in typing ability, influenced how participants choose to interleave tasks. This change in strategy then affected their performance on each task. A computational cognitive model was used to predict performance for a wide set of alternative strategies for how participants might have possibly interleaved tasks. This allowed for predictions of optimal performance to be derived, given the constraints placed on performance by the task and cognition. A comparison of human behavior with the predicted optimal strategy shows that participants behaved near optimally. Our findings have implications for the design and evaluation of technology for multitasking situations, as consideration should be given to the characteristics of the task, but also to how different users might use technology depending on their individual characteristics and their priorities.

Relationship between neuronal network architecture and naming performance in temporal lobe epilepsy: A connectome based approach using machine learning.

Science.gov (United States)

Munsell, B C; Wu, G; Fridriksson, J; Thayer, K; Mofrad, N; Desisto, N; Shen, D; Bonilha, L

2017-09-09

Impaired confrontation naming is a common symptom of temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE). The neurobiological mechanisms underlying this impairment are poorly understood but may indicate a structural disorganization of broadly distributed neuronal networks that support naming ability. Importantly, naming is frequently impaired in other neurological disorders and by contrasting the neuronal structures supporting naming in TLE with other diseases, it will become possible to elucidate the common systems supporting naming. We aimed to evaluate the neuronal networks that support naming in TLE by using a machine learning algorithm intended to predict naming performance in subjects with medication refractory TLE using only the structural brain connectome reconstructed from diffusion tensor imaging. A connectome-based prediction framework was developed using network properties from anatomically defined brain regions across the entire brain, which were used in a multi-task machine learning algorithm followed by support vector regression. Nodal eigenvector centrality, a measure of regional network integration, predicted approximately 60% of the variance in naming. The nodes with the highest regression weight were bilaterally distributed among perilimbic sub-networks involving mainly the medial and lateral temporal lobe regions. In the context of emerging evidence regarding the role of large structural networks that support language processing, our results suggest intact naming relies on the integration of sub-networks, as opposed to being dependent on isolated brain areas. In the case of TLE, these sub-networks may be disproportionately indicative naming processes that are dependent semantic integration from memory and lexical retrieval, as opposed to multi-modal perception or motor speech production. Copyright © 2017. Published by Elsevier Inc.

The effect of a concurrent working memory task and temporal offsets on the integration of auditory and visual speech information.

Science.gov (United States)

Buchan, Julie N; Munhall, Kevin G

2012-01-01

Audiovisual speech perception is an everyday occurrence of multisensory integration. Conflicting visual speech information can influence the perception of acoustic speech (namely the McGurk effect), and auditory and visual speech are integrated over a rather wide range of temporal offsets. This research examined whether the addition of a concurrent cognitive load task would affect the audiovisual integration in a McGurk speech task and whether the cognitive load task would cause more interference at increasing offsets. The amount of integration was measured by the proportion of responses in incongruent trials that did not correspond to the audio (McGurk response). An eye-tracker was also used to examine whether the amount of temporal offset and the presence of a concurrent cognitive load task would influence gaze behavior. Results from this experiment show a very modest but statistically significant decrease in the number of McGurk responses when subjects also perform a cognitive load task, and that this effect is relatively constant across the various temporal offsets. Participant's gaze behavior was also influenced by the addition of a cognitive load task. Gaze was less centralized on the face, less time was spent looking at the mouth and more time was spent looking at the eyes, when a concurrent cognitive load task was added to the speech task.

Effects of Nitric Oxide Production Inhibitor Named, NG-Nitro-L-Arginine Methyl Ester (L-NAME, on Rat Mesenchymal Stem Cells Differentiation

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

E Arfaei

2010-04-01

Full Text Available Introduction & Objectives: Recently, the findings of some studies have shown that, nitric oxide (NO probably has an important role in differentiation of mesenchymal stem cells to osteoblasts. The aim of the present investigation was to study the effects of nitric oxide production inhibitor named, NG-nitro-L-arginine methyl ester (L-NAME, on rat mesenchymal stem cells differentiation to osteoblasts in vitro. Materials & Methods: This was an experimental study conducted at Hamedan University of Medical Sciences in 2009, in which rat bone marrow stem cells were isolated in an aseptic condition and cultured in vitro. After third passage, the cells were cultured in osteogenic differentiation medium. To study the effects of L-NAME on osteogenic differentiation, the L-NAME was added to the culture medium at a concentration of 125, 250, and 500 μM in some culture plates. During the culture procedure, the media were replaced with fresh ones, with a three days interval. After 28 days of culturing the mineralized matrix was stained using Alizarian red staining method. The gathered data were analyzed by SPSS software version 12 using one way ANOVA. Results: The findings of this study showed that in the presence of L-NAME, differentiation of bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells to osteoblasts was disordered and matrix mineralization significantly decreased in a dose dependent manner. Conclusion: This study revealed that, inhibition of nitric oxide production using L-NAME can prevent the differentiation of rat bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells to osteoblast. The results imply that NO is an important constituent in differentiation of mesenchymal stem cell to osteoblasts.

Adaptive Algorithm For Identification Of The Environment Parameters In Contact Tasks

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Tuneski, Atanasko; Babunski, Darko [Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, ' St. Cyril and Methodius' University, Skopje (Macedonia, The Former Yugoslav Republic of)

2003-07-01

An adaptive algorithm for identification of the unknown parameters of the dynamic environment in contact tasks is proposed in this paper using the augmented least square estimation method. An approximate environment digital simulator for the continuous environment dynamics is derived, i.e. a discrete transfer function which has the approximately the same characteristics as the continuous environment dynamics is found. For solving this task a method named hold equivalence is used. The general model of the environment dynamics is given and the case when the environment dynamics is represented by second order models with parameter uncertainties is considered. (Author)

Adaptive Algorithm For Identification Of The Environment Parameters In Contact Tasks

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Tuneski, Atanasko; Babunski, Darko

2003-01-01

An adaptive algorithm for identification of the unknown parameters of the dynamic environment in contact tasks is proposed in this paper using the augmented least square estimation method. An approximate environment digital simulator for the continuous environment dynamics is derived, i.e. a discrete transfer function which has the approximately the same characteristics as the continuous environment dynamics is found. For solving this task a method named hold equivalence is used. The general model of the environment dynamics is given and the case when the environment dynamics is represented by second order models with parameter uncertainties is considered. (Author)

Robust Multi-unit Auction Protocol against False-name Bids

Science.gov (United States)

Yokoo, Makoto; Sakurai, Yuko; Matsubara, Shigeo

This paper presents a new multi-unit auction protocol (IR protocol) that is robust against false-name bids. Internet auctions have become an integral part of Electronic Commerce and a promising field for applying agent and Artificial Intelligence technologies. Although the Internet provides an excellent infrastructure for executing auctions, the possibility of a new type of cheating called false-name bids has been pointed out. A false-name bid is a bid submitted under a fictitious name. A protocol called LDS has been developed for combinatorial auctions of multiple different items and has proven to be robust against false-name bids. Although we can modify the LDS protocol to handle multi-unit auctions, in which multiple units of an identical item are auctioned, the protocol is complicated and requires the auctioneer to carefully pre-determine the combination of bundles to obtain a high social surplus or revenue. For the auctioneer, our newly developed IR protocol is easier to use than the LDS, since the combination of bundles is automatically determined in a flexible manner according to the declared evaluation values of agents. The evaluation results show that the IR protocol can obtain a better social surplus than that obtained by the LDS protocol.

