Masked and unmasked priming effects as a function of semantic relatedness and associative strength.

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Sánchez-Casas, Rosa; Ferré, Pilar; Demestre, Josep; García-Chico, Teófilo; García-Albea, José E

2012-11-01

The study presented in this paper aimed to investigate the pattern of semantic priming effects, under masked and unmasked conditions, in the lexical decision task, manipulating type of semantic relation and associative strength. Three different kinds of word relations were examined in two experiments: only-semantically related words [e.g., codo (elbow)-rodilla (knee)] and semantic/associative related words with strong [e.g., mesa (table)-silla (chair) and weak association strength [e.g., sapo (toad)-rana (frog)]. In Experiment 1 a masked priming procedure was used with a prime duration of 56 ms, and in Experiment 2, the prime was presented unmasked for 150 ms. The results showed that there were masked priming effects with strong associates, but no evidence of these effects was found with weak associates or only-semantic related word pairs. When the prime was presented unmasked, the three types of relations produced significant priming effects and they were not influenced by association strength.

The neural substrates of semantic memory deficits in early Alzheimer's disease: Clues from semantic priming effects and FDG-PET

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Giffard, B.; Laisney, M.; Mezenge, F.; De la Sayette, V.; Eustache, F.; Desgranges, B. [Univ Caen Basse Normandie, INSERM, U923, Unite Rech, EPHE, Lab Neuropsychol, CHU Cote Nacre, GIP Cyceron, F-14033 Caen (France)

2008-07-01

The neural substrates responsible for semantic dysfunction during the early stages of AD have yet to be clearly identified. After a brief overview of the literature on normal and pathological semantic memory, we describe a new approach, designed to provide fresh insights into semantic deficits in AD. We mapped the correlations between resting-state brain glucose utilisation measured by FDG-PET and semantic priming scores in a group of 17 AD patients. The priming task, which yields a particularly pure measurement of semantic memory, was composed of related pairs of words sharing an attribute relationship (e.g. tiger-stripe). The priming scores correlated positively with the metabolism of the superior temporal areas on both sides, especially the right side, and this correlation was shown to be specific to the semantic priming effect.This pattern of results is discussed in the light of recent theoretical models of semantic memory, and suggests that a dysfunction of the right superior temporal cortex may contribute to early semantic deficits, characterised by the loss of specific features of concepts in AD. (authors)

Is semantic priming due to association strength or feature overlap? A microanalytic review.

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Hutchison, Keith A

2003-12-01

In a recent meta-analysis, Lucas (2000) concluded that there is strong evidence of an overall pure semantic priming effect but no evidence of priming based purely on association. In the present review, I critically examine the individual studies claiming evidence of featural and associative relations in semantic memory. The most important conclusion is that automatic priming appears to be due to both association strength and feature overlap. Mediated associates provide the strongest evidence of automatic associative priming, whereas functional associates, synonyms, and antonyms instead support priming based on feature overlap. In contrast, automatic priming does not occur for category coordinates or perceptually similar items, at least when presented in the visual modality. The status of other relations, such as collocates, episodic relatives, and script relations, is unclear and requires further experimentation. Implications for current models of semantic representation and priming are discussed.

Somatotopic Semantic Priming and Prediction in the Motor System

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Grisoni, Luigi; Dreyer, Felix R.; Pulvermüller, Friedemann

2016-01-01

The recognition of action-related sounds and words activates motor regions, reflecting the semantic grounding of these symbols in action information; in addition, motor cortex exerts causal influences on sound perception and language comprehension. However, proponents of classic symbolic theories still dispute the role of modality-preferential systems such as the motor cortex in the semantic processing of meaningful stimuli. To clarify whether the motor system carries semantic processes, we investigated neurophysiological indexes of semantic relationships between action-related sounds and words. Event-related potentials revealed that action-related words produced significantly larger stimulus-evoked (Mismatch Negativity-like) and predictive brain responses (Readiness Potentials) when presented in body-part-incongruent sound contexts (e.g., “kiss” in footstep sound context; “kick” in whistle context) than in body-part-congruent contexts, a pattern reminiscent of neurophysiological correlates of semantic priming. Cortical generators of the semantic relatedness effect were localized in areas traditionally associated with semantic memory, including left inferior frontal cortex and temporal pole, and, crucially, in motor areas, where body-part congruency of action sound–word relationships was indexed by a somatotopic pattern of activation. As our results show neurophysiological manifestations of action-semantic priming in the motor cortex, they prove semantic processing in the motor system and thus in a modality-preferential system of the human brain. PMID:26908635

Influence of auditory spatial attention on cross-modal semantic priming effect: evidence from N400 effect.

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Wang, Hongyan; Zhang, Gaoyan; Liu, Baolin

2017-01-01

Semantic priming is an important research topic in the field of cognitive neuroscience. Previous studies have shown that the uni-modal semantic priming effect can be modulated by attention. However, the influence of attention on cross-modal semantic priming is unclear. To investigate this issue, the present study combined a cross-modal semantic priming paradigm with an auditory spatial attention paradigm, presenting the visual pictures as the prime stimuli and the semantically related or unrelated sounds as the target stimuli. Event-related potentials results showed that when the target sound was attended to, the N400 effect was evoked. The N400 effect was also observed when the target sound was not attended to, demonstrating that the cross-modal semantic priming effect persists even though the target stimulus is not focused on. Further analyses revealed that the N400 effect evoked by the unattended sound was significantly lower than the effect evoked by the attended sound. This contrast provides new evidence that the cross-modal semantic priming effect can be modulated by attention.

Attentional Control and the Relatedness Proportion Effect in Semantic Priming

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Hutchison, Keith A.

2007-01-01

In 2 experiments, participants completed both an attentional control battery (OSPAN, antisaccade, and Stroop tasks) and a modified semantic priming task. The priming task measured relatedness proportion (RP) effects within subjects, with the color of the prime indicating the probability that the to-be-named target would be related. In Experiment…

The Influence of Working Memory Load on Semantic Priming

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Heyman, Tom; Van Rensbergen, Bram; Storms, Gert; Hutchison, Keith A.; De Deyne, Simon

2015-01-01

The present research examines the nature of the different processes that have been proposed to underlie semantic priming. Specifically, it has been argued that priming arises as a result of "automatic target activation" and/or the use of strategies like prospective "expectancy generation" and "retrospective semantic…

A novel co-occurrence-based approach to predict pure associative and semantic priming.

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Roelke, Andre; Franke, Nicole; Biemann, Chris; Radach, Ralph; Jacobs, Arthur M; Hofmann, Markus J

2018-03-15

The theoretical "difficulty in separating association strength from [semantic] feature overlap" has resulted in inconsistent findings of either the presence or absence of "pure" associative priming in recent literature (Hutchison, 2003, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 10(4), p. 787). The present study used co-occurrence statistics of words in sentences to provide a full factorial manipulation of direct association (strong/no) and the number of common associates (many/no) of the prime and target words. These common associates were proposed to serve as semantic features for a recent interactive activation model of semantic processing (i.e., the associative read-out model; Hofmann & Jacobs, 2014). With stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) as an additional factor, our findings indicate that associative and semantic priming are indeed dissociable. Moreover, the effect of direct association was strongest at a long SOA (1,000 ms), while many common associates facilitated lexical decisions primarily at a short SOA (200 ms). This response pattern is consistent with previous performance-based accounts and suggests that associative and semantic priming can be evoked by computationally determined direct and common associations.

Priming the semantic neighbourhood during the attentional blink.

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Irina M Harris

2010-09-01

Full Text Available When two targets are presented in close temporal proximity amongst a rapid serial visual stream of distractors, a period of disrupted attention and attenuated awareness lasting 200-500 ms follows identification of the first target (T1. This phenomenon is known as the "attentional blink" (AB and is generally attributed to a failure to consolidate information in visual short-term memory due to depleted or disrupted attentional resources. Previous research has shown that items presented during the AB that fail to reach conscious awareness are still processed to relatively high levels, including the level of meaning. For example, missed word stimuli have been shown to prime later targets that are closely associated words. Although these findings have been interpreted as evidence for semantic processing during the AB, closely associated words (e.g., day-night may also rely on specific, well-worn, lexical associative links which enhance attention to the relevant target.We used a measure of semantic distance to create prime-target pairs that are conceptually close, but have low word associations (e.g., wagon and van and investigated priming from a distractor stimulus presented during the AB to a subsequent target (T2. The stimuli were words (concrete nouns in Experiment 1 and the corresponding pictures of objects in Experiment 2. In both experiments, report of T2 was facilitated when this item was preceded by a semantically-related distractor.This study is the first to show conclusively that conceptual information is extracted from distractor stimuli presented during a period of attenuated awareness and that this information spreads to neighbouring concepts within a semantic network.

The Onset and Time Course of Semantic Priming during Rapid Recognition of Visual Words

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Hoedemaker, Renske S.; Gordon, Peter C.

2016-01-01

In two experiments, we assessed the effects of response latency and task-induced goals on the onset and time course of semantic priming during rapid processing of visual words as revealed by ocular response tasks. In Experiment 1 (Ocular Lexical Decision Task), participants performed a lexical decision task using eye-movement responses on a sequence of four words. In Experiment 2, the same words were encoded for an episodic recognition memory task that did not require a meta-linguistic judgment. For both tasks, survival analyses showed that the earliest-observable effect (Divergence Point or DP) of semantic priming on target-word reading times occurred at approximately 260 ms, and ex-Gaussian distribution fits revealed that the magnitude of the priming effect increased as a function of response time. Together, these distributional effects of semantic priming suggest that the influence of the prime increases when target processing is more effortful. This effect does not require that the task include a metalinguistic judgment; manipulation of the task goals across experiments affected the overall response speed but not the location of the DP or the overall distributional pattern of the priming effect. These results are more readily explained as the result of a retrospective rather than a prospective priming mechanism and are consistent with compound-cue models of semantic priming. PMID:28230394

Lateralized direct and indirect semantic priming effects in subjects with paranormal experiences and beliefs.

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Pizzagalli, D; Lehmann, D; Brugger, P

2001-01-01

The present investigation tested the hypothesis that, as an aspect of schizotypal thinking, the formation of paranormal beliefs was related to spreading activation characteristics within semantic networks. From a larger student population (n = 117) prescreened for paranormal belief, 12 strong believers and 12 strong disbelievers (all women) were invited for a lateralized semantic priming task with directly and indirectly related prime-target pairs. Believers showed stronger indirect (but not direct) semantic priming effects than disbelievers after left (but not right) visual field stimulation, indicating faster appreciation of distant semantic relations specifically by the right hemisphere, reportedly specialized in coarse rather than focused semantic processing. These results are discussed in the light of recent findings in schizophrenic patients with thought disorders. They suggest that a disinhibition with semantic networks may underlie the formation of paranormal belief. The potential usefulness of work with healthy subjects for neuropsychiatric research is stressed. Copyright 2001 S. Karger AG, Basel

Test-retest reliability and stability of N400 effects in a word-pair semantic priming paradigm.

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Kiang, Michael; Patriciu, Iulia; Roy, Carolyn; Christensen, Bruce K; Zipursky, Robert B

2013-04-01

Elicited by any meaningful stimulus, the N400 event-related potential (ERP) component is reduced when the stimulus is related to a preceding one. This N400 semantic priming effect has been used to probe abnormal semantic relationship processing in clinical disorders, and suggested as a possible biomarker for treatment studies. Validating N400 semantic priming effects as a clinical biomarker requires characterizing their test-retest reliability. We assessed test-retest reliability of N400 semantic priming in 16 healthy adults who viewed the same related and unrelated prime-target word pairs in two sessions one week apart. As expected, N400 amplitudes were smaller for related versus unrelated targets across sessions. N400 priming effects (amplitude differences between unrelated and related targets) were highly correlated across sessions (r=0.85, Pmotivational changes. Use of N400 priming effects in treatment studies should account for possible magnitude decreases with repeat testing. Further research is needed to delineate N400 priming effects' test-retest reliability and stability in different age and clinical groups, and with different stimulus types. Copyright © 2012 International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology. Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Feature activation during word recognition: action, visual, and associative-semantic priming effects

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Kevin J.Y. Lam

2015-05-01

Full Text Available Embodied theories of language postulate that language meaning is stored in modality-specific brain areas generally involved in perception and action in the real world. However, the temporal dynamics of the interaction between modality-specific information and lexical-semantic processing remain unclear. We investigated the relative timing at which two types of modality-specific information (action-based and visual-form information contribute to lexical-semantic comprehension. To this end, we applied a behavioral priming paradigm in which prime and target words were related with respect to (1 action features, (2 visual features, or (3 semantically associative information. Using a Go/No-Go lexical decision task, priming effects were measured across four different inter-stimulus intervals (ISI = 100 ms, 250 ms, 400 ms, and 1,000 ms to determine the relative time course of the different features . Notably, action priming effects were found in ISIs of 100 ms, 250 ms, and 1,000 ms whereas a visual priming effect was seen only in the ISI of 1,000 ms. Importantly, our data suggest that features follow different time courses of activation during word recognition. In this regard, feature activation is dynamic, measurable in specific time windows but not in others. Thus the current study (1 demonstrates how multiple ISIs can be used within an experiment to help chart the time course of feature activation and (2 provides new evidence for embodied theories of language.

Priming picture naming with a semantic task: an fMRI investigation.

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Shiree Heath

Full Text Available Prior semantic processing can enhance subsequent picture naming performance, yet the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying this effect and its longevity are unknown. This functional magnetic resonance imaging study examined whether different neurological mechanisms underlie short-term (within minutes and long-term (within days facilitation effects from a semantic task in healthy older adults. Both short- and long-term facilitated items were named significantly faster than unfacilitated items, with short-term items significantly faster than long-term items. Region of interest results identified decreased activity for long-term facilitated items compared to unfacilitated and short-term facilitated items in the mid-portion of the middle temporal gyrus, indicating lexical-semantic priming. Additionally, in the whole brain results, increased activity for short-term facilitated items was identified in regions previously linked to episodic memory and object recognition, including the right lingual gyrus (extending to the precuneus region and the left inferior occipital gyrus (extending to the left fusiform region. These findings suggest that distinct neurocognitive mechanisms underlie short- and long-term facilitation of picture naming by a semantic task, with long-term effects driven by lexical-semantic priming and short-term effects by episodic memory and visual object recognition mechanisms.

Comparison between Phonological Priming and Semantic Priming in the Short Verbal Memory Span in Male 18-25

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Davood Sobhani Rad

2007-06-01

Full Text Available Background and Aim: The short-term memory (STM has been studied to a great extent so far. Using some strategies and techniques to help the subject to access to his/her memory is important for Speech pathologist. Priming is a process that increases the chance of accessing to some information of memory by means of some simulations. So, primings are some words which facilitate the retrieval of the target words. The purpose of this study is comparing phonological and semantic priming on the short verbal memory span.Materials and Methods: The research was conducted on sixty-four 18-25 year-old male students in Tehran University of Medical sciences. Due to some distortion factors, including bilingualism, stutter-ing, and articulation problem, that can effect the reaction time, were determined as exclusion critenia. In additiion, subjects with difficulty in Wepman auditory discrimination were ruled out. The test was performed via the second version of programmed DMDX software and reaction time was recorded.Results: Semantic tasks and rhyming tasks were retrieved faster than the other tasks in lexical access respectively. There was a significant difference between the semantic and rime tasks but there is no significant difference between alliteration and unrelated tasks.Conclusion: The result of this research indicates that the semantic level is activated faster than the other levels and the phonological level is activated right after that. The alliteration level is the last level that activated. It has some similarities with some other investigations on the reaction time in phono-logical tasks.

Why all the confusion? Experimental task explains discrepant semantic priming effects in schizophrenia under "automatic" conditions: evidence from Event-Related Potentials.

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Kreher, Donna A; Goff, Donald; Kuperberg, Gina R

2009-06-01

The schizophrenia research literature contains many differing accounts of semantic memory function in schizophrenia as assessed through the semantic priming paradigm. Most recently, Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) have been used to demonstrate both increased and decreased semantic priming at a neural level in schizophrenia patients, relative to healthy controls. The present study used ERPs to investigate the role of behavioral task in determining neural semantic priming effects in schizophrenia. The same schizophrenia patients and healthy controls completed two experiments in which word stimuli were identical, and the time between the onset of prime and target remained constant at 350 ms: in the first, participants monitored for words within a particular semantic category that appeared only in filler items (implicit task); in the second, participants explicitly rated the relatedness of word-pairs (explicit task). In the explicit task, schizophrenia patients showed reduced direct and indirect semantic priming in comparison with healthy controls. In contrast, in the implicit task, schizophrenia patients showed normal or, in positively thought-disordered patients, increased direct and indirect N400 priming effects compared with healthy controls. These data confirm that, although schizophrenia patients with positive thought disorder may show an abnormally increased automatic spreading activation, the introduction of semantic decision-making can result in abnormally reduced semantic priming in schizophrenia, even when other experimental conditions bias toward automatic processing.

Semantic context effects and priming in word association.

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Zeelenberg, René; Pecher, Diane; Shiffrin, Richard M; Raaijmakers, Jeroen G W

2003-09-01

Two experiments investigated priming in word association, an implicit memory task. In the study phase of Experiment 1, semantically ambiguous target words were presented in sentences that biased their interpretation. The appropriate interpretation of the target was either congruent or incongruent with the cue presented in a subsequent word association task. Priming (i.e., a higher proportion of target responses relative to a nonstudied baseline) was obtained for the congruent condition, but not for the incongruent condition. In Experiment 2, study sentences emphasized particular meaning aspects of nonambiguous targets. The word association task showed a higher proportion of target responses for targets studied in the more congruent sentence context than for targets studied in the less congruent sentence context. These results indicate that priming in word association depends largely on the storage of information relating the cue and target.

Spreading Activation in an Attractor Network with Latching Dynamics: Automatic Semantic Priming Revisited

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Lerner, Itamar; Bentin, Shlomo; Shriki, Oren

2012-01-01

Localist models of spreading activation (SA) and models assuming distributed representations offer very different takes on semantic priming, a widely investigated paradigm in word recognition and semantic memory research. In this study, we implemented SA in an attractor neural network model with distributed representations and created a unified…

Why all the confusion? Experimental task explains discrepant semantic priming effects in schizophrenia under “automatic” conditions: evidence from Event-Related Potentials

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Kreher, Donna A.; Goff, Donald; Kuperberg, Gina R.

2009-01-01

The schizophrenia research literature contains many differing accounts of semantic memory function in schizophrenia as assessed through the semantic priming paradigm. Most recently, Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) have been used to demonstrate both increased and decreased semantic priming at a neural level in schizophrenia patients, relative to healthy controls. The present study used ERPs to investigate the role of behavioral task in determining neural semantic priming effects in schizophren...

Congruence Effect in Semantic Categorization with Masked Primes with Narrow and Broad Categories

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Quinn, Wendy Maree; Kinoshita, Sachiko

2008-01-01

In semantic categorization, masked primes that are category-congruent with the target (e.g., "Planets: mars-VENUS") facilitate responses relative to category-incongruent primes (e.g., "tree-VENUS"). The present study investigated why this category congruence effect is more consistently found with narrow categories (e.g., "Numbers larger/smaller…

The modulatory influence of the functional COMT Val158Met polymorphism on lexical decisions and semantic priming.

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Reuter, Martin; Montag, Christian; Peters, Kristina; Kocher, Anne; Kiefer, Markus

2009-01-01

The role of the prefrontal Cortex (PFC) in higher cognitive functions - including working memory, conflict resolution, set shifting and semantic processing - has been demonstrated unequivocally. Despite the great heterogeneity among tasks measuring these phenotypes, due in part to the different cognitive sub-processes implied and the specificity of the stimulus material used, there is agreement that all of these tasks recruit an executive control system located in the PFC. On a biochemical level it is known that the dopaminergic system plays an important role in executive control functions. Evidence comes from molecular genetics relating the functional COMT Val158Met polymorphism to working memory and set shifting. In order determine whether this pattern of findings generalises to linguistic and semantic processing, we investigated the effects of the COMT Val158Met polymorphism in lexical decision making using masked and unmasked versions of the semantic priming paradigm on N = 104 healthy subjects. Although we observed strong priming effects in all conditions (masked priming, unmasked priming with short/long stimulus asynchronies (SOAs), direct and indirect priming), COMT was not significantly related to priming, suggesting no reliable influence on semantic processing. However, COMT Val158Met was strongly associated with lexical decision latencies in all priming conditions if considered separately, explaining between 9 and 14.5% of the variance. Therefore, the findings indicate that COMT mainly influences more general executive control functions in the PFC supporting the speed of lexical decisions.

The modulatory influence of the functional COMT Val158Met polymorphism on lexical decisions and semantic priming

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Martin Reuter

2009-08-01

Full Text Available The role of the prefrontal Cortex (PFC in higher cognitive functions - including working memory, conflict resolution, set shifting and semantic processing - has been demonstrated unequivocally. Despite the great heterogeneity among tasks measuring these phenotypes, due in part to the different cognitive sub-processes implied and the specificity of the stimulus material used, there is agreement that all of these tasks recruit an executive control system located in the PFC. On a biochemical level it is known that the dopaminergic system plays an important role in executive control functions. Evidence comes from molecular genetics relating the functional COMT Val158Met polymorphism to working memory and set shifting. In order determine whether this pattern of findings generalises to linguistic and semantic processing, we investigated the effects of the COMT Val158Met polymorphism in lexical decision making using masked and unmasked versions of the semantic priming paradigm on N=104 healthy subjects. Although we observed strong priming effects in all conditions (masked priming, unmasked priming with short/long stimulus asynchronies (SOAs, direct and indirect priming, COMT was not significantly related to masked priming, suggesting no reliable influence on semantic processing. However, COMT Val158Met was strongly associated with lexical decision latencies in all priming conditions if considered separately, explaining between 9 to 14.5 % of the variance. Therefore, the findings indicate that COMT mainly influences more general executive control functions in the PFC supporting the speed of lexical decisions.

Does a Working Memory Load Really Influence Semantic Priming? A Self-replication Attempt

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Tom Heyman

2017-08-01

Full Text Available The present paper describes two attempts to replicate a recent study of ours in the semantic priming domain (Heyman, Van Rensbergen, Storms, Hutchison, & De Deyne, 2015. In that study, we observed that semantic priming for forward associates (e.g., 'panda-bear' completely evaporated when participants’ working memory was taxed, whereas backward (e.g., 'baby-stork' and symmetric associates (e.g., 'cat-dog' showed no ill-effects of a secondary task. This was the case for relatively long and short stimulus onset asynchronies (i.e., 1,200 ms and 200 ms, respectively. The results thus suggested that prospective target activation is, contrary to what some theories of semantic memory posit, not an automatic process. However, the two replication studies reported here cast serious doubt on this conclusion. A Bayesian analysis of all the available data indicated that there is at least substantial evidence for a priming effect in every condition, except for forward associates in the short SOA condition. The null hypothesis is still supported in the latter condition, though the replication studies weakened the evidence for a null effect. The theoretical implications of these findings are discussed.

Semantic and translation priming from a first language to a second and back: Making sense of the findings.

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Schoonbaert, Sofie; Duyck, Wouter; Brysbaert, Marc; Hartsuiker, Robert J

2009-07-01

The present study investigated cross-language priming effects with unique noncognate translation pairs. Unbalanced Dutch (first language [L1])-English (second language [L2]) bilinguals performed a lexical decision task in a masked priming paradigm. The results of two experiments showed significant translation priming from L1 to L2 (meisje-girl) and from L2 to L1 (girl-meisje), using two different stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) (250 and 100 msec). Although translation priming from L1 to L2 was significantly stronger than priming from L2 to L1, the latter was significant as well. Two further experiments with the same word targets showed significant cross-language semantic priming in both directions (jongen [boy]-girl; boy-meisje [girl]) and for both SOAs. These data suggest that L1 and L2 are represented by means of a similar lexico-semantic architecture in which L2 words are also able to rapidly activate semantic information, although to a lesser extent than L1 words are able to. This is consistent with models assuming quantitative rather than qualitative differences between L1 and L2 representations.

Word encoding during sleep is suggested by correlations between word-evoked up-states and post-sleep semantic priming

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Simon eRuch

2014-11-01

Full Text Available To test whether humans can encode words during sleep we played everyday words to men while they were napping and assessed priming from sleep-played words following waking. Words were presented during non-rapid eye movement (NREM sleep. Priming was assessed using a semantic and a perceptual priming test. These tests measured differences in the processing of words that had been or had not been played during sleep. Synonyms to sleep-played words were the targets in the semantic priming test that tapped the meaning of sleep-played words. All men responded to sleep-played words by producing up-states in their electroencephalogram. Up-states are NREM sleep-specific phases of briefly increased neuronal excitability. The word-evoked up-states might have promoted word processing during sleep. Yet, the mean performance in the priming tests administered following sleep was at chance level, which suggests that participants as a group failed to show priming following sleep. However, performance in the two priming tests was positively correlated to each other and to the magnitude of the word-evoked up-states. Hence, the larger a participant’s word-evoked up-states, the larger his perceptual and semantic priming. Those participants who scored high on all variables must have encoded words during sleep. We conclude that some humans are able to encode words during sleep, but more research is needed to pin down the factors that modulate this ability.

Subliminal semantic priming changes the dynamic causal influence between the left frontal and temporal cortex.

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Matsumoto, Atsushi; Kakigi, Ryusuke

2014-01-01

Recent neuroimaging experiments have revealed that subliminal priming of a target stimulus leads to the reduction of neural activity in specific regions concerned with processing the target. Such findings lead to questions about the degree to which the subliminal priming effect is based only on decreased activity in specific local brain regions, as opposed to the influence of neural mechanisms that regulate communication between brain regions. To address this question, this study recorded EEG during performance of a subliminal semantic priming task. We adopted an information-based approach that used independent component analysis and multivariate autoregressive modeling. Results indicated that subliminal semantic priming caused significant modulation of alpha band activity in the left inferior frontal cortex and modulation of gamma band activity in the left inferior temporal regions. The multivariate autoregressive approach confirmed significant increases in information flow from the inferior frontal cortex to inferior temporal regions in the early time window that was induced by subliminal priming. In the later time window, significant enhancement of bidirectional causal flow between these two regions underlying subliminal priming was observed. Results suggest that unconscious processing of words influences not only local activity of individual brain regions but also the dynamics of neural communication between those regions.

Heterogeneity in semantic priming effect with a lexical decision task in patients after left hemisphere stroke

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Candice Steffen Holderbaum

Full Text Available ABSTRACT Investigations on the semantic priming effect (SPE in patients after left hemisphere (LH lesions have shown disparities that may be explained by the variability in performance found among patients. The aim of the present study was to verify the existence of subgroups of patients after LH stroke by searching for dissociations between performance on the lexical decision task based on the semantic priming paradigm and performance on direct memory, semantic association and language tasks. All 17 patients with LH lesions after stroke (ten non-fluent aphasics and seven non aphasics were analyzed individually. Results indicated the presence of three groups of patients according to SPE: one exhibiting SPE at both stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs, one with SPE only at long SOA, and another, larger group with no SPE.

The role of semantic and phonological factors in word recognition: an ERP cross-modal priming study of derivational morphology.

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Kielar, Aneta; Joanisse, Marc F

2011-01-01

Theories of morphological processing differ on the issue of how lexical and grammatical information are stored and accessed. A key point of contention is whether complex forms are decomposed during recognition (e.g., establish+ment), compared to forms that cannot be analyzed into constituent morphemes (e.g., apartment). In the present study, we examined these issues with respect to English derivational morphology by measuring ERP responses during a cross-modal priming lexical decision task. ERP priming effects for semantically and phonologically transparent derived words (government-govern) were compared to those of semantically opaque derived words (apartment-apart) as well as "quasi-regular" items that represent intermediate cases of morphological transparency (dresser-dress). Additional conditions independently manipulated semantic and phonological relatedness in non-derived words (semantics: couch-sofa; phonology: panel-pan). The degree of N400 ERP priming to morphological forms varied depending on the amount of semantic and phonological overlap between word types, rather than respecting a bivariate distinction between derived and opaque forms. Moreover, these effects could not be accounted for by semantic or phonological relatedness alone. The findings support the theory that morphological relatedness is graded rather than absolute, and depend on the joint contribution of form and meaning overlap. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Semantic priming increases word frequency judgments: Evidence for the role of memory strength in frequency estimation.

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Woltz, Dan J; Gardner, Michael K

2015-09-01

Previous research has demonstrated a systematic, nonlinear relationship between word frequency judgments and values from word frequency norms. This relationship could reflect a perceptual process similar to that found in the psychophysics literature for a variety of sensory phenomena. Alternatively, it could reflect memory strength differences that are expected for words of varying levels of prior exposure. Two experiments tested the memory strength explanation by semantically priming words prior to frequency judgments. Exposure to related word meanings produced a small but measurable increase in target word frequency ratings. Repetition but not semantic priming had a greater impact on low compared to high frequency words. These findings are consistent with a memory strength view of frequency judgments that assumes a distributed network with lexical and semantic levels of representation. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Partial sleep deprivation does not alter processes involved in semantic word priming: event-related potential evidence.

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Tavakoli, Paniz; Muller-Gass, Alexandra; Campbell, Kenneth

2015-03-01

Sleep deprivation has generally been observed to have a detrimental effect on tasks that require sustained attention for successful performance. It might however be possible to counter these effects by altering cognitive strategies. A recent semantic word priming study indicated that subjects used an effortful predictive-expectancy search of semantic memory following normal sleep, but changed to an automatic, effortless strategy following total sleep deprivation. Partial sleep deprivation occurs much more frequently than total sleep deprivation. The present study therefore employed a similar priming task following either 4h of sleep or following normal sleep. The purpose of the study was to determine whether partial sleep deprivation would also lead to a shift in cognitive strategy to compensate for an inability to sustain attention and effortful processing necessary for using the predicative expectancy strategy. Sixteen subjects were presented with word pairs, a prime and a target that were either strongly semantically associated (cat...dog), weakly associated (cow...barn) or not associated (apple...road). The subject's task was to determine if the target word was semantically associated to the prime. A strong priming effect was observed in both conditions. RTs were slower, accuracy lower, and N400 larger to unassociated targets, independent of the amount of sleep. The overall N400 did not differ as a function of sleep. The scalp distribution of the N400 was also similar following both normal sleep and sleep loss. There was thus little evidence of a difference in the processing of the target stimulus as a function of the amount sleep. Similarly, ERPs in the period between the onset of the prime and the subsequent target also did not differ between the normal sleep and sleep loss conditions. In contrast to total sleep deprivation, subjects therefore appeared to use a common predictive expectancy strategy in both conditions. This strategy does however require an

Automatic processing of semantic relations in fMRI: neural activation during semantic priming of taxonomic and thematic categories.

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Sachs, Olga; Weis, Susanne; Zellagui, Nadia; Huber, Walter; Zvyagintsev, Mikhail; Mathiak, Klaus; Kircher, Tilo

2008-07-07

Most current models of knowledge organization are based on hierarchical or taxonomic categories (animals, tools). Another important organizational pattern is thematic categorization, i.e. categories held together by external relations, a unifying scene or event (car and garage). The goal of this study was to compare the neural correlates of these categories under automatic processing conditions that minimize strategic influences. We used fMRI to examine neural correlates of semantic priming for category members with a short stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) of 200 ms as subjects performed a lexical decision task. Four experimental conditions were compared: thematically related words (car-garage); taxonomically related (car-bus); unrelated (car-spoon); non-word trials (car-derf). We found faster reaction times for related than for unrelated prime-target pairs for both thematic and taxonomic categories. However, the size of the thematic priming effect was greater than that of the taxonomic. The imaging data showed signal changes for the taxonomic priming effects in the right precuneus, postcentral gyrus, middle frontal and superior frontal gyri and thematic priming effects in the right middle frontal gyrus and anterior cingulate. The contrast of neural priming effects showed larger signal changes in the right precuneus associated with the taxonomic but not with thematic priming response. We suggest that the greater involvement of precuneus in the processing of taxonomic relations indicates their reduced salience in the knowledge structure compared to more prominent thematic relations.

Development and validation of a set of German stimulus- and target words for an attachment related semantic priming paradigm.

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Anke Maatz

Full Text Available Experimental research in adult attachment theory is faced with the challenge to adequately activate the adult attachment system. In view of the multitude of methods employed for this purpose so far, this paper suggests to further make use of the methodological advantages of semantic priming. In order to enable the use of such a paradigm in a German speaking context, a set of German words belonging to the semantic categories 'interpersonal closeness', 'interpersonal distance' and 'neutral' were identified and their semantics were validated combining production- and rating method. 164 university students answered corresponding online-questionnaires. Ratings were analysed using analysis of variance (ANOVA and cluster analysis from which three clearly distinct groups emerged. Beyond providing validated stimulus- and target words which can be used to activate the adult attachment system in a semantic priming paradigm, the results of this study point at important links between attachment and stress which call for further investigation in the future.

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

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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

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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.

Mechanisms of masked evaluative priming: task sets modulate behavioral and electrophysiological priming for picture and words differentially.

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Kiefer, Markus; Liegel, Nathalie; Zovko, Monika; Wentura, Dirk

2017-04-01

Research with the evaluative priming paradigm has shown that affective evaluation processes reliably influence cognition and behavior, even when triggered outside awareness. However, the precise mechanisms underlying such subliminal evaluative priming effects, response activation vs semantic processing, are matter of a debate. In this study, we determined the relative contribution of semantic processing and response activation to masked evaluative priming with pictures and words. To this end, we investigated the modulation of masked pictorial vs verbal priming by previously activated perceptual vs semantic task sets and assessed the electrophysiological correlates of priming using event-related potential (ERP) recordings. Behavioral and electrophysiological effects showed a differential modulation of pictorial and verbal subliminal priming by previously activated task sets: Pictorial priming was only observed during the perceptual but not during the semantic task set. Verbal priming, in contrast, was found when either task set was activated. Furthermore, only verbal priming was associated with a modulation of the N400 ERP component, an index of semantic processing, whereas a priming-related modulation of earlier ERPs, indexing visuo-motor S-R activation, was found for both picture and words. The results thus demonstrate that different neuro-cognitive processes contribute to unconscious evaluative priming depending on the stimulus format. © The Author (2016). Published by Oxford University Press. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Dissociation between the activity of the right middle frontal gyrus and the middle temporal gyrus in processing semantic priming.

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Laufer, Ilan; Negishi, Michiro; Lacadie, Cheryl M; Papademetris, Xenophon; Constable, R Todd

2011-01-01

The aim of this event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study was to test whether the right middle frontal gyrus (MFG) and middle temporal gyrus (MTG) would show differential sensitivity to the effect of prime-target association strength on repetition priming. In the experimental condition (RP), the target occurred after repetitive presentation of the prime within an oddball design. In the control condition (CTR), the target followed a single presentation of the prime with equal probability of the target as in RP. To manipulate semantic overlap between the prime and the target both conditions (RP and CTR) employed either the onomatopoeia "oink" as the prime and the referent "pig" as the target (OP) or vice-versa (PO) since semantic overlap was previously shown to be greater in OP. The results showed that the left MTG was sensitive to release of adaptation while both the right MTG and MFG were sensitive to sequence regularity extraction and its verification. However, dissociated activity between OP and PO was revealed in RP only in the right MFG. Specifically, target "pig" (OP) and the physically equivalent target in CTR elicited comparable deactivations whereas target "oink" (PO) elicited less inhibited response in RP than in CTR. This interaction in the right MFG was explained by integrating these effects into a competition model between perceptual and conceptual effects in priming processing.

Dissociation between the activity of the right middle frontal gyrus and the middle temporal gyrus in processing semantic priming.

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Ilan Laufer

Full Text Available The aim of this event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI study was to test whether the right middle frontal gyrus (MFG and middle temporal gyrus (MTG would show differential sensitivity to the effect of prime-target association strength on repetition priming. In the experimental condition (RP, the target occurred after repetitive presentation of the prime within an oddball design. In the control condition (CTR, the target followed a single presentation of the prime with equal probability of the target as in RP. To manipulate semantic overlap between the prime and the target both conditions (RP and CTR employed either the onomatopoeia "oink" as the prime and the referent "pig" as the target (OP or vice-versa (PO since semantic overlap was previously shown to be greater in OP. The results showed that the left MTG was sensitive to release of adaptation while both the right MTG and MFG were sensitive to sequence regularity extraction and its verification. However, dissociated activity between OP and PO was revealed in RP only in the right MFG. Specifically, target "pig" (OP and the physically equivalent target in CTR elicited comparable deactivations whereas target "oink" (PO elicited less inhibited response in RP than in CTR. This interaction in the right MFG was explained by integrating these effects into a competition model between perceptual and conceptual effects in priming processing.

Repetition Priming Magnitude Depends on Affirmative Prime Responses: A Test of Two Congruity Explanations.

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Fiet, Paula; Sorensen, Linda; Mayne, Zachary; Corgiat, Damon; Woltz, Dan

2016-01-01

We conducted 2 experiments to evaluate the impact of positive prime responses on repetition priming effects while decoupling this impact from content congruity and specific evaluation operations. Our first experiment consisted of word-meaning comparison trials that required participants to evaluate synonyms or antonyms. A crossing of evaluation operation with semantic content allowed us to test the goal-content congruity hypothesis against the semantic congruity explanation for greater facilitation from positive response primes. Results suggested that operation-based priming is affected by goal-content congruity. A second experiment tested the observed effect of positive responses on repetition priming using mental rotation of irregular shapes, affording a test of the impact of congruity in evaluation goals and content in a nonverbal stimulus domain. Both experiments produced a pattern of results inconsistent with Schulman's (1974) semantic congruity account and instead implicated a different form of congruity that affects memory for prior operations rather than memory for semantic and episodic content.

Tracking lexical consolidation with ERPs: Lexical and semantic-priming effects on N400 and LPC responses to newly-learned words.

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Bakker, Iske; Takashima, Atsuko; van Hell, Janet G; Janzen, Gabriele; McQueen, James M

2015-12-01

Novel words can be recalled immediately and after little exposure, but require a post-learning consolidation period to show word-like behaviour such as lexical competition. This pattern is thought to reflect a qualitative shift from episodic to lexical representations. However, several studies have reported immediate effects of meaningful novel words on semantic processing, suggesting that integration of novel word meanings may not require consolidation. The current study synthesises and extends these findings by showing a dissociation between lexical and semantic effects on the electrophysiological (N400, LPC) response to novel words. The difference in N400 amplitude between novel and existing words (a lexical effect) decreased significantly after a 24-h consolidation period, providing novel support for the hypothesis that offline consolidation aids lexicalisation. In contrast, novel words preceded by semantically related primes elicited a more positive LPC response (a semantic-priming effect) both before and after consolidation, indicating that certain semantic effects can be observed even when words have not been fully lexicalised. We propose that novel meanings immediately start to contribute to semantic processing, but that the underlying neural processes may shift from strategic to more automatic with consolidation. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Space-Valence Priming with Subliminal and Supraliminal Words

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Ulrich eAnsorge

2013-02-01

Full Text Available To date it is unclear whether (1 awareness-independent non-evaluative semantic processes influence affective semantics and whether (2 awareness-independent affective semantics influence non-evaluative semantic processing. In the current study, we investigated these questions with the help of subliminal (masked primes and visible targets in a space-valence across-category congruence effect. In line with (1, we found that subliminal space prime words influenced valence classification of supraliminal target words (Experiment 1: Classifications were faster with a congruent prime (e.g., the prime ‘up’ before the target ‘happy’ than with an incongruent prime (e.g., the prime ‘up’ before the target ‘sad’. In contrast to (2, no influence of subliminal valence primes on the classification of supraliminal space targets into up- and down-words was found (Experiment 2. Control conditions showed that standard masked response-priming effects were found with both subliminal prime types, and that an across-category congruence effect was also found with supraliminal valence primes and spatial target words. The final Experiment 3 confirmed that the across-category congruence effect indeed reflected priming of target categorization of a relevant meaning category. Together, the data jointly confirmed prediction (1 that awareness-independent non-evaluative semantic priming influences valence judgments.

Getting connected: Both associative and semantic links structure semantic memory for newly learned persons.

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Wiese, Holger; Schweinberger, Stefan R

2015-01-01

The present study examined whether semantic memory for newly learned people is structured by visual co-occurrence, shared semantics, or both. Participants were trained with pairs of simultaneously presented (i.e., co-occurring) preexperimentally unfamiliar faces, which either did or did not share additionally provided semantic information (occupation, place of living, etc.). Semantic information could also be shared between faces that did not co-occur. A subsequent priming experiment revealed faster responses for both co-occurrence/no shared semantics and no co-occurrence/shared semantics conditions, than for an unrelated condition. Strikingly, priming was strongest in the co-occurrence/shared semantics condition, suggesting additive effects of these factors. Additional analysis of event-related brain potentials yielded priming in the N400 component only for combined effects of visual co-occurrence and shared semantics, with more positive amplitudes in this than in the unrelated condition. Overall, these findings suggest that both semantic relatedness and visual co-occurrence are important when novel information is integrated into person-related semantic memory.

Reduced N400 Semantic Priming Effects in Adult Survivors of Paediatric and Adolescent Traumatic Brain Injury

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Knuepffer, C.; Murdoch, B. E.; Lloyd, D.; Lewis, F. M.; Hinchliffe, F. J.