A radiographic anthology of vertebral names

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Yochum, T.R.; Hartley, B.; Thomas, D.P.; Guebert, G.M.

1987-01-01

A total of 88 such named vertebrae have been extracted from the literature. With so many names from scattered sources, the authors collated them in a single presentation. A description is given and the anatomical and pathogenic reasons for the appearances are considered. A list of conditions associated with each named vertebra accompanies the descriptive paragraph. The named vertebrae are presented in alphabetical order

What words and where? Applying usability testing techniques to name a new live reference service.

Science.gov (United States)

Duncan, Vicky; Fichter, Darlene M

2004-04-01

A user-focused design approach was taken to develop a new "live reference" service at the Health Sciences Library, University of Saskatchewan. The name of the service, the placement of the links, and the design of a graphical button were seen as key elements in creating service awareness and its subsequent use. To ensure library users recognized and understood the label for the new service, selected library users were given an opportunity to choose a phrase that would best describe the service. The top two preferred phrases were then placed on the library Web pages as text and graphic images for further testing. Some pages had links in multiple locations to determine which placement worked best. Task-based usability testing was carried out with participants who were unaware of the new service. Participants were observed as they completed seven Website tasks arranged in increasing levels of difficulty to see whether they would notice the live reference service and seek assistance. The high level of recognition and use of the service indicate that the label name and link placement were effective with library Website users. Using user-centered design methodology helped ensure that the new live reference service was visible and used and demonstrated the effectiveness of the user-centered design approach for adding new services to an existing Website.

Event-related brain potential correlates of words' emotional valence irrespective of arousal and type of task.

Science.gov (United States)

Espuny, Javier; Jiménez-Ortega, Laura; Casado, Pilar; Fondevila, Sabela; Muñoz, Francisco; Hernández-Gutiérrez, David; Martín-Loeches, Manuel

2018-03-23

Many Event-Related brain Potential (ERP) experiments have explored how the two main dimensions of emotion, arousal and valence, affect linguistic processing. However, the heterogeneity of experimental paradigms and materials has led to mixed results. In the present study, we aim to clarify words' emotional valence effects on ERP when arousal is controlled, and determine whether these effects may vary as a function of the type of task performed. For these purposes, we designed an ERP experiment with the valence of words manipulated, and arousal equated across valences. The participants performed two types of task: in one, they had to read aloud each word, written in black on a white background; in the other, they had to name the color of the ink in which each word was written. The results showed the main effects of valence irrespective of task, and no interaction between valence and task. The most marked effects of valence were in response to negative words, which elicited an Early Posterior Negativity (EPN) and a Late Positive Complex (LPC). Our results suggest that, when arousal is controlled, the cognitive information in negative words triggers a 'negativity bias', these being the only words able to elicit emotion-related ERP modulations. Moreover, these modulations are largely unaffected by the types of task explored here. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The Effect of Orthographic Depth on Letter String Processing: The Case of Visual Attention Span and Rapid Automatized Naming

Science.gov (United States)

Antzaka, Alexia; Martin, Clara; Caffarra, Sendy; Schlöffel, Sophie; Carreiras, Manuel; Lallier, Marie

2018-01-01

The present study investigated whether orthographic depth can increase the bias towards multi-letter processing in two reading-related skills: visual attention span (VAS) and rapid automatized naming (RAN). VAS (i.e., the number of visual elements that can be processed at once in a multi-element array) was tested with a visual 1-back task and RAN…

Naming the Mystery: An Augustinian Ideal

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Allan Fitzgerald

2015-03-01

Full Text Available This article, by noticing Augustine’s constant questioning, shows that he often talks about not knowing and about his need for God’s help to know more. It is therefore better to see how he identifies the mystery than to focus on his answers, because he too recognizes his limits. His intellectual prowess can be seen more clearly when he “names the mystery” than by thinking that he has solved it.

What's in a name? Group fitness class names and women's reasons for exercising.

Science.gov (United States)

Brown, Theresa C; Miller, Bridget M; Adams, Bailey M

2017-01-01

The benefits of intrinsic exercise motivation are well recognized, yet extrinsically focused group-fitness class names/descriptions dominate the fitness industry. To explore the impact of how fitness classes are marketed, women (N = 389) were asked to indicate their preference for either intrinsically or extrinsically focused fitness classes based on title/description. Participants who favored intrinsic class names/descriptions were more likely to report greater interest/enjoyment, perceived competence, and greater effort and report exercising for health/fitness-related reasons. Those favoring extrinsic class names/descriptions were more likely to experience tension/pressure when exercising and report exercising for appearance/weight-related reasons. The results demonstrate the importance of wording when marketing fitness classes.

Sensitivity and reliability of language laterality assessment with a free reversed association task - a fMRI study

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Fesl, Gunther; Brueckmann, Hartmut; Bruhns, Philipp; Rau, Sabine; Ilmberger, Josef; Wiesmann, Martin; Kegel, Gerd

2010-01-01

The aim of the study was to evaluate the sensitivity and reliability of assessing hemispheric language dominance with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) using a 'free reversed association task.' Thirty-nine healthy subjects (13 dextrals, 13 sinistrals and 13 bimanuals) underwent two repeated fMRI sessions. In the active phases sets of words were presented via headphones, and an associated target item was named. During the baseline phases a standard answer was given after listening to unintelligible stimuli. Data were preprocessed with SPM, and then laterality indices (LI) and reliability coefficients (RC) were calculated. Extensive frontal, temporal and parietal activations were found. Seventy-eight percent of the subjects showed left-hemispheric dominance, 5% showed right-hemispheric dominance, and 17% had bilateral language representations. The incidence of right-hemispheric language dominance was 4.3 times higher in a left-hander with a handedness quotient (HQ) of -90 than in a right-hander with a HQ of +90. The RC was 0.61 for combined ROIs (global network). Strong correlations were found between the two session LIs (r = 0.95 for the global network). 'Free reversed association' is a sensitive and reliable task for the determination of individual language lateralization. This suggests that the task may be used in a clinical setting. (orig.)

Amerindian names of Colombian palms (Palmae

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Diana Marmolejo

2014-03-01

Full Text Available A glossary of 1276 Amerindian names or name variants of palms is presented, representing at least 121 species in 64 aboriginal languages of Colombia. The species with documented names in the largest number of languages are Bactris gasipaes, Oenocarpus bataua, Mauritia flexuosa,Euterpe precatoria, andAstrocaryum chambira, which are five of the most used palms in South America. The languages with the largest number of named species are uitoto (48, tikuna (47, muinane (43, siona (34, sikuani (31 and miraña (30. These figures reflect the detailed studies carried out with these ethnic groups, besides the palm diversity of their territories and their knowledge about it. The names are presented in three separate lists –arranged by species, by language, and a global list of names that includes references for each individual record.

Respiratory sinus arrhythmia responses to cognitive tasks : effects of task factors and RSA indices

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Overbeek, T.; Boxtel, van Anton; Westerink, J.H.D.M.

2014-01-01

Many studies show that respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) decreases while performing cognitive tasks. However, there is uncertainty about the role of contaminating factors such as physical activity and stress-inducing task variables. Different methods to quantify RSA may also contribute to variable

Respiratory sinus arrhythmia responses to cognitive tasks: Effects of task factors and RSA indices

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Overbeek, T.J.M.; van Boxtel, A.; Westerink, J.H.D.M.

2014-01-01

Many studies show that respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) decreases while performing cognitive tasks. However, there is uncertainty about the role of contaminating factors such as physical activity and stress-inducing task variables. Different methods to quantify RSA may also contribute to variable

Latin Feminine Personal Names of Greek origin coming from the Iberian Peninsula

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Araceli Striano

2013-06-01

Full Text Available The presence of Greek Personal Names in the Latin inscriptions coming from the Iberian Peninsula is considerable. Furthermore, from the evidence found in religious centres it is clear that these inscriptions comprise a broad chronological period reaching to Medieval times. This paper shows that the Phonetic and Morphological adaptation of these names was very limited in Latin. Consequently, the fact that the various forms of these Greek names did not expand outside the closed community which bore them is justified.

The effect of episodic retrieval on inhibition in task switching.

Science.gov (United States)

Grange, James A; Kowalczyk, Agnieszka W; O'Loughlin, Rory

2017-08-01

Inhibition in task switching is inferred from n-2 repetition costs: the observation that ABA task switching sequences are responded to slower than CBA sequences. This is thought to reflect the persisting inhibition of Task A, which slows reactivation attempts. Mayr (2002) reported an experiment testing a critical noninhibitory account of this effect, namely episodic retrieval: If the trial parameters for Task A match across an ABA sequence, responses should be facilitated because of priming from episodic retrieval; a cost would occur if trial parameters mismatch. In a rule-switching paradigm, Mayr reported no significant difference in n-2 repetition cost when the trial parameters repeated or switched across an ABA sequence, in clear contrast to the episodic retrieval account. What remains unclear is whether successful episodic retrieval modulates the n-2 repetition cost. Across 3 experiments-including a close replication of Mayr-we find clear evidence of reduced n-2 task repetition costs when episodic retrieval is controlled. We find that the effect of episodic retrieval on the n-2 task repetition cost is increased when the cue-task relationship is made more abstract, suggesting the effect is because of interference in establishing the relevant attentional set. We also demonstrate that the episodic retrieval effect is not influenced by retrieval of low-level, perceptual, elements. Together, the data suggest the n-2 task repetition cost-typically attributable to an inhibitory mechanism-also reflects episodic retrieval effects. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

New Trends in Yorùbá Personal Names among Yorùbá Christians

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Reuben Olúwáfẹ́mi Ìkọ̀tún

2013-01-01

Full Text Available In this paper, we examine new trends in Yorùbá personal names that are first names among Yorùbá Christians. The data used include data drawn from previous studies on Yorùbá personal names, the lists of names of the candidates of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board of Nigeria the lists of staff of three Nigerian universities, some attendance registers of pupils in nursery, primary and secondary schools as well as participant observation. We show that the European or established Churches and the newly founded autochthonous Nigerian Churches have different influences on Yorùbá naming system and tradition-based Yorùbá personal or first names. We also indicate that, at present, there is a complete cultural shift from the use of tradition-based Yorùbá personal names as first names to the use of biblical or Christian names and that this new dimension is as a result of the influence of western culture or civilization and the newly founded churches in Nigeria. We further show that the activities that are shrouded in fanaticism, flavours, modernisation and especially names that endear the Nigerian believers to one another are meant to prove that the newly founded autochthonous Nigerian churches understand the Bible teachings better than the European churches and that name modification or name change is inevitable when there is acculturation.

Brain activations during bimodal dual tasks depend on the nature and combination of component tasks

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Emma eSalo

2015-02-01

Full Text Available We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate brain activations during nine different dual tasks in which the participants were required to simultaneously attend to concurrent streams of spoken syllables and written letters. They performed a phonological, spatial or simple (speaker-gender or font-shade discrimination task within each modality. We expected to find activations associated specifically with dual tasking especially in the frontal and parietal cortices. However, no brain areas showed systematic dual task enhancements common for all dual tasks. Further analysis revealed that dual tasks including component tasks that were according to Baddeley’s model modality atypical, that is, the auditory spatial task or the visual phonological task, were not associated with enhanced frontal activity. In contrast, for other dual tasks, activity specifically associated with dual tasking was found in the left or bilateral frontal cortices. Enhanced activation in parietal areas, however, appeared not to be specifically associated with dual tasking per se, but rather with intermodal attention switching. We also expected effects of dual tasking in left frontal supramodal phonological processing areas when both component tasks required phonological processing and in right parietal supramodal spatial processing areas when both tasks required spatial processing. However, no such effects were found during these dual tasks compared with their component tasks performed separately. Taken together, the current results indicate that activations during dual tasks depend in a complex manner on specific demands of component tasks.