2012-01-01

The immediate and long-term neural correlates of linguistic processing deficits reported following paediatric and adolescent traumatic brain injury (TBI) are poorly understood. Therefore, the current research investigated event-related potentials (ERPs) elicited during a semantic picture-word priming experiment in two groups of highly functioning…

The influence of valence and arousal on reasoning: Affective priming in the semantic verification task

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Orlić Ana

2014-01-01

Full Text Available The aim of the present study was to examine the effects of affective valence and arousal on the reasoning process. Reasoning was measured using a semantic verification task and the influence of valence and arousal was tracked using the affective priming paradigm. Primes were photographs varied on two dimensions - emotional valence (positive, neutral, negative and arousal (high, low. Forty-nine psychology students participated in the experiment. Results showed that reaction time needed for semantic verification was significantly faster for positive-high arousing in comparison to positive-low arousing condition and for neutral high arousing in comparison to neutral-low arousing condition, but there were no significant differences in negative low and high arousing conditions. Also, significant differences were found among all three valences in high arousing conditions and there were no such differences in low arousing conditions. These results reveal the importance of both arousal and valence in the research on the influence of emotions on the reasoning process. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. 179033

The development of object function and manipulation knowledge: evidence from a semantic priming study

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Cynthia Collette

2016-08-01

Full Text Available Object semantics include object function and manipulation knowledge. Function knowledge refers to the goal attainable by using an object (e.g. the function of a key is to open or close a door while manipulation knowledge refers to gestures one has to execute to use an object appropriately (e.g. a key is held between the thumb and the index, inserted into the door lock and then turned.To date, several studies have assessed function and manipulation knowledge in brain lesion patients as well as in healthy adult populations. In patients with left brain damage, a double dissociation between these two types of knowledge has been reported; on the other hand, behavioral studies in healthy adults show that function knowledge is processed faster than manipulation knowledge. Empirical evidence has shown that object interaction in children differs from that in adults, suggesting that the access to function and manipulation knowledge in children might also differ.To investigate the development of object function and manipulation knowledge, 51 typically developing 8-9-10 year-old children and 17 healthy young adults were tested on a naming task associated with a semantic priming paradigm (190-ms SOA; prime duration: 90 ms in which a series of line drawings of manipulable objects were used. Target objects could be preceded by three priming contexts: related (e.g. knife-scissors for function; key-screwdriver for manipulation, unrelated but visually similar (e.g. glasses-scissors; baseball bat-screwdriver, and purely unrelated (e.g. die-scissors; tissue-screwdriver.Results showed a different developmental pattern of function and manipulation priming effects. Function priming effects were not present in children and emerged only in adults, with faster naming responses for targets preceded by objects sharing the same function. In contrast, manipulation priming effects were already present in 8-year-olds with faster naming responses for targets preceded by objects

Development of lexical-semantic language system: N400 priming effect for spoken words in 18- and 24-month old children.

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Rämä, Pia; Sirri, Louah; Serres, Josette

2013-04-01

Our aim was to investigate whether developing language system, as measured by a priming task for spoken words, is organized by semantic categories. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded during a priming task for spoken words in 18- and 24-month-old monolingual French learning children. Spoken word pairs were either semantically related (e.g., train-bike) or unrelated (e.g., chicken-bike). The results showed that the N400-like priming effect occurred in 24-month-olds over the right parietal-occipital recording sites. In 18-month-olds the effect was observed similarly to 24-month-olds only in those children with higher word production ability. The results suggest that words are categorically organized in the mental lexicon of children at the age of 2 years and even earlier in children with a high vocabulary. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Impacts of religious semantic priming on an intertemporal discounting task: Response time effects and neural correlates.

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Morgan, Jonathan; Clark, Dustin; Tripodis, Yorghos; Halloran, Christopher S; Minsky, April; Wildman, Wesley J; Durso, Raymon; McNamara, Patrick

2016-08-01

The purpose of this study is to test the hypothesis that religious primes would influence intertemporal discounting behaviors in neurotypical older adults, but not in participants with Parkinson's disease (PD). Furthermore, we predicted that this priming effect would be related to functional connectivity within neural networks mediating religious cognition, decision-making, reward valuing, and prospection processes. Contrary to past research with young adults, we found a significant positive relationship between religiosity and discounting rates. Religious semantic primes did not reliably shift individual discounting rates. But religious controls did respond more quickly to intertemporal decisions under the religious priming condition than the neutral condition, compared to response time differences among the participants with PD. Differences in response time were significantly associated with functional connectivity between the nucleus accumbens and various regions, including the left anterior cingulate cortex and Brodmann areas 10 and 46 in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. These results suggest that religious primes influence discounting behavior via dopaminergic meso-limbic and right dorsolateral prefrontal supporting cognitive valuation and prospection processes. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Anchors as Semantic Primes in Value Construction: An EEG Study of the Anchoring Effect.

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Qingguo Ma

Full Text Available Previous research regarding anchoring effects has demonstrated that human judgments are often assimilated to irrelevant information. Studies have demonstrated that anchors influence the economic valuation of various products and experiences; however, the cognitive explanations of this effect remain controversial, and its neural mechanisms have rarely been explored. In the current study, we conducted an electroencephalography (EEG experiment to investigate the anchoring effect on willingness to accept (WTA for an aversive hedonic experience and the role of anchors in this judgment heuristic. The behavioral results demonstrated that random numbers affect participants' WTA for listening to pieces of noise. The participants asked for higher pay after comparing their WTA with higher numbers. The EEG results indicated that anchors also influenced the neural underpinnings of the valuation process. Specifically, when a higher anchor number was drawn, larger P2 and late positive potential amplitudes were elicited, reflecting the anticipation of more intensive pain from the subsequent noise. Moreover, higher anchors induced a stronger theta band power increase compared with lower anchors when subjects listened to the noises, indicating that the participants felt more unpleasant during the actual experience of the noise. The levels of unpleasantness during both anticipation and experience were consistent with the semantic information implied by the anchors. Therefore, these data suggest that a semantic priming process underlies the anchoring effect in WTA. This study provides proof for the robustness of the anchoring effect and neural evidence of the semantic priming model. Our findings indicate that activated contextual information, even seemingly irrelevant, can be embedded in the construction of economic value in the brain.

Mechanisms of masked evaluative priming: task sets modulate behavioral and electrophysiological priming for picture and words differentially

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Kiefer, Markus; Liegel, Nathalie; Zovko, Monika; Wentura, Dirk

2016-01-01

Research with the evaluative priming paradigm has shown that affective evaluation processes reliably influence cognition and behavior, even when triggered outside awareness. However, the precise mechanisms underlying such subliminal evaluative priming effects, response activation vs semantic processing, are matter of a debate. In this study, we determined the relative contribution of semantic processing and response activation to masked evaluative priming with pictures and words. To this end,...

The facilitation effect of associative and semantic relatedness in word recognition

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Jakić Milena

2011-01-01

Full Text Available In this study we addressed three issues concerning semantic and associative relatedness between two words and how they prime each other. The first issue is whether there is a priming effect of semantic relatedness over and above the effect of associative relatedness. The second issue is how difference in semantic overlap between two words affects priming. In order to specify the semantic overlap we introduce five relation types that differ in number of common semantic components. Three relation types (synonyms, antonyms and hyponyms represent semantic relatedness while two relation types represent associative relatedness, with negligible or no semantic relatedness. Finally, the third issue addressed in this study is whether there is a symmetric priming effect if we swap the position of prime and target, i.e. whether the direction of relatedness between two words affects priming. In two lexical decision experiments we presented five types of word pairs. In both experiments we obtained stronger facilitation for pairs that were both semantically and associatively related. Closer inspection showed that larger semantic overlap between words is paralleled by greater facilitation effect. The effects did not change when prime and target swap their position, indicating that the observed facilitation effects are symmetrical. This outcome complies with predictions of distributed models of memory.

Age-Related Differences in Face Recognition: Neural Correlates of Repetition and Semantic Priming in Young and Older Adults

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Wiese, Holger; Komes, Jessica; Tüttenberg, Simone; Leidinger, Jana; Schweinberger, Stefan R.

2017-01-01

Difficulties in person recognition are among the common complaints associated with cognitive ageing. The present series of experiments therefore investigated face and person recognition in young and older adults. The authors examined how within-domain and cross-domain repetition as well as semantic priming affect familiar face recognition and…

Priming methods in semantics and pragmatics.

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Maldonado, Mora; Spector, Benjamin; Chemla, Emmanuel

2017-01-01

Structural priming is a powerful method to inform linguistic theories. We argue that this method extends nicely beyond syntax to theories of meaning. Priming, however, should still be seen as only one of the tools available for linguistic data collection. Specifically, because priming can occur at different, potentially conflicting levels, it cannot detect every aspect of linguistic representations.

Semantic processing in deaf and hard-of-hearing children: Large N400 mismatch effects in brain responses, despite poor semantic ability

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Petter Kallioinen

2016-08-01

Full Text Available Difficulties in auditory and phonological processing affect semantic processing in speech comprehension of deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH children. However, little is known about brain responses of semantic processing in this group. We investigated event-related potentials (ERPs in DHH children with cochlear implants (CI and/or hearing aids (HA, and in normally hearing controls (NH. We used a semantic priming task with spoken word primes followed by picture targets. In both DHH children and controls, response differences between matching and mismatching targets revealed a typical N400-effect associated with semantic processing. Children with CI had the largest mismatch response despite poor semantic abilities overall, children with CI also had the largest ERP differentiation between mismatch types, with small effects of within-category mismatches (target from same category as prime and large effects between-category mismatches (were target is from a different category than prime. NH and HA children had similar responses to both mismatch types. While the large and differentiated ERP responses in the CI group were unexpected and should be interpreted with caution, the results could reflect less precision in semantic processing among children with CI, or a stronger reliance on predictive processing.

Superficial Priming in Episodic Recognition

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Dopkins, Stephen; Sargent, Jesse; Ngo, Catherine T.

2010-01-01

We explored the effect of superficial priming in episodic recognition and found it to be different from the effect of semantic priming in episodic recognition. Participants made recognition judgments to pairs of items, with each pair consisting of a prime item and a test item. Correct positive responses to the test item were impeded if the prime…

The impact of semantic impairment on word stem completion in Alzheimer's disease.

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Beauregard, M; Chertkow, H; Gold, D; Bergman, S

2001-01-01

Both the extent of semantic memory impairment and the level of processing attained during encoding might constitute critical factors in determining the amount of word-stem completion (WSC) priming encountered in Alzheimer's disease (AD) subjects. We investigated the impact of varying encoding level in AD and elderly normal subjects, using a set of stimuli ranked as "intact" or "degraded" in terms of each subject's semantic knowledge on probe questions. For both shallow and deep encoding conditions, overall priming in the two subject groups was equivalent. However, for the deep encoding condition, consisting of a semantic judgment task performed on each target word, the priming effect noted in AD subjects was significantly smaller for semantically degraded items than for semantically intact items. Results indicate that the degree of semantic impairment represents one important variable affecting the amount of WSC priming which results when deep encoding procedures are used at study.

Electrocortical N400 Effects of Semantic Satiation

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Kim Ströberg

2017-12-01

Full Text Available Semantic satiation is characterised by the subjective and temporary loss of meaning after high repetition of a prime word. To study the nature of this effect, previous electroencephalography (EEG research recorded the N400, an ERP component that is sensitive to violations of semantic context. The N400 is characterised by a relative negativity to words that are unrelated vs. related to the semantic context. The semantic satiation hypothesis predicts that the N400 should decrease with high repetition. However, previous findings have been inconsistent. Because of these inconsistent findings and the shortcomings of previous research, we used a modified design that minimises confounding effects from non-semantic processes. We recorded 64-channel EEG and analysed the N400 in a semantic priming task in which the primes were repeated 3 or 30 times. Critically, we separated low and high repetition trials and excluded response trials. Further, we varied the physical features (letter case and format of consecutive primes to minimise confounding effects from perceptual habituation. For centrofrontal electrodes, the N400 was reduced after 30 repetitions (vs. 3 repetitions. Explorative source reconstructions suggested that activity decreased after 30 repetitions in bilateral inferior temporal gyrus, the right posterior section of the superior and middle temporal gyrus, right supramarginal gyrus, bilateral lateral occipital cortex, and bilateral lateral orbitofrontal cortex. These areas overlap broadly with those typically involved in the N400, namely middle temporal gyrus and inferior frontal gyrus. The results support the semantic rather than the perceptual nature of the satiation effect.

Comparing implicit and explicit semantic access of direct and indirect word pairs in schizophrenia to evaluate models of semantic memory.

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Neill, Erica; Rossell, Susan Lee

2013-02-28

Semantic memory deficits in schizophrenia (SZ) are profound, yet there is no research comparing implicit and explicit semantic processing in the same participant sample. In the current study, both implicit and explicit priming are investigated using direct (LION-TIGER) and indirect (LION-STRIPES; where tiger is not displayed) stimuli comparing SZ to healthy controls. Based on a substantive review (Rossell and Stefanovic, 2007) and meta-analysis (Pomarol-Clotet et al., 2008), it was predicted that SZ would be associated with increased indirect priming implicitly. Further, it was predicted that SZ would be associated with abnormal indirect priming explicitly, replicating earlier work (Assaf et al., 2006). No specific hypotheses were made for implicit direct priming due to the heterogeneity of the literature. It was hypothesised that explicit direct priming would be intact based on the structured nature of this task. The pattern of results suggests (1) intact reaction time (RT) and error performance implicitly in the face of abnormal direct priming and (2) impaired RT and error performance explicitly. This pattern confirms general findings regarding implicit/explicit memory impairments in SZ whilst highlighting the unique pattern of performance specific to semantic priming. Finally, priming performance is discussed in relation to thought disorder and length of illness. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Priming analogical reasoning with false memories.

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Howe, Mark L; Garner, Sarah R; Threadgold, Emma; Ball, Linden J

2015-08-01

Like true memories, false memories are capable of priming answers to insight-based problems. Recent research has attempted to extend this paradigm to more advanced problem-solving tasks, including those involving verbal analogical reasoning. However, these experiments are constrained inasmuch as problem solutions could be generated via spreading activation mechanisms (much like false memories themselves) rather than using complex reasoning processes. In three experiments we examined false memory priming of complex analogical reasoning tasks in the absence of simple semantic associations. In Experiment 1, we demonstrated the robustness of false memory priming in analogical reasoning when backward associative strength among the problem terms was eliminated. In Experiments 2a and 2b, we extended these findings by demonstrating priming on newly created homonym analogies that can only be solved by inhibiting semantic associations within the analogy. Overall, the findings of the present experiments provide evidence that the efficacy of false memory priming extends to complex analogical reasoning problems.

Social priming increases nonverbal expressive behaviors in schizophrenia.

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Jonathan Del-Monte

Full Text Available Semantic priming tasks are classically used to influence and implicitly promote target behaviors. Recently, several studies have demonstrated that prosocial semantic priming modulated feelings of social affiliation. The main aim of this study was to determine whether inducing feelings of social affiliation using priming tasks could modulate nonverbal social behaviors in schizophrenia. We used the Scrambled Sentence Task to prime schizophrenia patients according to three priming group conditions: pro-social, non-social or anti-social. Forty-five schizophrenia patients, diagnosed according to DSM-IV-TR, were randomly assigned to one of the three priming groups of 15 participants. We evaluated nonverbal social behaviors using the Motor-Affective subscale of the Motor-Affective-Social-Scale. Results showed that schizophrenia patients with pro-social priming had significantly more nonverbal behaviors than schizophrenia patients with anti-social and non-social priming conditions. Schizophrenia patient behaviors are affected by social priming. Our results have several clinical implications for the rehabilitation of social skills impairments frequently encountered among individuals with schizophrenia.

Unconscious Congruency Priming from Unpracticed Words Is Modulated by Prime-Target Semantic Relatedness

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Ortells, Juan J.; Mari-Beffa, Paloma; Plaza-Ayllon, Vanesa

2013-01-01

Participants performed a 2-choice categorization task on visible word targets that were preceded by novel (unpracticed) prime words. The prime words were presented for 33 ms and followed either immediately (Experiments 1-3) or after a variable delay (Experiments 1 and 4) by a pattern mask. Both subjective and objective measures of prime visibility…

Response-related potentials during semantic priming: the effect of a speeded button response task on ERPs.

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Marijn van Vliet

Full Text Available This study examines the influence of a button response task on the event-related potential (ERP in a semantic priming experiment. Of particular interest is the N400 component. In many semantic priming studies, subjects are asked to respond to a stimulus as fast and accurately as possible by pressing a button. Response time (RT is recorded in parallel with an electroencephalogram (EEG for ERP analysis. In this case, the response occurs in the time window used for ERP analysis and response-related components may overlap with stimulus-locked ones such as the N400. This has led to a recommendation against such a design, although the issue has not been explored in depth. Since studies keep being published that disregard this issue, a more detailed examination of influence of response-related potentials on the ERP is needed. Two experiments were performed in which subjects pressed one of two buttons with their dominant hand in response to word-pairs with varying association strength (AS, indicating a personal judgement of association between the two words. In the first experiment, subjects were instructed to respond as fast and accurately as possible. In the second experiment, subjects delayed their button response to enforce a one second interval between the onset of the target word and the button response. Results show that in the first experiment a P3 component and motor-related potentials (MRPs overlap with the N400 component, which can cause a misinterpretation of the latter. In order to study the N400 component, the button response should be delayed to avoid contamination of the ERP with response-related components.

When Wine and Apple Both Help the Production of Grapes: ERP Evidence for Post-lexical Semantic Facilitation in Picture Naming.

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Python, Grégoire; Fargier, Raphaël; Laganaro, Marina

2018-01-01

Background : Producing a word in referential naming requires to select the right word in our mental lexicon among co-activated semantically related words. The mechanisms underlying semantic context effects during speech planning are still controversial, particularly for semantic facilitation which investigation remains under-represented in contrast to the plethora of studies dealing with interference. Our aim is to study the time-course of semantic facilitation in picture naming, using a picture-word "interference" paradigm and event-related potentials (ERPs). Methods : We compared two different types of semantic relationships, associative and categorical, in a single word priming and a double word priming paradigm. The primes were presented visually with a long negative Stimulus Onset Asynchrony (SOA), which is expected to cause facilitation. Results : Shorter naming latencies were observed after both associative and categorical primes, as compared to unrelated primes, and even shorter latencies after two primes. Electrophysiological results showed relatively late modulations of waveform amplitudes for both types of primes (beginning ~330 ms post picture onset with a single prime and ~275 ms post picture onset with two primes), corresponding to a shift in latency of similar topographic maps across conditions. Conclusion : The present results are in favor of a post-lexical locus of semantic facilitation for associative and categorical priming in picture naming and confirm that semantic facilitation is as relevant as semantic interference to inform on word production. The post-lexical locus argued here might be related to self-monitoting or/and to modulations at the level of word-form planning, without excluding the participation of strategic processes.

Abnormal N400 Semantic Priming Effect May Reflect Psychopathological Processes in Schizophrenia: A Twin Study

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Anuradha Sharma

2017-01-01

Full Text Available Objective. Activation of semantic networks is indexed by the N400 effect. We used a twin study design to investigate whether N400 effect abnormalities reflect genetic/trait liability or are related to psychopathological processes in schizophrenia. Methods. We employed robust linear regression to compare N400 and behavioral priming effects across 36 monozygotic twin pairs (6 pairs concordant for schizophrenia/schizoaffective disorder, 11 discordant pairs, and 19 healthy control pairs performing a lexical decision task. Moreover, we examined the correlation between Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS score and the N400 effect and the influence of medication status on this effect. Results. Regression yielded a significant main effect of group on the N400 effect only in the direct priming condition (p=0.003. Indirect condition and behavioral priming effect showed no significant effect of group. Planned contrasts with the control group as a reference group revealed that affected concordant twins had significantly reduced N400 effect compared to controls, and discordant affected twins had a statistical trend for reduced N400 effect compared to controls. The unaffected twins did not differ significantly from the controls. There was a trend for correlation between reduced N400 effect and higher BPRS scores, and the N400 effect did not differ significantly between medicated and unmedicated patients. Conclusions. Reduced N400 effect may reflect disease-specific processes in schizophrenia implicating frontotemporal brain network in schizophrenia pathology.

Smelly primes – when olfactory primes do or do not work

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Monique A Smeets

2014-02-01

Full Text Available In applied olfactory cognition the effects that olfactory stimulation can have on (human behavior are investigated. To enable an efficient application of olfactory stimuli a model of how they may lead to a change in behavior is proposed. To this end we use the concept of olfactory priming. Olfactory priming may prompt a special view on priming as the olfactory sense has some unique properties which make odors special types of primes. Examples of such properties are the ability of odors to influence our behavior outside of awareness, to lead to strong affective evaluations, to evoke specific memories, and to associate easily and quickly to other environmental stimuli. Opportunities and limitations for using odors as primes are related to these properties, and alternative explanations for reported findings are offered. Implications for olfactory semantic, construal, behavior and goal priming are given based on a brief overview of the priming literature from social psychology and from olfactory perception science. We end by formulating recommendations and ideas for a future research agenda and applications for olfactory priming.

Further evidence that similar principles govern recall from episodic and semantic memory: the Canadian prime ministerial serial position function.

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Neath, Ian; Saint-Aubin, Jean

2011-06-01

The serial position function, with its characteristic primacy and recency effects, is one of the most ubiquitous findings in episodic memory tasks. In contrast, there are only two demonstrations of such functions in tasks thought to tap semantic memory. Here, we provide a third demonstration, showing that free recall of the prime ministers of Canada also results in a serial position function. Scale Independent Memory, Perception, and Learning (SIMPLE), a local distinctiveness model of memory that was designed to account for serial position effects in episodic memory, fit the data. According to SIMPLE, serial position functions observed in episodic and semantic memory all reflect the relative distinctiveness principle: items will be well remembered to the extent that they are more distinct than competing items at the time of retrieval. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved).

Accessing world knowledge: evidence from N400 and reaction time priming.

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Chwilla, Dorothee J; Kolk, Herman H J

2005-12-01

How fast are we in accessing world knowledge? In two experiments, we tested for priming for word triplets that described a conceptual script (e.g., DIRECTOR-BRIBE-DISMISSAL) but were not associatively related and did not share a category relationship. Event-related brain potentials were used to track the time course at which script information becomes available. In Experiment 1, in which participants made lexical decisions, we found a facilitation for script-related relative to unrelated triplets, as indicated by (i) a decrease in both reaction time and errors, and (ii) an N400-like priming effect. In Experiment 2, we further explored the locus of script priming by increasing the contribution of meaning integration processes. The participants' task was to indicate whether the three words presented a plausible scenario. Again, an N400 script priming effect was obtained. Directing attention to script relations was effective in enhancing the N400 effect. The time course of the N400 effect was similar to that of the standard N400 effect to semantic relations. The present results show that script priming can be obtained in the visual modality, and that script information is immediately accessed and integrated with context. This supports the view that script information forms a central aspect of word meaning. The RT and N400 script priming effects reported in this article are problematic for most current semantic priming models, like spreading activation models, expectancy models, and task-specific semantic matching/integration models. They support a view in which there is no clear cutoff point between semantic knowledge and world knowledge.

The pros and cons of masked priming.

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Forster, K I

1998-03-01

Masked priming paradigms offer the promise of tapping automatic, strategy-free lexical processing, as evidenced by the lack of expectancy disconfirmation effects, and proportionality effects in semantic priming experiments. But several recent findings suggest the effects may be prelexical. These findings concern nonword priming effects in lexical decision and naming, the effects of mixed-case presentation on nonword priming, and the dependence of priming on the nature of the distractors in lexical decision, suggesting possible strategy effects. The theory underlying each of these effects is discussed, and alternative explanations are developed that do not preclude a lexical basis for masked priming effects.

Category Priming in the Lexical Decision Task and Evidence of Repetition Effects.

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Sanza, James

Semantic priming is the process by which a subject performing a lexical decision task is prepared for a target word through the presentation of a semantically related word. Repetition of a given word at specific intervals is one form of priming that has been shown to reduce subject reaction time in word recognition tasks. A study was conducted to…

Grammatical markers switch roles and elicit different electrophysiological responses under shallow and deep semantic requirements.

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Soshi, Takahiro; Nakajima, Heizo; Hagiwara, Hiroko

2016-10-01

Static knowledge about the grammar of a natural language is represented in the cortico-subcortical system. However, the differences in dynamic verbal processing under different cognitive conditions are unclear. To clarify this, we conducted an electrophysiological experiment involving a semantic priming paradigm in which semantically congruent or incongruent word sequences (prime nouns-target verbs) were randomly presented. We examined the event-related brain potentials that occurred in response to congruent and incongruent target words that were preceded by primes with or without grammatical case markers. The two participant groups performed either the shallow (lexical judgment) or deep (direct semantic judgment) semantic tasks. We hypothesized that, irrespective of the case markers, the congruent targets would reduce centro-posterior N400 activities under the deep semantic condition, which induces selective attention to the semantic relatedness of content words. However, the same congruent targets with correct case markers would reduce lateralized negativity under the shallow semantic condition because grammatical case markers are related to automatic structural integration under semantically unattended conditions. We observed that congruent targets (e.g., 'open') that were preceded by primes with congruent case markers (e.g., 'shutter-object case') reduced lateralized negativity under the shallow semantic condition. In contrast, congruent targets, irrespective of case markers, consistently yielded N400 reductions under the deep semantic condition. To summarize, human neural verbal processing differed in response to the same grammatical markers in the same verbal expressions under semantically attended or unattended conditions.

Phonological Priming and Cohort Effects in Toddlers

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Mani, Nivedita; Plunkett, Kim

2011-01-01

Adult word recognition is influenced by prior exposure to phonologically or semantically related words ("cup" primes "cat" or "plate") compared to unrelated words ("door"), suggesting that words are organised in the adult lexicon based on their phonological and semantic properties and that word recognition implicates not just the heard word, but…

Automaticity Revisited: When Print Doesn't Activate Semantics

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Elsa Magdalena Labuschagne

2015-02-01

Full Text Available It is widely accepted that the presentation of a printed word automatically triggers processing that ends with full semantic activation. This processing, among other characteristics, is held to occur without intention, and cannot be stopped. The results of the present experiment show that this account is problematic in the context of a variant of the Stroop paradigm. Subjects named the print color of words that were either neutral or semantically related to color. When the letters were all colored, all spatially cued, and the spaces between letters were filled with characters from the top of the keyboard (i.e., 4, #, 5, %, 6, and *, color naming yielded a semantically based Stroop effect and a semantically based negative priming effect. In contrast, the same items yielded neither a semantic Stroop effect nor a negative priming effect when a single target letter was uniquely colored and spatially cued. These findings undermine the widespread view that lexical-semantic activation in word reading is automatic in the sense that it occurs without intention and cannot be derailed.

Semantic processing of unattended parafoveal words.

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Di Pace, E; Longoni, A M; Zoccolotti, P

1991-08-01

The influence that a context word presented either foveally or parafoveally, may exert on the processing of a subsequent target word was studied in a semantic decision task. Fourteen subjects participated in the experiment. They were presented with word-nonword pairs (prime). One member of the pair (which the subjects had to attend to) appeared centrally, the other parafoveally. The prime was followed by a target at two inter-stimulus intervals (ISI; 200 and 2000 msec). The word stimulus of the pair could be semantically related or unrelated to the target. The subjects' task was to classify the target as animal or not animal by pressing one of two buttons as quickly as possible. When the target word was semantically associated with the foveal (attended) word the reaction times were faster for both ISIs; when it was associated with the parafoveal (unattended) word in the prime pair, there were facilitatory effects only in the short ISI condition. A second experiment was run in order to evaluate the possibility that the obtained results were due to identification of the parafoveal stimulus. The same prime-target pairs of experiment 1 (without the target stimuli) were used. The prime-target pairs were presented to fourteen subjects who were requested to name the foveal (attended) stimulus and subsequently, if possible, the parafoveal (unattended) one. Even in this condition, percentage of identification of the unattended word was only 15%, suggesting that previous findings were not due to identification of unattended stimuli. Results are discussed in relation to Posner and Snyder's (1975) dual coding theory.

An RT distribution analysis of relatedness proportion effects in lexical decision and semantic categorization reveals different mechanisms.

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de Wit, Bianca; Kinoshita, Sachiko

2015-01-01

The magnitude of the semantic priming effect is known to increase as the proportion of related prime-target pairs in an experiment increases. This relatedness proportion (RP) effect was studied in a lexical decision task at a short prime-target stimulus onset asynchrony (240 ms), which is widely assumed to preclude strategic prospective usage of the prime. The analysis of the reaction time (RT) distribution suggested that the observed RP effect reflected a modulation of a retrospective semantic matching process. The pattern of the RP effect on the RT distribution found here is contrasted to that reported in De Wit and Kinoshita's (2014) semantic categorization study, and it is concluded that the RP effect is driven by different underlying mechanisms in lexical decision and semantic categorization.

Grammatical markers switch roles and elicit different electrophysiological responses under shallow and deep semantic requirements

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Takahiro Soshi

2016-10-01

Full Text Available Static knowledge about the grammar of a natural language is represented in the cortico-subcortical system. However, the differences in dynamic verbal processing under different cognitive conditions are unclear. To clarify this, we conducted an electrophysiological experiment involving a semantic priming paradigm in which semantically congruent or incongruent word sequences (prime nouns–target verbs were randomly presented. We examined the event-related brain potentials that occurred in response to congruent and incongruent target words that were preceded by primes with or without grammatical case markers. The two participant groups performed either the shallow (lexical judgment or deep (direct semantic judgment semantic tasks. We hypothesized that, irrespective of the case markers, the congruent targets would reduce centro-posterior N400 activities under the deep semantic condition, which induces selective attention to the semantic relatedness of content words. However, the same congruent targets with correct case markers would reduce lateralized negativity under the shallow semantic condition because grammatical case markers are related to automatic structural integration under semantically unattended conditions. We observed that congruent targets (e.g., ‘open' that were preceded by primes with congruent case markers (e.g., ‘shutter-object case' reduced lateralized negativity under the shallow semantic condition. In contrast, congruent targets, irrespective of case markers, consistently yielded N400 reductions under the deep semantic condition. To summarize, human neural verbal processing differed in response to the same grammatical markers in the same verbal expressions under semantically attended or unattended conditions. Keyword: Neuroscience

ERPs, semantic processing and age.

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Miyamoto, T; Katayama, J; Koyama, T

1998-06-01

ERPs (N400, LPC and CNV) were elicited in two sets of subjects grouped according to age (young vs. elderly) using a word-pair category matching paradigm. Each prime consisted of a Japanese noun (constructed from two to four characters of the Hiragana) followed by one Chinese character (Kanji) as the target, this latter representing one of five semantic categories. There were two equally probable target conditions: match or mismatch. Each target was preceded by a prime, either belonging to, or not belonging to, the same semantic category. The subjects were required to respond with a specified button press to the given target according to the condition. We found RTs to be longer in the elderly subjects and under the mismatch condition. N400 amplitude was reduced in the elderly subjects under the mismatch condition and there was no difference between match and mismatch response, which were similar in amplitude to that under match condition for the young subjects. In addition, the CNV amplitudes were larger in the elderly subjects. These results suggested that functional changes in semantic processing through aging (larger semantic networks and diffuse semantic activation) were the cause of this N400 reduction, attributing a subsidiary role to attentional disturbance. We also discuss the importance of taking age-related changes into consideration in clinical studies.

Semantic congruence enhances memory of episodic associations: role of theta oscillations.

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Atienza, Mercedes; Crespo-Garcia, Maite; Cantero, Jose L

2011-01-01

Growing evidence suggests that theta oscillations play a crucial role in episodic encoding. The present study evaluates whether changes in electroencephalographic theta source dynamics mediate the positive influence of semantic congruence on incidental associative learning. Here we show that memory for episodic associations (face-location) is more accurate when studied under semantically congruent contexts. However, only participants showing RT priming effect in a conceptual priming test (priming group) also gave faster responses when recollecting source information of semantically congruent faces as compared with semantically incongruent faces. This improved episodic retrieval was positively correlated with increases in theta power during the study phase mainly in the bilateral parahippocampal gyrus, left superior temporal gyrus, and left lateral posterior parietal lobe. Reconstructed signals from the estimated sources showed higher theta power for congruent than incongruent faces and also for the priming than the nonpriming group. These results are in agreement with the attention to memory model. Besides directing top-down attention to goal-relevant semantic information during encoding, the dorsal parietal lobe may also be involved in redirecting attention to bottom-up-driven memories thanks to connections between the medial-temporal and the left ventral parietal lobe. The latter function can either facilitate or interfere with encoding of face-location associations depending on whether they are preceded by semantically congruent or incongruent contexts, respectively, because only in the former condition retrieved representations related to the cue and the face are both coherent with the person identity and are both associated with the same location.

Reading "glasses" will prime "vision," but reading a pair of "glasses" will not.

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Neely, J H; VerWys, C A; Kahan, T A

1998-01-01

In a lexical decision task with two primes and a target, the target was preceded 300 msec by the second prime (P2) which in turn was preceded by a brief forward and backward masked first prime (P1). When P1 and P2 were unrelated, reaction times were faster when the target was related to P2 (e.g., wave SALT ... pepper) than when the target was unrelated to P2 (and P1--e.g., wave LOAN ... pepper). However, this semantic priming effect was reduced to statistically nonsignificant levels when P1 and P2 were repetitions of the same word. That is, priming did not occur for salt SALT ... pepper relative to loan LOAN ... pepper. This reduction in priming was observed whether P2 and the target were strongly or weakly related. These findings raise problems for current accounts of semantic priming.

Ways of making-sense: Local gamma synchronization reveals differences between semantic processing induced by music and language.

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Barraza, Paulo; Chavez, Mario; Rodríguez, Eugenio

2016-01-01

Similar to linguistic stimuli, music can also prime the meaning of a subsequent word. However, it is so far unknown what is the brain dynamics underlying the semantic priming effect induced by music, and its relation to language. To elucidate these issues, we compare the brain oscillatory response to visual words that have been semantically primed either by a musical excerpt or by an auditory sentence. We found that semantic violation between music-word pairs triggers a classical ERP N400, and induces a sustained increase of long-distance theta phase synchrony, along with a transient increase of local gamma activity. Similar results were observed after linguistic semantic violation except for gamma activity, which increased after semantic congruence between sentence-word pairs. Our findings indicate that local gamma activity is a neural marker that signals different ways of semantic processing between music and language, revealing the dynamic and self-organized nature of the semantic processing. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Preserved cumulative semantic interference despite amnesia

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Gary Michael Oppenheim

2015-05-01

As predicted by Oppenheim et al’s (2010 implicit incremental learning account, WRP’s BCN RTs demonstrated strong (and significant repetition priming and semantic blocking effects (Figure 1. Similar to typical results from neurally intact undergraduates, WRP took longer to name pictures presented in semantically homogeneous blocks than in heterogeneous blocks, an effect that increased with each cycle. This result challenges accounts that ascribe cumulative semantic interference in this task to explicit memory mechanisms, instead suggesting that the effect has the sort of implicit learning bases that are typically spared in hippocampal amnesia.

Repetition-priming effect: a cognitive task for the definition of a clinical assessment

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Silvia Pagani

2014-04-01

Full Text Available This research aims to study how semantic priming words can influence behavioral measures (RTs, accuracy, to develop an experimental paradigm to differentiate visual neglect and hemianopia. 69 experimental subjects were involved in four experiments. In each experiment target words were preceded by word primes semantically related, neutral or unrelated to the target. The four experiments differed in terms of: number of prime, prime duration and distance between PC monitor and subject. In general, related primes should improve facilitatory effect in target recognition more than unrelated primes, reducing RTs and increasing response accuracy. After repeated ANOVA analysis applied to each experiment and paired comparisons, it is possible to point out that single related primes, shown for 150 ms, greatly improve response behavior in terms of RTs reduction. For future applications to the clinical field, we assume that neglect patients should be facilitated in these specific experimental conditions, due to implicit contralesional prime processing. On the contrary, hemianopics should nowise be facilitated, due to visual field deficit.

The priming of priming: Evidence that the N400 reflects context-dependent post-retrieval word integration in working memory.

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Steinhauer, Karsten; Royle, Phaedra; Drury, John E; Fromont, Lauren A

2017-06-09

Which cognitive processes are reflected by the N400 in ERPs is still controversial. Various recent articles (Lau et al., 2008; Brouwer et al., 2012) have revived the idea that only lexical pre-activation processes (such as automatic spreading activation, ASA) are strongly supported, while post-lexical integrative processes are not. Challenging this view, the present ERP study replicates a behavioral study by McKoon and Ratcliff (1995) who demonstrated that a prime-target pair such as finger - hand shows stronger priming when a majority of other pairs in the list share the analogous semantic relationship (here: part-whole), even at short stimulus onset asynchronies (250ms). We created lists with four different types of semantic relationship (synonyms, part-whole, category-member, and opposites) and compared priming for pairs in a consistent list with those in an inconsistent list as well as unrelated items. Highly significant N400 reductions were found for both relatedness priming (unrelated vs. inconsistent) and relational priming (inconsistent vs. consistent). These data are taken as strong evidence that N400 priming effects are not exclusively carried by ASA-like mechanisms during lexical retrieval but also include post-lexical integration in working memory. We link the present findings to a neurocomputational model for relational reasoning (Knowlton et al., 2012) and to recent discussions of context-dependent conceptual activations (Yee and Thompson-Schill, 2016). Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Mechanisms of subliminal response priming.

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Kiesel, Andrea; Kunde, Wilfried; Hoffmann, Joachim

2008-07-15

Subliminal response priming has been considered to operate on several stages, e.g. perceptual, central or motor stages might be affected. While primes' impact on target perception has been clearly demonstrated, semantic response priming recently has been thrown into doubt (e.g. Klinger, Burton, & Pitts, 2000). Finally, LRP studies have revealed that subliminal primes evoke motor processes. Yet, the premises for such prime-evoked motor activation are not settled. A transfer of priming to stimuli that have never been presented as targets appears particularly interesting because it suggests a level of processing that goes beyond a reactivation of previously acquired S-R links. Yet, such transfer has not always withstood empirical testing. To account for these contradictory results, we proposed a two-process model (Kunde, Kiesel, & Hoffmann, 2003): First, participants build up expectations regarding imperative stimuli for the required responses according to experience and/or instructions. Second, stimuli that match these "action triggers" directly activate the corresponding motor responses irrespective of their conscious identification. In line with these assumptions, recent studies revealed that non-target primes induce priming when they fit the current task intentions and when they are expected in the experimental setting.

Color perception involves color representations firstly at a semantic level and then at a lexical level.

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Heurley, Loïc P; Brouillet, Thibaut; Chesnoy, Gabrielle; Brouillet, Denis

2013-03-01

Studies and models have suggested that color perception first involves access to semantic representations of color. This result leads to two questions: (1) is knowledge able to influence the perception of color when associated with a color? and (2) can the perception of color really involve only semantic representations? We developed an experiment where participants have to discriminate the color of a patch (yellow vs. green). The target patch is preceded either by a black-and-white line drawing or by a word representing a natural object associated with the same or a different color (banana vs. frog). We expected a priming effect for pictures because, with a 350-ms SOA, they only involve access to semantic representations of color, whereas words seem only elicit an access to lexical representations. As expected, we found a priming effect for pictures, but also for words. Moreover, we found a general slowdown of response times in the word-prime-condition suggesting the need of an additional processing step to produce priming. In a second experiment, we manipulated the SOA in order to preclude a semantic access in the word-prime-condition that could explain the additional step of processing. We also found a priming effect, suggesting that interaction with perception occurs at a lexical level and the additional step occurs at a color perception level. In the discussion, we develop a new model of color perception assuming that color perception involves access to semantic representations and then access to lexical representations.

Response-Retrieval in Identity Negative Priming is Modulated by Temporal Discriminability

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Matthias eMittner

2014-06-01

Full Text Available Reaction times to previously ignored information are often delayed, a phenomenon referred to as negative priming (NP. Rothermund, Wentura & De Houwer (2005 proposed that negative priming is caused by the retrieval of incidental stimulus-response associations when consecutive displays share visual features but require different responses. In two experiments we examined whether the features (color, shape that reappear in consecutive displays, or their level of processing (early-perceptual, late-semantic moderate the likelihood that stimulus-response associations are retrieved. Using a perceptual matching task (experiment 1, negative priming occurred independently of whether responses were repeated or switched. Only when implementing a semantic-matching task (experiment 2, negative priming was determined by response-repetition as predicted by response-retrieval theory. The results can be explained in terms of a task-dependent temporal discrimination process (Milliken et al., 1998: Response-relevant features are encoded more strongly and/or are more likely to be retrieved than irrelevant features.

Affective priming effects of musical sounds on the processing of word meaning.

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Steinbeis, Nikolaus; Koelsch, Stefan

2011-03-01

Recent studies have shown that music is capable of conveying semantically meaningful concepts. Several questions have subsequently arisen particularly with regard to the precise mechanisms underlying the communication of musical meaning as well as the role of specific musical features. The present article reports three studies investigating the role of affect expressed by various musical features in priming subsequent word processing at the semantic level. By means of an affective priming paradigm, it was shown that both musically trained and untrained participants evaluated emotional words congruous to the affect expressed by a preceding chord faster than words incongruous to the preceding chord. This behavioral effect was accompanied by an N400, an ERP typically linked with semantic processing, which was specifically modulated by the (mis)match between the prime and the target. This finding was shown for the musical parameter of consonance/dissonance (Experiment 1) and then extended to mode (major/minor) (Experiment 2) and timbre (Experiment 3). Seeing that the N400 is taken to reflect the processing of meaning, the present findings suggest that the emotional expression of single musical features is understood by listeners as such and is probably processed on a level akin to other affective communications (i.e., prosody or vocalizations) because it interferes with subsequent semantic processing. There were no group differences, suggesting that musical expertise does not have an influence on the processing of emotional expression in music and its semantic connotations.

Differential cognitive processing of Kanji and Kana words: do orthographic and semantic codes function in parallel in word matching task.

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Kawakami, A; Hatta, T; Kogure, T

2001-12-01

Relative engagements of the orthographic and semantic codes in Kanji and Hiragana word recognition were investigated. In Exp. 1, subjects judged whether the pairs of Kanji words (prime and target) presented sequentially were physically identical to each other in the word condition. In the sentence condition, subjects decided whether the target word was valid for the prime sentence presented in advance. The results showed that the response times to the target swords orthographically similar (to the prime) were significantly slower than to semantically related target words in the word condition and that this was also the case in the sentence condition. In Exp. 2, subjects judged whether the target word written in Hiragana was physically identical to the prime word in the word condition. In the sentence condition, subjects decided if the target word was valid for the previously presented prime sentence. Analysis indicated that response times to orthographically similar words were slower than to semantically related words in the word condition but not in the sentence condition wherein the response times to the semantically and orthographically similar words were largely the same. Based on these results, differential contributions of orthographic and semantic codes in cognitive processing of Japanese Kanji and Hiragana words was discussed.

Syntactic priming in American Sign Language.