ASD Is Not DLI: Individuals With Autism and Individuals With Syntactic DLI Show Similar Performance Level in Syntactic Tasks, but Different Error Patterns

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Nufar Sukenik

2018-04-01

Full Text Available Do individuals with autism have a developmental syntactic impairment, DLI (formerly known as SLI? In this study we directly compared the performance of 18 individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD aged 9;0–18;0 years with that of 93 individuals with Syntactic-Developmental Language Impairment (SyDLI aged 8;8–14;6 (and with 166 typically-developing children aged 5;2–18;1. We tested them using three syntactic tests assessing the comprehension and production of syntactic structures that are known to be sensitive to syntactic impairment: elicitation of subject and object relative clauses, reading and paraphrasing of object relatives, and repetition of complex syntactic structures including Wh questions, relative clauses, topicalized sentences, sentences with verb movement, sentences with A-movement, and embedded sentences. The results were consistent across the three tasks: the overall rate of correct performance on the syntactic tasks is similar for the children with ASD and those with SyDLI. However, once we look closer, they are very different. The types of errors of the ASD group differ from those of the SyDLI group—the children with ASD provide various types of pragmatically infelicitous responses that are not evinced in the SyDLI or in the age equivalent typically-developing groups. The two groups (ASD and SyDLI also differ in the pattern of performance—the children with SyDLI show a syntactically-principled pattern of impairment, with selective difficulty in specific sentence types (such as sentences derived by movement of the object across the subject, and normal performance on other structures (such as simple sentences. In contrast, the ASD participants showed generalized low performance on the various sentence structures. Syntactic performance was far from consistent within the ASD group. Whereas all ASD participants had errors that can originate in pragmatic/discourse difficulties, seven of them had completely normal syntax

ASD Is Not DLI: Individuals With Autism and Individuals With Syntactic DLI Show Similar Performance Level in Syntactic Tasks, but Different Error Patterns.

Science.gov (United States)

Sukenik, Nufar; Friedmann, Naama

2018-01-01

Do individuals with autism have a developmental syntactic impairment, DLI (formerly known as SLI)? In this study we directly compared the performance of 18 individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) aged 9;0-18;0 years with that of 93 individuals with Syntactic-Developmental Language Impairment (SyDLI) aged 8;8-14;6 (and with 166 typically-developing children aged 5;2-18;1). We tested them using three syntactic tests assessing the comprehension and production of syntactic structures that are known to be sensitive to syntactic impairment: elicitation of subject and object relative clauses, reading and paraphrasing of object relatives, and repetition of complex syntactic structures including Wh questions, relative clauses, topicalized sentences, sentences with verb movement, sentences with A-movement, and embedded sentences. The results were consistent across the three tasks: the overall rate of correct performance on the syntactic tasks is similar for the children with ASD and those with SyDLI. However, once we look closer, they are very different. The types of errors of the ASD group differ from those of the SyDLI group-the children with ASD provide various types of pragmatically infelicitous responses that are not evinced in the SyDLI or in the age equivalent typically-developing groups. The two groups (ASD and SyDLI) also differ in the pattern of performance-the children with SyDLI show a syntactically-principled pattern of impairment, with selective difficulty in specific sentence types (such as sentences derived by movement of the object across the subject), and normal performance on other structures (such as simple sentences). In contrast, the ASD participants showed generalized low performance on the various sentence structures. Syntactic performance was far from consistent within the ASD group. Whereas all ASD participants had errors that can originate in pragmatic/discourse difficulties, seven of them had completely normal syntax in the structures we

Musical expertise has minimal impact on dual task performance.

Science.gov (United States)

Cocchini, Gianna; Filardi, Maria Serena; Crhonkova, Marcela; Halpern, Andrea R

2017-05-01

Studies investigating effect of practice on dual task performance have yielded conflicting findings, thus supporting different theoretical accounts about the organisation of attentional resources when tasks are performed simultaneously. Because practice has been proven to reduce the demand of attention for the trained task, the impact of long-lasting training on one task is an ideal way to better understand the mechanisms underlying dual task decline in performance. Our study compared performance during dual task execution in expert musicians compared to controls with little if any musical experience. Participants performed a music recognition task and a visuo-spatial task separately (single task) or simultaneously (dual task). Both groups showed a significant but similar performance decline during dual tasks. In addition, the two groups showed a similar decline of dual task performance during encoding and retrieval of the musical information, mainly attributed to a decline in sensitivity. Our results suggest that attention during dual tasks is similarly distributed by expert and non-experts. These findings are in line with previous studies showing a lack of sensitivity to difficulty and lack of practice effect during dual tasks, supporting the idea that different tasks may rely on different and not-sharable attentional resources.

Demographic factors and retrieval of object and proper names after age 70.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Gitit Kavé

Full Text Available This research aimed to investigate whether demographic factors are similarly related to retrieval of object and proper names.The sample included 5,907 individuals above age 70 who participated in the Health and Retirement Study between 2004 and 2012. Participants were asked to name two objects as well as the US President and Vice President. Latent growth curve models examined the associations of age, education, and self-rated health with baseline levels and change trajectories in retrieval.Age and education were more strongly related to retrieval of proper names than to retrieval of object names, both for baseline scores and for change trajectory. Similar effects of self-rated health emerged for both types of stimuli.The results show that examining object names and proper names together as indication of cognitive status in the HRS might overlook important differences between the two types of stimuli, in both baseline performance and longitudinal change.

Formulation of EPICS record naming conventions in J-PARC linac and RCS. Build process of unique and standardized name

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Fukuta, Shinpei; Kawase, Masato; Kikuzawa, Nobuhiro; Watanabe, Kazuhiko; Sakaki, Hironao; Takahashi, Hiroki

2011-02-01

J-PARC (Japan Proton Accelerator Research Complex) accelerator devices are controlled by the use of the software called EPICS (Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System). The unique name called an EPICS record is given to a control signal and data acquisition, Accelerator device control is achieved using the EPICS record. The requirement for the EPICS record name is 2 points; (1) no overlap of the EPICS record name, (2) the control contents can be easily imagined from the EPICS record name. To manage the EPICS record using relational database for the information management of the accelerator device in J-PARC, the naming structure is required so that a mechanical process can be performed easily. It was necessary to standardize the EPICS record name and the EPICS record structure to achieve these requirements. Therefore, we have formulated a guideline called 'EPICS record naming conventions' to decide to an EPICS record name uniquely and standardization. The abbreviated key word list of the accelerator devices and the control signal that compose the EPICS record name is appended to the EPICS record naming conventions. (author)

Number names and number understanding

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Ejersbo, Lisser Rye; Misfeldt, Morten

2014-01-01

This paper concerns the results from the first year of a three-year research project involving the relationship between Danish number names and their corresponding digits in the canonical base 10 system. The project aims to develop a system to help the students’ understanding of the base 10 syste...... the Danish number names are more complicated than in other languages. Keywords: A research project in grade 0 and 1th in a Danish school, Base-10 system, two-digit number names, semiotic, cognitive perspectives....