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Hall, Matthew L; Ferreira, Victor S; Mayberry, Rachel I

2015-01-01

Psycholinguistic studies of sign language processing provide valuable opportunities to assess whether language phenomena, which are primarily studied in spoken language, are fundamentally shaped by peripheral biology. For example, we know that when given a choice between two syntactically permissible ways to express the same proposition, speakers tend to choose structures that were recently used, a phenomenon known as syntactic priming. Here, we report two experiments testing syntactic priming of a noun phrase construction in American Sign Language (ASL). Experiment 1 shows that second language (L2) signers with normal hearing exhibit syntactic priming in ASL and that priming is stronger when the head noun is repeated between prime and target (the lexical boost effect). Experiment 2 shows that syntactic priming is equally strong among deaf native L1 signers, deaf late L1 learners, and hearing L2 signers. Experiment 2 also tested for, but did not find evidence of, phonological or semantic boosts to syntactic priming in ASL. These results show that despite the profound differences between spoken and signed languages in terms of how they are produced and perceived, the psychological representation of sentence structure (as assessed by syntactic priming) operates similarly in sign and speech.

Delay-Induced Oscillations in a Competitor-Competitor-Mutualist Lotka-Volterra Model

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Changjin Xu

2017-01-01

Full Text Available This paper deals with a competitor-competitor-mutualist Lotka-Volterra model. A series of sufficient criteria guaranteeing the stability and the occurrence of Hopf bifurcation for the model are obtained. Several concrete formulae determine the properties of bifurcating periodic solutions by applying the normal form theory and the center manifold principle. Computer simulations are given to support the theoretical predictions. At last, biological meaning and a conclusion are presented.

Effects of task structure on category priming in patients with Parkinson's disease and in healthy individuals.

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Brown, Gregory G; Brown, Sandra J; Christenson, Gina; Williams, Rebecca E; Kindermann, Sandra S; Loftis, Christopher; Olsen, Ryan; Siple, Patricia; Shults, Clifford; Gorell, Jay M

2002-05-01

Lexical decision tasks have been used to study both shifts of attention and semantic processing in Parkinson's Disease (PD). Whereas other laboratories have reported normal levels of semantic priming among PD patients, our laboratory has reported abnormally large levels. In this study, two experiments were performed to determine the influence of task structure on the extent of semantic priming during lexical decision-making and pronunciation tasks among PD patients and neurologically healthy controls. In Experiment 1, the effect of Prime Dominance (the ratio of category to neutral trials) on lexical decision-making was studied. Although equal numbers of word and nonword trials were presented, half of the PD patients and controls were studied under Category Prime Dominance (category : neutral prime ratio of 2:1) and half were studied under Neutral Prime Dominance (category : neutral prime ratio of 1:2). In Experiment 2, PD and control participants were studied on lexical decision-making and pronunciation tasks where twice as many words as nonword trials were presented, consistent with other studies from our laboratory. In Experiment 1, we found no group differences in the magnitude of priming and no effect of Prime Dominance. Moreover, the findings were similar in pattern and magnitude to results published by Neely (1977). In Experiment 2, we observed larger priming effects among PD patients than among controls, but only on the lexical decision (LD) task. These results support the hypothesis that abnormally large category-priming effects appear in LD studies of PD patients when the number of word trials exceeds the number of nonword trials. Furthermore, increased lexical priming in PD appears to be due to processes operating during the decision-making period that follows presentation of the lexical target.

Do Danish food companies analyse their competitors?

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Grunert, Klaus G.; Nissen, Lars; Wildenhoff, Lars

1993-01-01

Executive summary: 1. Modern marketing knowledge points out that competitor analysis is equally important as customer analysis for the attainment of sustainable competitive advantage, given the ways in which market environments have changed in the seventies and eighties. 2. A study based...... on interviews with 20 Danish food companies shows that they realise this need and do carry out competitor analysis. However, the collection, storage, and processing of competitor information is largely informal and accidental. It refers to direct competitors only, and it is mostly standard information about...... competitor prices, products, and market shares. 3. Danish food companies use competitor information mostly at the tactical/operational level. This is related to the fact that there is little long-term planning. 4. There is very little knowledge about competitors on export markets. 5. The company...

The frequency attenuation effect in identity and associative priming.

Science.gov (United States)

Nievas, Francisco

2010-05-01

Three lexical decision experiments were carried out, where the masked priming paradigm is used to study the role of the frequency attenuation effect (more priming in low-frequency target words than in high-frequency target words) in repetition and associative priming, manipulating Prime Duration (PD) and Stimulus Onset Asynchrony (SOA). A new concept was introduced, Minimum Time Threshold (MTT), this is, the minimum time interval of exposure to the masked word in order to become aware of it. Results support the notion that MTT is a key to the appearance of the frequency attenuation effect when enough word processing time is allowed. Results do not support the unified explanation of masked priming and long-term priming as proposed by Bodner and Masson (2001). Moreover, information feedback from the semantic level was not the reason for the frequency attenuation effect in repetition priming.

An fMRI study of semantic processing in men with schizophrenia

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Kubicki, M.; McCarley, R.W.; Nestor, P.G.; Huh, T.; Kikinis, R.; Shenton, M.E.; Wible, C.G.

2009-01-01

As a means toward understanding the neural bases of schizophrenic thought disturbance, we examined brain activation patterns in response to semantically and superficially encoded words in patients with schizophrenia. Nine male schizophrenic and 9 male control subjects were tested in a visual levels of processing (LOP) task first outside the magnet and then during the fMRI scanning procedures (using a different set of words). During the experiments visual words were presented under two conditions. Under the deep, semantic encoding condition, subjects made semantic judgments as to whether the words were abstract or concrete. Under the shallow, nonsemantic encoding condition, subjects made perceptual judgments of the font size (uppercase/lowercase) of the presented words. After performance of the behavioral task, a recognition test was used to assess the depth of processing effect, defined as better performance for semantically encoded words than for perceptually encoded words. For the scanned version only, the words for both conditions were repeated in order to assess repetition-priming effects. Reaction times were assessed in both testing scenarios. Both groups showed the expected depth of processing effect for recognition, and control subjects showed the expected increased activation of the left inferior prefrontal cortex (LIPC) under semantic encoding relative to perceptual encoding conditions as well as repetition priming for semantic conditions only. In contrast, schizophrenics showed similar patterns of fMRI activation regardless of condition. Most striking in relation to controls, patients showed decreased LIFC activation concurrent with increased left superior temporal gyrus activation for semantic encoding versus shallow encoding. Furthermore, schizophrenia subjects did not show the repetition priming effect, either behaviorally or as a decrease in LIPC activity. In patients with schizophrenia, LIFC underactivation and left superior temporal gyrus

An fMRI study of semantic processing in men with schizophrenia.

Science.gov (United States)

Kubicki, M; McCarley, R W; Nestor, P G; Huh, T; Kikinis, R; Shenton, M E; Wible, C G

2003-12-01

As a means toward understanding the neural bases of schizophrenic thought disturbance, we examined brain activation patterns in response to semantically and superficially encoded words in patients with schizophrenia. Nine male schizophrenic and 9 male control subjects were tested in a visual levels of processing (LOP) task first outside the magnet and then during the fMRI scanning procedures (using a different set of words). During the experiments visual words were presented under two conditions. Under the deep, semantic encoding condition, subjects made semantic judgments as to whether the words were abstract or concrete. Under the shallow, nonsemantic encoding condition, subjects made perceptual judgments of the font size (uppercase/lowercase) of the presented words. After performance of the behavioral task, a recognition test was used to assess the depth of processing effect, defined as better performance for semantically encoded words than for perceptually encoded words. For the scanned version only, the words for both conditions were repeated in order to assess repetition-priming effects. Reaction times were assessed in both testing scenarios. Both groups showed the expected depth of processing effect for recognition, and control subjects showed the expected increased activation of the left inferior prefrontal cortex (LIPC) under semantic encoding relative to perceptual encoding conditions as well as repetition priming for semantic conditions only. In contrast, schizophrenics showed similar patterns of fMRI activation regardless of condition. Most striking in relation to controls, patients showed decreased LIFC activation concurrent with increased left superior temporal gyrus activation for semantic encoding versus shallow encoding. Furthermore, schizophrenia subjects did not show the repetition priming effect, either behaviorally or as a decrease in LIPC activity. In patients with schizophrenia, LIFC underactivation and left superior temporal gyrus

The semantic network, lexical access, and reading comprehension in monolingual and bilingual children : An individual differences study

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Spätgens, T.; Schoonen, R.

Using a semantic priming experiment, the influence of lexical access and knowledge of semantic relations on reading comprehension was studied in Dutch monolingual and bilingual minority children. Both context-independent semantic relations in the form of category coordinates and context-dependent

Syntactic priming in American Sign Language.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Matthew L Hall

Full Text Available Psycholinguistic studies of sign language processing provide valuable opportunities to assess whether language phenomena, which are primarily studied in spoken language, are fundamentally shaped by peripheral biology. For example, we know that when given a choice between two syntactically permissible ways to express the same proposition, speakers tend to choose structures that were recently used, a phenomenon known as syntactic priming. Here, we report two experiments testing syntactic priming of a noun phrase construction in American Sign Language (ASL. Experiment 1 shows that second language (L2 signers with normal hearing exhibit syntactic priming in ASL and that priming is stronger when the head noun is repeated between prime and target (the lexical boost effect. Experiment 2 shows that syntactic priming is equally strong among deaf native L1 signers, deaf late L1 learners, and hearing L2 signers. Experiment 2 also tested for, but did not find evidence of, phonological or semantic boosts to syntactic priming in ASL. These results show that despite the profound differences between spoken and signed languages in terms of how they are produced and perceived, the psychological representation of sentence structure (as assessed by syntactic priming operates similarly in sign and speech.

Organizing for Customer and Competitor Orientation

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Sørensen, Hans Eibe; Slater, Stanley F.

2007-01-01

The purpose of this study is to investigate the role of structural liaison devices, specialization, the presence of a marketing function, and competitive intensity as antecedents to firms' customer and competitor orientation. Results based on a sample of 99 medium-sized (50-250 employees......) manufacturing firms indicate, that while specialization and liaison devices facilitate customer orientation only liaison devices facilitate competitor orientation. Competitive intensity has no effects on customer orientation but influence competitor orientation. The results also indicate that the presence...... of a marketing function has no influence on the level of firms' customer and competitor orientation....

Rapid modulation of spoken word recognition by visual primes.

Science.gov (United States)

Okano, Kana; Grainger, Jonathan; Holcomb, Phillip J

2016-02-01

In a masked cross-modal priming experiment with ERP recordings, spoken Japanese words were primed with words written in one of the two syllabary scripts of Japanese. An early priming effect, peaking at around 200ms after onset of the spoken word target, was seen in left lateral electrode sites for Katakana primes, and later effects were seen for both Hiragana and Katakana primes on the N400 ERP component. The early effect is thought to reflect the efficiency with which words in Katakana script make contact with sublexical phonological representations involved in spoken language comprehension, due to the particular way this script is used by Japanese readers. This demonstrates fast-acting influences of visual primes on the processing of auditory target words, and suggests that briefly presented visual primes can influence sublexical processing of auditory target words. The later N400 priming effects, on the other hand, most likely reflect cross-modal influences on activity at the level of whole-word phonology and semantics.

Effect of handedness on the occurrence of semantic N400 priming effect in 18- and 24-month-old children

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Jacqueline eFagard

2014-04-01

Full Text Available It is frequently stated that right-handedness reflects hemispheric dominance for language. Indeed, most right-handers process phonological aspects of language with the left hemisphere (and other aspects with the right hemisphere. However, given the overwhelming majority of right-handers and of individuals showing left-hemisphere language dominance, there is a high probability to be right-handed and at the same time process phonology within the left hemisphere even if there was no causal link between both. One way to understand the link between handedness and language lateralization is to observe how they co-develop. In this study, we investigated to what extent handedness is related to the occurrence of a right-hemisphere lateralized N400 event related potential in a semantic priming task in children. The N400 component in a semantic priming task is more negative for unrelated than for related word pairs. We have shown earlier that N400 effect occurred in 24-month-olds over the right parietal-occipital recording sites, whereas no significant effect was obtained over the left hemisphere sites. In 18-month-olds, this effect was observed only in those children with higher word production ability. Since handedness has also been associated with the vocabulary size at these ages, we investigated the relationship between the N400 and handedness in 18- and 24-months as a function of their vocabulary. The results showed that right-handers had significantly higher vocabulary size and more pronounced N400 effect over the right hemisphere than non-lateralized children, but only in the 18-month-old group. We propose that the emergences of right-handedness and right-distributed N400 effect are not causally related, but that both developmental processes reflect a general tendency to recruit the hemispheres in a lateralized manner. The lack of this relationship at 24 months further suggests that there is no direct causal relation between handedness and language

Translation Priming Effect in Spanish-English Bilinguals

Science.gov (United States)

Ramírez Sarmiento, Albeiro Miguel Ángel

2011-01-01

This article aims to establish the effects of masked priming by translation equivalents in Spanish-English bilinguals with a high-intermediate level of proficiency in their second language. Its findings serve as evidence to support the hypothesis that semantic representations mediate the mental association among non-cognates from a speaker's first…

Combining the Post-Cue Task and the Perceptual Identification Task to Assess Parallel Activation and Mutual Facilitation of Related Primes and Targets.

Science.gov (United States)

Scherer, Demian; Wentura, Dirk

2018-03-01

Recent theories assume a mutual facilitation in case of semantic overlap for concepts being activated simultaneously. We provide evidence for this claim using a semantic priming paradigm. To test for mutual facilitation of related concepts, a perceptual identification task was employed, presenting prime-target pairs briefly and masked, with an SOA of 0 ms (i.e., prime and target were presented concurrently, one above the other). Participants were instructed to identify the target. In Experiment 1, a cue defining the target was presented at stimulus onset, whereas in Experiment 2 the cue was not presented before the offset of stimuli. Accordingly, in Experiment 2, a post-cue task was merged with the perceptual identification task. We obtained significant semantic priming effects in both experiments. This result is compatible with the view that two concepts can both be activated in parallel and can mutually facilitate each other if they are related.

A dual task priming investigation of right hemisphere inhibition for people with left hemisphere lesions

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Smith-Conway Erin R

2012-03-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background During normal semantic processing, the left hemisphere (LH is suggested to restrict right hemisphere (RH performance via interhemispheric suppression. However, a lesion in the LH or the use of concurrent tasks to overload the LH's attentional resource balance has been reported to result in RH disinhibition with subsequent improvements in RH performance. The current study examines variations in RH semantic processing in the context of unilateral LH lesions and the manipulation of the interhemispheric processing resource balance, in order to explore the relevance of RH disinhibition to hemispheric contributions to semantic processing following a unilateral LH lesion. Methods RH disinhibition was examined for nine participants with a single LH lesion and 13 matched controls using the dual task paradigm. Hemispheric performance on a divided visual field lexical decision semantic priming task was compared over three verbal memory load conditions, of zero-, two- and six-words. Related stimuli consisted of categorically related, associatively related, and categorically and associatively related prime-target pairs. Response time and accuracy data were recorded and analyzed using linear mixed model analysis, and planned contrasts were performed to compare priming effects in both visual fields, for each of the memory load conditions. Results Control participants exhibited significant bilateral visual field priming for all related conditions (p Conclusions The results from the control group are consistent with suggestions of an age related hemispheric asymmetry reduction and indicate that in healthy aging compensatory bilateral activation may reduce the impact of inhibition. In comparison, the results for the LHD group indicate that following a LH lesion RH semantic processing can be manipulated and enhanced by the introduction of a verbal memory task designed to engage LH resources and allow disinhibition of RH processing.

Semantic distance as a critical factor in icon design for in-car infotainment systems.

Science.gov (United States)

Silvennoinen, Johanna M; Kujala, Tuomo; Jokinen, Jussi P P

2017-11-01

In-car infotainment systems require icons that enable fluent cognitive information processing and safe interaction while driving. An important issue is how to find an optimised set of icons for different functions in terms of semantic distance. In an optimised icon set, every icon needs to be semantically as close as possible to the function it visually represents and semantically as far as possible from the other functions represented concurrently. In three experiments (N = 21 each), semantic distances of 19 icons to four menu functions were studied with preference rankings, verbal protocols, and the primed product comparisons method. The results show that the primed product comparisons method can be efficiently utilised for finding an optimised set of icons for time-critical applications out of a larger set of icons. The findings indicate the benefits of the novel methodological perspective into the icon design for safety-critical contexts in general. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Sensory and semantic activations evoked by action attributes of manipulable objects: Evidence from ERPs

Science.gov (United States)

Lee, Chia-lin; Huang, Hsu-Wen; Federmeier, Kara D.; Buxbaum, Laurel J.

2018-01-01

“Two route” theories of object-related action processing posit different temporal activation profiles of grasp-to-move actions (rapidly evoked based on object structure) versus skilled use actions (more slowly activated based on semantic knowledge). We capitalized on the exquisite temporal resolution and multidimensionality of Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) to directly test this hypothesis. Participants viewed manipulable objects (e.g., calculator) preceded by objects sharing either “grasp”, “use”, or no action attributes (e.g., bar of soap, keyboard, earring, respectively), as well as by action-unrelated but taxonomically-related objects (e.g., abacus); participants judged whether the two objects were related. The results showed more positive responses to “grasp-to-move” primed objects than “skilled use” primed objects or unprimed objects starting in the P1 (0–150 ms) time window and continuing onto the subsequent N1 and P2 components (150–300 ms), suggesting that only “grasp-to-move”, but not “skilled use”, actions may facilitate visual attention to object attributes. Furthermore, reliably reduced N400s (300–500 ms), an index of semantic processing, were observed to taxonomically primed and “skilled use” primed objects relative to unprimed objects, suggesting that “skilled use” action attributes are a component of distributed, multimodal semantic representations of objects. Together, our findings provide evidence supporting two-route theories by demonstrating that “grasp-to-move” and “skilled use” actions impact different aspects of object processing and highlight the relationship of “skilled use” information to other aspects of semantic memory. PMID:29183777

Suggestibility and negative priming: two replication studies.

Science.gov (United States)

David, Daniel; Brown, Richard J

2002-07-01

Research suggests that inhibiting the effect of irrelevant stimuli on subsequent thought and action (cognitive inhibition) may be an important component of suggestibility. Two small correlation studies were conducted to address the relationship between different aspects of suggestibility and individual differences in cognitive inhibition, operationalized as the degree of negative priming generated by to-be-ignored stimuli in a semantic categorization task. The first study found significant positive correlations between negative priming, hypnotic suggestibility, and creative imagination; a significant negative correlation was obtained between negative priming and interrogative suggestibility, demonstrating the discriminant validity of the study results. The second study replicated the correlation between negative priming and hypnotic suggestibility, using a different suggestibility measurement procedure that assessed subjective experience and hypnotic involuntariness as well as objective responses to suggestions. These studies support the notion that the ability to engage in cognitive inhibition may be an important component of hypnotic responsivity and maybe of other forms of suggestibility.

Happiness as a belief system: individual differences and priming in emotion judgments.

Science.gov (United States)

Robinson, Michael D; Kirkeby, Ben S

2005-08-01

Three studies involving 104 undergraduates sought to examine how an individual's level of life satisfaction organizes their knowledge concerning the self's emotions. Participants judged the self's positive and negative emotions within a computerized task. Key results sought to determine whether judging two positive emotions in a consecutive sequence speeds the second judgment--a pattern of priming that would suggest a tighter, more interconnected structure in semantic memory related to one's positive emotions. As expected, individual differences in life satisfaction predicted the magnitude of this priming effect (Studies 1 & 2), which appeared to be unique to judgments of the self's emotions (Study 3). The results indicate that happy, relative to less happy, individuals organize information concerning their positive emotions in a qualitatively different and tighter semantic manner.

Interference of spoken word recognition through phonological priming from visual objects and printed words.

Science.gov (United States)

McQueen, James M; Huettig, Falk

2014-01-01

Three cross-modal priming experiments examined the influence of preexposure to pictures and printed words on the speed of spoken word recognition. Targets for auditory lexical decision were spoken Dutch words and nonwords, presented in isolation (Experiments 1 and 2) or after a short phrase (Experiment 3). Auditory stimuli were preceded by primes, which were pictures (Experiments 1 and 3) or those pictures' printed names (Experiment 2). Prime-target pairs were phonologically onset related (e.g., pijl-pijn, arrow-pain), were from the same semantic category (e.g., pijl-zwaard, arrow-sword), or were unrelated on both dimensions. Phonological interference and semantic facilitation were observed in all experiments. Priming magnitude was similar for pictures and printed words and did not vary with picture viewing time or number of pictures in the display (either one or four). These effects arose even though participants were not explicitly instructed to name the pictures and where strategic naming would interfere with lexical decision making. This suggests that, by default, processing of related pictures and printed words influences how quickly we recognize spoken words.

Syntactic Priming As a Test of Argument Structure: A Self-paced Reading Experiment

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Isabel Oltra-Massuet

2017-08-01

Full Text Available Using data from a behavioral structural priming experiment, we test two competing theoretical approaches to argument structure, which attribute different configurations to (intransitive structures. These approaches make different claims about the relationship between unergatives and transitive structures selecting either a DP complement or a small clause complement in structurally unambiguous sentences, thus making different predictions about priming relations between them. Using statistical tools that combine a factorial 6 × 6 within subjects ANOVA, a mixed effects ANCOVA and a linear mixed effects regression model, we report syntactic priming effects in comprehension, which suggest a stronger predictive contribution of a model that supports an interpretive semantics view of syntax, whereby syntactic structures do not necessarily reflect argument/event structure in semantically unambiguous configurations. They also contribute novel experimental evidence that correlate representational complexity with language processing in the mind and brain. Our study further upholds the validity of combining quantitative methods and theoretical approaches to linguistics for advancing our knowledge of syntactic phenomena.

Spatiotemporal dynamics of word retrieval in speech production revealed by cortical high-frequency band activity.

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Riès, Stephanie K; Dhillon, Rummit K; Clarke, Alex; King-Stephens, David; Laxer, Kenneth D; Weber, Peter B; Kuperman, Rachel A; Auguste, Kurtis I; Brunner, Peter; Schalk, Gerwin; Lin, Jack J; Parvizi, Josef; Crone, Nathan E; Dronkers, Nina F; Knight, Robert T

2017-06-06

Word retrieval is core to language production and relies on complementary processes: the rapid activation of lexical and conceptual representations and word selection, which chooses the correct word among semantically related competitors. Lexical and conceptual activation is measured by semantic priming. In contrast, word selection is indexed by semantic interference and is hampered in semantically homogeneous (HOM) contexts. We examined the spatiotemporal dynamics of these complementary processes in a picture naming task with blocks of semantically heterogeneous (HET) or HOM stimuli. We used electrocorticography data obtained from frontal and temporal cortices, permitting detailed spatiotemporal analysis of word retrieval processes. A semantic interference effect was observed with naming latencies longer in HOM versus HET blocks. Cortical response strength as indexed by high-frequency band (HFB) activity (70-150 Hz) amplitude revealed effects linked to lexical-semantic activation and word selection observed in widespread regions of the cortical mantle. Depending on the subsecond timing and cortical region, HFB indexed semantic interference (i.e., more activity in HOM than HET blocks) or semantic priming effects (i.e., more activity in HET than HOM blocks). These effects overlapped in time and space in the left posterior inferior temporal gyrus and the left prefrontal cortex. The data do not support a modular view of word retrieval in speech production but rather support substantial overlap of lexical-semantic activation and word selection mechanisms in the brain.

Competitors' Perceptions of Questions in Individual Events Rounds.

Science.gov (United States)

Mills, Daniel; Pettus, Ann Burnett

A study investigated student competitors' opinions of the practice of judges asking questions of competitors at the conclusion of speeches in the individual events competiton at forensic tournaments. Surveys were completed by 52 final round student competitors at a large midwestern university individual events invitational tournament. Results…

Semantic encoding and retrieval in the left inferior prefrontal cortex: a functional MRI study of task difficulty and process specificity.

Science.gov (United States)

Demb, J B; Desmond, J E; Wagner, A D; Vaidya, C J; Glover, G H; Gabrieli, J D

1995-09-01

Prefrontal cortical function was examined during semantic encoding and repetition priming using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a noninvasive technique for localizing regional changes in blood oxygenation, a correlate of neural activity. Words studied in a semantic (deep) encoding condition were better remembered than words studied in both easier and more difficult nonsemantic (shallow) encoding conditions, with difficulty indexed by response time. The left inferior prefrontal cortex (LIPC) (Brodmann's areas 45, 46, 47) showed increased activation during semantic encoding relative to nonsemantic encoding regardless of the relative difficulty of the nonsemantic encoding task. Therefore, LIPC activation appears to be related to semantic encoding and not task difficulty. Semantic encoding decisions are performed faster the second time words are presented. This represents semantic repetition priming, a facilitation in semantic processing for previously encoded words that is not dependent on intentional recollection. The same LIPC area activated during semantic encoding showed decreased activation during repeated semantic encoding relative to initial semantic encoding of the same words. This decrease in activation during repeated encoding was process specific; it occurred when words were semantically reprocessed but not when words were nonsemantically reprocessed. The results were apparent in both individual and averaged functional maps. These findings suggest that the LIPC is part of a semantic executive system that contributes to the on-line retrieval of semantic information.

Fuzzy Nonnative Phonolexical Representations Lead to Fuzzy Form-to-Meaning Mappings

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Svetlana V Cook

2016-09-01

Full Text Available The present paper explores nonnative (L2 phonological encoding of lexical entries and dissociates the difficulties associated with L2 phonological and phonolexical encoding by focusing on similarly sounding L2 words that are not differentiated by difficult phonological contrasts. We test two main claims of the fuzzy lexicon hypothesis: (1 L2 fuzzy phonolexical representations are not fully specified and lack details at both phonological and phonolexical levels of representation (Experiment 1; and (2 fuzzy phonolexical representations can lead to establishing incorrect form-to-meaning mappings (Experiment 2.The Russian-English Translation Priming task (Experiment 1, TJT explores how the degree of phonolexical similarity between a word and its lexical competitor affects lexical access of Russian words. Words with smaller phonolexical distance (e.g., parent - parrot show longer reaction times and lower accuracy compared to words with a larger phonolexical distance (e.g., parent – parchment in lower-proficiency nonnative speakers, and, to a lesser degree, higher-proficiency speakers. This points to a lack of detail in nonnative phonolexical representations necessary for efficient lexical access. The Russian Pseudo-Semantic Priming task (Experiment 2, PSP addresses the vulnerability of form-to-meaning mappings as a consequence of fuzzy phonolexical representations in L2. We primed the target with a word semantically related to its phonological competitor, or a potentially confusable word. The findings of Experiment 2 extend the results of Experiment 1 that, unlike native speakers, nonnative speakers do not properly encode phonolexical information. As a result, they are prone to access an incorrect lexical representation of a competitor word, as indicated by a slowdown in the judgments to confusable words.The study provides evidence that fuzzy phonolexical representations result in unfaithful form-to-meaning mappings, which lead to retrieval of

Nutritional strategies of mountain marathon competitors--an observational study.

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Clark, Heather R; Barker, Margo E; Corfe, Bernard M

2005-04-01

Mountain marathons are 2-d, self-supported adventure races, during which competitors must carry all nutritional requirements to sustain athletic effort. This requires a compromise between the energy required to perform and the weight penalty of carrying it. We have undertaken a nutritional survey of event competitors in the UK using a questionnaire-based approach and have monitored dehydration during the event. We found that competitors in longer-distance classes (> 50 km) carry significantly less mass of food, which is more energy dense, but that the calorific value is lower than that of competitors in shorter classes. Carbohydrate and protein consumption both positively associated with performance. Competitors became progressively dehydrated throughout the event. Counterintuitively, the better-performing subjects became the most dehydrated. Competitors at all distances should make more effort to rehydrate during breaks in the event. Competitors at shorter distances could choose more energy-dense foods to reduce weight penalty.

Lexical-Semantic Processing and Reading: Relations between Semantic Priming, Visual Word Recognition and Reading Comprehension

Science.gov (United States)

Nobre, Alexandre de Pontes; de Salles, Jerusa Fumagalli

2016-01-01

The aim of this study was to investigate relations between lexical-semantic processing and two components of reading: visual word recognition and reading comprehension. Sixty-eight children from private schools in Porto Alegre, Brazil, from 7 to 12 years, were evaluated. Reading was assessed with a word/nonword reading task and a reading…

Implicit Phonological and Semantic Processing in Children with Developmental Dyslexia: Evidence from Event-Related Potentials

Science.gov (United States)

Jednorog, K.; Marchewka, A.; Tacikowski, P.; Grabowska, A.

2010-01-01

Dyslexia is characterized by a core phonological deficit, although recent studies indicate that semantic impairment also contributes to this condition. In this study, event-related potentials (ERP) were used to examine whether the N400 wave in dyslexic children is modulated by phonological or semantic priming, similarly to age-matched controls.…

Conceptual and non-conceptual repetition priming in category exemplar generation: Evidence from bilinguals.

Science.gov (United States)

Francis, Wendy S; Fernandez, Norma P; Bjork, Robert A

2010-10-01

One measure of conceptual implicit memory is repetition priming in the generation of exemplars from a semantic category, but does such priming transfer across languages? That is, do the overlapping conceptual representations for translation equivalents provide a sufficient basis for such priming? In Experiment 1 (N=96) participants carried out a deep encoding task, and priming between languages was statistically reliable, but attenuated, relative to within-language priming. Experiment 2 (N=96) replicated the findings of Experiment 1 and assessed the contributions of conceptual and non-conceptual processes using a levels-of-processing manipulation. Words that underwent shallow encoding exhibited within-language, but not between-language, priming. Priming in shallow conditions cannot therefore be explained by incidental activation of the concept. Instead, part of the within-language priming effect, even under deep-encoding conditions, is due to increased availability of language-specific lemmas or phonological word forms.

Priming trait inferences through pictures and moving pictures: the impact of open and closed mindsets.

Science.gov (United States)

Fiedler, Klaus; Schenck, Wolfram; Watling, Marlin; Menges, Jochen I

2005-02-01

A newly developed paradigm for studying spontaneous trait inferences (STI) was applied in 3 experiments. The authors primed dyadic stimulus behaviors involving a subject (S) and an object (O) person through degraded pictures or movies. An encoding task called for the verification of either a graphical feature or a semantic interpretation, which either fit or did not fit the primed behavior. Next, participants had to identify a trait word that appeared gradually behind a mask and that either matched or did not match the primed behavior. STI effects, defined as shorter identification latencies for matching than nonmatching traits, were stronger for S than for O traits, after graphical rather than semantic encoding decisions and after encoding failures. These findings can be explained by assuming that trait inferences are facilitated by open versus closed mindsets supposed to result from distracting (graphical) encoding tasks or encoding failures (involving nonfitting interpretations).

Brand priming effect on consumers’ financial risk taking behavior

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Danielle Mantovani

Full Text Available Abstract Taking the perspective of brand priming theory, this study proposes that brands associated with an audacious personality trait may influence consumers to be take more risks in making subsequent decisions. Two experiments, run in sport brands contexts, showed that individuals exposed to brands with high (vs. low audacity traits demonstrated a higher rate of risk taking in financial decisions. The studies also showed that this effect is moderated by individuals’ experience with the financial market. This moderation suggests that there was an activation of a goal not just semantic activation, but through the brand priming. This research provides insights into how today's consumers deal with brand priming effects in risky choice settings. From a managerial perspective, it can help managers to understand the likely effects of brand priming on behavior and better predict the probability of risk aversion or risk seeking outcomes.

Disturbance of semantic processing in temporal lobe epilepsy demonstrated with scalp ERPs.

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Miyamoto, T; Katayama, J I; Kohsaka, M; Koyama, T

2000-12-01

We investigated event-related potentials (N400, LPC and CNV) elicited in temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) patients and control subjects from scalp electrodes, using a word-pair category matching paradigm. Each prime consisted of a Japanese noun (constructed from 2-4 characters of the Hiragana) followed by a Chinese character (Kanji) as the target, the latter representing one of five semantic categories. There were two equally probable target conditions: match or mismatch. Each target was preceded by a prime, either belonging to, or not belonging to, the same semantic category. The subjects were required to respond with a specified button press to the given target, according to the condition. We found RTs to be longer under the mismatch condition in both subject groups. The N400 amplitude was reduced in TLE subjects under both conditions, although LPC and CNV amplitudes showed no significant differences. These results suggest that scalp N400 is capable of demonstrating disturbance of semantic processing in TLE non-invasively. Copyright 2000 BEA Trading Ltd.

Competitor analysis for Feelback Ltd - A base for strategic decision making

OpenAIRE

Markkanen, Sini

2012-01-01

The aim of this research was to execute a competitor analysis for Feelback Ltd. The analysis focused on finding the company’s current competitors operating in Finland. The commissioner Feelback intended to use the competitor information in strategic decision making, such as planning the company’s operations in the competitive environment. The competitor analysis found 14 competitors which were grouped into direct, indirect and potential competitors. As a conclusion, it can be stated t...

Semantic Priming During Sentence Processing by Young and Older Adults.

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Burke, Deborah M.; Yee, Penny L.

1984-01-01

Compares the semantic processing skills of younger adults (mean age 25) and older adults (mean age 68). After reading a sentence, subjects performed a task in which responses did not depend on retention. Results provided no evidence for age-related changes, including those associated with access to implied information. (Author/RH)

Why competitors matter for market orientation

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Sørensen, Hans Eibe

2009-01-01

  Purpose - This paper investigates whether it is meaningful to decompose market orientation into customer orientation and competitor orientation and what possible implications this decomposition may have for researchers and business practitioners.   Design - Through a review of existing market...... orientation research, two of its salient dimensions, customer orientation and competitor orientation, are theoretically investigated. Then, two symmetric component measures are developed and tested on 308 manufacturing firms in a cross-sectional questionnaire survey, supplemented with census data.   Findings...... - Empirical evidence reveals that, while competitor orientation is positively related to a firm's market share, a customer orientation is detrimental to a firm's return on assets for firms in less competitive environments.   Research implications and limitations - The study advocates moving beyond ‘global...

Why competitors matter for market orientation

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Sørensen, Hans Eibe

2009-01-01

and empirically tests two novel symmetric component measures of customer orientation and competitor orientation. Academicians are provided with insights with respect to the content and symmetry of component measures of the market orientation construct and their relation to firm performance. Furthermore, business......  Purpose - This paper investigates whether it is meaningful to decompose market orientation into customer orientation and competitor orientation and what possible implications this decomposition may have for researchers and business practitioners.   Design - Through a review of existing market...... - Empirical evidence reveals that, while competitor orientation is positively related to a firm's market share, a customer orientation is detrimental to a firm's return on assets for firms in less competitive environments.   Research implications and limitations - The study advocates moving beyond ‘global...

Graded effects of regularity in language revealed by N400 indices of morphological priming.

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Kielar, Aneta; Joanisse, Marc F

2010-07-01

Differential electrophysiological effects for regular and irregular linguistic forms have been used to support the theory that grammatical rules are encoded using a dedicated cognitive mechanism. The alternative hypothesis is that language systematicities are encoded probabilistically in a way that does not categorically distinguish rule-like and irregular forms. In the present study, this matter was investigated more closely by focusing specifically on whether the regular-irregular distinction in English past tenses is categorical or graded. We compared the ERP priming effects of regulars (baked-bake), vowel-change irregulars (sang-sing), and "suffixed" irregulars that display a partial regularity (suffixed irregular verbs, e.g., slept-sleep), as well as forms that are related strictly along formal or semantic dimensions. Participants performed a visual lexical decision task with either visual (Experiment 1) or auditory prime (Experiment 2). Stronger N400 priming effects were observed for regular than vowel-change irregular verbs, whereas suffixed irregulars tended to group with regular verbs. Subsequent analyses decomposed early versus late-going N400 priming, and suggested that differences among forms can be attributed to the orthographic similarity of prime and target. Effects of morphological relatedness were observed in the later-going time period, however, we failed to observe true regular-irregular dissociations in either experiment. The results indicate that morphological effects emerge from the interaction of orthographic, phonological, and semantic overlap between words.

Target Categorization with Primes that Vary in Both Congruency and Sense Modality

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Kathryn eWeatherford

2015-01-01

Full Text Available In two experiments we examined conceptual priming within and across sense modalities by varying the modality (picture and environmental sounds and the category congruency of prime-target pairs. Both experiments used a repetition priming paradigm, but Experiment 1 studied priming effects with a task that required a superordinate categorization response (man-made or natural, while Experiment 2 used a lower-level category response (musical instruments or animal: one that was more closely associated with the basic level of the semantic network. Results from Experiment 1 showed a strong effect of target modality and two distinct patterns of conceptual priming effects with picture and environmental sound targets. However, no priming advantage was found when congruent and incongruent primes were compared. Results from Experiment 2, found congruency effects that were specific to environmental sound targets when preceded by picture primes. The findings provide support for the intermodal event file and multisensory framework, and suggest that auditory and visual features about a single item in a conceptual category may be more tightly connected than two different items from the same category.

When canary primes yellow: effects of semantic memory on overt attention.

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Léger, Laure; Chauvet, Elodie

2015-02-01

This study explored how overt attention is influenced by the colour that is primed when a target word is read during a lexical visual search task. Prior studies have shown that attention can be influenced by conceptual or perceptual overlap between a target word and distractor pictures: attention is attracted to pictures that have the same form (rope--snake) or colour (green--frog) as the spoken target word or is drawn to an object from the same category as the spoken target word (trumpet--piano). The hypothesis for this study was that attention should be attracted to words displayed in the colour that is primed by reading a target word (for example, yellow for canary). An experiment was conducted in which participants' eye movements were recorded whilst they completed a lexical visual search task. The primary finding was that participants' eye movements were mainly directed towards words displayed in the colour primed by reading the target word, even though this colour was not relevant to completing the visual search task. This result is discussed in terms of top-down guidance of overt attention in visual search for words.

Online interpretation of scalar quantifiers: insight into the semantics-pragmatics interface.

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Huang, Yi Ting; Snedeker, Jesse

2009-05-01

Scalar implicature has served as a test case for exploring the relations between semantic and pragmatic processes during language comprehension. Most studies have used reaction time methods and the results have been variable. In these studies, we use the visual-world paradigm to investigate implicature. We recorded participants' eye movements during commands like "Point to the girl that has some of the socks" in the presence of a display in which one girl had two of four socks and another had three of three soccer balls. These utterances contained an initial period of ambiguity in which the semantics of some was compatible with both characters. This ambiguity could be immediately resolved by a pragmatic implicature which would restrict some to a proper subset. Instead in Experiments 1 and 2, we found that participants were substantially delayed, suggesting a lag between semantic and pragmatic processing. In Experiment 3, we examined interpretations of some when competitors were inconsistent with the semantics (girl with socks vs. girl with no socks). We found quick resolution of the target, suggesting that previous delays were specifically linked to pragmatic analysis.

Stress priming in picture naming: an SOA study.

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Schiller, Niels O; Fikkert, Paula; Levelt, Clara C

2004-01-01

This study investigates whether or not the representation of lexical stress information can be primed during speech production. In four experiments, we attempted to prime the stress position of bisyllabic target nouns (picture names) having initial and final stress with auditory prime words having either the same or different stress as the target (e.g., WORtel-MOtor vs. koSTUUM-MOtor; capital letters indicate stressed syllables in prime-target pairs). Furthermore, half of the prime words were semantically related, the other half unrelated. Overall, picture names were not produced faster when the prime word had the same stress as the target than when the prime had different stress, i.e., there was no stress-priming effect in any experiment. This result would not be expected if stress were stored in the lexicon. However, targets with initial stress were responded to faster than final-stress targets. The reason for this effect was neither the quality of the pictures nor frequency of occurrence or voice-key characteristics. We hypothesize here that this stress effect is a genuine encoding effect, i.e., words with stress on the second syllable take longer to be encoded because their stress pattern is irregular with respect to the lexical distribution of bisyllabic stress patterns, even though it can be regular with respect to metrical stress rules in Dutch. The results of the experiments are discussed in the framework of models of phonological encoding.

ERP evidence of distinct processes underlying semantic facilitation and interference in word production.

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Python, Grégoire; Fargier, Raphaël; Laganaro, Marina

2018-02-01

In everyday conversations, we take advantage of lexical-semantic contexts to facilitate speech production, but at the same time, we also have to reduce interference and inhibit semantic competitors. The blocked cyclic naming paradigm (BCNP) has been used to investigate such context effects. Typical results on production latencies showed semantic facilitation (or no effect) during the first presentation cycle, and interference emerging in subsequent cycles. Even if semantic contexts might be just as facilitative as interfering, previous BCNP studies focused on interference, which was interpreted as reflecting lemma selection and self-monitoring processes. Facilitation in the first cycle was rarely considered/analysed, although it potentially informs on word production to the same extent as interference. Here we contrasted the event-related potential (ERP) signatures of both semantic facilitation and interference in a BCNP. ERPs differed between homogeneous and heterogeneous blocks from about 365 msec post picture onset in the first cycle (facilitation) and in an earlier time-window (270 msec post picture onset) in the third cycle (interference). Three different analyses of the ERPs converge towards distinct processes underlying semantic facilitation and interference (post-lexical vs lexical respectively). The loci of semantic facilitation and interference are interpreted in the context of different theoretical frameworks of language production: the post-lexical locus of semantic facilitation involves interactive phonological-semantic processes and/or self-monitoring, whereas the lexical locus of semantic interference is in line with selection through increased lexical competition. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Automatic Priming Effects for New Associations in Lexical Decision and Perceptual Identification

NARCIS (Netherlands)

D. Pecher (Diane); J.G.W. Raaijmakers (Jeroen)

1999-01-01

textabstractInformation storage in semantic memory was investigated by looking at automatic priming effects for new associations in two experiments. In the study phase word pairs were presented in a paired-associate learning task. Lexical decision and perceptual identification were used to examine

Does the presence of priming hinder subsequent recognition or recall performance?

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Stark, Shauna M; Gordon, Barry; Stark, Craig E L

2008-02-01

Declarative and non-declarative memories are thought be supported by two distinct memory systems that are often posited not to interact. However, Wagner, Maril, and Schacter (2000a) reported that at the time priming was assessed, greater behavioural and neural priming was associated with lower levels of subsequent recognition memory, demonstrating an interaction between declarative and non-declarative memory. We examined this finding using a similar paradigm, in which participants made the same or different semantic word judgements following a short or long lag and subsequent memory test. We found a similar overall pattern of results, with greater behavioural priming associated with a decrease in recognition and recall performance. However, neither various within-participant nor various between-participant analyses revealed significant correlations between priming and subsequent memory performance. These data suggest that both lag and task have effects on priming and declarative memory performance, but that they are largely independent and occur in parallel.

Affective priming of emotional pictures in parafoveal vision: left visual field advantage.

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Calvo, Manuel G; Avero, Pedro

2008-03-01

This study investigated whether stimulus affective content can be extracted from visual scenes when these appear in parafoveal locations of the visual field and are foveally masked, and whether there is lateralization involved. Parafoveal prime pleasant or unpleasant scenes were presented for 150 msec 2.5 degrees away from fixation and were followed by a foveal probe scene that was either congruent or incongruent in emotional valence with the prime. Participants responded whether the probe was emotionally positive or negative. Affective priming was demonstrated by shorter response latencies for congruent than for incongruent prime-probe pairs. This effect occurred when the prime was presented in the left visual field at a 300-msec prime-probe stimulus onset asynchrony, even when the prime and the probe were different in physical appearance and semantic category. This result reveals that the affective significance of emotional stimuli can be assessed early through covert attention mechanisms, in the absence of overt eye fixations on the stimuli, and suggests that right-hemisphere dominance is involved.

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

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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.

The effect of priming with a love concept on blood donation promise.

Science.gov (United States)

Charles-Sire, Virginie; Guéguen, Nicolas; Meineri, Sébastien; Martin, Angélique; Bullock, Andrea

2014-02-01

This field study on blood donor behavior tests the effectiveness of semantic priming on donor intention and commitment. Using face-to-face interactions, participants were primed with the concept of love and solicited to promise blood to the French National Blood Bank. Results showed a significant effect on willingness to donate blood and on donor commitment. The relatively simple and easily implemented technique used in this study could be of interest in improving performance of recruitment and retention campaigns. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

[An effect of semantic satiation in conceptual processing].

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Takashi, Shimokido

2007-12-01

This study examined whether semantic satiation effects for a picture exemplar differ from a word exemplar. If massive repetition of the category name leads to an inhibition of conceptual processing, then semantic satiation effects would be found in both the word and picture exemplar conditions. However, if the repetition leads to an inhibition of lexical processing, then effects would be found for the word exemplar but not the picture exemplar. To examine these hypotheses, 48 college students were asked to judge whether a target pair of exemplars belonged to the same named category. The results showed that semantic satiation effects were found equally in both exemplar conditions. Moreover, the picture-superiority effect was intact regardless of the prime repetitions. The possibility was discussed that word and picture exemplars are integrated into an abstract and amodal conceptual unit; hence category judgment was affected by the satiation effect.

Electrophysiological evidence for the action of a center-surround mechanism on semantic processing in the left hemisphere

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Diana eDeacon

2013-12-01

Full Text Available Physiological evidence was sought for a center-surround attentional mechanism (CSM, which has been proposed to assist in the retrieval of weakly activated items from semantic memory. The CSM operates by facilitating strongly related items in the center of the weakly activated area of semantic memory, and inhibiting less strongly related items in its surround. In this study weak activation was created by having subjects acquire the meanings of new words to a recall criterion of only 50%. Subjects who attained this approximate criterion level of performance were subsequently included in a semantic priming task, during which ERPs were recorded. Primes were newly learned rare words, and targets were either synonyms, nonsynonymously related words, or unrelated words. All stimuli were presented to the RVF/LH (right visual field/left hemisphere or the LVF/RH (left visual field/right hemisphere. Under RVF/LH stimulation the newly learned word primes produced facilitation on N400 for synonym targets, and inhibition for related targets. No differences were observed under LVF/RH stimulation. The LH thus, supports a CSM, whereby a synonym in the center of attention focused on the newly learned word is facilitated, whereas a related word in the surround is inhibited. The data are consistent with the view of this laboratory that semantic memory is subserved by a spreading activation system in the LH. Also consistent with our view, there was no evidence of spreading activation in the RH. The findings are discussed in the context of additional recent theories of semantic memory. Finally, the adult right hemisphere may require more learning than the LH in order to demonstrate evidence of meaning acquisition.

Repetition priming of face recognition in a serial choice reaction-time task.

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Roberts, T; Bruce, V

1989-05-01

Marshall & Walker (1987) found that pictorial stimuli yield visual priming that is disrupted by an unpredictable visual event in the response-stimulus interval. They argue that visual stimuli are represented in memory in the form of distinct visual and object codes. Bruce & Young (1986) propose similar pictorial, structural and semantic codes which mediate the recognition of faces, yet repetition priming results obtained with faces as stimuli (Bruce & Valentine, 1985), and with objects (Warren & Morton, 1982) are quite different from those of Marshall & Walker (1987), in the sense that recognition is facilitated by pictures presented 20 minutes earlier. The experiment reported here used different views of familiar and unfamiliar faces as stimuli in a serial choice reaction-time task and found that, with identical pictures, repetition priming survives and intervening item requiring a response, with both familiar and unfamiliar faces. Furthermore, with familiar faces such priming was present even when the view of the prime was different from the target. The theoretical implications of these results are discussed.

Episodic and Semantic Memory Contribute to Familiar and Novel Episodic Future Thinking.

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Wang, Tong; Yue, Tong; Huang, Xi Ting

2016-01-01

Increasing evidence indicates that episodic future thinking (EFT) relies on both episodic and semantic memory; however, event familiarity may importantly affect the extent to which episodic and semantic memory contribute to EFT. To test this possibility, two behavioral experiments were conducted. In Experiment 1, we directly compared the proportion of episodic and semantic memory used in an EFT task. The results indicated that more episodic memory was used when imagining familiar future events compared with novel future events. Conversely, significantly more semantic memory was used when imagining novel events compared with familiar events. Experiment 2 aimed to verify the results of Experiment 1. In Experiment 2, we found that familiarity moderated the effect of priming the episodic memory system on EFT; particularly, it increased the time required to construct a standard familiar episodic future event, but did not significantly affect novel episodic event reaction time. Collectively, these findings support the hypothesis that event familiarity importantly moderates episodic and semantic memory's contribution to EFT.

Actively learning human gaze shifting paths for semantics-aware photo cropping.

Science.gov (United States)

Zhang, Luming; Gao, Yue; Ji, Rongrong; Xia, Yingjie; Dai, Qionghai; Li, Xuelong

2014-05-01

Photo cropping is a widely used tool in printing industry, photography, and cinematography. Conventional cropping models suffer from the following three challenges. First, the deemphasized role of semantic contents that are many times more important than low-level features in photo aesthetics. Second, the absence of a sequential ordering in the existing models. In contrast, humans look at semantically important regions sequentially when viewing a photo. Third, the difficulty of leveraging inputs from multiple users. Experience from multiple users is particularly critical in cropping as photo assessment is quite a subjective task. To address these challenges, this paper proposes semantics-aware photo cropping, which crops a photo by simulating the process of humans sequentially perceiving semantically important regions of a photo. We first project the local features (graphlets in this paper) onto the semantic space, which is constructed based on the category information of the training photos. An efficient learning algorithm is then derived to sequentially select semantically representative graphlets of a photo, and the selecting process can be interpreted by a path, which simulates humans actively perceiving semantics in a photo. Furthermore, we learn a prior distribution of such active graphlet paths from training photos that are marked as aesthetically pleasing by multiple users. The learned priors enforce the corresponding active graphlet path of a test photo to be maximally similar to those from the training photos. Experimental results show that: 1) the active graphlet path accurately predicts human gaze shifting, and thus is more indicative for photo aesthetics than conventional saliency maps and 2) the cropped photos produced by our approach outperform its competitors in both qualitative and quantitative comparisons.

A neural signature of food semantics is associated with body-mass index.

Science.gov (United States)

Pergola, Giulio; Foroni, Francesco; Mengotti, Paola; Argiris, Georgette; Rumiati, Raffaella Ida

2017-10-01

Visual recognition of objects may rely on different features depending on the category to which they belong. Recognizing natural objects, such as fruits and plants, weighs more on their perceptual attributes, whereas recognizing man-made objects, such as tools or vehicles, weighs more upon the functions and actions they enable. Edible objects are perceptually rich but also prepared for specific functions, therefore it is unclear how perceptual and functional attributes affect their recognition. Two event-related potentials experiments investigated: (i) whether food categorization in the brain is differentially modulated by sensory and functional attributes, depending on whether the food is natural or transformed; (ii) whether these processes are modulated by participants' body mass index. In experiment 1, healthy normal-weight participants were presented with a sentence (prime) and a photograph of a food. Primes described either a sensory feature ('It tastes sweet') or a functional feature ('It is suitable for a wedding party') of the food, while photographs depicted either a natural (e.g., cherry) or a transformed food (e.g., pizza). Prime-feature pairs were either congruent or incongruent. This design aimed at modulating N400-like components elicited by semantic processing. In experiment 1, N400-like amplitude was significantly larger for transformed food than for natural food with sensory primes, and vice versa with functional primes. In experiment 2, underweight and obese women performed the same semantic task. We found that, while the N400-like component in obese participants was modulated by sensory-functional primes only for transformed food, the same modulation was found in underweight participants only for natural food. These findings suggest that the level of food transformation interacts with participants' body mass index in modulating food perception and the underlying brain processing. Crown Copyright © 2017. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights

A prime a day keeps calories away: The effects of supraliminal priming on food consumption and the moderating role of gender and eating restraint.

Science.gov (United States)

Minas, Randall K; Poor, Morgan; Dennis, Alan R; Bartelt, Valerie L

2016-10-01

The link between intentions and action in weight control is weaker than previously thought, so recent research has called for further investigation of ways to improve weight control that bypass conscious intentions. Priming has been shown to have effects on individual behavior in a variety of contexts by influencing subconscious cognition. This paper investigates the effects of semantic priming using healthy body image, goal-oriented words on food consumption. The moderating role of both restrained eating and gender is investigated. 161 participants were involved in an experiment using a novel version of a scrambled sentence priming game. The outcome measure was the number of kilocalories consumed, examined using a between subjects ANCOVA with priming, gender, restrained eating index, self-reported BMI, and two interaction terms (primingxgender, and primingxrestrained eating index). There was no main effect of priming but there was an interaction of priming with gender. Females consumed significantly fewer kilocalories after being exposed to priming words related to a healthy body image (i.e. "slim", "fit,") compared to females receiving the neutral prime, with a medium effect size (d = 0.58). The body image prime did not significantly affect food intake for males, nor did it have a differential effect on restrained eaters. This study shows that priming can be an effective method for influencing females to reduce food intake, regardless of whether they are restrained or unrestrained eaters. Future studies could investigate whether different priming words related to a male's healthy body image goal (i.e. "buff," "muscles," etc.) would similarly reduce food intake for males. Copyright © 2016. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

The strength and conditioning practices of strongman competitors.

Science.gov (United States)

Winwood, Paul W; Keogh, Justin W L; Harris, Nigel K

2011-11-01

This study describes the results of a survey of the strength and conditioning practices of strongman competitors. A 65-item online survey was completed by 167 strongman competitors. The subject group included 83 local, 65 national, and 19 international strongman competitors. The survey comprised 3 main areas of enquiry: (a) exercise selection, (b) training protocols and organization, and (c) strongman event training. The back squat and conventional deadlift were reported as the most commonly used squat and deadlift (65.8 and 88.0%, respectively). Eighty percent of the subjects incorporated some form of periodization in their training. Seventy-four percent of subjects included hypertrophy training, 97% included maximal strength training, and 90% included power training in their training organization. The majority performed speed repetitions with submaximal loads in the squat and deadlift (59.9 and 61.1%, respectively). Fifty-four percent of subjects incorporated lower body plyometrics into their training, and 88% of the strongman competitors reported performing Olympic lifts as part of their strongman training. Seventy-eight percent of subjects reported that the clean was the most performed Olympic lift used in their training. Results revealed that 56 and 38% of the strongman competitors used elastic bands and chains in their training, respectively. The findings demonstrate that strongman competitors incorporate a variety of strength and conditioning practices that are focused on increasing muscular size, and the development of maximal strength and power into their conditioning preparation. The farmers walk, log press, and stones were the most commonly performed strongman exercises used in a general strongman training session by these athletes. These data provide information on the training practices required to compete in the sport of strongman.

Turing instability for a competitor-competitor-mutualist model with nonlinear cross-diffusion effects

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Wen, Zijuan; Fu, Shengmao

2016-01-01

This paper deals with a strongly coupled reaction-diffusion system modeling a competitor-competitor-mutualist three-species model with diffusion, self-diffusion and nonlinear cross-diffusion and subject to Neumann boundary conditions. First, we establish the persistence of a corresponding reaction-diffusion system without self- and cross-diffusion. Second, the global asymptotic stability of the unique positive equilibrium for weakly coupled PDE system is established by using a comparison method. Moreover, under certain conditions about the intra- and inter-species effects, we prove that the uniform positive steady state is linearly unstable for the cross-diffusion system when one of the cross-diffusions is large enough. The results indicate that Turing instability can be driven solely from strong diffusion effect of the first species (or the second species or the third species) due to the pressure of the second species (or the first species).

Spatial and Semantic Processing between Audition and Vision: An Event-Related Potential Study

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Xiaoxi Chen

2011-10-01

Full Text Available Using a crossmodal priming paradigm, this study investigated how the brain bound the spatial and semantic features in multisensory processing. The visual stimuli (pictures of animals were presented after the auditory stimuli (sounds of animals, and the stimuli from different modalities may match spatially (or semantically or not. Participants were required to detect the head orientation of the visual target (an oddball paradigm. The event-related potentials (ERPs to the visual stimuli was enhanced by spatial attention (150–170 ms irrespectively of semantic information. The early crossmodal attention effect for the visual stimuli was more negative in the spatial-congruent condition than in the spatial-incongruent condition. By contrast, the later effects of spatial ERPs were significant only for the semantic- congruent condition (250–300 ms. These findings indicated that spatial attention modulated early visual processing, and semantic and spatial features were simultaneously used to orient attention and modulate later processing stages.

Electrophysiological correlates of competitor activation predict retrieval-induced forgetting.

Science.gov (United States)

Hellerstedt, Robin; Johansson, Mikael

2014-06-01

The very act of retrieval modifies the accessibility of memory for knowledge and past events and can also cause forgetting. A prominent theory of such retrieval-induced forgetting (RIF) holds that retrieval recruits inhibition to overcome interference from competing memories, rendering these memories inaccessible. The present study tested a fundamental tenet of the inhibitory-control account: The competition-dependence assumption. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while participants engaged in a competitive retrieval task. Competition levels were manipulated within the retrieval task by varying the cue-item associative strength of competing items. In order to temporally separate ERP correlates of competitor activation and target retrieval, memory was probed with the sequential presentation of 2 cues: A category cue, to reactivate competitors, and a target cue. As predicted by the inhibitory-control account, competitors with strong compared with weak cue-competitor association were more susceptible to forgetting. Furthermore, competition-sensitive ERP modulations, elicited by the category cue, were observed over anterior regions and reflected individual differences in ensuing forgetting. The present study demonstrates ERP correlates of the reactivation of tightly bound associated memories (the competitors) and provides support for the inhibitory-control account of RIF.

Attentional Sensitization of Unconscious Cognition: Task Sets Modulate Subsequent Masked Semantic Priming

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Kiefer, Markus; Martens, Ulla

2010-01-01

According to classical theories, automatic processes are autonomous and independent of higher level cognitive influence. In contrast, the authors propose that automatic processing depends on attentional sensitization of task-congruent processing pathways. In 3 experiments, the authors tested this hypothesis with a modified masked semantic priming…

Differentiation of perceptual and semantic subsequent memory effects using an orthographic paradigm.

Science.gov (United States)

Kuo, Michael C C; Liu, Karen P Y; Ting, Kin Hung; Chan, Chetwyn C H

2012-11-27

This study aimed to differentiate perceptual and semantic encoding processes using subsequent memory effects (SMEs) elicited by the recognition of orthographs of single Chinese characters. Participants studied a series of Chinese characters perceptually (by inspecting orthographic components) or semantically (by determining the object making sounds), and then made studied or unstudied judgments during the recognition phase. Recognition performance in terms of d-prime measure in the semantic condition was higher, though not significant, than that of the perceptual condition. The between perceptual-semantic condition differences in SMEs at P550 and late positive component latencies (700-1000ms) were not significant in the frontal area. An additional analysis identified larger SME in the semantic condition during 600-1000ms in the frontal pole regions. These results indicate that coordination and incorporation of orthographic information into mental representation is essential to both task conditions. The differentiation was also revealed in earlier SMEs (perceptual>semantic) at N3 (240-360ms) latency, which is a novel finding. The left-distributed N3 was interpreted as more efficient processing of meaning with semantically learned characters. Frontal pole SMEs indicated strategic processing by executive functions, which would further enhance memory. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Competitor Orientation: Effects of Objectives and Information on Managerial Decisions and Profitability

OpenAIRE

Armstrong, J. Scott; Collopy, Fred

1996-01-01

Managers are often advised, "beat your competitors," which sometimes contrasts with the advice, "do the best for your firm." This may lead managers to focus on comparative measures such as market share. Drawing on game theory, the authors hypothesize that managers are competitor-oriented under certain conditions, in particular, when they are provided with information about competitors' performance. Empirical studies lead to the additional hypothesis that a competitor orientation is detrimenta...

Strategic tradeoffs in competitor dynamics on adaptive networks.

Science.gov (United States)

Hébert-Dufresne, Laurent; Allard, Antoine; Noël, Pierre-André; Young, Jean-Gabriel; Libby, Eric

2017-08-08

Recent empirical work highlights the heterogeneity of social competitions such as political campaigns: proponents of some ideologies seek debate and conversation, others create echo chambers. While symmetric and static network structure is typically used as a substrate to study such competitor dynamics, network structure can instead be interpreted as a signature of the competitor strategies, yielding competition dynamics on adaptive networks. Here we demonstrate that tradeoffs between aggressiveness and defensiveness (i.e., targeting adversaries vs. targeting like-minded individuals) creates paradoxical behaviour such as non-transitive dynamics. And while there is an optimal strategy in a two competitor system, three competitor systems have no such solution; the introduction of extreme strategies can easily affect the outcome of a competition, even if the extreme strategies have no chance of winning. Not only are these results reminiscent of classic paradoxical results from evolutionary game theory, but the structure of social networks created by our model can be mapped to particular forms of payoff matrices. Consequently, social structure can act as a measurable metric for social games which in turn allows us to provide a game theoretical perspective on online political debates.

Multisensory integration in complete unawareness: evidence from audiovisual congruency priming.

Science.gov (United States)

Faivre, Nathan; Mudrik, Liad; Schwartz, Naama; Koch, Christof

2014-11-01

Multisensory integration is thought to require conscious perception. Although previous studies have shown that an invisible stimulus could be integrated with an audible one, none have demonstrated integration of two subliminal stimuli of different modalities. Here, pairs of identical or different audiovisual target letters (the sound /b/ with the written letter "b" or "m," respectively) were preceded by pairs of masked identical or different audiovisual prime digits (the sound /6/ with the written digit "6" or "8," respectively). In three experiments, awareness of the audiovisual digit primes was manipulated, such that participants were either unaware of the visual digit, the auditory digit, or both. Priming of the semantic relations between the auditory and visual digits was found in all experiments. Moreover, a further experiment showed that unconscious multisensory integration was not obtained when participants did not undergo prior conscious training of the task. This suggests that following conscious learning, unconscious processing suffices for multisensory integration. © The Author(s) 2014.

Self-reported injury history in Native American professional rodeo competitors.

Science.gov (United States)

Crichlow, Renée; Williamson, Steve; Geurin, Mike; Heggem, Heather

2006-07-01

Evaluation of rodeo injury and the use of protective equipment. Cross-sectional survey. Indian National Finals Rodeo 2004 in San Jacinto, CA. One hundred sixty-nine native American, professional rodeo competitors. On-site survey completed before competition. A total of 180 native American competitors received the survey. Respondents reported the event of participation, prior injury histories (including number, type and disability), use of protective equipment, and access to health care. Main outcomes were determined before survey distribution and included self-reported injury rate, time away from rodeo secondary to injury, and protective equipment usage during competition. Total 94% response rate. There was a range of injury history-from 100% of bull riders to only 24% of tie-down ropers-reporting a history of injuries. Forty percent of competitors reported using protective equipment; of these, 32% reported wearing vests. Twenty-six percent of the competitors had a history of injury that prevented them from working an average of 3.2 months. As hypothesized, a greater injury rate resulted from rough stock events; older competitors are more likely to have had work time loss from injury; and vests are the most frequently used protective equipment in rodeo.

Bidirectional semantic associations between social power and weight.

Science.gov (United States)

He, Xiaoling; Chen, Jun; Li, Jianan

2018-02-01

Two experiments were conducted to examine bidirectional semantic associations between power and weight using a priming paradigm. Bidirectionality in the relationship between power and weight was demonstrated, utilising tasks that were identical except that the orders in which the stimuli were presented were reversed. In Experiment 1, an empty scale leaning either leftward or rightward was used as a priming stimulus, and a scale that appeared in equilibrium with a pair of power words was used as a target stimulus. In Experiment 2, a scale with a pair of words that appeared in equilibrium was used as a priming stimulus, and an empty scale leaning either leftward or rightward was used as a target stimulus. We identified interaction effects between power and weight in both experiments. Associations between power and weight provide evidence for both conceptual metaphor views and evolutionary theory. The bidirectionality of metaphorical effects is in line with the strong version of metaphoric structuring. Both language and experiential correlations play important roles in the development of the mapping between power and weight. © 2016 International Union of Psychological Science.

Semantic and translation priming from a first language to a second and back: Making sense of the findings

OpenAIRE

Schoonbaert, Sofie; Duyck, Wouter; Brysbaert, Marc; Hartsuiker, Robert

2009-01-01

The present study investigated cross-language priming effects with unique noncognate translation pairs. Unbalanced Dutch (first language [L1])-English (second language [L2]) bilinguals performed a lexical decision task in a masked priming paradigm. The results of two experiments showed significant translation priming from L I to L2 (meisje-GIRL) and from L2 to L I (girl-MEISJE), using two different stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) (250 and 100 msec). Although translation priming from L I to...

Effects of Iconicity and Semantic Relatedness on Lexical Access in American Sign Language

Science.gov (United States)

Bosworth, Rain G.; Emmorey, Karen

2010-01-01

Iconicity is a property that pervades the lexicon of many sign languages, including American Sign Language (ASL). Iconic signs exhibit a motivated, nonarbitrary mapping between the form of the sign and its meaning. We investigated whether iconicity enhances semantic priming effects for ASL and whether iconic signs are recognized more quickly than…

Competitor timing information affects nest site selection in a migratory bird

OpenAIRE

Samplonius, Jelmer Menno

2016-01-01

INTRODUCTION The costs of competition should lead to competitor avoidance. However, science has shown that animals may prefer settling near competitors to benefit from information about habitat quality. High quality habitat may translate to higher densities and reproductive success, but also to earlier reproductive timing. The former two have been studied as social cues, but competitor phenology has not. Climate change advances phenologies across trophic levels, so it is key to understand how...

Online Sources for Competitor Information.

Science.gov (United States)

Weiss, Arthur

Competitor information gathering is a key aspect of business planning. Information can be collected from either published or unpublished sources. Unpublished information will often be verified based on material from published sources. Published information is more likely to be factual and includes financial, stockmarket, press, market and…

Competitor's marketing : How banks acquire and react to knowledge about their competitor's marketing.

OpenAIRE

Puelma, Rodrigo; Persson, Annika

2008-01-01

Abstract   Introduction The way banks compete has changed dramatically during recent years, mostly because of international trends such as advances in information technology, globalisation and deregulations. This has made competition harsher meaning that survival and success requires knowledge about the competitors and understanding about the way they act and react. Within marketing there is a need to identify suitable strategies to acquire knowledge about competitor’s marketing and methods t...

Competitor timing information affects nest site selection in a migratory bird

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Samplonius, Jelmer Menno

2016-01-01

INTRODUCTION The costs of competition should lead to competitor avoidance. However, science has shown that animals may prefer settling near competitors to benefit from information about habitat quality. High quality habitat may translate to higher densities and reproductive success, but also to

The internal competitor: Buyer motives and external supplier marketing strategies

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Mols, Niels Peter; Sloth, Jacob Lerche; Thrane, Claus

Abstract Purpose of the paper and literature addressed: The purpose of this paper is to identify buyer motives for supporting internal competitors and to suggest relevant marketing strategy elements for external suppliers confronting these internal competitors. Research method: With basis...... in a literature review we identify different buyer motives for choosing to combine external suppliers with internal production, i.e., an internal competitor. For each buyer motive, possible marketing strategies are identified and briefly discussed. Research findings: The paper describes different buyer motives...... relevant buyer motives, the existence of different buyer motives suggests that these buyers should be targeted with different marketing strategies. For each buyer motive, possible marketing strategies are suggested and briefly discussed. Thus, for each buyer motive it is briefly discussed (1) how...

The effect of level of processing on perceptual and conceptual priming: control versus closed-head-injured patients.

Science.gov (United States)

Vakil, E; Sigal, J

1997-07-01

Twenty-four closed-head-injured (CHI) and 24 control participants studied two word lists under shallow (i.e., nonsemantic) and deep (i.e., semantic) encoding conditions. They were then tested on free recall, perceptual priming (i.e., perceptual partial word identification) and conceptual priming (i.e., category production) tasks. Previous findings have demonstrated that memory in CHI is characterized by inefficient conceptual processing of information. It was thus hypothesized that the CHI participants would perform more poorly than the control participants on the explicit and on the conceptual priming tasks. On these tasks the CHI group was expected to benefit to a lesser degree from prior deep encoding, as compared to controls. The groups were not expected to significantly differ from each other on the perceptual priming task. Prior deep encoding was not expected to improve the perceptual priming performance of either group. All findings were as predicted, with the exception that a significant effect was not found between groups for deep encoding in the conceptual priming task. The results are discussed (1) in terms of their theoretical contribution in further validating the dissociation between perceptual and conceptual priming; and (2) in terms of the contribution in differentiating between amnesic and CHI patients. Conceptual priming is preserved in amnesics but not in CHI patients.

Spontaneous Gender Categorization in Masking and Priming Studies: Key for Distinguishing Jane from John Doe but Not Madonna from Sinatra

Science.gov (United States)

Habibi, Ruth; Khurana, Beena

2012-01-01

Facial recognition is key to social interaction, however with unfamiliar faces only generic information, in the form of facial stereotypes such as gender and age is available. Therefore is generic information more prominent in unfamiliar versus familiar face processing? In order to address the question we tapped into two relatively disparate stages of face processing. At the early stages of encoding, we employed perceptual masking to reveal that only perception of unfamiliar face targets is affected by the gender of the facial masks. At the semantic end; using a priming paradigm, we found that while to-be-ignored unfamiliar faces prime lexical decisions to gender congruent stereotypic words, familiar faces do not. Our findings indicate that gender is a more salient dimension in unfamiliar relative to familiar face processing, both in early perceptual stages as well as later semantic stages of person construal. PMID:22389697

Comparing different kinds of words and word-word relations to test an habituation model of priming.

Science.gov (United States)

Rieth, Cory A; Huber, David E

2017-06-01

Huber and O'Reilly (2003) proposed that neural habituation exists to solve a temporal parsing problem, minimizing blending between one word and the next when words are visually presented in rapid succession. They developed a neural dynamics habituation model, explaining the finding that short duration primes produce positive priming whereas long duration primes produce negative repetition priming. The model contains three layers of processing, including a visual input layer, an orthographic layer, and a lexical-semantic layer. The predicted effect of prime duration depends both on this assumed representational hierarchy and the assumption that synaptic depression underlies habituation. The current study tested these assumptions by comparing different kinds of words (e.g., words versus non-words) and different kinds of word-word relations (e.g., associative versus repetition). For each experiment, the predictions of the original model were compared to an alternative model with different representational assumptions. Experiment 1 confirmed the prediction that non-words and inverted words require longer prime durations to eliminate positive repetition priming (i.e., a slower transition from positive to negative priming). Experiment 2 confirmed the prediction that associative priming increases and then decreases with increasing prime duration, but remains positive even with long duration primes. Experiment 3 replicated the effects of repetition and associative priming using a within-subjects design and combined these effects by examining target words that were expected to repeat (e.g., viewing the target word 'BACK' after the prime phrase 'back to'). These results support the originally assumed representational hierarchy and more generally the role of habituation in temporal parsing and priming. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Reexamining unconscious response priming: A liminal-prime paradigm.

Science.gov (United States)

Avneon, Maayan; Lamy, Dominique

2018-03-01

Research on the limits of unconscious processing typically relies on the subliminal-prime paradigm. However, this paradigm is limited in the issues it can address. Here, we examined the implications of using the liminal-prime paradigm, which allows comparing unconscious and conscious priming with constant stimulation. We adapted an iconic demonstration of unconscious response priming to the liminal-prime paradigm. On the one hand, temporal attention allocated to the prime and its relevance to the task increased the magnitude of response priming. On the other hand, the longer RTs associated with the dual task inherent to the paradigm resulted in response priming being underestimated, because unconscious priming effects were shorter-lived than conscious-priming effects. Nevertheless, when the impact of long RTs was alleviated by considering the fastest trials or by imposing a response deadline, conscious response priming remained considerably larger than unconscious response priming. These findings suggest that conscious perception strongly modulates response priming. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Bankruptcy effect on business competitors. : Empirical study of US companies

OpenAIRE

Nassimbwa, Justine; Tian, Yuchi

2013-01-01

Bankruptcy is a negative event that not only affects the company in question but all stakeholders of society. Our research will focus on one stakeholder group, business competitors. How are competitors affected by bankruptcy announcements? Past research has tried to answer this question in different ways. Some compared two industries with different characteristics while others worked with multiple industries. Past researchers suggested and tested three independent variables that they thought ...

Do competitors modulate rare plant response to precipitation change?

Science.gov (United States)

Levine, J.M.; Kathryn, Mceachern A.; Cowan, C.

2010-01-01

Ecologists increasingly suspect that climate change will directly impact species physiology, demography, and phenology, but also indirectly affect these measures via changes to the surrounding community. Unfortunately, few studies examine both the direct and indirect pathways of impact. Doing so is important because altered competitive pressures can reduce or magnify the direct responses of a focal species to climate change. Here, we examine the effects of changing rainfall on three rare annual plant species in the presence and absence of competition on the California Channel Islands. We used rain-out shelters and hand watering to exclude and augment early, late, and season-long rainfall, spanning the wide range of precipitation change forecast for the region. In the absence of competition, droughts reduced the population growth rates of two of three focal annuals, while increased rainfall was only sometimes beneficial, As compared to the focal species, the dominant competitors were more sensitive to the precipitation treatments, benefiting from increased season-long precipitation and harmed by droughts. Importantly, the response of two of three competitors to the precipitation treatments tended to be positively correlated with those of the focal annuals. Although this leads to the expectation that increased competition will counter the direct benefits of favorable conditions, such indirect effects of precipitation change proved weak to nonexistent in our experiment. Competitors had little influence on the precipitation response of two focal species, due to their low sensitivity to competition and highly variable precipitation responses. Competition did affect how our third focal species responded to precipitation change, but this effect only approached significance, and whether it truly resulted from competitor response to precipitation change was unclear. Our work suggests that even when competitors respond to climate change, these responses may have little

Semantic Blogging : Spreading the Semantic Web Meme

OpenAIRE

Cayzer, Steve

2004-01-01

This paper is about semantic blogging, an application of the semantic web to blogging. The semantic web promises to make the web more useful by endowing metadata with machine processable semantics. Blogging is a lightweight web publishing paradigm which provides a very low barrier to entry, useful syndication and aggregation behaviour, a simple to understand structure and decentralized construction of a rich information network. Semantic blogging builds upon the success and clear network valu...

Biomedical semantics in the Semantic Web.

Science.gov (United States)

Splendiani, Andrea; Burger, Albert; Paschke, Adrian; Romano, Paolo; Marshall, M Scott

2011-03-07

The Semantic Web offers an ideal platform for representing and linking biomedical information, which is a prerequisite for the development and application of analytical tools to address problems in data-intensive areas such as systems biology and translational medicine. As for any new paradigm, the adoption of the Semantic Web offers opportunities and poses questions and challenges to the life sciences scientific community: which technologies in the Semantic Web stack will be more beneficial for the life sciences? Is biomedical information too complex to benefit from simple interlinked representations? What are the implications of adopting a new paradigm for knowledge representation? What are the incentives for the adoption of the Semantic Web, and who are the facilitators? Is there going to be a Semantic Web revolution in the life sciences?We report here a few reflections on these questions, following discussions at the SWAT4LS (Semantic Web Applications and Tools for Life Sciences) workshop series, of which this Journal of Biomedical Semantics special issue presents selected papers from the 2009 edition, held in Amsterdam on November 20th.

Stereotype Priming in Face Recognition: Interactions between Semantic and Visual Information in Face Encoding

Science.gov (United States)

Hills, Peter J.; Lewis, Michael B.; Honey, R. C.

2008-01-01

The accuracy with which previously unfamiliar faces are recognised is increased by the presentation of a stereotype-congruent occupation label [Klatzky, R. L., Martin, G. L., & Kane, R. A. (1982a). "Semantic interpretation effects on memory for faces." "Memory & Cognition," 10, 195-206; Klatzky, R. L., Martin, G. L., & Kane, R. A. (1982b).…

Phonologically-Based Priming in the Same-Different Task With L1 Readers.

Science.gov (United States)

Lupker, Stephen J; Nakayama, Mariko; Yoshihara, Masahiro

2018-02-01

The present experiment provides an investigation of a promising new tool, the masked priming same-different task, for investigating the orthographic coding process. Orthographic coding is the process of establishing a mental representation of the letters and letter order in the word being read which is then used by readers to access higher-level (e.g., semantic) information about that word. Prior research (e.g., Norris & Kinoshita, 2008) had suggested that performance in this task may be based entirely on orthographic codes. As reported by Lupker, Nakayama, and Perea (2015a), however, in at least some circumstances, phonological codes also play a role. Specifically, even though their 2 languages are completely different orthographically, Lupker et al.'s Japanese-English bilinguals showed priming in this task when masked L1 primes were phonologically similar to L2 targets. An obvious follow-up question is whether Lupker et al.'s effect might have resulted from a strategy that was adopted by their bilinguals to aid in processing of, and memory for, the somewhat unfamiliar L2 targets. In the present experiment, Japanese readers responded to (Japanese) Kanji targets with phonologically identical primes (on "related" trials) being presented in a completely different but highly familiar Japanese script, Hiragana. Once again, significant priming effects were observed, indicating that, although performance in the masked priming same-different task may be mainly based on orthographic codes, phonological codes can play a role even when the stimuli being matched are familiar words from a reader's L1. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

Impairments in multisensory processing are not universal to the autism spectrum: no evidence for crossmodal priming deficits in Asperger syndrome.

Science.gov (United States)

David, Nicole; R Schneider, Till; Vogeley, Kai; Engel, Andreas K

2011-10-01

Individuals suffering from autism spectrum disorders (ASD) often show a tendency for detail- or feature-based perception (also referred to as "local processing bias") instead of more holistic stimulus processing typical for unaffected people. This local processing bias has been demonstrated for the visual and auditory domains and there is evidence that multisensory processing may also be affected in ASD. Most multisensory processing paradigms used social-communicative stimuli, such as human speech or faces, probing the processing of simultaneously occuring sensory signals. Multisensory processing, however, is not limited to simultaneous stimulation. In this study, we investigated whether multisensory processing deficits in ASD persist when semantically complex but nonsocial stimuli are presented in succession. Fifteen adult individuals with Asperger syndrome and 15 control persons participated in a visual-audio priming task, which required the classification of sounds that were either primed by semantically congruent or incongruent preceding pictures of objects. As expected, performance on congruent trials was faster and more accurate compared with incongruent trials (crossmodal priming effect). The Asperger group, however, did not differ significantly from the control group. Our results do not support a general multisensory processing deficit, which is universal to the entire autism spectrum. Copyright © 2011, International Society for Autism Research, Wiley-Liss, Inc.

Measuring the purpose of firms' customer and competitor-oriented activities

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Sørensen, Hans Eibe

Traditional empirical market orientation research predominantly focuses on the presence of firms' market-oriented activities. This paper empirically explores a novel structure of four multi-indicator measures assessing the purpose of firms' customer and competitor-oriented activities. The operati......Traditional empirical market orientation research predominantly focuses on the presence of firms' market-oriented activities. This paper empirically explores a novel structure of four multi-indicator measures assessing the purpose of firms' customer and competitor-oriented activities...

Preserved musical semantic memory in semantic dementia.

Science.gov (United States)

Weinstein, Jessica; Koenig, Phyllis; Gunawardena, Delani; McMillan, Corey; Bonner, Michael; Grossman, Murray

2011-02-01

To understand the scope of semantic impairment in semantic dementia. Case study. Academic medical center. A man with semantic dementia, as demonstrated by clinical, neuropsychological, and imaging studies. Music performance and magnetic resonance imaging results. Despite profoundly impaired semantic memory for words and objects due to left temporal lobe atrophy, this semiprofessional musician was creative and expressive in demonstrating preserved musical knowledge. Long-term representations of words and objects in semantic memory may be dissociated from meaningful knowledge in other domains, such as music.

Masked priming effect reflects evidence accumulated by the prime.

Science.gov (United States)

Kinoshita, Sachiko; Norris, Dennis

2010-01-01

In the same-different match task, masked priming is observed with the same responses but not different responses. Norris and Kinoshita's (2008) Bayesian reader account of masked priming explains this pattern based on the same principle as that explaining the absence of priming for nonwords in the lexical decision task. The pattern of priming follows from the way the model makes optimal decisions in the two tasks; priming does not depend on first activating the prime and then the target. An alternative explanation is in terms of a bias towards responding "same" that exactly counters the facilitatory effect of lexical access. The present study tested these two views by varying both the degree to which the prime predicts the response and the visibility of the prime. Unmasked primes produced effects expected from the view that priming is influenced by the degree to which the prime predicts the response. In contrast, with masked primes, the size of priming for the same response was completely unaffected by predictability. These results rule out response bias as an explanation of the absence of masked priming for different responses and, in turn, indicate that masked priming is not a consequence of automatic lexical access of the prime.

Effortful semantic decision-making boosts memory performance in older adults.

Science.gov (United States)

Fu, Li; Maes, Joseph H R; Varma, Samarth; Kessels, Roy P C; Daselaar, Sander M

2017-04-01

A major concern in age-related cognitive decline is episodic memory (EM). Previous studies indicate that both resource and binding deficits contribute to EM decline. Environmental support by task manipulations encouraging stronger cognitive effort and deeper levels of processing may facilitate compensation for these two deficits. To clarify factors that can counteract age-related EM decline, we assessed effects of cognitive effort (four levels) and level of processing (LoP, shallow/deep) during encoding on subsequent retrieval. Young (YAs, N = 23) and older (OAs, N = 23) adults performed two incidental encoding tasks, deep/semantic and shallow/perceptual. Cognitive effort was manipulated by varying decision-making demands. EM performance, indexed by d-prime, was later tested using a recognition task. Results showed that regardless of LoP, increased cognitive effort caused higher d-primes in both age groups. Compared to YAs, OAs showed a lower d-prime after shallow encoding across all cognitive effort levels, and after deep encoding with low cognitive effort. Deep encoding with higher levels of cognitive effort completely eliminated these age differences. Our findings support an environmental-compensatory account of cognitive ageing and can have important therapeutic implications.

Priming effects in Chinese character recognition for Chinese children with developmental dyslexia

Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

Yuliang Zou; Jing Wang; Hanrong Wu

2009-01-01

BACKGROUND:Dyslexic children exhibit reading ability unmatched to age,although they possess normal intelligence and are well educated.OBJECTIVE:To examine the performance of dyslexic children in Chinese characters visual recognition tasks and to investigate the relationship between priming effect in character recognition and dyslexia.DESIGN,TIME AND SETTING:A case-control study was performed at the Department of Children and Adolescent Health and Maternal Care,School of Public Health,Tongji Medical College,Huazhong University of Science and Technology between March and June 2007.PARTICIPANTS:A total of 75 primary school students in grades 3 and 5 were selected from two primary schools in Wuhan City,Hubei province,China,and were assigned to three groups.(1) Reading disability (RD,n=25);(2) chronological age (CA) group (n=25 normal readers that were intelligence quotient and age-matched to the RD group);(3) reading level (RL) group (n=25 normal readers that were intelligence quotient and RL-matched to the RD group).All children were right-handed and had normal or corrected-to-normal vision.METHODS:Recognition of target characters was performed in each child using a masked prime paradigm.Recognition speed and accuracy of graphic,phonological,and semantic characters were examined.Simultaneously,data,with respect to response time for each target character and error rate,were recorded to calculate facilitation values (unrelated RT-related RT).MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES:Response time,facilitation,and error rate in Chinese character recognition task were calculated.RESULTS:The baseline-adjusted facilitation of graphic,phonological,and semantic priming for dyslexic children was -0.010,-0.010,and 0.001,respectively.Dyslexic children displayed inhibition in graphic and phonological prime conditions.Facilitations under the three prime conditions were 0.026,0.026,and 0.022 for the CA group.In the RL group,results were 0.062,0.058,and 0.031 respectively.The differences of baseline

Action verbs are processed differently in metaphorical and literal sentences depending on the semantic match of visual primes

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Melissa eTroyer

2014-12-01

Full Text Available Language comprehension requires rapid and flexible access to information stored in long-term memory, likely influenced by activation of rich world knowledge and by brain systems that support the processing of sensorimotor content. We hypothesized that while literal language about biological motion might rely on neurocognitive representations of biological motion specific to the details of the actions described, metaphors rely on more generic representations of motion. In a priming and self-paced reading paradigm, participants saw video clips or images of (a an intact point-light walker or (b a scrambled control and read sentences containing literal or metaphoric uses of biological motion verbs either closely or distantly related to the depicted action (walking. We predicted that reading times for literal and metaphorical sentences would show differential sensitivity to the match between the verb and the visual prime. In Experiment 1, we observed interactions between the prime type (walker or scrambled video and the verb type (close or distant match for both literal and metaphorical sentences, but with strikingly different patterns. We found no difference in the verb region of literal sentences for Close-Match verbs after walker or scrambled motion primes, but Distant-Match verbs were read more quickly following walker primes. For metaphorical sentences, the results were roughly reversed, with Distant-Match verbs being read more slowly following a walker compared to scrambled motion. In Experiment 2, we observed a similar pattern following still image primes, though critical interactions emerged later in the sentence. We interpret these findings as evidence for shared recruitment of cognitive and neural mechanisms for processing visual and verbal biological motion information. Metaphoric language using biological motion verbs may recruit neurocognitive mechanisms similar to those used in processing literal language but be represented in a less

Semantic Advertising

OpenAIRE

Zamanzadeh, Ben; Ashish, Naveen; Ramakrishnan, Cartic; Zimmerman, John

2013-01-01

We present the concept of Semantic Advertising which we see as the future of online advertising. Semantic Advertising is online advertising powered by semantic technology which essentially enables us to represent and reason with concepts and the meaning of things. This paper aims to 1) Define semantic advertising, 2) Place it in the context of broader and more widely used concepts such as the Semantic Web and Semantic Search, 3) Provide a survey of work in related areas such as context matchi...