The history of Latin teeth names.

Science.gov (United States)

Šimon, František

2015-01-01

This paper aims to give an account of the Latin naming of the different types of teeth by reviewing relevant historical and contemporary literature. The paper presents etymologies of Latin or Greek teeth names, their development, variants and synonyms, and sometimes the names of their authors. The Greek names did not have the status of official terms, but the Latin terms for particular types of teeth gradually established themselves. Names for the incisors, canines and molars are Latin calques for the Greek ones (tomeis, kynodontes, mylai), dens serotinus is an indirect calque of the Greek name (odús) opsigonos, and the term pre-molar is created in the way which is now common in modern anatomical terminology, using the prefix prae- = pre and the adjective molaris. The Latin terms dentes canini and dentes molares occur in the Classical Latin literature, the term (dentes) incisivi is found first time in medieval literature, and the terms dentes premolares and dens serotinus are modern-age ones.

Induction by Coinduction and Control Operators in Call-by-Name

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Yoshihiko Kakutani

2013-09-01

Full Text Available This paper studies emulation of induction by coinduction in a call-by-name language with control operators. Since it is known that call-by-name programming languages with control operators cannot have general initial algebras, interaction of induction and control operators is often restricted to effect-free functions. We show that some class of such restricted inductive types can be derived from full coinductive types by the power of control operators. As a typical example of our results, the type of natural numbers is represented by the type of streams. The underlying idea is a counterpart of the fact that some coinductive types can be expressed by inductive types in call-by-name pure language without side-effects.

On the History of the Name Ruslan

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Roza Yu. Namitokova

2016-12-01

Full Text Available The authors postulate that there exists a common stock of Russian personal names resulting from a partial blending of national anthroponymicons. The main part of the paper focuses on the history of the personal name Ruslan which has etymological ties with the widespread Turkic name Arslan having the pre-onomastic meaning ‘lion’. The authors study the variation of the name in Russian folklore and in the 15th–17th centuries documents and historical sources. They also pay particular attention to the role of Pushkin’s poem Ruslan and Ludmila in the formation of the associative background of the studied name and to various onomastic derivatives, the latter include patronyms, surnames and the female name Ruslana. The author conclude that the name Ruslan became especially popular in Soviet and post-Soviet periods when it acquired a specific “semantic aura”, namely, in Caucasus where Ruslan became a kind of mark of Russian identity and, thus, contributed to the unification of the anthroponymic space. This conclusion was verified in the course of a survey done among 40 respondents representing different peoples of Caucasus. For most respondents the name has positive connotations and is associated with the Turkic name Arslan and the name of Pushkin’s character. However, some respondents consider it as a “non-Muslim”, Russian name and point out that it is often perceived as such outside Russia. The history of the name Ruslan and the ways of its transonymisation can be an interesting object for further research, especially due to the emergence of new communication technologies and onomastic discourses.

Semantic ambiguity effects on traditional Chinese character naming: A corpus-based approach.

Science.gov (United States)

Chang, Ya-Ning; Lee, Chia-Ying

2017-11-09

Words are considered semantically ambiguous if they have more than one meaning and can be used in multiple contexts. A number of recent studies have provided objective ambiguity measures by using a corpus-based approach and have demonstrated ambiguity advantages in both naming and lexical decision tasks. Although the predictive power of objective ambiguity measures has been examined in several alphabetic language systems, the effects in logographic languages remain unclear. Moreover, most ambiguity measures do not explicitly address how the various contexts associated with a given word relate to each other. To explore these issues, we computed the contextual diversity (Adelman, Brown, & Quesada, Psychological Science, 17; 814-823, 2006) and semantic ambiguity (Hoffman, Lambon Ralph, & Rogers, Behavior Research Methods, 45; 718-730, 2013) of traditional Chinese single-character words based on the Academia Sinica Balanced Corpus, where contextual diversity was used to evaluate the present semantic space. We then derived a novel ambiguity measure, namely semantic variability, by computing the distance properties of the distinct clusters grouped by the contexts that contained a given word. We demonstrated that semantic variability was superior to semantic diversity in accounting for the variance in naming response times, suggesting that considering the substructure of the various contexts associated with a given word can provide a relatively fine scale of ambiguity information for a word. All of the context and ambiguity measures for 2,418 Chinese single-character words are provided as supplementary materials.

Multi-task linear programming discriminant analysis for the identification of progressive MCI individuals.

Science.gov (United States)

Yu, Guan; Liu, Yufeng; Thung, Kim-Han; Shen, Dinggang

2014-01-01

Accurately identifying mild cognitive impairment (MCI) individuals who will progress to Alzheimer's disease (AD) is very important for making early interventions. Many classification methods focus on integrating multiple imaging modalities such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography (FDG-PET). However, the main challenge for MCI classification using multiple imaging modalities is the existence of a lot of missing data in many subjects. For example, in the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) study, almost half of the subjects do not have PET images. In this paper, we propose a new and flexible binary classification method, namely Multi-task Linear Programming Discriminant (MLPD) analysis, for the incomplete multi-source feature learning. Specifically, we decompose the classification problem into different classification tasks, i.e., one for each combination of available data sources. To solve all different classification tasks jointly, our proposed MLPD method links them together by constraining them to achieve the similar estimated mean difference between the two classes (under classification) for those shared features. Compared with the state-of-the-art incomplete Multi-Source Feature (iMSF) learning method, instead of constraining different classification tasks to choose a common feature subset for those shared features, MLPD can flexibly and adaptively choose different feature subsets for different classification tasks. Furthermore, our proposed MLPD method can be efficiently implemented by linear programming. To validate our MLPD method, we perform experiments on the ADNI baseline dataset with the incomplete MRI and PET images from 167 progressive MCI (pMCI) subjects and 226 stable MCI (sMCI) subjects. We further compared our method with the iMSF method (using incomplete MRI and PET images) and also the single-task classification method (using only MRI or only subjects with both MRI and PET images

Multi-task linear programming discriminant analysis for the identification of progressive MCI individuals.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Guan Yu