Morning rapid eye movement sleep naps facilitate broad access to emotional semantic networks.

Science.gov (United States)

Carr, Michelle; Nielsen, Tore

2015-03-01

The goal of the study was to assess semantic priming to emotion and nonemotion cue words using a novel measure of associational breadth for participants who either took rapid eye movement (REM) or nonrapid eye movement (NREM) naps or who remained awake; assess relation of priming to REM sleep consolidation and REM sleep inertia effects. The associational breadth task was applied in both a priming condition, where cue-words were signaled to be memorized prior to sleep (primed), and a nonpriming condition, where cue words were not memorized (nonprimed). Cue words were either emotional (positive, negative) or nonemotional. Participants were randomly assigned to either an awake (WAKE) or a sleep condition, which was subsequently split into NREM or REM groups depending on stage at awakening. Hospital-based sleep laboratory. Fifty-eight healthy participants (22 male) ages 18 to 35 y (Mage = 23.3 ± 4.08 y). The REM group scored higher than the NREM or WAKE groups on primed, but not nonprimed emotional cue words; the effect was stronger for positive than for negative cue words. However, REM time and percent correlated negatively with degree of emotional priming. Priming occurred for REM awakenings but not for NREM awakenings, even when the latter sleep episodes contained some REM sleep. Associational breadth may be selectively consolidated during REM sleep for stimuli that have been tagged as important for future memory retrieval. That priming decreased with REM time and was higher only for REM sleep awakenings is consistent with two explanatory REM sleep processes: REM sleep consolidation serving emotional downregulation and REM sleep inertia. © 2015 Associated Professional Sleep Societies, LLC.

Lexical selection in the semantically blocked cyclic naming task: The role of cognitive control and learning

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jason E. Crowther

2014-01-01

Full Text Available Studies of semantic interference in language production have provided evidence for a role of cognitive control mechanisms in regulating the activation of semantic competitors during naming. The present study investigated the relationship between individual differences in cognitive control abilities, for both younger and older adults, and the degree of semantic interference in a blocked cyclic naming task. We predicted that individuals with lower working memory capacity (as measured by word span, lesser ability to inhibit distracting responses (as measured by Stroop interference, and a lesser ability to resolve proactive interference (as measured by a recent negatives task would show a greater increase in semantic interference in naming, with effects being larger for older adults. Instead, measures of cognitive control were found to relate to specific indices of semantic interference in the naming task, rather than overall degree of semantic interference, and few interactions with age were found, with younger and older adults performing similarly. The increase in naming latencies across naming trials within a cycle were negatively correlated with word span for both related and unrelated conditions, suggesting a strategy of narrowing response alternatives based upon memory for the set of item names. Evidence for a role of inhibition in response selection was obtained, as Stroop interference correlated positively with the change in naming latencies across cycles for the related, but not unrelated, condition. In contrast, recent negatives interference correlated negatively with the change in naming latencies across unrelated cycles, suggesting that individual differences in this tap the degree of strengthening of links in a lexical network based upon prior exposure. Results are discussed in terms of current models of lexical selection and consequences for word retrieval in more naturalistic production.

Constituent order and semantic parallelism in online comprehension: eye-tracking evidence from German.

Science.gov (United States)

Knoeferle, Pia; Crocker, Matthew W

2009-12-01

Reading times for the second conjunct of and-coordinated clauses are faster when the second conjunct parallels the first conjunct in its syntactic or semantic (animacy) structure than when its structure differs (Frazier, Munn, & Clifton, 2000; Frazier, Taft, Roeper, & Clifton, 1984). What remains unclear, however, is the time course of parallelism effects, their scope, and the kinds of linguistic information to which they are sensitive. Findings from the first two eye-tracking experiments revealed incremental constituent order parallelism across the board-both during structural disambiguation (Experiment 1) and in sentences with unambiguously case-marked constituent order (Experiment 2), as well as for both marked and unmarked constituent orders (Experiments 1 and 2). Findings from Experiment 3 revealed effects of both constituent order and subtle semantic (noun phrase similarity) parallelism. Together our findings provide evidence for an across-the-board account of parallelism for processing and-coordinated clauses, in which both constituent order and semantic aspects of representations contribute towards incremental parallelism effects. We discuss our findings in the context of existing findings on parallelism and priming, as well as mechanisms of sentence processing.

Estudo comparativo do acesso semântico no processamento visual de palavras entre brasileiros monolíngues e chineses multilíngues falantes do português do Brasil como língua estrangeira Comparative study of the semantic access in the visual processing of words between monolinguistic Brazilians and multilinguistic Chinese who speak portuguese as a foreign language

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jerusa Fumagalli de Salles

2010-12-01

Full Text Available O priming semântico é uma forma de avaliar o processamento semântico de palavras. Se a semântica é um importante fator contribuinte no reconhecimento visual de palavras, surge a questão de se chineses multilíngues (mandarin como L1 e inglês como L2, que estão aprendendo o português como L3, podem se beneficiar do contexto semântico em tarefa de decisão lexical na Língua Portuguesa, comparado aos controles (brasileiros universitários e crianças. Além de comparar a magnitude do efeito de priming semântico entre a amostra de chineses e de brasileiros, objetivou-se investigar nos chineses a relação entre o desempenho no experimento de priming semântico e na tarefa de consciência fonológica, ambos na língua portuguesa. Participaram do estudo 40 universitários chineses multilíngues, 31 universitários brasileiros e 26 crianças de 3ª série. Houve efeito de priming semântico nos chineses e nos brasileiros, universitários e crianças, ou seja, respostas mais rápidas na condição com prime relacionado do que na condição com prime não relacionado. Não houve diferenças significativas na magnitude do efeito entre os grupos de adultos, mas as crianças apresentaram maior magnitude de efeito do que os chineses. Considerando apenas o grupo de chineses, não houve correlação entre os escores na tarefa de decisão lexical no paradigma de priming semântico e a avaliação da consciência fonológica. Chineses parecem ter acessado o significado dos primes apresentados visualmente na Língua Portuguesa, não se diferenciando dos brasileiros adultos e crianças.The semantic priming paradigm can be used to evaluate word semantic processing. Considering that semantic is an important factor in visual word recognition, an experiment was conducted to verify if multilingual Chinese (L1 and L2 being respectively Mandarin and English that are learning Portuguese as L3 would benefit from the semantic context during a lexical decision

Semantator: annotating clinical narratives with semantic web ontologies.

Science.gov (United States)

Song, Dezhao; Chute, Christopher G; Tao, Cui

2012-01-01

To facilitate clinical research, clinical data needs to be stored in a machine processable and understandable way. Manual annotating clinical data is time consuming. Automatic approaches (e.g., Natural Language Processing systems) have been adopted to convert such data into structured formats; however, the quality of such automatically extracted data may not always be satisfying. In this paper, we propose Semantator, a semi-automatic tool for document annotation with Semantic Web ontologies. With a loaded free text document and an ontology, Semantator supports the creation/deletion of ontology instances for any document fragment, linking/disconnecting instances with the properties in the ontology, and also enables automatic annotation by connecting to the NCBO annotator and cTAKES. By representing annotations in Semantic Web standards, Semantator supports reasoning based upon the underlying semantics of the owl:disjointWith and owl:equivalentClass predicates. We present discussions based on user experiences of using Semantator.

Competitor localization and innovation activity of peripheral industrial systems in Poland

OpenAIRE

Arkadiusz Swiadek

2013-01-01

Spatial proximity to competitors is an important factor in the acceleration of technological change in industrial systems in most developed countries, but is it also in Poland? The main objective of the study was to identify and evaluation the impact of distance from the nearest competitor on the innovative activity of selected peripheral regional industrial systems in Poland. Surveys conducted in the years 2007-11, including a group of 1 860 industrial companies in the five diverse and locat...

SCEGRAM: An image database for semantic and syntactic inconsistencies in scenes.

Science.gov (United States)

Öhlschläger, Sabine; Võ, Melissa Le-Hoa

2017-10-01

Our visual environment is not random, but follows compositional rules according to what objects are usually found where. Despite the growing interest in how such semantic and syntactic rules - a scene grammar - enable effective attentional guidance and object perception, no common image database containing highly-controlled object-scene modifications has been publically available. Such a database is essential in minimizing the risk that low-level features drive high-level effects of interest, which is being discussed as possible source of controversial study results. To generate the first database of this kind - SCEGRAM - we took photographs of 62 real-world indoor scenes in six consistency conditions that contain semantic and syntactic (both mild and extreme) violations as well as their combinations. Importantly, always two scenes were paired, so that an object was semantically consistent in one scene (e.g., ketchup in kitchen) and inconsistent in the other (e.g., ketchup in bathroom). Low-level salience did not differ between object-scene conditions and was generally moderate. Additionally, SCEGRAM contains consistency ratings for every object-scene condition, as well as object-absent scenes and object-only images. Finally, a cross-validation using eye-movements replicated previous results of longer dwell times for both semantic and syntactic inconsistencies compared to consistent controls. In sum, the SCEGRAM image database is the first to contain well-controlled semantic and syntactic object-scene inconsistencies that can be used in a broad range of cognitive paradigms (e.g., verbal and pictorial priming, change detection, object identification, etc.) including paradigms addressing developmental aspects of scene grammar. SCEGRAM can be retrieved for research purposes from http://www.scenegrammarlab.com/research/scegram-database/ .

Semantic content-based recommendations using semantic graphs.

Science.gov (United States)

Guo, Weisen; Kraines, Steven B

2010-01-01

Recommender systems (RSs) can be useful for suggesting items that might be of interest to specific users. Most existing content-based recommendation (CBR) systems are designed to recommend items based on text content, and the items in these systems are usually described with keywords. However, similarity evaluations based on keywords suffer from the ambiguity of natural languages. We present a semantic CBR method that uses Semantic Web technologies to recommend items that are more similar semantically with the items that the user prefers. We use semantic graphs to represent the items and we calculate the similarity scores for each pair of semantic graphs using an inverse graph frequency algorithm. The items having higher similarity scores to the items that are known to be preferred by the user are recommended.

Cross-modal priming facilitates production of low imageability word strings in a case of deep-phonological dysphasia

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Laura Mary Mccarthy

2014-04-01

Full Text Available Introduction. Characteristics of repetition in deep-phonological dysphasia include an inability to repeat nonwords, semantic errors in single word repetition (deep dysphasia and in multiple word repetition (phonological dysphasia and better repetition of highly imageable words (Wilshire & Fisher, 2004; Ablinger et al., 2008. Additionally, visual processing of words is often more accurate than auditory processing of words (Howard & Franklin, 1988. We report a case study of LT who incurred a LCVA on 10/3/2009. She initially presented with deep dysphasia and near normal word reading. When enrolled in this study, approximately 24 months post-onset, she presented with phonological dysphasia. We investigated the hypothesis that (1 reproduction of a word string would be more accurate when preceded by a visual presentation of the word string compared to two auditory presentations of the word string, and (2 that this facilitative boost would be observed only for strings of low image words, consistent with the imageability effect in repetition. Method. Three-word strings were created in four conditions which varied the frequency (F and imageability (I of words within a string: HiF-HiI, LoF-HiI, HiF-LoI, LoF-LoI. All strings were balanced for total syllable length and were unrelated semantically and phonologically. The dependent variable was as accuracy of repetition of each word within a string. We created six modality prime conditions each with 24 strings drawn equally from the four frequency-imageability types, randomized within modality condition: Auditory Once (AudOnce – string presented auditorily one time; Auditory Twice (AudAud – string presented auditorily two consecutive times; Visual Once (VisOnce – string presented visually one time; Visual Twice (VisVis – string presented visually two consecutive times; Auditory then Visual (AudVis – string presented once auditorily, then a second time visually; Visual then Auditory (VisAud �

Protecting Your Turf: First-mover Advantages as a Barrier to Competitor Innovation

OpenAIRE

Briggeman, Brian C.; Gunderson, Michael A.; Detre, Joshua D.

2006-01-01

Product innovation for a juice company and its associated first-mover advantages are analyzed. Stochastic simulation is used to model market size, price, competitive intensity, and the likelihood of competitor entry. Results of moving first allow the firm to capture market share, realize first-mover advantages in excess of $2 million, and deter competitor innovation. In addition, the proposed model is flexible enough to be applied in other industries.

Transposed-Letter Priming Effects with Masked Subset Primes: A Re-Examination of the "Relative Position Priming Constraint"

Science.gov (United States)

Stinchcombe, Eric J.; Lupker, Stephen J.; Davis, Colin J.

2012-01-01

Three experiments are reported investigating the role of letter order in orthographic subset priming (e.g., "grdn"-GARDEN) using both the conventional masked priming technique as well as the sandwich priming technique in a lexical decision task. In all three experiments, subset primes produced priming with the effect being considerably…

Social cognitive correlates of young adult sport competitors' sunscreen use.

Science.gov (United States)

Berndt, Nadine C; O'Riordan, David L; Winkler, Elisabeth; McDermott, Liane; Spathonis, Kym; Owen, Neville

2011-02-01

Young adults participating in outdoor sports represent a high-risk group for excessive sun exposure. The purpose of this study was to identify modifiable social cognitive correlates of sunscreen use among young adult competitors. Participants aged 18 to 30 years who competed in soccer (n = 65), surf-lifesaving (n = 63), hockey (n = 61), and tennis (n = 48) completed a sun habits survey. Almost half (n = 113) of the participants used sunscreen inadequately and 30% (n = 70) reported not using sunscreen. In fully adjusted models, social cognitive attributes significantly (p competitors and as a result may be useful in informing behavior change interventions within the sporting context.

PRATICE CRAWL – MENTAL DISTABILITIES: ADULT CHOICE OF DRIVE TECHNOLOGY ADAPTED COMPETITORS

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Dominique Redon

2014-06-01

Full Text Available Introduction: Of the two schools most stressed about the act of propelling the crawl, crawl in practice, which is the most efficient swimming, the two modes of propulsion favorites are "The outstretched arm" next to the called swimmer paddling and "The arm bent S-shaped" under the so-called swimmer impeller (N. Lanotte, S. Lem, 2012 The debate is not yet settled (Potdevin F; Pelayo P. 2006. Any swimmer has a strategy for managing its own resources considering the cost / benefit of each stroke technique report, with the aim of improving strength (Arellano, R. (1992, its movement and hence its performance (Joshua, 1992 in retarded placed in individual practice crawl competition, open to different technical conditions, what is the movement that is most often practiced, according to "the outstretched arm" or "folded S-shaped arm "under the swimmer? Methods: We record video (Pk Chollet - 2003, during two Regional championships in France adapted swim organized by the French Federation of Adapted Sport tests crawl in Division 1 Division 2 and Division 3 according to the latest regulations for implementation first time. We question the choice: "The outstretched arm" or "arm bent S-shaped" under the swimmer, by interviews (Y.Meynaud; Duclos D.1996 professional supervisors or volunteers before tests their competitors and we competitors are questioning after their trials. Results: It appears on the video that all competitors swim the "arms outstretched" The point of view of professional or volunteer supervisors: no of them are not asked for the choice of method of propulsion is best for their competitors as they say swimming techniques they teach in their club are the same as for all disabled or not competitors. The point of view of competitors: For competitors the method of propulsion "outstretched arm" seems to them the most effective. Method "arm S" Their demand coordination of movement more difficult to obtain in the context of mental disability

Geospatial semantic web

CERN Document Server

Zhang, Chuanrong; Li, Weidong

2015-01-01

This book covers key issues related to Geospatial Semantic Web, including geospatial web services for spatial data interoperability; geospatial ontology for semantic interoperability; ontology creation, sharing, and integration; querying knowledge and information from heterogeneous data source; interfaces for Geospatial Semantic Web, VGI (Volunteered Geographic Information) and Geospatial Semantic Web; challenges of Geospatial Semantic Web; and development of Geospatial Semantic Web applications. This book also describes state-of-the-art technologies that attempt to solve these problems such as WFS, WMS, RDF, OWL, and GeoSPARQL, and demonstrates how to use the Geospatial Semantic Web technologies to solve practical real-world problems such as spatial data interoperability.

The interaction of lexical semantics and cohort competition in spoken word recognition: an fMRI study.

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Zhuang, Jie; Randall, Billi; Stamatakis, Emmanuel A; Marslen-Wilson, William D; Tyler, Lorraine K

2011-12-01

Spoken word recognition involves the activation of multiple word candidates on the basis of the initial speech input--the "cohort"--and selection among these competitors. Selection may be driven primarily by bottom-up acoustic-phonetic inputs or it may be modulated by other aspects of lexical representation, such as a word's meaning [Marslen-Wilson, W. D. Functional parallelism in spoken word-recognition. Cognition, 25, 71-102, 1987]. We examined these potential interactions in an fMRI study by presenting participants with words and pseudowords for lexical decision. In a factorial design, we manipulated (a) cohort competition (high/low competitive cohorts which vary the number of competing word candidates) and (b) the word's semantic properties (high/low imageability). A previous behavioral study [Tyler, L. K., Voice, J. K., & Moss, H. E. The interaction of meaning and sound in spoken word recognition. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 7, 320-326, 2000] showed that imageability facilitated word recognition but only for words in high competition cohorts. Here we found greater activity in the left inferior frontal gyrus (BA 45, 47) and the right inferior frontal gyrus (BA 47) with increased cohort competition, an imageability effect in the left posterior middle temporal gyrus/angular gyrus (BA 39), and a significant interaction between imageability and cohort competition in the left posterior superior temporal gyrus/middle temporal gyrus (BA 21, 22). In words with high competition cohorts, high imageability words generated stronger activity than low imageability words, indicating a facilitatory role of imageability in a highly competitive cohort context. For words in low competition cohorts, there was no effect of imageability. These results support the behavioral data in showing that selection processes do not rely solely on bottom-up acoustic-phonetic cues but rather that the semantic properties of candidate words facilitate discrimination between competitors.

Semantic Multimedia

NARCIS (Netherlands)

S. Staab; A. Scherp; R. Arndt; R. Troncy (Raphael); M. Grzegorzek; C. Saathoff; S. Schenk; L. Hardman (Lynda)

2008-01-01

htmlabstractMultimedia constitutes an interesting field of application for Semantic Web and Semantic Web reasoning, as the access and management of multimedia content and context depends strongly on the semantic descriptions of both. At the same time, multimedia resources constitute complex objects,

The time course of morphological processing during spoken word recognition in Chinese.

Science.gov (United States)

Shen, Wei; Qu, Qingqing; Ni, Aiping; Zhou, Junyi; Li, Xingshan

2017-12-01

We investigated the time course of morphological processing during spoken word recognition using the printed-word paradigm. Chinese participants were asked to listen to a spoken disyllabic compound word while simultaneously viewing a printed-word display. Each visual display consisted of three printed words: a semantic associate of the first constituent of the compound word (morphemic competitor), a semantic associate of the whole compound word (whole-word competitor), and an unrelated word (distractor). Participants were directed to detect whether the spoken target word was on the visual display. Results indicated that both the morphemic and whole-word competitors attracted more fixations than the distractor. More importantly, the morphemic competitor began to diverge from the distractor immediately at the acoustic offset of the first constituent, which was earlier than the whole-word competitor. These results suggest that lexical access to the auditory word is incremental and morphological processing (i.e., semantic access to the first constituent) that occurs at an early processing stage before access to the representation of the whole word in Chinese.

Varieties of semantic 'access' deficit in Wernicke's aphasia and semantic aphasia.

Science.gov (United States)

Thompson, Hannah E; Robson, Holly; Lambon Ralph, Matthew A; Jefferies, Elizabeth

2015-12-01

Comprehension deficits are common in stroke aphasia, including in cases with (i) semantic aphasia, characterized by poor executive control of semantic processing across verbal and non-verbal modalities; and (ii) Wernicke's aphasia, associated with poor auditory-verbal comprehension and repetition, plus fluent speech with jargon. However, the varieties of these comprehension problems, and their underlying causes, are not well understood. Both patient groups exhibit some type of semantic 'access' deficit, as opposed to the 'storage' deficits observed in semantic dementia. Nevertheless, existing descriptions suggest that these patients might have different varieties of 'access' impairment-related to difficulty resolving competition (in semantic aphasia) versus initial activation of concepts from sensory inputs (in Wernicke's aphasia). We used a case series design to compare patients with Wernicke's aphasia and those with semantic aphasia on Warrington's paradigmatic assessment of semantic 'access' deficits. In these verbal and non-verbal matching tasks, a small set of semantically-related items are repeatedly presented over several cycles so that the target on one trial becomes a distractor on another (building up interference and eliciting semantic 'blocking' effects). Patients with Wernicke's aphasia and semantic aphasia were distinguished according to lesion location in the temporal cortex, but in each group, some individuals had additional prefrontal damage. Both of these aspects of lesion variability-one that mapped onto classical 'syndromes' and one that did not-predicted aspects of the semantic 'access' deficit. Both semantic aphasia and Wernicke's aphasia cases showed multimodal semantic impairment, although as expected, the Wernicke's aphasia group showed greater deficits on auditory-verbal than picture judgements. Distribution of damage in the temporal lobe was crucial for predicting the initially 'beneficial' effects of stimulus repetition: cases with

The Prime Numbers Hidden Symmetric Structure and its Relation to the Twin Prime Infinitude and an Improved Prime Number Theorem

CERN Document Server

Mikoss, I

2006-01-01

Due to the sieving process represented by a Secondary Sieving Map; during the generation of the prime numbers, geometric structures with definite symmetries are formed which become evident through their geometrical representations. The study of these structures allows the development of a constructive prime generating formula. This defines a mean prime density yielding a second order recursive and discrete prime producing formula and a second order differential equation whose solutions produce an improved Prime Number Theorem. Applying these results to twin prime pairs is possible to generate a Twin Prime Number Theorem and important conclusions about the infinitude of the twin primes.

Generative Semantics.

Science.gov (United States)

King, Margaret

The first section of this paper deals with the attempts within the framework of transformational grammar to make semantics a systematic part of linguistic description, and outlines the characteristics of the generative semantics position. The second section takes a critical look at generative semantics in its later manifestations, and makes a case…

Relationship Structures and Semantic Type Assignments of the UMLS Enriched Semantic Network

Science.gov (United States)

Zhang, Li; Halper, Michael; Perl, Yehoshua; Geller, James; Cimino, James J.

2005-01-01

Objective: The Enriched Semantic Network (ESN) was introduced as an extension of the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) Semantic Network (SN). Its multiple subsumption configuration and concomitant multiple inheritance make the ESN's relationship structures and semantic type assignments different from those of the SN. A technique for deriving the relationship structures of the ESN's semantic types and an automated technique for deriving the ESN's semantic type assignments from those of the SN are presented. Design: The technique to derive the ESN's relationship structures finds all newly inherited relationships in the ESN. All such relationships are audited for semantic validity, and the blocking mechanism is used to block invalid relationships. The mapping technique to derive the ESN's semantic type assignments uses current SN semantic type assignments and preserves nonredundant categorizations, while preventing new redundant categorizations. Results: Among the 426 newly inherited relationships, 326 are deemed valid. Seven blockings are applied to avoid inheritance of the 100 invalid relationships. Sixteen semantic types have different relationship structures in the ESN as compared to those in the SN. The mapping of semantic type assignments from the SN to the ESN avoids the generation of 26,950 redundant categorizations. The resulting ESN contains 138 semantic types, 149 IS-A links, 7,303 relationships, and 1,013,876 semantic type assignments. Conclusion: The ESN's multiple inheritance provides more complete relationship structures than in the SN. The ESN's semantic type assignments avoid the existing redundant categorizations appearing in the SN and prevent new ones that might arise due to multiple parents. Compared to the SN, the ESN provides a more accurate unifying semantic abstraction of the UMLS Metathesaurus. PMID:16049233

Perceptual priming versus explicit memory: dissociable neural correlates at encoding.

Science.gov (United States)

Schott, Björn; Richardson-Klavehn, Alan; Heinze, Hans-Jochen; Düzel, Emrah

2002-05-15

We addressed the hypothesis that perceptual priming and explicit memory have distinct neural correlates at encoding. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while participants studied visually presented words at deep versus shallow levels of processing (LOPs). The ERPs were sorted by whether or not participants later used studied words as completions to three-letter word stems in an intentional memory test, and by whether or not they indicated that these completions were remembered from the study list. Study trials from which words were later used and not remembered (primed trials) and study trials from which words were later used and remembered (remembered trials) were compared to study trials from which words were later not used (forgotten trials), in order to measure the ERP difference associated with later memory (DM effect). Primed trials involved an early (200-450 msec) centroparietal negative-going DM effect. Remembered trials involved a late (900-1200 msec) right frontal, positive-going DM effect regardless of LOP, as well as an earlier (600-800 msec) central, positive-going DM effect during shallow study processing only. All three DM effects differed topographically, and, in terms of their onset or duration, from the extended (600-1200 msec) fronto-central, positive-going shift for deep compared with shallow study processing. The results provide the first clear evidence that perceptual priming and explicit memory have distinct neural correlates at encoding, consistent with Tulving and Schacter's (1990) distinction between brain systems concerned with perceptual representation versus semantic and episodic memory. They also shed additional light on encoding processes associated with later explicit memory, by suggesting that brain processes influenced by LOP set the stage for other, at least partially separable, brain processes that are more directly related to encoding success.

Trust estimation of the semantic web using semantic web clustering

Science.gov (United States)

Shirgahi, Hossein; Mohsenzadeh, Mehran; Haj Seyyed Javadi, Hamid

2017-05-01

Development of semantic web and social network is undeniable in the Internet world these days. Widespread nature of semantic web has been very challenging to assess the trust in this field. In recent years, extensive researches have been done to estimate the trust of semantic web. Since trust of semantic web is a multidimensional problem, in this paper, we used parameters of social network authority, the value of pages links authority and semantic authority to assess the trust. Due to the large space of semantic network, we considered the problem scope to the clusters of semantic subnetworks and obtained the trust of each cluster elements as local and calculated the trust of outside resources according to their local trusts and trust of clusters to each other. According to the experimental result, the proposed method shows more than 79% Fscore that is about 11.9% in average more than Eigen, Tidal and centralised trust methods. Mean of error in this proposed method is 12.936, that is 9.75% in average less than Eigen and Tidal trust methods.

Masked immediate-repetition-priming effect on the early lexical process in the bilateral anterior temporal areas assessed by neuromagnetic responses.

Science.gov (United States)

Fujimaki, Norio; Hayakawa, Tomoe; Ihara, Aya; Matani, Ayumu; Wei, Qiang; Terazono, Yasushi; Murata, Tsutomu

2010-10-01

A masked priming paradigm has been used to measure unconscious and automatic context effects on the processing of words. However, its spatiotemporal neural basis has not yet been clarified. To test the hypothesis that masked repetition priming causes enhancement of neural activation, we conducted a magnetoencephalography experiment in which a prime was visually presented for a short duration (50 ms), preceded by a mask pattern, and followed by a target word that was represented by a Japanese katakana syllabogram. The prime, which was identical to the target, was represented by another hiragana syllabogram in the "Repeated" condition, whereas it was a string of unreadable pseudocharacters in the "Unrepeated" condition. Subjects executed a categorical decision task on the target. Activation was significantly larger for the Repeated condition than for the Unrepeated condition at a time window of 150-250 ms in the right occipital area, 200-250 ms in the bilateral ventral occipitotemporal areas, and 200-250 ms and 200-300 ms in the left and right anterior temporal areas, respectively. These areas have been reported to be related to processing of visual-form/orthography and lexico-semantics, and the enhanced activation supports the hypothesis. However, the absence of the priming effect in the areas related to phonological processing implies that automatic phonological priming effect depends on task requirements. 2010 Elsevier Ireland Ltd and the Japan Neuroscience Society. All rights reserved.

Photocaged Competitor Guests: A General Approach Toward Light-Activated Cargo Release From Cucurbiturils.

Science.gov (United States)

Romero, Miguel A; Basílio, Nuno; Moro, Artur J; Domingues, Mara; González-Delgado, José A; Arteaga, Jesús F; Pischel, Uwe

2017-09-21

A general approach toward the light-induced guest release from cucurbit[7]uril by means of a photoactivatable competitor was devised. An o-nitrobenzyl-caged competitor is photolyzed to generate a competitive guest that can displace cargo from the host macrocycle solely based on considerations of chemical equilibrium. With this method the release of terpene guests from inclusion complexes with cucurbit[7]uril was demonstrated. The binding of the herein investigated terpenes, all being lead fragrant components in essential oils, has been characterized for the first time. They feature binding constants of up to 10 8  L mol -1 and a high differential binding selectivity (spanning four orders of magnitude for the binding constants for the particular set of terpenes). By fine-tuning the photoactivatable competitor guest, selective and also sequential release of the terpenes was achieved. © 2017 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

The Influence of Concreteness of Concepts on the Integration of Novel Words into the Semantic Network.

Science.gov (United States)

Ding, Jinfeng; Liu, Wenjuan; Yang, Yufang

2017-01-01

On the basis of previous studies revealing a processing advantage of concrete words over abstract words, the current study aimed to further explore the influence of concreteness on the integration of novel words into semantic memory with the event related potential (ERP) technique. In the experiment during the learning phase participants read two-sentence contexts and inferred the meaning of novel words. The novel words were two-character non-words in Chinese language. Their meaning was either a concrete or abstract known concept which could be inferred from the contexts. During the testing phase participants performed a lexical decision task in which the learned novel words served as primes for either their corresponding concepts, semantically related or unrelated targets. For the concrete novel words, the semantically related words belonged to the same semantic categories with their corresponding concepts. For the abstract novel words, the semantically related words were synonyms of their corresponding concepts. The unrelated targets were real words which were concrete or abstract for the concrete or abstract novel words respectively. The ERP results showed that the corresponding concepts and the semantically related words elicited smaller N400s than the unrelated words. The N400 effect was not modulated by the concreteness of the concepts. In addition, the concrete corresponding concepts elicited a smaller late positive component (LPC) than the concrete unrelated words. This LPC effect was absent for the abstract words. The results indicate that although both concrete and abstract novel words can be acquired and linked to their related words in the semantic network after a short learning phase, the concrete novel words are learned better. Our findings support the (extended) dual coding theory and broaden our understanding of adult word learning and changes in concept organization.

The Influence of Concreteness of Concepts on the Integration of Novel Words into the Semantic Network

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jinfeng Ding

2017-12-01

Full Text Available On the basis of previous studies revealing a processing advantage of concrete words over abstract words, the current study aimed to further explore the influence of concreteness on the integration of novel words into semantic memory with the event related potential (ERP technique. In the experiment during the learning phase participants read two-sentence contexts and inferred the meaning of novel words. The novel words were two-character non-words in Chinese language. Their meaning was either a concrete or abstract known concept which could be inferred from the contexts. During the testing phase participants performed a lexical decision task in which the learned novel words served as primes for either their corresponding concepts, semantically related or unrelated targets. For the concrete novel words, the semantically related words belonged to the same semantic categories with their corresponding concepts. For the abstract novel words, the semantically related words were synonyms of their corresponding concepts. The unrelated targets were real words which were concrete or abstract for the concrete or abstract novel words respectively. The ERP results showed that the corresponding concepts and the semantically related words elicited smaller N400s than the unrelated words. The N400 effect was not modulated by the concreteness of the concepts. In addition, the concrete corresponding concepts elicited a smaller late positive component (LPC than the concrete unrelated words. This LPC effect was absent for the abstract words. The results indicate that although both concrete and abstract novel words can be acquired and linked to their related words in the semantic network after a short learning phase, the concrete novel words are learned better. Our findings support the (extended dual coding theory and broaden our understanding of adult word learning and changes in concept organization.

Semantic Desktop

Science.gov (United States)

Sauermann, Leo; Kiesel, Malte; Schumacher, Kinga; Bernardi, Ansgar

In diesem Beitrag wird gezeigt, wie der Arbeitsplatz der Zukunft aussehen könnte und wo das Semantic Web neue Möglichkeiten eröffnet. Dazu werden Ansätze aus dem Bereich Semantic Web, Knowledge Representation, Desktop-Anwendungen und Visualisierung vorgestellt, die es uns ermöglichen, die bestehenden Daten eines Benutzers neu zu interpretieren und zu verwenden. Dabei bringt die Kombination von Semantic Web und Desktop Computern besondere Vorteile - ein Paradigma, das unter dem Titel Semantic Desktop bekannt ist. Die beschriebenen Möglichkeiten der Applikationsintegration sind aber nicht auf den Desktop beschränkt, sondern können genauso in Web-Anwendungen Verwendung finden.

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.

TMS interferes with lexical-semantic retrieval in left inferior frontal gyrus and posterior middle temporal gyrus: Evidence from cyclical picture naming.

Science.gov (United States)

Krieger-Redwood, Katya; Jefferies, Elizabeth

2014-11-01

We used TMS to investigate the contribution of left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG) and posterior middle temporal gyrus (pMTG) to lexical/semantic selection and retrieval processes using a cyclical naming paradigm. Participants named pictures that were presented repeatedly across six cycles, either in semantically related or unrelated sets. Previous research has suggested that selection demands are higher for related sets, especially after repetition, since participants experience competition from the activation of semantic neighbours. In contrast, retrieval demands are greater for unrelated sets in the absence of semantic priming, particularly on the first cycle when the target names have not been previously activated. Therefore, this paradigm can reveal independent effects of (i) retrieval demands (i.e., the ease of accessing picture names from visual input) and (ii) selection/competition. We found that rTMS to LIFG and pMTG produced similar behavioural effects: stimulation of both sites disrupted picture naming performance on early cycles (when participants were less practised at producing the picture names) and for semantically-related sets (when there was the potential for increased competition and yet also facilitation from semantic neighbours). There were no effects of TMS when either retrieval or selection requirements were maximal on their own. The data therefore support the view that both LIFG and pMTG contribute to picture name retrieval, with both sites playing a critical role in mediating the semantic facilitation of naming when retrieval demands are high. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Semantic heterogeneity: comparing new semantic web approaches with those of digital libraries

OpenAIRE

Krause, Jürgen

2008-01-01

To demonstrate that newer developments in the semantic web community, particularly those based on ontologies (simple knowledge organization system and others) mitigate common arguments from the digital library (DL) community against participation in the Semantic web. The approach is a semantic web discussion focusing on the weak structure of the Web and the lack of consideration given to the semantic content during indexing. The points criticised by the semantic web and ontology approaches ar...

Semantic framework for mapping object-oriented model to semantic web languages.

Science.gov (United States)

Ježek, Petr; Mouček, Roman

2015-01-01

The article deals with and discusses two main approaches in building semantic structures for electrophysiological metadata. It is the use of conventional data structures, repositories, and programming languages on one hand and the use of formal representations of ontologies, known from knowledge representation, such as description logics or semantic web languages on the other hand. Although knowledge engineering offers languages supporting richer semantic means of expression and technological advanced approaches, conventional data structures and repositories are still popular among developers, administrators and users because of their simplicity, overall intelligibility, and lower demands on technical equipment. The choice of conventional data resources and repositories, however, raises the question of how and where to add semantics that cannot be naturally expressed using them. As one of the possible solutions, this semantics can be added into the structures of the programming language that accesses and processes the underlying data. To support this idea we introduced a software prototype that enables its users to add semantically richer expressions into a Java object-oriented code. This approach does not burden users with additional demands on programming environment since reflective Java annotations were used as an entry for these expressions. Moreover, additional semantics need not to be written by the programmer directly to the code, but it can be collected from non-programmers using a graphic user interface. The mapping that allows the transformation of the semantically enriched Java code into the Semantic Web language OWL was proposed and implemented in a library named the Semantic Framework. This approach was validated by the integration of the Semantic Framework in the EEG/ERP Portal and by the subsequent registration of the EEG/ERP Portal in the Neuroscience Information Framework.

Language-mediated visual orienting behavior in low and high literates

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Falk eHuettig

2011-10-01

Full Text Available The influence of formal literacy on spoken language-mediated visual orienting was investigated by using a simple look and listen task (cf. Huettig & Altmann, 2005 which resembles every day behavior. In Experiment 1, high and low literates listened to spoken sentences containing a target word (e.g., 'magar', crocodile while at the same time looking at a visual display of four objects (a phonological competitor of the target word, e.g., 'matar', peas; a semantic competitor, e.g., 'kachuwa', turtle, and two unrelated distractors. In Experiment 2 the semantic competitor was replaced with another unrelated distractor. Both groups of participants shifted their eye gaze to the semantic competitors (Experiment 1. In both experiments high literates shifted their eye gaze towards phonological competitors as soon as phonological information became available and moved their eyes away as soon as the acoustic information mismatched. Low literates in contrast only used phonological information when semantic matches between spoken word and visual referent were impossible (Experiment 2 but in contrast to high literates these phonologically-mediated shifts in eye gaze were not closely time-locked to the speech input. We conclude that in high literates language-mediated shifts in overt attention are co-determined by the type of information in the visual environment, the timing of cascaded processing in the word- and object-recognition systems, and the temporal unfolding of the spoken language. Our findings indicate that low literates exhibit a similar cognitive behavior but instead of participating in a tug-of-war among multiple types of cognitive representations, word-object mapping is achieved primarily at the semantic level. If forced, for instance by a situation in which semantic matches are not present (Experiment 2, low literates may on occasion have to rely on phonological information but do so in a much less proficient manner than their highly literate

Programming the semantic web

CERN Document Server

Segaran, Toby; Taylor, Jamie

2009-01-01

With this book, the promise of the Semantic Web -- in which machines can find, share, and combine data on the Web -- is not just a technical possibility, but a practical reality Programming the Semantic Web demonstrates several ways to implement semantic web applications, using current and emerging standards and technologies. You'll learn how to incorporate existing data sources into semantically aware applications and publish rich semantic data. Each chapter walks you through a single piece of semantic technology and explains how you can use it to solve real problems. Whether you're writing

Semantic metrics

OpenAIRE

Hu, Bo; Kalfoglou, Yannis; Dupplaw, David; Alani, Harith; Lewis, Paul; Shadbolt, Nigel

2006-01-01

In the context of the Semantic Web, many ontology-related operations, e.g. ontology ranking, segmentation, alignment, articulation, reuse, evaluation, can be boiled down to one fundamental operation: computing the similarity and/or dissimilarity among ontological entities, and in some cases among ontologies themselves. In this paper, we review standard metrics for computing distance measures and we propose a series of semantic metrics. We give a formal account of semantic metrics drawn from a...

Allies and Competitors as Enscripted Audiences in Scientific Writing.

Science.gov (United States)

Perry, Susan

A set of much examined scientific papers which specifically portray a controversial topic and also manifest ally-peer and competitor-peer enscripted audiences are those written by James Watson and Francis Crick concerning their discovery of the structure of deoxyribose nucleic acid (DNA). The theoretical perspective of an ally-peer and…

Inquisitive semantics and pragmatics

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Groenendijk, J.; Roelofsen, F.; Larrazabal, J.M.; Zubeldia, L.

2009-01-01

This paper starts with an informal introduction to inquisitive semantics. After that, we present a formal definition of the semantics, and introduce the basic semantic notions of inquisitiveness and informativeness, in terms of wich we define the semantic categories of questions, assertions, and

Personal semantics: at the crossroads of semantic and episodic memory.

Science.gov (United States)

Renoult, Louis; Davidson, Patrick S R; Palombo, Daniela J; Moscovitch, Morris; Levine, Brian

2012-11-01

Declarative memory is usually described as consisting of two systems: semantic and episodic memory. Between these two poles, however, may lie a third entity: personal semantics (PS). PS concerns knowledge of one's past. Although typically assumed to be an aspect of semantic memory, it is essentially absent from existing models of knowledge. Furthermore, like episodic memory (EM), PS is idiosyncratically personal (i.e., not culturally-shared). We show that, depending on how it is operationalized, the neural correlates of PS can look more similar to semantic memory, more similar to EM, or dissimilar to both. We consider three different perspectives to better integrate PS into existing models of declarative memory and suggest experimental strategies for disentangling PS from semantic and episodic memory. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

13 CFR 107.885 - Disposition of assets to Licensee's Associates or to competitors of Portfolio Concern.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-01-01

... 13 Business Credit and Assistance 1 2010-01-01 2010-01-01 false Disposition of assets to Licensee's Associates or to competitors of Portfolio Concern. 107.885 Section 107.885 Business Credit and... to competitors of Portfolio Concern. Sale of assets to Associate. Except with SBA's prior written...

The role of semantics, pre-emption and skew in linguistic distributions: the case of the un-construction.

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Paul eIbbotson

2013-12-01

Full Text Available We use the Google Ngram database, a corpus of 5,195,769 digitized books containing ~4% of all books ever published, to test three ideas that are hypothesized to account for linguistic generalizations: verbal semantics, pre-emption and skew. Using 828,813 tokens of un-forms as a test case for these mechanisms, we found verbal semantics was a good predictor of the frequency of un-forms in the English language over the past 200 years – both in terms of how the frequency changed over time and their rank frequency. We did not find strong evidence for the direct competition of un-forms and their top pre-emptors, however the skew of the un-construction competitors was inversely correlated with the acceptability of the un-form. We suggest a cognitive explanation for this, namely, that the more the set of relevant pre-emptors is skewed then the more easily it is retrieved from memory. This suggests that it is not just the frequency of pre-emptive forms that must be taken into account when trying to explain usage patterns but their skew as well.

SSWAP: A Simple Semantic Web Architecture and Protocol for semantic web services.

Science.gov (United States)

Gessler, Damian D G; Schiltz, Gary S; May, Greg D; Avraham, Shulamit; Town, Christopher D; Grant, David; Nelson, Rex T

2009-09-23

SSWAP (Simple Semantic Web Architecture and Protocol; pronounced "swap") is an architecture, protocol, and platform for using reasoning to semantically integrate heterogeneous disparate data and services on the web. SSWAP was developed as a hybrid semantic web services technology to overcome limitations found in both pure web service technologies and pure semantic web technologies. There are currently over 2400 resources published in SSWAP. Approximately two dozen are custom-written services for QTL (Quantitative Trait Loci) and mapping data for legumes and grasses (grains). The remaining are wrappers to Nucleic Acids Research Database and Web Server entries. As an architecture, SSWAP establishes how clients (users of data, services, and ontologies), providers (suppliers of data, services, and ontologies), and discovery servers (semantic search engines) interact to allow for the description, querying, discovery, invocation, and response of semantic web services. As a protocol, SSWAP provides the vocabulary and semantics to allow clients, providers, and discovery servers to engage in semantic web services. The protocol is based on the W3C-sanctioned first-order description logic language OWL DL. As an open source platform, a discovery server running at http://sswap.info (as in to "swap info") uses the description logic reasoner Pellet to integrate semantic resources. The platform hosts an interactive guide to the protocol at http://sswap.info/protocol.jsp, developer tools at http://sswap.info/developer.jsp, and a portal to third-party ontologies at http://sswapmeet.sswap.info (a "swap meet"). SSWAP addresses the three basic requirements of a semantic web services architecture (i.e., a common syntax, shared semantic, and semantic discovery) while addressing three technology limitations common in distributed service systems: i.e., i) the fatal mutability of traditional interfaces, ii) the rigidity and fragility of static subsumption hierarchies, and iii) the

SemanticOrganizer: A Customizable Semantic Repository for Distributed NASA Project Teams

Science.gov (United States)

Keller, Richard M.; Berrios, Daniel C.; Carvalho, Robert E.; Hall, David R.; Rich, Stephen J.; Sturken, Ian B.; Swanson, Keith J.; Wolfe, Shawn R.

2004-01-01

SemanticOrganizer is a collaborative knowledge management system designed to support distributed NASA projects, including diverse teams of scientists, engineers, and accident investigators. The system provides a customizable, semantically structured information repository that stores work products relevant to multiple projects of differing types. SemanticOrganizer is one of the earliest and largest semantic web applications deployed at NASA to date, and has been used in diverse contexts ranging from the investigation of Space Shuttle Columbia's accident to the search for life on other planets. Although the underlying repository employs a single unified ontology, access control and ontology customization mechanisms make the repository contents appear different for each project team. This paper describes SemanticOrganizer, its customization facilities, and a sampling of its applications. The paper also summarizes some key lessons learned from building and fielding a successful semantic web application across a wide-ranging set of domains with diverse users.

Varieties of semantic ‘access’ deficit in Wernicke’s aphasia and semantic aphasia

Science.gov (United States)

Robson, Holly; Lambon Ralph, Matthew A.; Jefferies, Elizabeth

2015-01-01

Comprehension deficits are common in stroke aphasia, including in cases with (i) semantic aphasia, characterized by poor executive control of semantic processing across verbal and non-verbal modalities; and (ii) Wernicke’s aphasia, associated with poor auditory–verbal comprehension and repetition, plus fluent speech with jargon. However, the varieties of these comprehension problems, and their underlying causes, are not well understood. Both patient groups exhibit some type of semantic ‘access’ deficit, as opposed to the ‘storage’ deficits observed in semantic dementia. Nevertheless, existing descriptions suggest that these patients might have different varieties of ‘access’ impairment—related to difficulty resolving competition (in semantic aphasia) versus initial activation of concepts from sensory inputs (in Wernicke’s aphasia). We used a case series design to compare patients with Wernicke’s aphasia and those with semantic aphasia on Warrington’s paradigmatic assessment of semantic ‘access’ deficits. In these verbal and non-verbal matching tasks, a small set of semantically-related items are repeatedly presented over several cycles so that the target on one trial becomes a distractor on another (building up interference and eliciting semantic ‘blocking’ effects). Patients with Wernicke’s aphasia and semantic aphasia were distinguished according to lesion location in the temporal cortex, but in each group, some individuals had additional prefrontal damage. Both of these aspects of lesion variability—one that mapped onto classical ‘syndromes’ and one that did not—predicted aspects of the semantic ‘access’ deficit. Both semantic aphasia and Wernicke’s aphasia cases showed multimodal semantic impairment, although as expected, the Wernicke’s aphasia group showed greater deficits on auditory-verbal than picture judgements. Distribution of damage in the temporal lobe was crucial for predicting the initially �

Stacking faults of {gamma}{prime}{prime} phase precipitated in a Ni-15Cr-8Fe-6Nb alloy; Ni-15Cr-8Fe-6Nb gokin ni sekishutsusuru {gamma}{prime}{prime} sonai no sekiso kekkan

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Kusabiraki, K; Ikeuchi, S [Toyama University, Toyama (Japan). Faculty of Engineering

1995-09-01

The stacking faults of a metastable {gamma}{prime}{prime} phase precipitated in a nickel-base superalloy, a modified NCF 3 type alloy (X-750M) were investigated by transmission electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction method. The {gamma}{prime}{prime} precipitates are circular shaped plates at the early stage of aging and they become elliptic or irregular shaped plates at the latter stage of aging up to 1033K. Contrast which suggests the existence of stacking faults on {l_brace}112{r_brace}{sub {gamma}{prime}{prime}} planes can be seen in many of large {gamma}{prime}{prime} precipitates extracted from the specimens aged at 1033K. It is clear that the values of {gamma}{prime}{prime}/{gamma} lattice mismatch increase with increasing the aging time from the measurement of lattice constants of the {gamma} and the {gamma}{prime}{prime} phase. The formation of stacking faults on {l_brace}112{r_brace}{sub {gamma}{prime}{prime}} in the large {gamma}{prime}{prime} precipitates is due to the movement of an a/6 [111] partial dislocation introduced by {gamma}{prime}{prime} /{gamma} coherency strain. Since a part of stacking sequence has a similar crystal structure to that of a stable {delta} phase precipitates in {gamma} phase, the formation of stacking faults in the {gamma}{prime}{prime} precipitates is considered to be favorable for the stabilization of them. 14 refs., 10 figs., 1 tab.

A Feedback Loop Model of Postmerger Performance: Customers and Competitors.

Science.gov (United States)

Bastien, David T.

1994-01-01

Offers a case study of a merger of two local theaters. Finds that organizational change causes customers to change vendors; the announcement of a merger fuels efforts by competitors to "steal" market share; and organizational change leads to more organizational change. (SR)

Iconic gestures prime related concepts: an ERP study.

Science.gov (United States)

Wu, Ying Croon; Coulson, Seana

2007-02-01

To assess priming by iconic gestures, we recorded EEG (at 29 scalp sites) in two experiments while adults watched short, soundless videos of spontaneously produced, cospeech iconic gestures followed by related or unrelated probe words. In Experiment 1, participants classified the relatedness between gestures and words. In Experiment 2, they attended to stimuli, and performed an incidental recognition memory test on words presented during the EEG recording session. Event-related potentials (ERPs) time-locked to the onset of probe words were measured, along with response latencies and word recognition rates. Although word relatedness did not affect reaction times or recognition rates, contextually related probe words elicited less-negative ERPs than did unrelated ones between 300 and 500 msec after stimulus onset (N400) in both experiments. These findings demonstrate sensitivity to semantic relations between iconic gestures and words in brain activity engendered during word comprehension.

Word-embeddings Italian semantic spaces: A semantic model for psycholinguistic research

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Marelli Marco

2017-01-01

Full Text Available Distributional semantics has been for long a source of successful models in psycholinguistics, permitting to obtain semantic estimates for a large number of words in an automatic and fast way. However, resources in this respect remain scarce or limitedly accessible for languages different from English. The present paper describes WEISS (Word-Embeddings Italian Semantic Space, a distributional semantic model based on Italian. WEISS includes models of semantic representations that are trained adopting state-of-the-art word-embeddings methods, applying neural networks to induce distributed representations for lexical meanings. The resource is evaluated against two test sets, demonstrating that WEISS obtains a better performance with respect to a baseline encoding word associations. Moreover, an extensive qualitative analysis of the WEISS output provides examples of the model potentialities in capturing several semantic phenomena. Two variants of WEISS are released and made easily accessible via web through the SNAUT graphic interface.

Gene expression of corals in response to macroalgal competitors.

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Tonya L Shearer

Full Text Available As corals decline and macroalgae proliferate on coral reefs, coral-macroalgal competition becomes more frequent and ecologically important. Whether corals are damaged by these interactions depends on susceptibility of the coral and traits of macroalgal competitors. Investigating changes in gene expression of corals and their intracellular symbiotic algae, Symbiodinium, in response to contact with different macroalgae provides insight into the biological processes and cellular pathways affected by competition with macroalgae. We evaluated the gene expression profiles of coral and Symbiodinium genes from two confamilial corals, Acropora millepora and Montipora digitata, after 6 h and 48 h of contact with four common macroalgae that differ in their allelopathic potency to corals. Contacts with macroalgae affected different biological pathways in the more susceptible (A. millepora versus the more resistant (M. digitata coral. Genes of coral hosts and of their associated Symbiodinium also responded in species-specific and time-specific ways to each macroalga. Changes in number and expression intensity of affected genes were greater after 6 h compared to 48 h of contact and were greater following contact with Chlorodesmis fastigiata and Amphiroa crassa than following contact with Galaxaura filamentosa or Turbinaria conoides. We documented a divergence in transcriptional responses between two confamilial corals and their associated Symbiodinium, as well as a diversity of dynamic responses within each coral species with respect to the species of macroalgal competitor and the duration of exposure to that competitor. These responses included early initiation of immune processes by Montipora, which is more resistant to damage after long-term macroalgal contact. Activation of the immune response by corals that better resist algal competition is consistent with the hypothesis that some macroalgal effects on corals may be mediated by microbial pathogens.

Semantically Interoperable XML Data.

Science.gov (United States)

Vergara-Niedermayr, Cristobal; Wang, Fusheng; Pan, Tony; Kurc, Tahsin; Saltz, Joel

2013-09-01

XML is ubiquitously used as an information exchange platform for web-based applications in healthcare, life sciences, and many other domains. Proliferating XML data are now managed through latest native XML database technologies. XML data sources conforming to common XML schemas could be shared and integrated with syntactic interoperability. Semantic interoperability can be achieved through semantic annotations of data models using common data elements linked to concepts from ontologies. In this paper, we present a framework and software system to support the development of semantic interoperable XML based data sources that can be shared through a Grid infrastructure. We also present our work on supporting semantic validated XML data through semantic annotations for XML Schema, semantic validation and semantic authoring of XML data. We demonstrate the use of the system for a biomedical database of medical image annotations and markups.

Semantically Interoperable XML Data

Science.gov (United States)

Vergara-Niedermayr, Cristobal; Wang, Fusheng; Pan, Tony; Kurc, Tahsin; Saltz, Joel

2013-01-01

XML is ubiquitously used as an information exchange platform for web-based applications in healthcare, life sciences, and many other domains. Proliferating XML data are now managed through latest native XML database technologies. XML data sources conforming to common XML schemas could be shared and integrated with syntactic interoperability. Semantic interoperability can be achieved through semantic annotations of data models using common data elements linked to concepts from ontologies. In this paper, we present a framework and software system to support the development of semantic interoperable XML based data sources that can be shared through a Grid infrastructure. We also present our work on supporting semantic validated XML data through semantic annotations for XML Schema, semantic validation and semantic authoring of XML data. We demonstrate the use of the system for a biomedical database of medical image annotations and markups. PMID:25298789

Semantics of Kinship Terms in Tamil from the Semantic Typology Point of View

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Анна Александровна Смирнитская

2016-12-01

Full Text Available In this article the author examines the lexical-semantic group “kinship terms” in Tamil, applying the attainments of modern semantic typology and the theory of semantic derivation. The kinship terms describing nuclear and extended family are explored. The “semantic shift” relation between two different meanings is established if such relation is realized by synchronous polysemy in one lexeme, semantic derivation, diachronic semantic change, cognates or some other means. The starting point of the study is the typological data from the DatSemShift catalogue of semantic shifts in languages of the world developed by a group of researchers under the guidance of Anna A. Zalizniak in the Institute of Linguistics, RAS. We verify the presence of semantic shifts described in the Database in Tamil. Also, we propose new semantic shifts specific only for this language. We confirm the presence of semantic relation of the studied type among the meanings with English “labels”: father - parents, girl - daughter, to deliver (a child - parents, - child, old woman - wife, owner - wife and others. The data also allows the assumption that the same relation exists between the meanings: old - grandfather, earth - mother, son - courage, unripe - son and others. The meanings of this field are the sources of semantic movements to abstract notions, lexicon of posession, forms of address and others; in addition many inner semantic relations inside this field are revealed. The meanings covering the nuclear part of the kinship system participate in universal semantic shifts described in the DatSemShift catalogue, while the meanings from collateral branches of this bifurcative kinship system (uncle, aunt turn out to be incomparable with kinship terms from indo-european lineal systems. Their meanings can be included in the DatSemShift catalogue only with an indication of system specifics. The information about semantic shifts can be useful for

Semantic Role Labeling

CERN Document Server

Palmer, Martha; Xue, Nianwen

2011-01-01

This book is aimed at providing an overview of several aspects of semantic role labeling. Chapter 1 begins with linguistic background on the definition of semantic roles and the controversies surrounding them. Chapter 2 describes how the theories have led to structured lexicons such as FrameNet, VerbNet and the PropBank Frame Files that in turn provide the basis for large scale semantic annotation of corpora. This data has facilitated the development of automatic semantic role labeling systems based on supervised machine learning techniques. Chapter 3 presents the general principles of applyin

Representations for Semantic Learning Webs: Semantic Web Technology in Learning Support

Science.gov (United States)

Dzbor, M.; Stutt, A.; Motta, E.; Collins, T.

2007-01-01

Recent work on applying semantic technologies to learning has concentrated on providing novel means of accessing and making use of learning objects. However, this is unnecessarily limiting: semantic technologies will make it possible to develop a range of educational Semantic Web services, such as interpretation, structure-visualization, support…

UML 2 Semantics and Applications

CERN Document Server

Lano, Kevin

2009-01-01

A coherent and integrated account of the leading UML 2 semantics work and the practical applications of UML semantics development With contributions from leading experts in the field, the book begins with an introduction to UML and goes on to offer in-depth and up-to-date coverage of: The role of semantics Considerations and rationale for a UML system model Definition of the UML system model UML descriptive semantics Axiomatic semantics of UML class diagrams The object constraint language Axiomatic semantics of state machines A coalgebraic semantic framework for reasoning about interaction des

Novelties in Competition Regulation in Romania. Impact on Competitors

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Cornelia LEFTER

2011-10-01

Full Text Available Upon the coming into force of the Law No. 149/2011, the recent changes in the Competition Law bring a significant decrease of the fines level, while encouraging competitors to support the maintenance of a healthy and transparent competition. However, some provisions require application guidelines, while others are tougher than the European law principles.

Semantic memory in object use.

Science.gov (United States)

Silveri, Maria Caterina; Ciccarelli, Nicoletta

2009-10-01

We studied five patients with semantic memory disorders, four with semantic dementia and one with herpes simplex virus encephalitis, to investigate the involvement of semantic conceptual knowledge in object use. Comparisons between patients who had semantic deficits of different severity, as well as the follow-up, showed that the ability to use objects was largely preserved when the deficit was mild but progressively decayed as the deficit became more severe. Naming was generally more impaired than object use. Production tasks (pantomime execution and actual object use) and comprehension tasks (pantomime recognition and action recognition) as well as functional knowledge about objects were impaired when the semantic deficit was severe. Semantic and unrelated errors were produced during object use, but actions were always fluent and patients performed normally on a novel tools task in which the semantic demand was minimal. Patients with severe semantic deficits scored borderline on ideational apraxia tasks. Our data indicate that functional semantic knowledge is crucial for using objects in a conventional way and suggest that non-semantic factors, mainly non-declarative components of memory, might compensate to some extent for semantic disorders and guarantee some residual ability to use very common objects independently of semantic knowledge.

The causal role of category-specific neuronal representations in the left ventral premotor cortex (PMv) in semantic processing.

Science.gov (United States)

Cattaneo, Zaira; Devlin, Joseph T; Salvini, Francesca; Vecchi, Tomaso; Silvanto, Juha

2010-02-01

The left ventral premotor cortex (PMv) is preferentially activated by exemplars of tools, suggestive of category specificity in this region. Here we used state-dependent transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to investigate the causal role of such category-specific neuronal representations in the encoding of tool words. Priming to a category name (either "Tool" or "Animal") was used with the objective of modulating the initial activation state of this region prior to application of TMS and the presentation of the target stimulus. When the target word was an exemplar of the "Tool" category, the effects of TMS applied over PMv (but not PMd) interacted with priming history by facilitating reaction times on incongruent trials while not affecting congruent trials. This congruency/TMS interaction implies that the "Tool" and "Animal" primes had a differential effect on the initial activation state of the left PMv and implies that this region is one neural locus of category-specific behavioral priming for the "Tool" category. TMS applied over PMv had no behavioral effect when the target stimulus was an exemplar of the "Animal" category, regardless of whether the target word was congruent or incongruent with the prime. That TMS applied over the left PMv interacted with a priming effect that extended from the category name ("Tool") to exemplars of that category suggests that this region contains neuronal representation associated with a specific semantic category. Our results also demonstrate that the state-dependent effects obtained in the combination of visual priming and TMS are useful in the study of higher-level cognitive functions. Copyright (c) 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The Neuromuscular Qualities of Higher- and Lower-Level Mixed-Martial-Arts Competitors.

Science.gov (United States)

James, Lachlan P; Beckman, Emma M; Kelly, Vincent G; Haff, G Gregory

2017-05-01

To determine whether the maximal strength, impulse, and power characteristics of competitive mixed-martial-arts (MMA) athletes differ according to competition level. Twenty-nine male semiprofessional and amateur MMA competitors were stratified into either higher-level (HL) or lower-level (LL) performers on the basis of competition grade and success. The 1-repetition-maximum (1RM) squat was used to assess lower-body dynamic strength, and a spectrum of impulse, power, force, and velocity variables were evaluated during an incremental-load jump squat. In addition, participants performed an isometric midthigh pull (IMTP) and 1RM bench press to determine whole-body isometric force and upper-body dynamic strength capabilities, respectively. All force and power variables were expressed relative to body mass (BM). The HL competitors produced significantly superior values across a multitude of measures. These included 1RM squat strength (1.84 ± 0.23 vs 1.56 ± 0.24 kg BM; P = .003), in addition to performance in the incremental-load jump squat that revealed greater peak power (P = .005-.002), force (P = .002-.004), and velocity (P = .002-.03) at each load. Higher measures of impulse (P = .01-.04) were noted in a number of conditions. Average power (P = .002-.02) and velocity (P = .01-.04) at all loads in addition to a series of rate-dependent measures were also superior in the HL group (P = .005-.02). The HL competitors' 1RM bench-press values approached significantly greater levels (P = .056) than the LL group's, but IMTP performance did not differ between groups. Maximal lower-body neuromuscular capabilities are key attributes distinguishing HL from LL MMA competitors. This information can be used to inform evidenced-based training and performance-monitoring practices.

Meinongian Semantics and Artificial Intelligence

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

William J. Rapaport

2013-12-01

Full Text Available This essay describes computational semantic networks for a philosophical audience and surveys several approaches to semantic-network semantics. In particular, propositional semantic networks (exemplified by SNePS are discussed; it is argued that only a fully intensional, Meinongian semantics is appropriate for them; and several Meinongian systems are presented.

Effects of sexual reproduction of the inferior competitor Brachionus calyciflorus on its fitness against Brachionus angularis

Science.gov (United States)

Li, Chen; Niu, Cuijuan

2015-03-01

Sexual reproduction adversely affects the population growth of cyclic parthenogenetic animals. The density-dependent sexual reproduction of a superior competitor could mediate the coexistence. However, the cost of sex may make the inferior competitor more vulnerable. To investigate the effect of sexual reproduction on the inferior competitor, we experimentally paired the competition of one Brachionus angularis clone against three Brachionus calyciflorus clones. One of the B. calyciflorus clones showed a low propensity for sexual reproduction, while the other two showed high propensities. The results show that all B. calyciflorus clones were excluded in the competition for resources at low food level. The increased food level promoted the competition persistence, but the clones did not show a clear pattern. Both the cumulative population density and resting egg production increased with the food level. The cumulative population density decreased with the mixis investment, while the resting egg production increased with the mixis investment. A trade-off between the population growth and sexual reproduction was observed in this research. The results indicate that although higher mixis investment resulted in a lower population density, it would not determinately accelerate the exclusion process of the inferior competitor. On the contrary, higher mixis investment promoted resting egg production before being excluded and thus promised a long-term benefit. In conclusion, our results suggest that mixis investment, to some extent, favored the excluded inferior competitor under fierce competition or some other adverse conditions.

Geospatial Semantics and the Semantic Web

CERN Document Server

Ashish, Naveen

2011-01-01

The availability of geographic and geospatial information and services, especially on the open Web has become abundant in the last several years with the proliferation of online maps, geo-coding services, geospatial Web services and geospatially enabled applications. The need for geospatial reasoning has significantly increased in many everyday applications including personal digital assistants, Web search applications, local aware mobile services, specialized systems for emergency response, medical triaging, intelligence analysis and more. Geospatial Semantics and the Semantic Web: Foundation

Are invasive plants more competitive than native conspecifics? Patterns vary with competitors

Science.gov (United States)

Zheng, Yulong; Feng, Yulong; Valiente-Banuet, Alfonso; Li, Yangping; Liao, Zhiyong; Zhang, Jiaolin; Chen, Yajun

2015-10-01

Invasive plants are sometimes considered to be more competitive than their native conspecifics, according to the prediction that the invader reallocates resources from defense to growth due to liberation of natural enemies [‘Evolution of Increased Competitive Ability’ (EICA) hypothesis]. However, the differences in competitive ability may depend on the identity of competitors. In order to test the effects of competitors, Ageratina adenophora plants from both native and invasive ranges competed directly, and competed with native residents from both invasive (China) and native (Mexico) ranges respectively. Invasive A. adenophora plants were more competitive than their conspecifics from native populations when competing with natives from China (interspecific competition), but not when competing with natives from Mexico. Invasive A. adenophora plants also showed higher competitive ability when grown in high-density monoculture communities of plants from the same population (intrapopulation competition). In contrast, invasive A. adenophora plants showed lower competitive ability when competing with plants from native populations (intraspecific competition). Our results indicated that in the invasive range A. adenophora has evolved to effectively cope with co-occurring natives and high density environments, contributing to invasion success. Here, we showed the significant effects of competitors, which should be considered carefully when testing the EICA hypothesis.

Social priming of dyslexia and reduction of the Stroop effect: what component of the Stroop effect is actually reduced?

Science.gov (United States)

Augustinova, Maria; Ferrand, Ludovic

2014-03-01

Recently, Goldfarb, Aisenberg, and Henik (2011) showed that in a manual format of the Stroop task, dyslexia priming eliminates the normal magnitude of the interference-based Stroop-like findings otherwise exhibited by individuals participating in such research. Goldfarb et al. (2011) consequently concluded that the effect of word reading in a Stroop task (i.e., one automatic behavior) can be effectively controlled through an automatic instruction "do not read" (i.e., another automatic behavior). The present study further investigated these ideas by examining when and how dyslexia priming controls different processes involved in a Stroop task. To this end, the original finding was first replicated (Experiment 1) and subsequently extended to the vocal (instead of manual) response modality to examine whether previously reported eliminations of the Stroop effect persist with this response format (i.e., format producing larger Stroop effects). Since past work (e.g., Augustinova & Ferrand, 2012a; Brown, Joneleit et al., 2002; Ferrand & Augustinova, 2013) had suggested that various interventions were likely to reduce (rather than eliminate) the interference-based Stroop-like findings with vocal responses, a further aim of these experiments was to identify the component of these findings that dyslexia priming actually reduces. To this end, the effects of this intervention were examined in a more fine-grained variant of the Stroop task that distinguished between interference resulting from task-irrelevant processes involved in computing the lexical and semantic representations of the word (i.e., a written distractor to ignore) and task-relevant processes involved in the selection of a response (i.e., a color target to name) that are both involved in this task. In line with our past work (e.g., Augustinova & Ferrand, 2012a; Ferrand & Augustinova, 2013), the results of two experiments (Experiments 2 and 3) showed that in the vocal format, dyslexia priming reduces but does not

Prime tight frames

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Lemvig, Jakob; Miller, Christopher; Okoudjou, Kasso A.

2014-01-01

to suggest effective analysis and synthesis computation strategies for such frames. Finally, we describe all prime frames constructed from the spectral tetris method, and, as a byproduct, we obtain a characterization of when the spectral tetris construction works for redundancies below two.......We introduce a class of finite tight frames called prime tight frames and prove some of their elementary properties. In particular, we show that any finite tight frame can be written as a union of prime tight frames. We then characterize all prime harmonic tight frames and use thischaracterization...

Influence of spatial competitor on the growth and regeneration of the marine sponge Cinachyrella cf. cavernosa (Porifera, demospongiae)

Digital Repository Service at National Institute of Oceanography (India)

Singh, A.; Thakur, N.L.

of the competitor species, Z. sansibaricus. The protein synthesis ability (RNA to DNA ratio), which is an index for physiological activity was adversely affected by sponge size and competitor abundance. Results suggest that in a space-limited region, the presence...

Verbal and non-verbal semantic impairment: From fluent primary progressive aphasia to semantic dementia

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Mirna Lie Hosogi Senaha

Full Text Available Abstract Selective disturbances of semantic memory have attracted the interest of many investigators and the question of the existence of single or multiple semantic systems remains a very controversial theme in the literature. Objectives: To discuss the question of multiple semantic systems based on a longitudinal study of a patient who presented semantic dementia from fluent primary progressive aphasia. Methods: A 66 year-old woman with selective impairment of semantic memory was examined on two occasions, undergoing neuropsychological and language evaluations, the results of which were compared to those of three paired control individuals. Results: In the first evaluation, physical examination was normal and the score on the Mini-Mental State Examination was 26. Language evaluation revealed fluent speech, anomia, disturbance in word comprehension, preservation of the syntactic and phonological aspects of the language, besides surface dyslexia and dysgraphia. Autobiographical and episodic memories were relatively preserved. In semantic memory tests, the following dissociation was found: disturbance of verbal semantic memory with preservation of non-verbal semantic memory. Magnetic resonance of the brain revealed marked atrophy of the left anterior temporal lobe. After 14 months, the difficulties in verbal semantic memory had become more severe and the semantic disturbance, limited initially to the linguistic sphere, had worsened to involve non-verbal domains. Conclusions: Given the dissociation found in the first examination, we believe there is sufficient clinical evidence to refute the existence of a unitary semantic system.

Non-cognate translation priming in masked priming lexical decision experiments: A meta-analysis.

Science.gov (United States)

Wen, Yun; van Heuven, Walter J B

2017-06-01

The masked translation priming paradigm has been widely used in the last 25 years to investigate word processing in bilinguals. Motivated by studies reporting mixed findings, in particular for second language (L2) to first language (L1) translation priming, we conducted, for the first time in the literature, a meta-analysis of 64 masked priming lexical decision experiments across 24 studies to assess the effect sizes of L1-L2 and L2-L1 non-cognate translation priming effects in bilinguals. Our meta-analysis also investigated the influence of potential moderators of translation priming effects. The results provided clear evidence of significant translation priming effects for both directions, with L1-L2 translation priming significantly larger than L2-L1 translation priming (i.e., effect size of 0.86 vs. 0.31). The analyses also revealed that L1-L2 translation effect sizes were moderated by the interval between prime and target (ISI), whereas L2-L1 translation effect sizes were modulated by the number of items per cell. Theoretical and methodological implications of this meta-analysis are discussed and recommendations for future studies are provided.

Montague semantics

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Janssen, T.M.V.

2012-01-01

Montague semantics is a theory of natural language semantics and of its relation with syntax. It was originally developed by the logician Richard Montague (1930-1971) and subsequently modified and extended by linguists, philosophers, and logicians. The most important features of the theory are its

From Data to Semantic Information

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Luciano Floridi

2003-06-01

Full Text Available Abstract: There is no consensus yet on the definition of semantic information. This paper contributes to the current debate by criticising and revising the Standard Definition of semantic Information (SDI as meaningful data, in favour of the Dretske-Grice approach: meaningful and well-formed data constitute semantic information only if they also qualify as contingently truthful. After a brief introduction, SDI is criticised for providing necessary but insufficient conditions for the definition of semantic information. SDI is incorrect because truth-values do not supervene on semantic information, and misinformation (that is, false semantic information is not a type of semantic information, but pseudo-information, that is not semantic information at all. This is shown by arguing that none of the reasons for interpreting misinformation as a type of semantic information is convincing, whilst there are compelling reasons to treat it as pseudo-information. As a consequence, SDI is revised to include a necessary truth-condition. The last section summarises the main results of the paper and indicates the important implications of the revised definition for the analysis of the deflationary theories of truth, the standard definition of knowledge and the classic, quantitative theory of semantic information.

Foundations of semantic web technologies

CERN Document Server

Hitzler, Pascal; Rudolph, Sebastian

2009-01-01

The Quest for Semantics Building Models Calculating with Knowledge Exchanging Information Semanic Web Technologies RESOURCE DESCRIPTION LANGUAGE (RDF)Simple Ontologies in RDF and RDF SchemaIntroduction to RDF Syntax for RDF Advanced Features Simple Ontologies in RDF Schema Encoding of Special Data Structures An ExampleRDF Formal Semantics Why Semantics? Model-Theoretic Semantics for RDF(S) Syntactic Reasoning with Deduction Rules The Semantic Limits of RDF(S)WEB ONTOLOGY LANGUAGE (OWL) Ontologies in OWL OWL Syntax and Intuitive Semantics OWL Species The Forthcoming OWL 2 StandardOWL Formal Sem

The Influence of Market Context on Business Strategy, Competitor Imitation and Operational Effectiveness

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Madalina Balau

2015-08-01

Full Text Available The importance of strategic positioning, along with operational effectiveness, has long been presented as key for the success of the company. There are few studies that highlighted the way in which the market context affects these efforts of the company. The aim of this paper is to explore the influence of the market context on competitor imitation and its further implications on strategy. For this purpose, a literature review was conducted and major concepts were drawn from works of M. Porter, while the influence of market context was found in research papers. Putting together these different perspectives on the company and the strategic choices it must make, the results of our analysis suggest that choosing a differentiation strategy and not imitating the reference competitors is a daring initiative, that involves the risk of standing out from the crowd. The implication of this finding is that imitation of the competitor is an easier solution for the company and it has an important attraction, due to the short term influence on increasing sales, while deterring innovation. The value of this paper consists in exploring the contextual influence of well-established concepts for company’s management.

Assess your competitor collaboration to advance sustainability : an assessment tool

NARCIS (Netherlands)

DiVito, Lori; Garima, Sharma

2016-01-01

If your company is currently collaborating with competitors in order to advance sustainability, this tool will help you think about how to take that collaboration to the next level and achieve better results. If you’re still at the planning stages, this tool can help you reflect on where you would

The modulatory influence of the functional COMT Val158Met polymorphism on lexical decisions and semantic priming

OpenAIRE

Reuter, Martin; Montag, Christian; Peters, Kristina; Kocher, Anne; Kiefer, Markus

2009-01-01

The role of the prefrontal Cortex (PFC) in higher cognitive functions - including working memory, conflict resolution, set shifting and semantic processing - has been demonstrated unequivocally. Despite the great heterogeneity among tasks measuring these phenotypes, due in part to the different cognitive sub-processes implied and the specificity of the stimulus material used, there is agreement that all of these tasks recruit an executive control system located in the PFC. On a biochemical le...

Basic semantics of product sounds

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Özcan Vieira, E.; Van Egmond, R.

2012-01-01

Product experience is a result of sensory and semantic experiences with product properties. In this paper, we focus on the semantic attributes of product sounds and explore the basic components for product sound related semantics using a semantic differential paradigmand factor analysis. With two

Retrieval from semantic memory.

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Noordman-Vonk, Wietske

1977-01-01

The present study has been concerned with the retrieval of semantic information. Retrieving semantic information is a fundamental process in almost any kind of cognitive behavior. The introduction presented the main experimental paradigms and results found in the literature on semantic memory as

Towards Universal Semantic Tagging

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Abzianidze, Lasha; Bos, Johan

2017-01-01

The paper proposes the task of universal semantic tagging---tagging word tokens with language-neutral, semantically informative tags. We argue that the task, with its independent nature, contributes to better semantic analysis for wide-coverage multilingual text. We present the initial version of

Process-oriented semantic web search

CERN Document Server

Tran, DT

2011-01-01

The book is composed of two main parts. The first part is a general study of Semantic Web Search. The second part specifically focuses on the use of semantics throughout the search process, compiling a big picture of Process-oriented Semantic Web Search from different pieces of work that target specific aspects of the process.In particular, this book provides a rigorous account of the concepts and technologies proposed for searching resources and semantic data on the Semantic Web. To collate the various approaches and to better understand what the notion of Semantic Web Search entails, this bo

Semantic SenseLab: Implementing the vision of the Semantic Web in neuroscience.

Science.gov (United States)

Samwald, Matthias; Chen, Huajun; Ruttenberg, Alan; Lim, Ernest; Marenco, Luis; Miller, Perry; Shepherd, Gordon; Cheung, Kei-Hoi

2010-01-01

Integrative neuroscience research needs a scalable informatics framework that enables semantic integration of diverse types of neuroscience data. This paper describes the use of the Web Ontology Language (OWL) and other Semantic Web technologies for the representation and integration of molecular-level data provided by several of SenseLab suite of neuroscience databases. Based on the original database structure, we semi-automatically translated the databases into OWL ontologies with manual addition of semantic enrichment. The SenseLab ontologies are extensively linked to other biomedical Semantic Web resources, including the Subcellular Anatomy Ontology, Brain Architecture Management System, the Gene Ontology, BIRNLex and UniProt. The SenseLab ontologies have also been mapped to the Basic Formal Ontology and Relation Ontology, which helps ease interoperability with many other existing and future biomedical ontologies for the Semantic Web. In addition, approaches to representing contradictory research statements are described. The SenseLab ontologies are designed for use on the Semantic Web that enables their integration into a growing collection of biomedical information resources. We demonstrate that our approach can yield significant potential benefits and that the Semantic Web is rapidly becoming mature enough to realize its anticipated promises. The ontologies are available online at http://neuroweb.med.yale.edu/senselab/. 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

English semantic word-pair norms and a searchable Web portal for experimental stimulus creation.

Science.gov (United States)

Buchanan, Erin M; Holmes, Jessica L; Teasley, Marilee L; Hutchison, Keith A

2013-09-01

As researchers explore the complexity of memory and language hierarchies, the need to expand normed stimulus databases is growing. Therefore, we present 1,808 words, paired with their features and concept-concept information, that were collected using previously established norming methods (McRae, Cree, Seidenberg, & McNorgan Behavior Research Methods 37:547-559, 2005). This database supplements existing stimuli and complements the Semantic Priming Project (Hutchison, Balota, Cortese, Neely, Niemeyer, Bengson, & Cohen-Shikora 2010). The data set includes many types of words (including nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc.), expanding on previous collections of nouns and verbs (Vinson & Vigliocco Journal of Neurolinguistics 15:317-351, 2008). We describe the relation between our and other semantic norms, as well as giving a short review of word-pair norms. The stimuli are provided in conjunction with a searchable Web portal that allows researchers to create a set of experimental stimuli without prior programming knowledge. When researchers use this new database in tandem with previous norming efforts, precise stimuli sets can be created for future research endeavors.

Priming in concert: Assimilation and contrast with multiple affective and gender primes.

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Fockenberg, D.A.; Koole, S.L.; Semin, G.R.

2008-01-01

The present research investigated the influence of multiple sequential primes on social categorization processes. Study 1 examined an evaluative decision task in which targets were preceded and succeeded by two primes. As expected, the temporally closest forward primes had assimilative effects on

Considering the role of semantic memory in episodic future thinking: evidence from semantic dementia.

Science.gov (United States)

Irish, Muireann; Addis, Donna Rose; Hodges, John R; Piguet, Olivier

2012-07-01

Semantic dementia is a progressive neurodegenerative condition characterized by the profound and amodal loss of semantic memory in the context of relatively preserved episodic memory. In contrast, patients with Alzheimer's disease typically display impairments in episodic memory, but with semantic deficits of a much lesser magnitude than in semantic dementia. Our understanding of episodic memory retrieval in these cohorts has greatly increased over the last decade, however, we know relatively little regarding the ability of these patients to imagine and describe possible future events, and whether episodic future thinking is mediated by divergent neural substrates contingent on dementia subtype. Here, we explored episodic future thinking in patients with semantic dementia (n=11) and Alzheimer's disease (n=11), in comparison with healthy control participants (n=10). Participants completed a battery of tests designed to probe episodic and semantic thinking across past and future conditions, as well as standardized tests of episodic and semantic memory. Further, all participants underwent magnetic resonance imaging. Despite their relatively intact episodic retrieval for recent past events, the semantic dementia cohort showed significant impairments for episodic future thinking. In contrast, the group with Alzheimer's disease showed parallel deficits across past and future episodic conditions. Voxel-based morphometry analyses confirmed that atrophy in the left inferior temporal gyrus and bilateral temporal poles, regions strongly implicated in semantic memory, correlated significantly with deficits in episodic future thinking in semantic dementia. Conversely, episodic future thinking performance in Alzheimer's disease correlated with atrophy in regions associated with episodic memory, namely the posterior cingulate, parahippocampal gyrus and frontal pole. These distinct neuroanatomical substrates contingent on dementia group were further qualified by correlational

High Performance Descriptive Semantic Analysis of Semantic Graph Databases

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Joslyn, Cliff A.; Adolf, Robert D.; al-Saffar, Sinan; Feo, John T.; Haglin, David J.; Mackey, Greg E.; Mizell, David W.

2011-06-02

As semantic graph database technology grows to address components ranging from extant large triple stores to SPARQL endpoints over SQL-structured relational databases, it will become increasingly important to be able to understand their inherent semantic structure, whether codified in explicit ontologies or not. Our group is researching novel methods for what we call descriptive semantic analysis of RDF triplestores, to serve purposes of analysis, interpretation, visualization, and optimization. But data size and computational complexity makes it increasingly necessary to bring high performance computational resources to bear on this task. Our research group built a novel high performance hybrid system comprising computational capability for semantic graph database processing utilizing the large multi-threaded architecture of the Cray XMT platform, conventional servers, and large data stores. In this paper we describe that architecture and our methods, and present the results of our analyses of basic properties, connected components, namespace interaction, and typed paths such for the Billion Triple Challenge 2010 dataset.

Aging affects both perceptual and lexical/semantic components of word stem priming: An event-related fMRI study

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Daselaar, S.M.; Veltman, D.J.; Rombouts, S.A.R.B.; Raaijmakers, J.G.; Jonker, C.

2005-01-01

In this event-related fMRI study, brain activity patterns were compared in extensive groups of young (N = 25) and older (N = 38) adults, while they were performing a word stem completion priming task. Based on behavioral findings, we tested the hypothesis that aging affects only the

The elimination of positive priming with increasing prime duration reflects a transition from perceptual fluency to disfluency rather than bias against primed words.

Science.gov (United States)

Potter, Kevin W; Donkin, Chris; Huber, David E

2018-03-01

With immediate repetition priming of forced choice perceptual identification, short prime durations produce positive priming (i.e., priming the target leads to higher accuracy, while priming the foil leads to lower accuracy). Many theories explain positive priming following short duration primes as reflecting increased perceptual fluency for the primed target (i.e., decreased identification latency). However, most studies only examine either accuracy or response times, rather than considering the joint constraints of response times and accuracy to properly address the role of decision biases and response caution. This is a critical oversight because several theories propose that the transition to negative priming following a long duration prime reflects a decision strategy to compensate for the effect of increased perceptual fluency. In contrast, the nROUSE model of Huber and O'Reilly (2003) explains this transition as reflecting perceptual habituation, and thus a change to perceptual disfluency. We confirmed this prediction by applying a sequential sampling model (the diffusion race model) to accuracy and response time distributions from a new single item same-different version of the priming task. In this way, we measured strategic biases and perceptual fluency in each condition for each subject. The nROUSE model was only applied to accuracy from the original forced-choice version of the priming task. This application of nROUSE produced separate predictions for each subject regarding the degree of fluency and disfluency in each condition, and these predictions were confirmed by the drift rate parameters (i.e., fluency) from the response time model in contrast to the threshold parameters (i.e., bias). Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Using the key success factor concept in competitor intelligence and benchmarking

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Bisp, Søren; Sørensen, Elin; Grunert, Klaus G.

1997-01-01

A key success factor is regarded as a skill or a resource that a business can invest in, which explains a major part of the observable differences in perceived value of the offer and/or relative costs of bringing that offer to the marketplace. Key success factors are potentially useful in structu......A key success factor is regarded as a skill or a resource that a business can invest in, which explains a major part of the observable differences in perceived value of the offer and/or relative costs of bringing that offer to the marketplace. Key success factors are potentially useful...... in structuring the generation of market intelligence in competitor analysis and benchmarking. To this end, a method was developed, based on a reverse laddering procedure, which elicits decision-makers' subjec causal maps. When aggregated, these maps can be used to derive competitor analysis systems. The paper...