Full Text Available Accurately identifying mild cognitive impairment (MCI individuals who will progress to Alzheimer's disease (AD is very important for making early interventions. Many classification methods focus on integrating multiple imaging modalities such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI and fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography (FDG-PET. However, the main challenge for MCI classification using multiple imaging modalities is the existence of a lot of missing data in many subjects. For example, in the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI study, almost half of the subjects do not have PET images. In this paper, we propose a new and flexible binary classification method, namely Multi-task Linear Programming Discriminant (MLPD analysis, for the incomplete multi-source feature learning. Specifically, we decompose the classification problem into different classification tasks, i.e., one for each combination of available data sources. To solve all different classification tasks jointly, our proposed MLPD method links them together by constraining them to achieve the similar estimated mean difference between the two classes (under classification for those shared features. Compared with the state-of-the-art incomplete Multi-Source Feature (iMSF learning method, instead of constraining different classification tasks to choose a common feature subset for those shared features, MLPD can flexibly and adaptively choose different feature subsets for different classification tasks. Furthermore, our proposed MLPD method can be efficiently implemented by linear programming. To validate our MLPD method, we perform experiments on the ADNI baseline dataset with the incomplete MRI and PET images from 167 progressive MCI (pMCI subjects and 226 stable MCI (sMCI subjects. We further compared our method with the iMSF method (using incomplete MRI and PET images and also the single-task classification method (using only MRI or only subjects with both MRI and

Lepidoptera family-group names proposed by Thaddeus William Harris in 1841

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Donald Lafontaine

2013-02-01

Full Text Available In 1841, T. W. Harris published “A Report on the Insects of Massachusetts, Injurious to Vegetation,” a seminal work in North American Entomology and one of the first New World publications to describe Lepidoptera species. Although appearing in several subsequent editions, the eight family-group names proposed by Harris were largely overlooked. In summarizing Harris’ family-group names, we show that authorship for two Noctuidae names in current usage require changes: Acronictinae Harris, 1841 (originally as Acronyctadae has priority over Heinemann, 1859, and Agrotini Harris, 1841 (as Agrotitidae has priority over Rambur, 1848. Mamestradae Harris, 1841 is also a senior synonym of Mamestrinae Hampson, 1902 (Type genus: Mamestra Ochsenheimer, 1816, an available name that is currently a junior subjective synonym of Noctuidae: Noctuinae: Hadenini Guenée, 1837 (Type genus: Hadena Schrank, 1802. Geometridae: Ennominae: Hyberniini Harris, 1841 (as Hyberniadae, based on Erranis Hübner, [1825] (= Hybernia Berthold, 1827, has precedence over two family-group names with long-standing usage, Bistonini Stephens, 1850 and Boarmiini Duponchel, 1845, and a reversal of precedence for the latter two names over Hyberniini is proposed under ICZN guidelines.

Limitations in dual-task performance

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Pannebakker, Merel Mathilde

2009-01-01

In this thesis, the effect of information-processing overload on working-memory dependent information processing was examined using dual-task paradigms. The experiments described strengthen the importance of a functional explanation for dual-task limitations. First, it showed evidence for a unified

"Smart inhibition": electrophysiological evidence for the suppression of conflict-generating task rules during task switching.

Science.gov (United States)

Meiran, Nachshon; Hsieh, Shulan; Chang, Chi-Chih

2011-09-01

A major challenge for task switching is maintaining a balance between high task readiness and effectively ignoring irrelevant task rules. This calls for finely tuned inhibition that targets only the source of interference without adversely influencing other task-related representations. The authors show that irrelevant task rules generating response conflict are inhibited, causing their inefficient execution on the next trial (indicating the presence of competitor rule suppression[CRS];Meiran, Hsieh, & Dimov, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 36, 992-1002, 2010). To determine whether CRS influences task rules, rather than target stimuli or responses, the authors focused on the processing of the task cue before the target stimulus was presented and before the response could be chosen. As was predicted, CRS was found in the event-related potentials in two time windows during task cue processing. It was also found in three time windows after target presentation. Source localization analyses suggest the involvement of the right dorsal prefrontal cortex in all five time windows.

Using co-occurrence network structure to extract synonymous gene and protein names from MEDLINE abstracts

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Spackman K

2005-04-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background Text-mining can assist biomedical researchers in reducing information overload by extracting useful knowledge from large collections of text. We developed a novel text-mining method based on analyzing the network structure created by symbol co-occurrences as a way to extend the capabilities of knowledge extraction. The method was applied to the task of automatic gene and protein name synonym extraction. Results Performance was measured on a test set consisting of about 50,000 abstracts from one year of MEDLINE. Synonyms retrieved from curated genomics databases were used as a gold standard. The system obtained a maximum F-score of 22.21% (23.18% precision and 21.36% recall, with high efficiency in the use of seed pairs. Conclusion The method performs comparably with other studied methods, does not rely on sophisticated named-entity recognition, and requires little initial seed knowledge.

Precedent Names of Chinese National Culture

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Валентина Алексеевна Ленинцева

2015-12-01

Full Text Available The article presents an analysis of precedent names as symbols of precedent phenomena in the material and spiritual culture of the Chinese. An evaluation of daily events and the attitude of the Chinese towards the world are reflected in the vocabulary of their language. The symbols of precedent phenomena can be proper names (anthroponomy, names of places, the date, as well as figurative and expressive means of language (idioms, sayings. Precedent names as symbols of precedent phenomena vividly and accurately capture the above-mentioned points, and encompass almost all spheres of life, history and spiritual development. The subject of our study are national precedent phenomena that define the ethno-cultural specificity, reflecting the history and culture of the Chinese people and their national character. Representatives of different cultures have different perceptions of the same precedent phenomena. Inadequate understanding of national invariants of precedent phenomena is often the source of communication failures. The aim of this paper is to highlight precedent names as a symbol of precedent phenomena in the discourse of the Chinese linguocultural community. For this purpose a classification of precedent names in Chinese was carried out. Precedent names which play an important role in shaping the Chinese national consciousness were taken from the Chinese-Russian Dictionary.

27 CFR 19.165 - Trade names.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-04-01

... 27 Alcohol, Tobacco Products and Firearms 1 2010-04-01 2010-04-01 false Trade names. 19.165 Section 19.165 Alcohol, Tobacco Products and Firearms ALCOHOL AND TOBACCO TAX AND TRADE BUREAU, DEPARTMENT... Trade names. (a) Operating permits. Where a trade name is to be used in connection with the operations...

Balancing the Demands of Two Tasks: An Investigation of Cognitive-Motor Dual-Tasking in Relapsing Remitting Multiple Sclerosis.