Costs of coexistence along a gradient of competitor densities: an experiment with arvicoline rodents.

Science.gov (United States)

Eccard, Jana A; Ylönen, Hannu

2007-01-01

1. Costs of coexistence for species with indirect resource competition usually increase monotonically with competitor numbers. Very little is known though about the shape of the cost function for species with direct interference competition. 2. Here we report the results of an experiment with two vole species in artificial coexistence in large enclosures, where density of the dominant competitor species (Microtus agrestis) was manipulated. Experimental populations of the subordinate vole species (Clethrionomys glareolus) were composed of same aged individuals to study distribution of costs of coexistence with a dominant species within an age-cohort. 3. Survival and space use decreased gradually with increasing field vole numbers. Thus, responses to interference competition in our system appeared to be similar as expected from resource competition. The total number of breeders was stable. Reproductive characteristics such as the timing of breeding, and the litter size were not affected. In the single species enclosures a proportion of surviving individuals were not able to establish a breeding territory against stronger conspecifics. Under competition with heterospecifics such nonbreeders suffered high mortality, whereas the breeders survived. 4. Combined interference of dominant conspecifics and heterospecifics probably increased the frequency of aggressive interactions, social stress and mortality for the weaker individuals within a homogeneous age cohort of the subordinate competitor population. 5. Our results suggest, that in open systems where bank voles are outcompeted over the breeding season by faster reproducing field voles, animals able to establish a territory may be able to withstand competitor pressure, while nonbreeding bank vole individuals are forced to emigrate to suboptimal forest habitats.

A Defense of Semantic Minimalism

Science.gov (United States)

Kim, Su

2012-01-01

Semantic Minimalism is a position about the semantic content of declarative sentences, i.e., the content that is determined entirely by syntax. It is defined by the following two points: "Point 1": The semantic content is a complete/truth-conditional proposition. "Point 2": The semantic content is useful to a theory of…

On the Control of Single-Prime Negative Priming: The Effects of Practice and Time Course

Science.gov (United States)

Chao, Hsuan-Fu

2009-01-01

Single-prime negative priming refers to the phenomenon wherein repetition of a prime as the probe target results in delayed response. Sometimes this effect has been found to be contingent on participants' unawareness of the primes, and sometimes it has not. Further, sometimes this effect has been found to be eliminated when the prime could predict…

Open semantic analysis: The case of word level semantics in Danish

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Nielsen, Finn Årup; Hansen, Lars Kai

2017-01-01

The present research is motivated by the need for accessible and efficient tools for automated semantic analysis in Danish. We are interested in tools that are completely open, so they can be used by a critical public, in public administration, non-governmental organizations and businesses. We...... describe data-driven models for Danish semantic relatedness, word intrusion and sentiment prediction. Open Danish corpora were assembled and unsupervised learning implemented for explicit semantic analysis and with Gensim’s Word2vec model. We evaluate the performance of the two models on three different...... annotated word datasets. We test the semantic representations’ alignment with single word sentiment using supervised learning. We find that logistic regression and large random forests perform well with Word2vec features....

Primes, Geometry and Condensed Matter

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Al Rabeh R. H.

2009-07-01

Full Text Available Fascination with primes dates back to the Greeks and before. Primes are named by some "the elementary particles of arithmetic" as every nonprime integer is made of a unique set of primes. In this article we point to new connections between primes, geometry and physics which show that primes could be called "the elementary particles of physics" too. This study considers the problem of closely packing similar circles/spheres in 2D/3D space. This is in effect a discretization process of space and the allowable number in a pack is found to lead to some unexpected cases of prime configurations which is independent of the size of the constituents. We next suggest that a non-prime can be considered geometrically as a symmetric collection that is separable (factorable into similar parts- six is two threes or three twos for example. A collection that has no such symmetry is a prime. As a result, a physical prime aggregate is more difficult to split symmetrically resulting in an inherent stability. This "number/physical" stability idea applies to bigger collections made from smaller (prime units leading to larger stable prime structures in a limitless scaling up process. The distribution of primes among numbers can be understood better using the packing ideas described here and we further suggest that differing numbers (and values of distinct prime factors making a nonprime collection is an important factor in determining the probability and method of possible and subsequent disintegration. Disintegration is bound by energy conservation and is closely related to symmetry by Noether theorems. Thinking of condensed matter as the packing of identical elements, we examine plots of the masses of chemical elements of the periodic table, and also those of the elementary particles of physics, and show that prime packing rules seem to play a role in the make up of matter. The plots show convincingly that the growth of prime numbers and that of the masses of

Applied Semantic Web Technologies

CERN Document Server

Sugumaran, Vijayan

2011-01-01

The rapid advancement of semantic web technologies, along with the fact that they are at various levels of maturity, has left many practitioners confused about the current state of these technologies. Focusing on the most mature technologies, Applied Semantic Web Technologies integrates theory with case studies to illustrate the history, current state, and future direction of the semantic web. It maintains an emphasis on real-world applications and examines the technical and practical issues related to the use of semantic technologies in intelligent information management. The book starts with

China and Latin America: strategic partners or competitors?

OpenAIRE

Juan Manuel Gil Barragán; Andrés Aguilera Castillo

2017-01-01

This document has as main objective to discuss the dual role that China is playing in Latin America, on one hand, a strategic trade partner in Asia, source of foreign direct investment (FDI) and key ally in the international arena, on the other hand, China is a formidable competitor particularly in the manufacturing sector. To reach the main objective, we make a brief description of the international trade relation between China and Latin America for the last 15 years, also, a review of the i...

Adventures in semantic publishing: exemplar semantic enhancements of a research article.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

David Shotton

2009-04-01

Full Text Available Scientific innovation depends on finding, integrating, and re-using the products of previous research. Here we explore how recent developments in Web technology, particularly those related to the publication of data and metadata, might assist that process by providing semantic enhancements to journal articles within the mainstream process of scholarly journal publishing. We exemplify this by describing semantic enhancements we have made to a recent biomedical research article taken from PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases, providing enrichment to its content and increased access to datasets within it. These semantic enhancements include provision of live DOIs and hyperlinks; semantic markup of textual terms, with links to relevant third-party information resources; interactive figures; a re-orderable reference list; a document summary containing a study summary, a tag cloud, and a citation analysis; and two novel types of semantic enrichment: the first, a Supporting Claims Tooltip to permit "Citations in Context", and the second, Tag Trees that bring together semantically related terms. In addition, we have published downloadable spreadsheets containing data from within tables and figures, have enriched these with provenance information, and have demonstrated various types of data fusion (mashups with results from other research articles and with Google Maps. We have also published machine-readable RDF metadata both about the article and about the references it cites, for which we developed a Citation Typing Ontology, CiTO (http://purl.org/net/cito/. The enhanced article, which is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pntd.0000228.x001, presents a compelling existence proof of the possibilities of semantic publication. We hope the showcase of examples and ideas it contains, described in this paper, will excite the imaginations of researchers and publishers, stimulating them to explore the possibilities of semantic publishing for their own

Pascal Semantics by a Combination of Denotational Semantics and High-level Petri Nets

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Jensen, Kurt; Schmidt, Erik Meineche

1986-01-01

This paper describes the formal semantics of a subset of PASCAL, by means of a semantic model based on a combination of denotational semantics and high-level Petri nets. It is our intention that the paper can be used as part of the written material for an introductory course in computer science....

Cognate status and cross-script translation priming.

Science.gov (United States)

Voga, Madeleine; Grainger, Jonathan

2007-07-01

Greek-French bilinguals were tested in three masked priming experiments with Greek primes and French targets. Related primes were the translation equivalents of target words, morphologically related to targets, or phonologically related to targets. In Experiment 1, cognate translation equivalents (phonologically similar translations) showed facilitatory priming, relative to matched phonologically related primes, in conditions in which morphologically related primes showed no effect (50-msec prime exposure). Cross-language morphological priming emerged at longer prime exposure durations (66 msec), but cognate primes continued to generate more priming than did those in the morphological condition. In Experiments 2 and 3, the level of phonological overlap across translation equivalents was varied, and priming effects were measured against those for matched phonologically related primes and those in an unrelated prime condition. When measured against the unrelated baseline, cognate primes showed the typical advantage over noncognate primes. However, this cognate advantage disappeared when priming was measured against the phonologically related prime condition. The results are discussed in terms of how translation equivalents are represented in bilingual memory.

Auditing the Assignments of Top-Level Semantic Types in the UMLS Semantic Network to UMLS Concepts.

Science.gov (United States)

He, Zhe; Perl, Yehoshua; Elhanan, Gai; Chen, Yan; Geller, James; Bian, Jiang

2017-11-01

The Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) is an important terminological system. By the policy of its curators, each concept of the UMLS should be assigned the most specific Semantic Types (STs) in the UMLS Semantic Network (SN). Hence, the Semantic Types of most UMLS concepts are assigned at or near the bottom (leaves) of the UMLS Semantic Network. While most ST assignments are correct, some errors do occur. Therefore, Quality Assurance efforts of UMLS curators for ST assignments should concentrate on automatically detected sets of UMLS concepts with higher error rates than random sets. In this paper, we investigate the assignments of top-level semantic types in the UMLS semantic network to concepts, identify potential erroneous assignments, define four categories of errors, and thus provide assistance to curators of the UMLS to avoid these assignments errors. Human experts analyzed samples of concepts assigned 10 of the top-level semantic types and categorized the erroneous ST assignments into these four logical categories. Two thirds of the concepts assigned these 10 top-level semantic types are erroneous. Our results demonstrate that reviewing top-level semantic type assignments to concepts provides an effective way for UMLS quality assurance, comparing to reviewing a random selection of semantic type assignments.

Primes, Geometry and Condensed Matter

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Al Rabeh R. H.

2009-07-01

Full Text Available Fascination with primes dates back to the Greeks and before. Primes are named by some “the elementary particles of arithmetic” as every nonprime integer is made of a unique set of primes. In this article we point to new connections between primes, geometry and physics which show that primes could be called “the elementary particles of physics” too. This study considers the problem of closely packing similar circles / spheres in 2D / 3D space. This is in effect a discretization process of space and the allowable num- ber in a pack is found to lead to some unexpected cases of prime configurations which is independent of the size of the constituents. We next suggest that a non-prime can be considered geometrically as a symmetric collection that is separable (factorable into similar parts- six is two threes or three twos for example. A collection that has no such symmetry is a prime. As a result, a physical prime aggregate is more difficult to split symmetrically resulting in an inherent stability. This “number / physical” stability idea applies to bigger collections made from smaller (prime units leading to larger sta- ble prime structures in a limitless scaling up process. The distribution of primes among numbers can be understood better using the packing ideas described here and we further suggest that differing numbers (and values of distinct prime factors making a nonprime collection is an important factor in determining the probability and method of possible and subsequent disintegration. Disintegration is bound by energy conservation and is closely related to symmetry by Noether theorems. Thinking of condensed matter as the packing of identical elements, we examine plots of the masses of chemical elements of the periodic table, and also those of the elementary particles of physics, and show that prime packing rules seem to play a role in the make up of matter. The plots show con- vincingly that the growth of prime numbers and that

Rating competitors before tournament starts: How it's affecting team progression in a soccer tournament

Science.gov (United States)

Yusof, Muhammad Mat; Sulaiman, Tajularipin; Khalid, Ruzelan; Hamid, Mohamad Shukri Abdul; Mansor, Rosnalini

2014-12-01

In professional sporting events, rating competitors before tournament start is a well-known approach to distinguish the favorite team and the weaker teams. Various methodologies are used to rate competitors. In this paper, we explore four ways to rate competitors; least squares rating, maximum likelihood strength ratio, standing points in large round robin simulation and previous league rank position. The tournament metric we used to evaluate different types of rating approach is tournament outcome characteristics measure. The tournament outcome characteristics measure is defined by the probability that a particular team in the top 100q pre-tournament rank percentile progress beyond round R, for all q and R. Based on simulation result, we found that different rating approach produces different effect to the team. Our simulation result shows that from eight teams participate in knockout standard seeding, Perak has highest probability to win for tournament that use the least squares rating approach, PKNS has highest probability to win using the maximum likelihood strength ratio and the large round robin simulation approach, while Perak has the highest probability to win a tournament using previous league season approach.

Segmentation cues in conversational speech: Robust semantics and fragile phonotactics

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Laurence eWhite

2012-10-01

Full Text Available Multiple cues influence listeners’ segmentation of connected speech into words, but most previous studies have used stimuli elicited in careful readings rather than natural conversation. Discerning word boundaries in conversational speech may differ from the laboratory setting. In particular, a speaker’s articulatory effort – hyperarticulation vs hypoarticulation (H&H – may vary according to communicative demands, suggesting a compensatory relationship whereby acoustic-phonetic cues are attenuated when other information sources strongly guide segmentation. We examined how listeners’ interpretation of segmentation cues is affected by speech style (spontaneous conversation vs read, using cross-modal identity priming. To elicit spontaneous stimuli, we used a map task in which speakers discussed routes around stylised landmarks. These landmarks were two-word phrases in which the strength of potential segmentation cues – semantic likelihood and cross-boundary diphone phonotactics – was systematically varied. Landmark-carrying utterances were transcribed and later re-recorded as read speech.Independent of speech style, we found an interaction between cue valence (favourable/unfavourable and cue type (phonotactics/semantics. Thus, there was an effect of semantic plausibility, but no effect of cross-boundary phonotactics, indicating that the importance of phonotactic segmentation may have been overstated in studies where lexical information was artificially suppressed. These patterns were unaffected by whether the stimuli were elicited in a spontaneous or read context, even though the difference in speech styles was evident in a main effect. Durational analyses suggested speaker-driven cue trade-offs congruent with an H&H account, but these modulations did not impact on listener behaviour. We conclude that previous research exploiting read speech is reliable in indicating the primacy of lexically-based cues in the segmentation of natural

Reactive Kripke semantics

CERN Document Server

Gabbay, Dov M

2013-01-01

This text offers an extension to the traditional Kripke semantics for non-classical logics by adding the notion of reactivity. Reactive Kripke models change their accessibility relation as we progress in the evaluation process of formulas in the model. This feature makes the reactive Kripke semantics strictly stronger and more applicable than the traditional one. Here we investigate the properties and axiomatisations of this new and most effective semantics, and we offer a wide landscape of applications of the idea of reactivity. Applied topics include reactive automata, reactive grammars, rea

Learning new vocabulary during childhood: effects of semantic training on lexical consolidation and integration.

Science.gov (United States)

Henderson, Lisa; Weighall, Anna; Gaskell, Gareth

2013-11-01

Research suggests that word learning is an extended process, with offline consolidation crucial for the strengthening of new lexical representations and their integration with existing lexical knowledge (as measured by engagement in lexical competition). This supports a dual memory systems account, in which new information is initially sparsely encoded separately from existing knowledge and integrated with long-term memory over time. However, previous studies of this type exploited unnatural learning contexts, involving fictitious words in the absence of word meaning. In this study, 5- to 9-year-old children learned real science words (e.g., hippocampus) with or without semantic information. Children in both groups were slower to detect pauses in familiar competitor words (e.g., hippopotamus) relative to control words 24h after training but not immediately, confirming that offline consolidation is required before new words are integrated with the lexicon and engage in lexical competition. Children recalled more new words 24h after training than immediately (with similar improvements shown for the recall and recognition of new word meanings); however, children who were exposed to the meanings during training showed further improvements in recall after 1 week and outperformed children who were not exposed to meanings. These findings support the dual memory systems account of vocabulary acquisition and suggest that the association of a new phonological form with semantic information is critical for the development of stable lexical representations. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Semantics, contrastive linguistics and parallel corpora

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Violetta Koseska

2014-09-01

Full Text Available Semantics, contrastive linguistics and parallel corpora In view of the ambiguity of the term “semantics”, the author shows the differences between the traditional lexical semantics and the contemporary semantics in the light of various semantic schools. She examines semantics differently in connection with contrastive studies where the description must necessary go from the meaning towards the linguistic form, whereas in traditional contrastive studies the description proceeded from the form towards the meaning. This requirement regarding theoretical contrastive studies necessitates construction of a semantic interlanguage, rather than only singling out universal semantic categories expressed with various language means. Such studies can be strongly supported by parallel corpora. However, in order to make them useful for linguists in manual and computer translations, as well as in the development of dictionaries, including online ones, we need not only formal, often automatic, annotation of texts, but also semantic annotation - which is unfortunately manual. In the article we focus on semantic annotation concerning time, aspect and quantification of names and predicates in the whole semantic structure of the sentence on the example of the “Polish-Bulgarian-Russian parallel corpus”.

Parasites and competitors suppress bacterial pathogen synergistically due to evolutionary trade-offs

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Wang, Xiaofang; Wei, Zhong; Li, Mei; Wang, Xueqi; Shan, Anqi; Mei, Xinlan; Jousset, Alexandre; Shen, Qirong; Xu, Yangchun; Friman, Ville Petri

2017-01-01

Parasites and competitors are important for regulating pathogen densities and subsequent disease dynamics. It is, however, unclear to what extent this is driven by ecological and evolutionary processes. Here, we used experimental evolution to study the eco-evolutionary feedbacks among Ralstonia

Semantic web for dummies

CERN Document Server

Pollock, Jeffrey T

2009-01-01

Semantic Web technology is already changing how we interact with data on the Web. By connecting random information on the Internet in new ways, Web 3.0, as it is sometimes called, represents an exciting online evolution. Whether you're a consumer doing research online, a business owner who wants to offer your customers the most useful Web site, or an IT manager eager to understand Semantic Web solutions, Semantic Web For Dummies is the place to start! It will help you:Know how the typical Internet user will recognize the effects of the Semantic WebExplore all the benefits the data Web offers t

Sequential Stereotype Priming: A Meta-Analysis.

Science.gov (United States)

Kidder, Ciara K; White, Katherine R; Hinojos, Michelle R; Sandoval, Mayra; Crites, Stephen L

2017-08-01

Psychological interest in stereotype measurement has spanned nearly a century, with researchers adopting implicit measures in the 1980s to complement explicit measures. One of the most frequently used implicit measures of stereotypes is the sequential priming paradigm. The current meta-analysis examines stereotype priming, focusing specifically on this paradigm. To contribute to ongoing discussions regarding methodological rigor in social psychology, one primary goal was to identify methodological moderators of the stereotype priming effect-whether priming is due to a relation between the prime and target stimuli, the prime and target response, participant task, stereotype dimension, stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA), and stimuli type. Data from 39 studies yielded 87 individual effect sizes from 5,497 participants. Analyses revealed that stereotype priming is significantly moderated by the presence of prime-response relations, participant task, stereotype dimension, target stimulus type, SOA, and prime repetition. These results carry both practical and theoretical implications for future research on stereotype priming.

The contribution of executive control to semantic cognition: Convergent evidence from semantic aphasia and executive dysfunction.

Science.gov (United States)

Thompson, Hannah E; Almaghyuli, Azizah; Noonan, Krist A; Barak, Ohr; Lambon Ralph, Matthew A; Jefferies, Elizabeth

2018-01-03

Semantic cognition, as described by the controlled semantic cognition (CSC) framework (Rogers et al., , Neuropsychologia, 76, 220), involves two key components: activation of coherent, generalizable concepts within a heteromodal 'hub' in combination with modality-specific features (spokes), and a constraining mechanism that manipulates and gates this knowledge to generate time- and task-appropriate behaviour. Executive-semantic goal representations, largely supported by executive regions such as frontal and parietal cortex, are thought to allow the generation of non-dominant aspects of knowledge when these are appropriate for the task or context. Semantic aphasia (SA) patients have executive-semantic deficits, and these are correlated with general executive impairment. If the CSC proposal is correct, patients with executive impairment should not only exhibit impaired semantic cognition, but should also show characteristics that align with those observed in SA. This possibility remains largely untested, as patients selected on the basis that they show executive impairment (i.e., with 'dysexecutive syndrome') have not been extensively tested on tasks tapping semantic control and have not been previously compared with SA cases. We explored conceptual processing in 12 patients showing symptoms consistent with dysexecutive syndrome (DYS) and 24 SA patients, using a range of multimodal semantic assessments which manipulated control demands. Patients with executive impairments, despite not being selected to show semantic impairments, nevertheless showed parallel patterns to SA cases. They showed strong effects of distractor strength, cues and miscues, and probe-target distance, plus minimal effects of word frequency on comprehension (unlike semantic dementia patients with degradation of conceptual knowledge). This supports a component process account of semantic cognition in which retrieval is shaped by control processes, and confirms that deficits in SA patients reflect

Putting semantics into the semantic web: how well can it capture biology?

Science.gov (United States)

Kazic, Toni

2006-01-01

Could the Semantic Web work for computations of biological interest in the way it's intended to work for movie reviews and commercial transactions? It would be wonderful if it could, so it's worth looking to see if its infrastructure is adequate to the job. The technologies of the Semantic Web make several crucial assumptions. I examine those assumptions; argue that they create significant problems; and suggest some alternative ways of achieving the Semantic Web's goals for biology.

Removal of copper (II) from aqueous solutions by adsorption onto granular activated carbon in the presence of competitor ions

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Almohammadi, S.; Mirzaei, M.

2016-01-01

In this work, the removal of copper from an aqueous solution by granular activated carbon (GAC) in the presence of competitor ions was studied. A batch adsorption was carried out and different parameters such as p H, contact time, initial copper concentration and competitor ions concentration were changed to determine the optimum conditions for adsorption. The optimum p H required for maximum adsorption was found to be 4.5 for copper. Equilibrium was evaluated at 144 h at room temperature. The removal efficiency of Cu(II) was 71.12% at this time. The kinetics of copper adsorption on activated carbon followed the pseudo second-order model. The experimental equilibrium sorption data were tested using the Langmuir, Freundlich, Temkin and Dubinin–Radushkevich (D-R) equations and the Langmuir model was found to be well fitted for copper adsorption onto GAC. The maximum adsorption capacity of the adsorbent for Cu(II) was calculated from the Langmuir isotherm and found to be 7.03 mg/g. Subsequently, the removal of copper by granular activated carbon in the presence of Ag 1 + and Mn 2 + as competitor ions was investigated. The removal efficiency of Cu(II) ions without the presence of the competitor ions was 46% at 6 h, while the removal efficiency of Cu(II) ions in the presence of competitor ions, Ag 1 + and Mn 2 + , was 34.76% and 31.73%, respectevely.

Towards Compatible and Interderivable Semantic Specifications for the Scheme Programming Language, Part I: Denotational Semantics, Natural Semantics, and Abstract Machines

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Danvy, Olivier

2008-01-01

We derive two big-step abstract machines, a natural semantics, and the valuation function of a denotational semantics based on the small-step abstract machine for Core Scheme presented by Clinger at PLDI'98. Starting from a functional implementation of this small-step abstract machine, (1) we fuse...... its transition function with its driver loop, obtaining the functional implementation of a big-step abstract machine; (2) we adjust this big-step abstract machine so that it is in defunctionalized form, obtaining the functional implementation of a second big-step abstract machine; (3) we...... refunctionalize this adjusted abstract machine, obtaining the functional implementation of a natural semantics in continuation style; and (4) we closure-unconvert this natural semantics, obtaining a compositional continuation-passing evaluation function which we identify as the functional implementation...

Must analysis of meaning follow analysis of form? A time course analysis

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Laurie eFeldman

2015-03-01

Full Text Available Many models of word recognition assume that processing proceeds sequentially from analysis of form to analysis of meaning. In the context of morphological processing, this implies that morphemes are processed as units of form prior to any influence of their meanings. Some interpret the apparent absence of differences in recognition latencies to targets (SNEAK in form and semantically similar (sneaky-SNEAK and in form similar and semantically dissimilar (sneaker-SNEAK prime contexts at an SOA of 48 ms as consistent with this claim. To determine the time course over which degree of semantic similarity between morphologically structured primes and their targets influences recognition in the forward masked priming variant of the lexical decision paradigm, we compared facilitation for the same targets after semantically similar and dissimilar primes across a range of SOAs. The effect of shared semantics on recognition latency increased linearly with SOA when long SOAs were intermixed (Exp. 1 and latencies were significantly faster after semantically similar than dissimilar primes at homogeneous SOAs of 48 ms (Exp. 2 and 34 ms (Exp. 3. Results limit the scope of form-then-semantics models of recognition and demonstrate that semantics influences even the very early stages of recognition. Finally, once general behavior across trials has been accounted for, we fail to provide evidence for individual differences in morphological processing that can be linked to measures of reading proficiency.

Temporal Representation in Semantic Graphs

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Levandoski, J J; Abdulla, G M

2007-08-07

A wide range of knowledge discovery and analysis applications, ranging from business to biological, make use of semantic graphs when modeling relationships and concepts. Most of the semantic graphs used in these applications are assumed to be static pieces of information, meaning temporal evolution of concepts and relationships are not taken into account. Guided by the need for more advanced semantic graph queries involving temporal concepts, this paper surveys the existing work involving temporal representations in semantic graphs.

Flow Logics and Operational Semantics

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Nielson, Flemming; Nielson, Hanne Riis

1998-01-01

Flow logic is a “fast prototyping” approach to program analysis that shows great promise of being able to deal with a wide variety of languages and calculi for computation. However, seemingly innocent choices in the flow logic as well as in the operational semantics may inhibit proving the analys...... correct. Our main conclusion is that environment based semantics is more flexible than either substitution based semantics or semantics making use of structural congruences (like alpha-renaming)....

Semantic Versus Syntactic Cutting Planes

OpenAIRE

Filmus, Yuval; Hrubeš, Pavel; Lauria, Massimo

2016-01-01

In this paper, we compare the strength of the semantic and syntactic version of the cutting planes proof system. First, we show that the lower bound technique of Pudlák applies also to semantic cutting planes: the proof system has feasible interpolation via monotone real circuits, which gives an exponential lower bound on lengths of semantic cutting planes refutations. Second, we show that semantic refutations are stronger than syntactic ones. In particular, we give a formula for whic...

Semantic word category processing in semantic dementia and posterior cortical atrophy.

Science.gov (United States)

Shebani, Zubaida; Patterson, Karalyn; Nestor, Peter J; Diaz-de-Grenu, Lara Z; Dawson, Kate; Pulvermüller, Friedemann

2017-08-01

There is general agreement that perisylvian language cortex plays a major role in lexical and semantic processing; but the contribution of additional, more widespread, brain areas in the processing of different semantic word categories remains controversial. We investigated word processing in two groups of patients whose neurodegenerative diseases preferentially affect specific parts of the brain, to determine whether their performance would vary as a function of semantic categories proposed to recruit those brain regions. Cohorts with (i) Semantic Dementia (SD), who have anterior temporal-lobe atrophy, and (ii) Posterior Cortical Atrophy (PCA), who have predominantly parieto-occipital atrophy, performed a lexical decision test on words from five different lexico-semantic categories: colour (e.g., yellow), form (oval), number (seven), spatial prepositions (under) and function words (also). Sets of pseudo-word foils matched the target words in length and bi-/tri-gram frequency. Word-frequency was matched between the two visual word categories (colour and form) and across the three other categories (number, prepositions, and function words). Age-matched healthy individuals served as controls. Although broad word processing deficits were apparent in both patient groups, the deficit was strongest for colour words in SD and for spatial prepositions in PCA. The patterns of performance on the lexical decision task demonstrate (a) general lexicosemantic processing deficits in both groups, though more prominent in SD than in PCA, and (b) differential involvement of anterior-temporal and posterior-parietal cortex in the processing of specific semantic categories of words. Copyright © 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.

Leading, but not trailing, primes influence temporal order perception: further evidence for an attentional account of perceptual latency priming.

Science.gov (United States)

Scharlau, Ingrid

2002-11-01

Presenting a masked prime leading a target influences the perceived onset of the masking target (perceptual latency priming; Scharlau & Neumann, in press). This priming effect is explained by the asynchronous updating model (Neumann, 1982; Scharlau & Neumann, in press): The prime initiates attentional allocation toward its location, which renders a trailing target at the same place consciously available earlier. In three experiments, this perceptual latency priming by leading primes was examined jointly with the effects of trailing primes in order to compare the explanation of the asynchronous updating model with the onset-averaging and the P-center hypotheses. Experiment 1 showed that an attended, as well as an unattended, prime leads to perceptual latency priming. In addition, a large effect of trailing primes on the onset of a target was found. As Experiment 2 demonstrated, this effect is quite robust, although smaller than that of a leading prime. In Experiment 3, masked primes were used. Under these conditions, no influence of trailing primes could be found, whereas perceptual latency priming persisted. Thus, a nonattentional explanation for the effect of trailing primes seems likely.

It matters how much you talk: on the automaticity of affective connotations of first and second language words

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Degner, J.; Doycheva, C.; Wentura, D.

2012-01-01

We report the results of an affective priming study conducted with proficient sequential German and French bilinguals to assess automatic affective word processing in L1 and L2. Additionally, a semantic priming task was conducted in both languages. Whereas semantic priming effects occurred in L1 and

SemantEco: a semantically powered modular architecture for integrating distributed environmental and ecological data

Science.gov (United States)

Patton, Evan W.; Seyed, Patrice; Wang, Ping; Fu, Linyun; Dein, F. Joshua; Bristol, R. Sky; McGuinness, Deborah L.

2014-01-01

We aim to inform the development of decision support tools for resource managers who need to examine large complex ecosystems and make recommendations in the face of many tradeoffs and conflicting drivers. We take a semantic technology approach, leveraging background ontologies and the growing body of linked open data. In previous work, we designed and implemented a semantically enabled environmental monitoring framework called SemantEco and used it to build a water quality portal named SemantAqua. Our previous system included foundational ontologies to support environmental regulation violations and relevant human health effects. In this work, we discuss SemantEco’s new architecture that supports modular extensions and makes it easier to support additional domains. Our enhanced framework includes foundational ontologies to support modeling of wildlife observation and wildlife health impacts, thereby enabling deeper and broader support for more holistically examining the effects of environmental pollution on ecosystems. We conclude with a discussion of how, through the application of semantic technologies, modular designs will make it easier for resource managers to bring in new sources of data to support more complex use cases.

Semantic Web Primer

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Antoniou, Grigoris; Harmelen, Frank van

2004-01-01

The development of the Semantic Web, with machine-readable content, has the potential to revolutionize the World Wide Web and its use. A Semantic Web Primer provides an introduction and guide to this still emerging field, describing its key ideas, languages, and technologies. Suitable for use as a

Wernicke's Aphasia Reflects a Combination of Acoustic-Phonological and Semantic Control Deficits: A Case-Series Comparison of Wernicke's Aphasia, Semantic Dementia and Semantic Aphasia

Science.gov (United States)

Robson, Holly; Sage, Karen; Lambon Ralph, Matthew A.

2012-01-01

Wernicke's aphasia (WA) is the classical neurological model of comprehension impairment and, as a result, the posterior temporal lobe is assumed to be critical to semantic cognition. This conclusion is potentially confused by (a) the existence of patient groups with semantic impairment following damage to other brain regions (semantic dementia and…

COTARD SYNDROME IN SEMANTIC DEMENTIA

Science.gov (United States)

Mendez, Mario F.; Ramírez-Bermúdez, Jesús

2011-01-01

Background Semantic dementia is a neurodegenerative disorder characterized by the loss of meaning of words or concepts. semantic dementia can offer potential insights into the mechanisms of content-specific delusions. Objective The authors present a rare case of semantic dementia with Cotard syndrome, a delusion characterized by nihilism or self-negation. Method The semantic deficits and other features of semantic dementia were evaluated in relation to the patient's Cotard syndrome. Results Mrs. A developed the delusional belief that she was wasting and dying. This occurred after she lost knowledge for her somatic discomforts and sensations and for the organs that were the source of these sensations. Her nihilistic beliefs appeared to emerge from her misunderstanding of her somatic sensations. Conclusion This unique patient suggests that a mechanism for Cotard syndrome is difficulty interpreting the nature and source of internal pains and sensations. We propose that loss of semantic knowledge about one's own body may lead to the delusion of nihilism or death. PMID:22054629

Hierarchical Semantic Model of Geovideo

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

XIE Xiao

2015-05-01

Full Text Available The public security incidents were getting increasingly challenging with regard to their new features, including multi-scale mobility, multistage dynamic evolution, as well as spatiotemporal concurrency and uncertainty in the complex urban environment. However, the existing video models, which were used/designed for independent archive or local analysis of surveillance video, have seriously inhibited emergency response to the urgent requirements.Aiming at the explicit representation of change mechanism in video, the paper proposed a novel hierarchical geovideo semantic model using UML. This model was characterized by the hierarchical representation of both data structure and semantics based on the change-oriented three domains (feature domain, process domain and event domain instead of overall semantic description of video streaming; combining both geographical semantics and video content semantics, in support of global semantic association between multiple geovideo data. The public security incidents by video surveillance are inspected as an example to illustrate the validity of this model.

Mapping the Structure of Semantic Memory

Science.gov (United States)

Morais, Ana Sofia; Olsson, Henrik; Schooler, Lael J.

2013-01-01

Aggregating snippets from the semantic memories of many individuals may not yield a good map of an individual's semantic memory. The authors analyze the structure of semantic networks that they sampled from individuals through a new snowball sampling paradigm during approximately 6 weeks of 1-hr daily sessions. The semantic networks of individuals…

Causality in the semantics of Esterel : revisited

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Mousavi, M.R.; Klin, B.; Sobocinski, P.

2010-01-01

We re-examine the challenges concerning causality in the semantics of Esterel and show that they pertain to the known issues in the semantics of Structured Operational Semantics with negative premises. We show that the solutions offered for the semantics of SOS also provide answers to the semantic

Semantic Representatives of the Concept

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Elena N. Tsay

2013-01-01

Full Text Available In the article concept as one of the principle notions of cognitive linguistics is investigated. Considering concept as culture phenomenon, having language realization and ethnocultural peculiarities, the description of the concept “happiness” is presented. Lexical and semantic paradigm of the concept of happiness correlates with a great number of lexical and semantic variants. In the work semantic representatives of the concept of happiness, covering supreme spiritual values are revealed and semantic interpretation of their functioning in the Biblical discourse is given.

System semantics of explanatory dictionaries

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Volodymyr Shyrokov

2015-11-01

Full Text Available System semantics of explanatory dictionaries Some semantic properties of the language to be followed from the structure of lexicographical systems of big explanatory dictionaries are considered. The hyperchains and hypercycles are determined as the definite kind of automorphisms of the lexicographical system of explanatory dictionary. Some semantic consequencies following from the principles of lexicographic closure and lexicographic completeness are investigated using the hyperchains and hypercycles formalism. The connection between the hypercyle properties of the lexicographical system semantics and Goedel’s incompleteness theorem is discussed.

Rhizosphere priming: a nutrient perspective

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Feike Auke Dijkstra

2013-07-01

Full Text Available Rhizosphere priming is the change in decomposition of soil organic matter (SOM caused by root activity. Rhizosphere priming plays a crucial role in soil carbon (C dynamics and their response to global climate change. Rhizosphere priming may be affected by soil nutrient availability, but rhizosphere priming itself can also affect nutrient supply to plants. These interactive effects may be of particular relevance in understanding the sustained increase in plant growth and nutrient supply in response to a rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration. We examined how these interactions were affected by elevated CO2 in two similar semiarid grassland field studies. We found that an increase in rhizosphere priming enhanced the release of nitrogen (N through decomposition of a larger fraction of SOM in one study, but not in the other. We postulate that rhizosphere priming may enhance N supply to plants in systems that are N limited, but that rhizosphere priming may not occur in systems that are phosphorus (P limited. Under P limitation, rhizodeposition may be used for mobilisation of P, rather than for decomposition of SOM. Therefore, with increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations, rhizosphere priming may play a larger role in affecting C sequestration in N poor than in P poor soils.

Cross border semantic interoperability for clinical research: the EHR4CR semantic resources and services

Science.gov (United States)

Daniel, Christel; Ouagne, David; Sadou, Eric; Forsberg, Kerstin; Gilchrist, Mark Mc; Zapletal, Eric; Paris, Nicolas; Hussain, Sajjad; Jaulent, Marie-Christine; MD, Dipka Kalra

2016-01-01

With the development of platforms enabling the use of routinely collected clinical data in the context of international clinical research, scalable solutions for cross border semantic interoperability need to be developed. Within the context of the IMI EHR4CR project, we first defined the requirements and evaluation criteria of the EHR4CR semantic interoperability platform and then developed the semantic resources and supportive services and tooling to assist hospital sites in standardizing their data for allowing the execution of the project use cases. The experience gained from the evaluation of the EHR4CR platform accessing to semantically equivalent data elements across 11 European participating EHR systems from 5 countries demonstrated how far the mediation model and mapping efforts met the expected requirements of the project. Developers of semantic interoperability platforms are beginning to address a core set of requirements in order to reach the goal of developing cross border semantic integration of data. PMID:27570649

The Semantic Web Revisited

OpenAIRE

Shadbolt, Nigel; Berners-Lee, Tim; Hall, Wendy

2006-01-01

The original Scientific American article on the Semantic Web appeared in 2001. It described the evolution of a Web that consisted largely of documents for humans to read to one that included data and information for computers to manipulate. The Semantic Web is a Web of actionable information--information derived from data through a semantic theory for interpreting the symbols.This simple idea, however, remains largely unrealized. Shopbots and auction bots abound on the Web, but these are esse...

Semantic Search of Web Services

Science.gov (United States)

Hao, Ke

2013-01-01

This dissertation addresses semantic search of Web services using natural language processing. We first survey various existing approaches, focusing on the fact that the expensive costs of current semantic annotation frameworks result in limited use of semantic search for large scale applications. We then propose a vector space model based service…

Removal of copper (II from aqueous solutions by adsorption onto granular activated carbon in the presence of competitor ions

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Saeed Almohammadi

2016-04-01

Full Text Available In this work, the removal of copper from an aqueous solution by granular activated carbon (GAC in the presence of competitor ions was studied. A batch adsorption was carried out and different parameters such as pH, contact time, initial copper concentration and competitor ions concentration were changed to determine the optimum conditions for adsorption. The optimum pH required for maximum adsorption was found to be 4.5 for copper. Equilibrium was evaluated at 144 h at room temperature. The removal efficiency of Cu(II was 71.12% at this time. The kinetics of copper adsorption on activated carbon followed the pseudo second-order model. The experimental equilibrium sorption data were tested using the Langmuir, Freundlich, Temkin and Dubinin–Radushkevich (D-R equations and the Langmuir model was found to be well fitted for copper adsorption onto GAC. The maximum adsorption capacity of the adsorbent for Cu(II was calculated from the Langmuir isotherm and found to be 7.03 mg/g. Subsequently, the removal of copper by granular activated carbon in the presence of Ag1+ and Mn2+ as competitor ions was investigated. The removal efficiency of Cu(II ions without the presence of the competitor ions was 46% at 6 h, while the removal efficiency of Cu(II ions in the presence of competitor ions, Ag1+ and Mn2+ , was 34.76% and 31.73%, respectively.

Degree of handedness and priming: Further evidence for a distinction between production and identification priming mechanisms.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Donna J. LaVoie

2015-02-01

Full Text Available The distinction between implicit and explicit forms of memory retrieval is long-standing, and important to the extent it reveals how different neural architecture supports different aspects of memory function. Similarly, distinctions have been made between kinds of repetition priming, a form of implicit memory retrieval. This study focuses on the production-identification priming distinction, which delineates priming tasks involving verification of stimulus features as compared to priming tasks that require use of a cue to guide response retrieval. Studies investigating this dissociation in dementia or similar patient populations indicate that these forms of priming may differ in their neural bases. The current study looks at degree of handedness as a way of investigating inferred neural architecture supporting these two forms of priming. A growing body of research indicates that degree of handedness (consistent, or CH, versus inconsistent, or ICH is associated with greater interhemispheric interaction and functional access to right hemisphere processing in ICH, with superior performance seen in ICH on memory tasks reliant on this processing. Arguments about the theoretical mechanisms underlying identification and production forms of perceptual priming tasks suggest that performance on these tasks will differ as a function of degree of handedness. We tested this question in a group of CH and ICH young adults, who were asked to study lists of words prior to performing a production priming task (word stem completion, a perceptual word identification task, and a word stem cued recall task. While both handedness groups exhibited reliable priming across tasks, word stem completion priming was greater in ICH than CH participants, with identification priming not differing between groups. This dissociation supports the argument that production and identification forms of priming have different underlying neural bases.

Rapid response learning of brand logo priming: Evidence that brand priming is not dominated by rapid response learning.

Science.gov (United States)

Boehm, Stephan G; Smith, Ciaran; Muench, Niklas; Noble, Kirsty; Atherton, Catherine

2017-08-31

Repetition priming increases the accuracy and speed of responses to repeatedly processed stimuli. Repetition priming can result from two complementary sources: rapid response learning and facilitation within perceptual and conceptual networks. In conceptual classification tasks, rapid response learning dominates priming of object recognition, but it does not dominate priming of person recognition. This suggests that the relative engagement of network facilitation and rapid response learning depends on the stimulus domain. Here, we addressed the importance of the stimulus domain for rapid response learning by investigating priming in another domain, brands. In three experiments, participants performed conceptual decisions for brand logos. Strong priming was present, but it was not dominated by rapid response learning. These findings add further support to the importance of the stimulus domain for the relative importance of network facilitation and rapid response learning, and they indicate that brand priming is more similar to person recognition priming than object recognition priming, perhaps because priming of both brands and persons requires individuation.

Psychophysiological Tracking of a Female Physique Competitor through Competition Preparation.

Science.gov (United States)

Rohrig, Brandon J; Pettitt, Robert W; Pettitt, Cherie D; Kanzenbach, Todd L

2017-01-01

Natural physique competitions are based on subjective judgments of how a competitor appears on show day. Prior to competition, there is a prolonged dieting phase referred to as contest preparation. The primary goal is to reduce body fat levels while maintaining skeletal muscle mass. The study tracked the physiological and psychological changes for a 24 year old female preparing for a physique competition. The study was conducted to describe the physiological and psychological changes of a female physique competitor who engages in long-term contest preparation. Diet, body composition, blood work, energy expenditure, mood, and performance were evaluated through contest preparation. The participant lost 10.1kg throughout contest preparation in a strong weekly linear pattern (R 2 =0.97). Body fat was reduced from 30.45% to 15.85% while fat free mass was maintained. Mood for the participant remained stable until month five, when an observed variation occurred, with performance maintaining. Contest preparation was successful in reducing the body fat in the participant while having a minimum effect on both performance and fat free mass. For athletes looking to lose large amounts of body fat with minimal performance decrements a prolonged diet period with moderate exercise and food restriction can be an effective solution.