Science.gov (United States)

Butchard-MacDonald, Emma; Paul, Lorna; Evans, Jonathan J

2018-03-01

People with relapsing remitting multiple sclerosis (PwRRMS) suffer disproportionate decrements in gait under dual-task conditions, when walking and a cognitive task are combined. There has been much less investigation of the impact of cognitive demands on balance. This study investigated whether: (1) PwRRMS show disproportionate decrements in postural stability under dual-task conditions compared to healthy controls, and (2) dual-task decrements are associated with everyday dual-tasking difficulties. The impact of mood, fatigue, and disease severity on dual-tasking was also examined. A total of 34 PwRRMS and 34 matched controls completed cognitive (digit span) and balance (movement of center of pressure on Biosway on stable and unstable surfaces) tasks under single- and dual-task conditions. Everyday dual-tasking was measured using the Dual-Tasking Questionnaire. Mood was measured by the Hospital Anxiety & Depression Scale. Fatigue was measured via the Modified Fatigue Index Scale. No differences in age, gender, years of education, estimated pre-morbid IQ, or baseline digit span between groups. Compared with controls, PwRRMS showed significantly greater decrement in postural stability under dual-task conditions on an unstable surface (p=.007), but not a stable surface (p=.679). Balance decrement scores were not correlated with everyday dual-tasking difficulties or fatigue. Stable surface balance decrement scores were significantly associated with levels of anxiety (rho=0.527; p=.001) and depression (rho=0.451; p=.007). RRMS causes dual-tasking difficulties, impacting balance under challenging conditions, which may contribute to increased risk of gait difficulties and falls. The relationship between anxiety/depression and dual-task decrement suggests that emotional factors may be contributing to dual-task difficulties. (JINS, 2018, 24, 247-258).

Recommended conservation of the names Streptococcus sanguis, Streptococcus rattus, Streptococcus cricetus, and seven other names included in the Approved Lists of Bacterial Names. Request for an opinion

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Kilian, Mogens

2001-01-01

With reference to the first Principle of the International Code of Nomenclature of Bacteria, which emphasizes stability of names, it is proposed that the original names Streptococcus sanguis, Streptococcus rattus, Streptococcus cricetus, Erwinia ananas, Eubacterium tarantellus, Lactobacillus sake......, Nitrosococcus oceanus, Pseudomonas betle, Rickettsia canada and Streptomyces rangoon, all included in the Approved Lists of Bacterial Names, be conserved. Request for an Opinion...

The task complexity experiment 2003/2004

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Laumann, Karin; Braarud, Per Oeivind; Svengren, Haakan

2005-08-01

The purpose of this experiment was to explore how additional tasks added to base case scenarios affected the operators' performance of the main tasks. These additional tasks were in different scenario variants intended to cause high time pressure, high information load, and high masking. The experiment was run in Halden Man-Machine Laboratory's BWR simulator. Seven crews participated, each for one week. There were three operators in each crew. Five main types of scenarios and 20 scenario variants were run. The data from the experiment were analysed by completion time for important actions and by in-depth qualitative analyses of the crews' communications. The results showed that high time pressure decreased some of the crews' performance in the scenarios. When a crew had problems in solving a task for which the time pressure was high, they had even more problems in solving other important tasks. High information load did not affect the operators' performance much and in general the crews were very good at selecting the most important tasks in the scenarios. The scenarios that included both high time pressure and high information load resulted in more reduced performance for the crews compared to the scenarios that only included high time pressure. The total amount of tasks to do and information load to attend to seemed to affect the crews' performance. To solve the scenarios with high time pressure well, it was important to have good communication and good allocation of tasks within the crew. Furthermore, the results showed that scenarios with an added complex, masked task created problems for some crews when solving a relatively simple main task. Overall, the results confirmed that complicating, but secondary tasks, that are not normally taken into account when modelling the primary tasks in a PRA scenario can adversely affect the performance of the main tasks modelled in the PRA scenario. (Author)

Promising high monetary rewards for future task performance increases intermediate task performance.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Claire M Zedelius

Full Text Available In everyday life contexts and work settings, monetary rewards are often contingent on future performance. Based on research showing that the anticipation of rewards causes improved task performance through enhanced task preparation, the present study tested the hypothesis that the promise of monetary rewards for future performance would not only increase future performance, but also performance on an unrewarded intermediate task. Participants performed an auditory Simon task in which they responded to two consecutive tones. While participants could earn high vs. low monetary rewards for fast responses to every second tone, their responses to the first tone were not rewarded. Moreover, we compared performance under conditions in which reward information could prompt strategic performance adjustments (i.e., when reward information was presented for a relatively long duration to conditions preventing strategic performance adjustments (i.e., when reward information was presented very briefly. Results showed that high (vs. low rewards sped up both rewarded and intermediate, unrewarded responses, and the effect was independent of the duration of reward presentation. Moreover, long presentation led to a speed-accuracy trade-off for both rewarded and unrewarded tones, whereas short presentation sped up responses to rewarded and unrewarded tones without this trade-off. These results suggest that high rewards for future performance boost intermediate performance due to enhanced task preparation, and they do so regardless whether people respond to rewards in a strategic or non-strategic manner.

Promising high monetary rewards for future task performance increases intermediate task performance.

Science.gov (United States)

Zedelius, Claire M; Veling, Harm; Bijleveld, Erik; Aarts, Henk

2012-01-01

In everyday life contexts and work settings, monetary rewards are often contingent on future performance. Based on research showing that the anticipation of rewards causes improved task performance through enhanced task preparation, the present study tested the hypothesis that the promise of monetary rewards for future performance would not only increase future performance, but also performance on an unrewarded intermediate task. Participants performed an auditory Simon task in which they responded to two consecutive tones. While participants could earn high vs. low monetary rewards for fast responses to every second tone, their responses to the first tone were not rewarded. Moreover, we compared performance under conditions in which reward information could prompt strategic performance adjustments (i.e., when reward information was presented for a relatively long duration) to conditions preventing strategic performance adjustments (i.e., when reward information was presented very briefly). Results showed that high (vs. low) rewards sped up both rewarded and intermediate, unrewarded responses, and the effect was independent of the duration of reward presentation. Moreover, long presentation led to a speed-accuracy trade-off for both rewarded and unrewarded tones, whereas short presentation sped up responses to rewarded and unrewarded tones without this trade-off. These results suggest that high rewards for future performance boost intermediate performance due to enhanced task preparation, and they do so regardless whether people respond to rewards in a strategic or non-strategic manner.

27 CFR 40.511 - Change in name.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-04-01

... corporate name. When there is a change in the corporate name of a manufacturer of processed tobacco, the... 27 Alcohol, Tobacco Products and Firearms 2 2010-04-01 2010-04-01 false Change in name. 40.511... PROCESSED TOBACCO Manufacture of Processed Tobacco Changes After Qualification § 40.511 Change in name. (a...

Activations of human auditory cortex to phonemic and nonphonemic vowels during discrimination and memory tasks.

Science.gov (United States)

Harinen, Kirsi; Rinne, Teemu

2013-08-15

We used fMRI to investigate activations within human auditory cortex (AC) to vowels during vowel discrimination, vowel (categorical n-back) memory, and visual tasks. Based on our previous studies, we hypothesized that the vowel discrimination task would be associated with increased activations in the anterior superior temporal gyrus (STG), while the vowel memory task would enhance activations in the posterior STG and inferior parietal lobule (IPL). In particular, we tested the hypothesis that activations in the IPL during vowel memory tasks are associated with categorical processing. Namely, activations due to categorical processing should be higher during tasks performed on nonphonemic (hard to categorize) than on phonemic (easy to categorize) vowels. As expected, we found distinct activation patterns during vowel discrimination and vowel memory tasks. Further, these task-dependent activations were different during tasks performed on phonemic or nonphonemic vowels. However, activations in the IPL associated with the vowel memory task were not stronger during nonphonemic than phonemic vowel blocks. Together these results demonstrate that activations in human AC to vowels depend on both the requirements of the behavioral task and the phonemic status of the vowels. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Nuclear waste management, a European task

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Strassburg, W.

1989-01-01

The coming into force of the Single European Act on July 1, 1987, which is to stepwise create a truly frontierless internal market of the European Community up to the year 1992, will have an effect also on the nuclear waste management sector. The goals of the energy policy and fuel cycle policy of the FRG, however, will not be changed by this. The contribution in hand discusses in particular some problems encountered at the back-end of the nuclear fuel cycle, namely nuclear spent fuel reprocessing. Activities in this branch of nuclear industry for more than ten years already have been a joint, European task. Spent fuel elements from West German reactors have been sent for reprocessing to facilities in France and in Great Britain, for example. The task of spent fuel reprocessing in the eyes of the author has a dimension exceeding the scope of the European single market: cooperation in this field for years has been including Switzerland and Sweden, for example, and is likely to include in future some countries of the Eastern Bloc. (orig.) [de

Dictionary of Minor Planet Names

CERN Document Server

Schmadel, Lutz D

2007-01-01

Dictionary of Minor Planet Names, Fifth Edition, is the official reference for the field of the IAU, which serves as the internationally recognised authority for assigning designations to celestial bodies and any surface features on them. The accelerating rate of the discovery of minor planets has not only made a new edition of this established compendium necessary but has also significantly altered its scope: this thoroughly revised edition concentrates on the approximately 10,000 minor planets that carry a name. It provides authoritative information about the basis for all names of minor planets. In addition to being of practical value for identification purposes, this collection provides a most interesting historical insight into the work of those astronomers who over two centuries vested their affinities in a rich and colorful variety of ingenious names, from heavenly goddesses to more prosaic constructions. The fifth edition serves as the primary reference, with plans for complementary booklets with newl...

27 CFR 1.40 - Change of name.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-04-01

... 27 Alcohol, Tobacco Products and Firearms 1 2010-04-01 2010-04-01 false Change of name. 1.40... Amendment and Duration of Basic Permits § 1.40 Change of name. In the event of any change in the name (trade or corporate name) of a permittee, or, in the event a permittee desires to engage in operations under...

MULTIPATH COMMUNICATIONS USING NAMES

OpenAIRE

Purushothama, Rashmi

2011-01-01

Increased host mobility, and multi-homing make IP address management very complex in applications. Due to host mobility, the IP address of a host may change dynamically, and also frequently. Multi-homing leads to multiple IP addresses for a single host. Name-based socket is a solution to address the complex IP address management. It relieves the applications from the overhead, and moves it to the operating system. It uses a constant name, instead of an IP address to establish a connection, th...

A False-name-Proof Double Auction Protocol for Arbitrary Evaluation Values

Science.gov (United States)

Sakurai, Yuko; Yokoo, Makoto

We develop a new false-name-proof double auction protocol called the Generalized Threshold Price Double auction (GTPD) protocol. False-name-proofness generalizes strategy-proofness by incorporating the possibility of false-name bids, e.g., bids submitted using multiple e-mail addresses. An existing protocol called TPD protocol is false-name-proof but can handle only the cases where marginal utilities of each agent always decrease, while our new GTPD protocol can handle arbitrary evaluation values. When marginal utilities can increase, some bids cannot be divided into a single unit (e.g., an all-or-nothing bid). Due to the existence of such indivisible bids, meeting supply/demand becomes difficult. Furthermore, a seller/buyer can submit a false-name-bid by pretending to be a potential buyer/seller to manipulate allocations and payments. In the GTPD protocol, the auctioneer is required to absorb the supply-demand imbalance up to a given upper-bound. Also, the GTPD incorporate a new false-name-proof one-sided auction protocol that is guaranteed to sell/buy a certain number of units. Simulation results show that when the threshold price is set appropriately, this protocol can obtain a good social surplus, and the number of absorbed units is much smaller than the given upper-bound.

Mechanisms of Practice-Related Reductions of Dual-Task Interference with Simple Tasks: Data and Theory

Science.gov (United States)

Strobach, Tilo; Torsten, Schubert

2017-01-01

In dual-task situations, interference between two simultaneous tasks impairs performance. With practice, however, this impairment can be reduced. To identify mechanisms leading to a practice-related improvement in sensorimotor dual tasks, the present review applied the following general hypothesis: Sources that impair dual-task performance at the beginning of practice are associated with mechanisms for the reduction of dual-task impairment at the end of practice. The following types of processes provide sources for the occurrence of this impairment: (a) capacity-limited processes within the component tasks, such as response-selection or motor response stages, and (b) cognitive control processes independent of these tasks and thus operating outside of component-task performance. Dual-task practice studies show that, under very specific conditions, capacity-limited processes within the component tasks are automatized with practice, reducing the interference between two simultaneous tasks. Further, there is evidence that response-selection stages are shortened with practice. Thus, capacity limitations at these stages are sources for dual-task costs at the beginning of practice and are overcome with practice. However, there is no evidence demonstrating the existence of practice-related mechanisms associated with capacity-limited motor-response stages. Further, during practice, there is an acquisition of executive control skills for an improved allocation of limited attention resources to two tasks as well as some evidence supporting the assumption of improved task coordination. These latter mechanisms are associated with sources of dual-task interference operating outside of component task performance at the beginning of practice and also contribute to the reduction of dual-task interference at its end. PMID:28439319