Auditory semantic processing in dichotic listening: effects of competing speech, ear of presentation, and sentential bias on N400s to spoken words in context.

Science.gov (United States)

Carey, Daniel; Mercure, Evelyne; Pizzioli, Fabrizio; Aydelott, Jennifer

2014-12-01

The effects of ear of presentation and competing speech on N400s to spoken words in context were examined in a dichotic sentence priming paradigm. Auditory sentence contexts with a strong or weak semantic bias were presented in isolation to the right or left ear, or with a competing signal presented in the other ear at a SNR of -12 dB. Target words were congruent or incongruent with the sentence meaning. Competing speech attenuated N400s to both congruent and incongruent targets, suggesting that the demand imposed by a competing signal disrupts the engagement of semantic comprehension processes. Bias strength affected N400 amplitudes differentially depending upon ear of presentation: weak contexts presented to the le/RH produced a more negative N400 response to targets than strong contexts, whereas no significant effect of bias strength was observed for sentences presented to the re/LH. The results are consistent with a model of semantic processing in which the RH relies on integrative processing strategies in the interpretation of sentence-level meaning. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

LAIR: A Language for Automated Semantics-Aware Text Sanitization based on Frame Semantics

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Hedegaard, Steffen; Houen, Søren; Simonsen, Jakob Grue

2009-01-01

We present \\lair{}: A domain-specific language that enables users to specify actions to be taken upon meeting specific semantic frames in a text, in particular to rephrase and redact the textual content. While \\lair{} presupposes superficial knowledge of frames and frame semantics, it requires on...... with automated redaction of web pages for subjectively undesirable content; initial experiments suggest that using a small language based on semantic recognition of undesirable terms can be highly useful as a supplement to traditional methods of text sanitization.......We present \\lair{}: A domain-specific language that enables users to specify actions to be taken upon meeting specific semantic frames in a text, in particular to rephrase and redact the textual content. While \\lair{} presupposes superficial knowledge of frames and frame semantics, it requires only...... limited prior programming experience. It neither contain scripting or I/O primitives, nor does it contain general loop constructions and is not Turing-complete. We have implemented a \\lair{} compiler and integrated it in a pipeline for automated redaction of web pages. We detail our experience...

A Prime Example of the Maluma/Takete Effect? Testing for Sound Symbolic Priming.

Science.gov (United States)

Sidhu, David M; Pexman, Penny M

2017-09-01

Certain nonwords, like maluma and takete, are associated with roundness and sharpness, respectively. However, this has typically been demonstrated using explicit tasks. We investigated whether this association would be detectable using a more implicit measure-a sequential priming task. We began with a replication of the standard Maluma/Takete effect (Experiments 1a and 1b) before examining whether round and sharp nonword primes facilitated the categorization of congruent shapes (Experiment 2). We found modest evidence of a priming effect in response accuracy. We next examined whether nonword primes affected categorization of ambiguous shapes, using visual (Experiment 3) and auditory primes (Experiment 4). We found that ambiguous shapes were categorized as round (sharp) more often following the presentation of a round (sharp) nonword. This suggests that phonemes may activate related shape information which then affects the processing of shapes, and that this association emerges even when participants are not explicitly searching for it. Copyright © 2016 Cognitive Science Society, Inc.

Must analysis of meaning follow analysis of form? A time course analysis.

Science.gov (United States)

Feldman, Laurie B; Milin, Petar; Cho, Kit W; Moscoso Del Prado Martín, Fermín; O'Connor, Patrick A

2015-01-01

Many models of word recognition assume that processing proceeds sequentially from analysis of form to analysis of meaning. In the context of morphological processing, this implies that morphemes are processed as units of form prior to any influence of their meanings. Some interpret the apparent absence of differences in recognition latencies to targets (SNEAK) in form and semantically similar (sneaky-SNEAK) and in form similar and semantically dissimilar (sneaker-SNEAK) prime contexts at a stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) of 48 ms as consistent with this claim. To determine the time course over which degree of semantic similarity between morphologically structured primes and their targets influences recognition in the forward masked priming variant of the lexical decision paradigm, we compared facilitation for the same targets after semantically similar and dissimilar primes across a range of SOAs (34-100 ms). The effect of shared semantics on recognition latency increased linearly with SOA when long SOAs were intermixed (Experiments 1A and 1B) and latencies were significantly faster after semantically similar than dissimilar primes at homogeneous SOAs of 48 ms (Experiment 2) and 34 ms (Experiment 3). Results limit the scope of form-then-semantics models of recognition and demonstrate that semantics influences even the very early stages of recognition. Finally, once general performance across trials has been accounted for, we fail to provide evidence for individual differences in morphological processing that can be linked to measures of reading proficiency.

Semantic dementia without surface dyslexia in Spanish: unimpaired reading with impaired semantics.

Science.gov (United States)

Wilson, Maximiliano A; Martínez-Cuitiño, Macarena

2012-01-01

Surface dyslexia has been attributed to an overreliance on the sub-lexical route for reading. Typically, surface dyslexic patients commit regularisation errors when reading irregular words. Also, semantic dementia has often been associated with surface dyslexia, leading to some explanations of the reading impairment that stress the role of semantics in irregular word reading. Nevertheless, some patients have been reported with unimpaired ability to read irregular words, even though they show severe comprehension impairment. We present the case of M.B., the first Spanish-speaking semantic dementia patient to be reported who shows unimpaired reading of non-words, regular words, and - most strikingly - irregular loan words. M.B. has severely impaired comprehension of the same words he reads correctly (whether regular or irregular). We argue that M.B.'s pattern of performance shows that irregular words can be correctly read even with impaired semantic knowledge corresponding to those words.

A generalized notion of semantic independence

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Fränzle, Martin; Stengel, Bernhard von; Wittmüss, Arne

1995-01-01

For programs represented semantically as relations, a concept of semantic independence is defined that is more general than previously stated notions. It allows for shared input variables and irrelevant interference due to nondeterminism.......For programs represented semantically as relations, a concept of semantic independence is defined that is more general than previously stated notions. It allows for shared input variables and irrelevant interference due to nondeterminism....

Comparing Refinements for Failure and Bisimulation Semantics

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Eshuis, H.; Fokkinga, M.M.

2002-01-01

Refinement in bisimulation semantics is defined differently from refinement in failure semantics: in bisimulation semantics refinement is based on simulations between labelled transition systems, whereas in failure semantics refinement is based on inclusions between failure systems. There exist

Semantics-based Automated Web Testing

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Hai-Feng Guo

2015-08-01

Full Text Available We present TAO, a software testing tool performing automated test and oracle generation based on a semantic approach. TAO entangles grammar-based test generation with automated semantics evaluation using a denotational semantics framework. We show how TAO can be incorporated with the Selenium automation tool for automated web testing, and how TAO can be further extended to support automated delta debugging, where a failing web test script can be systematically reduced based on grammar-directed strategies. A real-life parking website is adopted throughout the paper to demonstrate the effectivity of our semantics-based web testing approach.

Benchmarking semantic web technology

CERN Document Server

García-Castro, R

2009-01-01

This book addresses the problem of benchmarking Semantic Web Technologies; first, from a methodological point of view, proposing a general methodology to follow in benchmarking activities over Semantic Web Technologies and, second, from a practical point of view, presenting two international benchmarking activities that involved benchmarking the interoperability of Semantic Web technologies using RDF(S) as the interchange language in one activity and OWL in the other.The book presents in detail how the different resources needed for these interoperability benchmarking activities were defined:

Speech-in-speech perception and executive function involvement.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Marcela Perrone-Bertolotti

Full Text Available This present study investigated the link between speech-in-speech perception capacities and four executive function components: response suppression, inhibitory control, switching and working memory. We constructed a cross-modal semantic priming paradigm using a written target word and a spoken prime word, implemented in one of two concurrent auditory sentences (cocktail party situation. The prime and target were semantically related or unrelated. Participants had to perform a lexical decision task on visual target words and simultaneously listen to only one of two pronounced sentences. The attention of the participant was manipulated: The prime was in the pronounced sentence listened to by the participant or in the ignored one. In addition, we evaluate the executive function abilities of participants (switching cost, inhibitory-control cost and response-suppression cost and their working memory span. Correlation analyses were performed between the executive and priming measurements. Our results showed a significant interaction effect between attention and semantic priming. We observed a significant priming effect in the attended but not in the ignored condition. Only priming effects obtained in the ignored condition were significantly correlated with some of the executive measurements. However, no correlation between priming effects and working memory capacity was found. Overall, these results confirm, first, the role of attention for semantic priming effect and, second, the implication of executive functions in speech-in-noise understanding capacities.

Semantic Web and Contextual Information: Semantic Network Analysis of Online Journalistic Texts

Science.gov (United States)

Lim, Yon Soo

This study examines why contextual information is important to actualize the idea of semantic web, based on a case study of a socio-political issue in South Korea. For this study, semantic network analyses were conducted regarding English-language based 62 blog posts and 101 news stories on the web. The results indicated the differences of the meaning structures between blog posts and professional journalism as well as between conservative journalism and progressive journalism. From the results, this study ascertains empirical validity of current concerns about the practical application of the new web technology, and discusses how the semantic web should be developed.

Prime Slaughter

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Valente, Andrea; Marchetti, Emanuela

2011-01-01

of primality and factorization into playful interactions, addressed to primary and early secondary school children. Taking into account individual needs expressed by children regarding play, during a participatory design processes aimed at enhancing learning in museums, Prime Slaughter allows for multiple......Starting from the difficulty of creating playful representation of domain-specific abstract concepts, this study discusses the design of Prime Slaughter, a computer game aimed at facilitating individual sense-making of abstract mathematical concepts. Specifically the game proposes a transposition...

Semantic Keys and Reading

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Zev bar-Lev

2016-12-01

Full Text Available Semantic Keys are elements (word-parts of written language that give an iconic, general representation of the whole word’s meaning. In written Sino-Japanese the “radical” or semantic components play this role. For example, the character meaning ‘woman, female’ is the Semantic Key of the character for Ma ‘Mama’ (alongside the phonetic component Ma, which means ‘horse’ as a separate character. The theory of semantic Keys in both graphic and phonemic aspects is called qTheory or nanosemantics. The most innovative aspect of the present article is the hypothesis that, in languages using alphabetic writing systems, the role of Semantic Key is played by consonants, more specifically the first consonant. Thus, L meaning ‘LIFT’ is the Semantic Key of English Lift, Ladle, Lofty, aLps, eLevator, oLympus; Spanish Leva, Lecantarse, aLto, Lengua; Arabic aLLah, and Hebrew① ªeL-ºaL ‘upto-above’ (the Israeli airline, Polish Lot ‘flight’ (the Polish airline; Hebrew ªeL, ªeLohim ‘God’, and haLLeluyah ‘praise-ye God’ (using Parallels, ‘Lift up God’. Evidence for the universality of the theory is shown by many examples drawn from various languages, including Indo-European Semitic, Chinese and Japanese. The theory reveals hundreds of relationships within and between languages, related and unrelated, that have been “Hiding in Plain Sight”, to mention just one example: the Parallel between Spanish Pan ‘bread’ and Mandarin Fan ‘rice’.

Interpreting semantic clustering effects in free recall.

Science.gov (United States)

Manning, Jeremy R; Kahana, Michael J

2012-07-01

The order in which participants choose to recall words from a studied list of randomly selected words provides insights into how memories of the words are represented, organised, and retrieved. One pervasive finding is that when a pair of semantically related words (e.g., "cat" and "dog") is embedded in the studied list, the related words are often recalled successively. This tendency to successively recall semantically related words is termed semantic clustering (Bousfield, 1953; Bousfield & Sedgewick, 1944; Cofer, Bruce, & Reicher, 1966). Measuring semantic clustering effects requires making assumptions about which words participants consider to be similar in meaning. However, it is often difficult to gain insights into individual participants' internal semantic models, and for this reason researchers typically rely on standardised semantic similarity metrics. Here we use simulations to gain insights into the expected magnitudes of semantic clustering effects given systematic differences between participants' internal similarity models and the similarity metric used to quantify the degree of semantic clustering. Our results provide a number of useful insights into the interpretation of semantic clustering effects in free recall.

Snapshots for Semantic Maps

National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

Nielsen, Curtis W; Ricks, Bob; Goodrich, Michael A; Bruemmer, David; Few, Doug; Walton, Miles

2004-01-01

.... Semantic maps are a relatively new approach to information presentation. Semantic maps provide more detail about an environment than typical maps because they are augmented by icons or symbols that provide meaning for places or objects of interest...

Repopulation dynamics of single haematopoietic stem cells in mouse transplantation experiments: Importance of stem cell composition in competitor cells.

Science.gov (United States)

Ema, Hideo; Uchinomiya, Kouki; Morita, Yohei; Suda, Toshio; Iwasa, Yoh

2016-04-07

The transplantation of blood tissues from bone marrow into a lethally irradiated animal is an experimental procedure that is used to study how the blood system is reconstituted by haematopoietic stem cells (HSC). In a competitive repopulation experiment, a lethally irradiated mouse was transplanted with a single HSC as a test cell together with a number of bone marrow cells as competitor cells, and the fraction of the test cell progeny (percentage of chimerism) was traced over time. In this paper, we studied the stem cell kinetics in this experimental procedure. The balance between symmetric self-renewal and differentiation divisions in HSC determined the number of cells which HSC produce and the length of time for which HSC live after transplantation. The percentage of chimerism depended on the type of test cell (long-, intermediate-, or short-term HSC), as well as the type and number of HSC included in competitor cells. We next examined two alternative HSC differentiation models, one-step and multi-step differentiation models. Although these models differed in blood cell production, the percentage of chimerism appeared very similar. We also estimated the numbers of different types of HSC in competitor cells. Based on these results, we concluded that the experimental results inevitably include stochasticity with regard to the number and the type of HSC in competitor cells, and that, in order to detect different types of HSC, an appropriate number of competitor cells needs to be used in transplantation experiments. Copyright © 2016. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Towards Compatible and Interderivable Semantic Specifications for the Scheme Programming Language, Part I: Denotational Semantics, Natural Semantics, and Abstract Machines

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Danvy, Olivier

2009-01-01

We derive two big-step abstract machines, a natural semantics, and the valuation function of a denotational semantics based on the small-step abstract machine for Core Scheme presented by Clinger at PLDI'98. Starting from a functional implementation of this small-step abstract machine, (1) we fus...

Examining lateralized semantic access using pictures.

Science.gov (United States)

Lovseth, Kyle; Atchley, Ruth Ann

2010-03-01

A divided visual field (DVF) experiment examined the semantic processing strategies employed by the cerebral hemispheres to determine if strategies observed with written word stimuli generalize to other media for communicating semantic information. We employed picture stimuli and vary the degree of semantic relatedness between the picture pairs. Participants made an on-line semantic relatedness judgment in response to sequentially presented pictures. We found that when pictures are presented to the right hemisphere responses are generally more accurate than the left hemisphere for semantic relatedness judgments for picture pairs. Furthermore, consistent with earlier DVF studies employing words, we conclude that the RH is better at accessing or maintaining access to information that has a weak or more remote semantic relationship. We also found evidence of faster access for pictures presented to the LH in the strongly-related condition. Overall, these results are consistent with earlier DVF word studies that argue that the cerebral hemispheres each play an important and separable role during semantic retrieval. Copyright 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

A Denotational Semantics for Logic Programming

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Frandsen, Gudmund Skovbjerg

A fully abstract denotational semantics for logic programming has not been constructed yet. In this paper we present a denotational semantics that is almost fully abstract. We take the meaning of a logic program to be an element in a Plotkin power domain of substitutions. In this way our result...... shows that standard domain constructions suffice, when giving a semantics for logic programming. Using the well-known fixpoint semantics of logic programming we have to consider two different fixpoints in order to obtain information about both successful and failed computations. In contrast, our...... semantics is uniform in that the (single) meaning of a logic program contains information about both successful, failed and infinite computations. Finally, based on the full abstractness result, we argue that the detail level of substitutions is needed in any denotational semantics for logic programming....

WEATHER FORECAST DATA SEMANTIC ANALYSIS IN F-LOGIC

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ana Meštrović

2007-06-01

Full Text Available This paper addresses the semantic analysis problem in a spoken dialog system developed for the domain of weather forecasts. The main goal of semantic analysis is to extract the meaning from the spoken utterances and to transform it into a domain database format. In this work a semantic database for the domain of weather forecasts is represented using the F-logic formalism. Semantic knowledge is captured through semantic categories a semantic dictionary using phrases and output templates. Procedures for semantic analysis of Croatian weather data combine parsing techniques for Croatian language and slot filling approach. Semantic analysis is conducted in three phases. In the first phase the main semantic category for the input utterance is determined. The lattices are used for hierarchical semantic relation representation and main category derivation. In the second phase semantic units are analyzed and knowledge slots in the database are filled. Since some slot values of input data are missing in the third phase, incomplete data is updated with missing values. All rules for semantic analysis are defined in the F-logic and implemented using the FLORA-2 system. The results of semantic analysis evaluation in terms of frame and slot error rates are presented.

CASL The Common Algebraic Specification Language Semantics

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Haxthausen, Anne

1998-01-01

This is version 1.0 of the CASL Language Summary, annotated by the CoFI Semantics Task Group with the semantics of constructs. This is the first complete but possibly imperfect version of the semantics. It was compiled prior to the CoFI workshop at Cachan in November 1998.......This is version 1.0 of the CASL Language Summary, annotated by the CoFI Semantics Task Group with the semantics of constructs. This is the first complete but possibly imperfect version of the semantics. It was compiled prior to the CoFI workshop at Cachan in November 1998....

The time course of lexical competition during spoken word recognition in Mandarin Chinese: an event-related potential study.

Science.gov (United States)

Huang, Xianjun; Yang, Jin-Chen

2016-01-20

The present study investigated the effect of lexical competition on the time course of spoken word recognition in Mandarin Chinese using a unimodal auditory priming paradigm. Two kinds of competitive environments were designed. In one session (session 1), only the unrelated and the identical primes were presented before the target words. In the other session (session 2), besides the two conditions in session 1, the target words were also preceded by the cohort primes that have the same initial syllables as the targets. Behavioral results showed an inhibitory effect of the cohort competitors (primes) on target word recognition. The event-related potential results showed that the spoken word recognition processing in the middle and late latency windows is modulated by whether the phonologically related competitors are presented or not. Specifically, preceding activation of the competitors can induce direct competitions between multiple candidate words and lead to increased processing difficulties, primarily at the word disambiguation and selection stage during Mandarin Chinese spoken word recognition. The current study provided both behavioral and electrophysiological evidences for the lexical competition effect among the candidate words during spoken word recognition.

Discovery: Prime Numbers

Science.gov (United States)

de Mestre, Neville

2008-01-01

Prime numbers are important as the building blocks for the set of all natural numbers, because prime factorisation is an important and useful property of all natural numbers. Students can discover them by using the method known as the Sieve of Eratosthenes, named after the Greek geographer and astronomer who lived from c. 276-194 BC. Eratosthenes…

Semantic Web status model

CSIR Research Space (South Africa)

Gerber, AJ

2006-06-01

Full Text Available Semantic Web application areas are experiencing intensified interest due to the rapid growth in the use of the Web, together with the innovation and renovation of information content technologies. The Semantic Web is regarded as an integrator across...

Competitors' Cluster - A Phenomenon in the Field of Retail Locating

OpenAIRE

Wang, Libo (Michael); Zhu, Bo (Pritt)

2005-01-01

Cluster is a common phenomenon in developed countries. Horizontal clusters and vertical clusters are often seen in these countries. In the domestic retailing, a particular type of cluster—competitors’ cluster plays an important role in the past, nowadays and in the future. Though many researchers have investigated into clusters and talked a lot about the benefits firms could share by clustering together, few of them explained directly why the competitors of the same trade cluster together for...

Analyzing the positioning of political competitors on relevant policy conflict dimensions within the 2014 EU Europarliamentary elections

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Todor Arpad

2014-11-01

Full Text Available In this paper I analyze the positioning of Romanian political competitor for the European elections 2014 on most relevant dimensions of political conflict relevant to all European Union member countries. I analyze the political programs of the Romanian political parties realized within the euandi project. Even though not all dimensions are considered relevant in the context of political debate in Romania, the mapping provides a detailed picture of the current positioning of the main political competitors in the context of breaking USL and the creation of a new coalition government.

Semantic Memory in the Clinical Progression of Alzheimer Disease.

Science.gov (United States)

Tchakoute, Christophe T; Sainani, Kristin L; Henderson, Victor W

2017-09-01

Semantic memory measures may be useful in tracking and predicting progression of Alzheimer disease. We investigated relationships among semantic memory tasks and their 1-year predictive value in women with Alzheimer disease. We conducted secondary analyses of a randomized clinical trial of raloxifene in 42 women with late-onset mild-to-moderate Alzheimer disease. We assessed semantic memory with tests of oral confrontation naming, category fluency, semantic recognition and semantic naming, and semantic density in written narrative discourse. We measured global cognition (Alzheimer Disease Assessment Scale, cognitive subscale), dementia severity (Clinical Dementia Rating sum of boxes), and daily function (Activities of Daily Living Inventory) at baseline and 1 year. At baseline and 1 year, most semantic memory scores correlated highly or moderately with each other and with global cognition, dementia severity, and daily function. Semantic memory task performance at 1 year had worsened one-third to one-half standard deviation. Factor analysis of baseline test scores distinguished processes in semantic and lexical retrieval (semantic recognition, semantic naming, confrontation naming) from processes in lexical search (semantic density, category fluency). The semantic-lexical retrieval factor predicted global cognition at 1 year. Considered separately, baseline confrontation naming and category fluency predicted dementia severity, while semantic recognition and a composite of semantic recognition and semantic naming predicted global cognition. No individual semantic memory test predicted daily function. Semantic-lexical retrieval and lexical search may represent distinct aspects of semantic memory. Semantic memory processes are sensitive to cognitive decline and dementia severity in Alzheimer disease.

A Denotational Semantics for Communicating Unstructured Code

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Nils Jähnig

2015-03-01

Full Text Available An important property of programming language semantics is that they should be compositional. However, unstructured low-level code contains goto-like commands making it hard to define a semantics that is compositional. In this paper, we follow the ideas of Saabas and Uustalu to structure low-level code. This gives us the possibility to define a compositional denotational semantics based on least fixed points to allow for the use of inductive verification methods. We capture the semantics of communication using finite traces similar to the denotations of CSP. In addition, we examine properties of this semantics and give an example that demonstrates reasoning about communication and jumps. With this semantics, we lay the foundations for a proof calculus that captures both, the semantics of unstructured low-level code and communication.

A Semantics for Distributed Execution of Statemate

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Fränzle, Martin; Niehaus, Jürgen; Metzner, Alexander

2003-01-01

We present a semantics for the statechart variant implemented in the Statemate product of i-Logix. Our semantics enables distributed code generation for Statemate models in the context of rapid prototyping for embedded control applications. We argue that it seems impossible to efficiently generate......, the changes made regarding the interaction of distributed model parts are similar to the interaction between the model and its environment in the original semantics, thus giving designers a familiar execution model. The semantics has been implemented in Grace, a framework for rapid prototyping code generation...... distributed code using the original Statemate semantics. The new, distributed semantics has the advantages that, first, it enables the generation of efficient distributed code, second, it preserves many aspects of the original semantics for those parts of a model that are not distributed, and third...

Inter-deriving Semantic Artifacts for Object-Oriented Programming

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Danvy, Olivier; Johannsen, Jacob

2008-01-01

.e., big-step operational semantics) specified in Abadi and Cardelli's monograph. This abstract machine therefore embodies the soundness of Abadi and Cardelli's reduction semantics and natural semantics relative to each other. To move closer to actual implementations, which use environments rather than......We present a new abstract machine for Abadi and Cardelli's untyped calculus of objects. What is special about this semantic artifact (i.e., man-made construct) is that is mechanically corresponds to both the reduction semantics (i.e., small-step operational semantics) and the natural semantics (i...... actual substitutions, we then represent object methods as closures and in the same inter-derivational spirit, we present three new semantic artifacts: a reduction semantics for a version of Abadi and Cardelli's untyped calculus of objects with explicit substitutions, an environment-based abstract machine...

Quality of semantic standards

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Folmer, Erwin Johan Albert

2012-01-01

Little scientific literature addresses the issue of quality of semantic standards, albeit a problem with high economic and social impact. Our problem survey, including 34 semantic Standard Setting Organizations (SSOs), gives evidence that quality of standards can be improved, but for improvement a

Morphological Cues for Lexical Semantics

National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

Light, Marc

1996-01-01

Most natural language processing tasks require lexical semantic information such as verbal argument structure and selectional restrictions, corresponding nominal semantic class, verbal aspectual class...

Semantic attributes based texture generation

Science.gov (United States)

Chi, Huifang; Gan, Yanhai; Qi, Lin; Dong, Junyu; Madessa, Amanuel Hirpa

2018-04-01

Semantic attributes are commonly used for texture description. They can be used to describe the information of a texture, such as patterns, textons, distributions, brightness, and so on. Generally speaking, semantic attributes are more concrete descriptors than perceptual features. Therefore, it is practical to generate texture images from semantic attributes. In this paper, we propose to generate high-quality texture images from semantic attributes. Over the last two decades, several works have been done on texture synthesis and generation. Most of them focusing on example-based texture synthesis and procedural texture generation. Semantic attributes based texture generation still deserves more devotion. Gan et al. proposed a useful joint model for perception driven texture generation. However, perceptual features are nonobjective spatial statistics used by humans to distinguish different textures in pre-attentive situations. To give more describing information about texture appearance, semantic attributes which are more in line with human description habits are desired. In this paper, we use sigmoid cross entropy loss in an auxiliary model to provide enough information for a generator. Consequently, the discriminator is released from the relatively intractable mission of figuring out the joint distribution of condition vectors and samples. To demonstrate the validity of our method, we compare our method to Gan et al.'s method on generating textures by designing experiments on PTD and DTD. All experimental results show that our model can generate textures from semantic attributes.

Language networks associated with computerized semantic indices.

Science.gov (United States)

Pakhomov, Serguei V S; Jones, David T; Knopman, David S

2015-01-01

Tests of generative semantic verbal fluency are widely used to study organization and representation of concepts in the human brain. Previous studies demonstrated that clustering and switching behavior during verbal fluency tasks is supported by multiple brain mechanisms associated with semantic memory and executive control. Previous work relied on manual assessments of semantic relatedness between words and grouping of words into semantic clusters. We investigated a computational linguistic approach to measuring the strength of semantic relatedness between words based on latent semantic analysis of word co-occurrences in a subset of a large online encyclopedia. We computed semantic clustering indices and compared them to brain network connectivity measures obtained with task-free fMRI in a sample consisting of healthy participants and those differentially affected by cognitive impairment. We found that semantic clustering indices were associated with brain network connectivity in distinct areas including fronto-temporal, fronto-parietal and fusiform gyrus regions. This study shows that computerized semantic indices complement traditional assessments of verbal fluency to provide a more complete account of the relationship between brain and verbal behavior involved organization and retrieval of lexical information from memory. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

On the Existence of Semantic Working Memory: Evidence for Direct Semantic Maintenance

Science.gov (United States)

Shivde, Geeta; Anderson, Michael C.

2011-01-01

Despite widespread acknowledgment of the importance of online semantic maintenance, there has been astonishingly little work that clearly establishes this construct. We review the extant work relevant to short-term retention of meaning and show that, although consistent with semantic working memory, most data can be accommodated in other ways.…

Inhibition in the Dynamics of Selective Attention: An Integrative Model for Negative Priming

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Hecke eSchrobsdorff

2012-11-01

Full Text Available We introduce a computational model of the negative priming (NP effect that includes perception, memory, attention, decision making, and action. The model is designed to provide a coherent picture across competing theories of NP and to relate psychological experiments to physiological measurements. The model is formulated in terms of an abstract dynamics of activations of features, their binding into object entities or their semantic categorization as well as related memories and implied reactions. The dynamical variables interact in a connectionist network which is shown to be adaptable to a variety of experimental paradigms. We find that selective attention can be modeled by means of inhibitory processes and by a threshold dynamics. Considering the implementation it becomes obvious that the specificity of the experimental paradigm must be taken into account when predicting the nature of the NP effect.

THE IMPACT OF SPATIAL PROXIMITY TO CUSTOMERS, SUPPLIERS AND COMPETITORS ON INNOVATION ACTIVITY IN MEDIUM HIGH AND HIGH TECHNOLOGY INDUSTRY IN POLAND

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Piotr Dzikowski

2016-12-01

Full Text Available The aim of this study is to determine the impact of spatial proximity to customers, suppliers and competitors on innovation activity in medium high and high technology manufacturing industries in Poland. It is assumed that innovation activity is facilitated by both local suppliers and customers whereas it is decreased by local competitors. The scope of the survey relates to innovation in medium high and high technology manufacturing industries in Poland. It concerns innovation at the firm level and takes into account the diffusion to the "new to the company." The study shows that both local and regional suppliers and customers decrease innovation activity whereas both national and foreign ones positively influence on it. For competitors the hypothesis proved to be right. Foreign suppliers, customers and competitors have the highest positive influence on innovation activity whereas local ones have the most negative impact.

Semantic Coherence Facilitates Distributional Learning.

Science.gov (United States)

Ouyang, Long; Boroditsky, Lera; Frank, Michael C

2017-04-01

Computational models have shown that purely statistical knowledge about words' linguistic contexts is sufficient to learn many properties of words, including syntactic and semantic category. For example, models can infer that "postman" and "mailman" are semantically similar because they have quantitatively similar patterns of association with other words (e.g., they both tend to occur with words like "deliver," "truck," "package"). In contrast to these computational results, artificial language learning experiments suggest that distributional statistics alone do not facilitate learning of linguistic categories. However, experiments in this paradigm expose participants to entirely novel words, whereas real language learners encounter input that contains some known words that are semantically organized. In three experiments, we show that (a) the presence of familiar semantic reference points facilitates distributional learning and (b) this effect crucially depends both on the presence of known words and the adherence of these known words to some semantic organization. Copyright © 2016 Cognitive Science Society, Inc.

Semantic Query Processing : Estimating Relational Purity

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Kalo, Jan-Christoph; Lofi, C.; Maseli, René Pascal; Balke, Wolf-Tilo; Leyer, M.

2017-01-01

The use of semantic information found in structured knowledge bases has become an integral part of the processing pipeline of modern intelligent in-
formation systems. However, such semantic information is frequently insuffi-cient to capture the rich semantics demanded by the applications, and

Pragmatics for formal semantics

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Danvy, Olivier

2011-01-01

This tech talk describes how to write and how to inter-derive formal semantics for sequential programming languages. The progress reported here is (1) concrete guidelines to write each formal semantics to alleviate their proof obligations, and (2) simple calculational tools to obtain a formal...

A reasonable Semantic Web

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Hitzler, Pascal; Van Harmelen, Frank

2010-01-01

The realization of Semantic Web reasoning is central to substantiating the Semantic Web vision. However, current mainstream research on this topic faces serious challenges, which forces us to question established lines of research and to rethink the underlying approaches. We argue that reasoning for

Complex architecture of primes and natural numbers.

Science.gov (United States)

García-Pérez, Guillermo; Serrano, M Ángeles; Boguñá, Marián

2014-08-01

Natural numbers can be divided in two nonoverlapping infinite sets, primes and composites, with composites factorizing into primes. Despite their apparent simplicity, the elucidation of the architecture of natural numbers with primes as building blocks remains elusive. Here, we propose a new approach to decoding the architecture of natural numbers based on complex networks and stochastic processes theory. We introduce a parameter-free non-Markovian dynamical model that naturally generates random primes and their relation with composite numbers with remarkable accuracy. Our model satisfies the prime number theorem as an emerging property and a refined version of Cramér's conjecture about the statistics of gaps between consecutive primes that seems closer to reality than the original Cramér's version. Regarding composites, the model helps us to derive the prime factors counting function, giving the probability of distinct prime factors for any integer. Probabilistic models like ours can help to get deeper insights about primes and the complex architecture of natural numbers.

Episodic memory, semantic memory, and amnesia.

Science.gov (United States)

Squire, L R; Zola, S M

1998-01-01

Episodic memory and semantic memory are two types of declarative memory. There have been two principal views about how this distinction might be reflected in the organization of memory functions in the brain. One view, that episodic memory and semantic memory are both dependent on the integrity of medial temporal lobe and midline diencephalic structures, predicts that amnesic patients with medial temporal lobe/diencephalic damage should be proportionately impaired in both episodic and semantic memory. An alternative view is that the capacity for semantic memory is spared, or partially spared, in amnesia relative to episodic memory ability. This article reviews two kinds of relevant data: 1) case studies where amnesia has occurred early in childhood, before much of an individual's semantic knowledge has been acquired, and 2) experimental studies with amnesic patients of fact and event learning, remembering and knowing, and remote memory. The data provide no compelling support for the view that episodic and semantic memory are affected differently in medial temporal lobe/diencephalic amnesia. However, episodic and semantic memory may be dissociable in those amnesic patients who additionally have severe frontal lobe damage.

Gricean Semantics and Vague Speaker-Meaning

OpenAIRE

Schiffer, Stephen

2017-01-01

Presentations of Gricean semantics, including Stephen Neale’s in “Silent Reference,” totally ignore vagueness, even though virtually every utterance is vague. I ask how Gricean semantics might be adjusted to accommodate vague speaker-meaning. My answer is that it can’t accommodate it: the Gricean program collapses in the face of vague speaker-meaning. The Gricean might, however, fi nd some solace in knowing that every other extant meta-semantic and semantic program is in the same boat.

Modeling the Interaction Between Semantic Agents and Semantic Web Services Using MDA Approach

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Kardas, Geylani; Göknil, Arda; Dikenelli, Oguz; Topaloglu, N. Yasemin

2007-01-01

In this paper, we present our metamodeling approach for integrating semantic web services and semantic web enabled agents under Model Driven Architecture (MDA) view which defines a conceptual framework to realize model driven development. We believe that agents must have well designed environment

A Model for Semantic IS Standards

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Folmer, Erwin Johan Albert; Oude Luttighuis, Paul; van Hillegersberg, Jos

2011-01-01

We argue that, in order to suggest improvements of any kind to semantic information system (IS) standards, better understanding of the conceptual structure of semantic IS standard is required. This study develops a model for semantic IS standard, based on literature and expert knowledge. The model

Z(prime) Phenomenology and the LHC

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Rizzo, Thomas G.

2006-01-01

A brief pedagogical overview of the phenomenology of Z(prime) gauge bosons is ILC in determining Z(prime) properties is also discussed. and explore in detail how the LHC may discover and help elucidate the models, review the current constraints on the possible properties of a Z(prime) nature of these new particles. We provide an overview of the Z(prime) studies presented. Such particles can arise in various electroweak extensions of that have been performed by both ATLAS and CMS. The role of the the Standard Model (SM). We provide a quick survey of a number of Z(prime)

Semantic-based surveillance video retrieval.

Science.gov (United States)

Hu, Weiming; Xie, Dan; Fu, Zhouyu; Zeng, Wenrong; Maybank, Steve

2007-04-01

Visual surveillance produces large amounts of video data. Effective indexing and retrieval from surveillance video databases are very important. Although there are many ways to represent the content of video clips in current video retrieval algorithms, there still exists a semantic gap between users and retrieval systems. Visual surveillance systems supply a platform for investigating semantic-based video retrieval. In this paper, a semantic-based video retrieval framework for visual surveillance is proposed. A cluster-based tracking algorithm is developed to acquire motion trajectories. The trajectories are then clustered hierarchically using the spatial and temporal information, to learn activity models. A hierarchical structure of semantic indexing and retrieval of object activities, where each individual activity automatically inherits all the semantic descriptions of the activity model to which it belongs, is proposed for accessing video clips and individual objects at the semantic level. The proposed retrieval framework supports various queries including queries by keywords, multiple object queries, and queries by sketch. For multiple object queries, succession and simultaneity restrictions, together with depth and breadth first orders, are considered. For sketch-based queries, a method for matching trajectories drawn by users to spatial trajectories is proposed. The effectiveness and efficiency of our framework are tested in a crowded traffic scene.

Transposed-letter priming of prelexical orthographic representations.

Science.gov (United States)

Kinoshita, Sachiko; Norris, Dennis

2009-01-01

A prime generated by transposing two internal letters (e.g., jugde) produces strong priming of the original word (judge). In lexical decision, this transposed-letter (TL) priming effect is generally weak or absent for nonword targets; thus, it is unclear whether the origin of this effect is lexical or prelexical. The authors describe the Bayesian Reader theory of masked priming (D. Norris & S. Kinoshita, 2008), which explains why nonwords do not show priming in lexical decision but why they do in the cross-case same-different task. This analysis is followed by 3 experiments that show that priming in this task is not based on low-level perceptual similarity between the prime and target, or on phonology, to make the case that priming is based on prelexical orthographic representation. The authors then use this task to demonstrate equivalent TL priming effects for nonwords and words. The results are interpreted as the first reliable evidence based on the masked priming procedure that letter position is not coded absolutely within the prelexical, orthographic representation. The implications of the results for current letter position coding schemes are discussed.

Wrath of God: religious primes and punishment.

Science.gov (United States)

McKay, Ryan; Efferson, Charles; Whitehouse, Harvey; Fehr, Ernst

2011-06-22

Recent evidence indicates that priming participants with religious concepts promotes prosocial sharing behaviour. In the present study, we investigated whether religious priming also promotes the costly punishment of unfair behaviour. A total of 304 participants played a punishment game. Before the punishment stage began, participants were subliminally primed with religion primes, secular punishment primes or control primes. We found that religious primes strongly increased the costly punishment of unfair behaviours for a subset of our participants--those who had previously donated to a religious organization. We discuss two proximate mechanisms potentially underpinning this effect. The first is a 'supernatural watcher' mechanism, whereby religious participants punish unfair behaviours when primed because they sense that not doing so will enrage or disappoint an observing supernatural agent. The second is a 'behavioural priming' mechanism, whereby religious primes activate cultural norms pertaining to fairness and its enforcement and occasion behaviour consistent with those norms. We conclude that our results are consistent with dual inheritance proposals about religion and cooperation, whereby religions harness the byproducts of genetically inherited cognitive mechanisms in ways that enhance the survival prospects of their adherents.

Automatic and directed search processes in solving simple semantic-memory problems.

Science.gov (United States)

Ben-Zur, H

1989-09-01

The cognitive processes involved in simple semantic-memory problems were investigated in four experiments. On each trial of Experiments 1 and 2, two stimulus words were presented, with the instructions to find a third word (i.e., the solution) that, when coupled with each of the stimuli, would yield two word pairs used in everyday language (e.g., surprise and birthday, for which the solution is party). The results of the two experiments indicated that informing the subject whether the solution constituted the first or the second element in the word pairs facilitated both likelihood and speed of solution attainment. In addition, solution attainment was relatively high for items based on frequently used word pairs (Experiment 1) and for items in which the stimuli appear, in everyday language, in a small number of word pairs (Experiment 2). In Experiment 3, the subjects were required to produce word pairs containing one of the two stimulus words from the items used in Experiment 2. Solution production was facilitated by rehearsing the second stimulus word of the specific item. The conclusion, supported by a post hoc analysis of the results of Experiments 2 and 3 (Experiment 4), was that indirect priming from one stimulus word may facilitate solution production from a searched word. These results are interpreted in terms of automatic and controlled processes, and their relevance to two different models for retrieval from semantic memory is discussed.

Semantic models for adaptive interactive systems

CERN Document Server

Hussein, Tim; Lukosch, Stephan; Ziegler, Jürgen; Calvary, Gaëlle

2013-01-01

Providing insights into methodologies for designing adaptive systems based on semantic data, and introducing semantic models that can be used for building interactive systems, this book showcases many of the applications made possible by the use of semantic models.Ontologies may enhance the functional coverage of an interactive system as well as its visualization and interaction capabilities in various ways. Semantic models can also contribute to bridging gaps; for example, between user models, context-aware interfaces, and model-driven UI generation. There is considerable potential for using

Some Novel Techniques in Operational Semantics

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Mosses, Peter David

2003-01-01

Several novel techniques for use in operational semantics are presented. They were developed in connection with a modular vatriant of the conventional Structural Operational Semantics framework, but can also be exploited when modularity is of no great concern. Gives a simple introduction to the m......Several novel techniques for use in operational semantics are presented. They were developed in connection with a modular vatriant of the conventional Structural Operational Semantics framework, but can also be exploited when modularity is of no great concern. Gives a simple introduction...

Mobile Apps: Improve Airports ́ Brand Image and Differentiate Among Competitors

OpenAIRE

Lázaro Florido-Benítez

2016-01-01

The image airports project via their applications (apps) affects -- directly or indirectly--passengers’ satisfaction. Today, airports are competing among each other to attract more airlines and passengers to improve commercial revenues. Airport apps (as mobile marketing tools) are offering a wide range of opportunities to both passengers and airports. Apps are the best solution if airports want to improve the passenger experience as well as differentiate themselves from their competitors. The...

Recognizing Plant Defense Priming

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Martinez-Medina, Ainhoa; Flors, Victor; Heil, Martin; Mauch-Mani, Brigitte; Pieterse, Corné M J|info:eu-repo/dai/nl/113115113; Pozo, Maria J; Ton, Jurriaan; van Dam, Nicole M; Conrath, Uwe

2016-01-01

Defense priming conditions diverse plant species for the superinduction of defense, often resulting in enhanced pest and disease resistance and abiotic stress tolerance. Here, we propose a guideline that might assist the plant research community in a consistent assessment of defense priming in

Recognizing plant defense priming

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Martinez-Medina, A.; Flors, V.; Heil, M.; Mauch-Mani, B.; Pieterse, C.M.J.; Pozo, M.J.; Ton, J.; Van Dam, N.M.; Conrath, U.

2016-01-01

Defense priming conditions diverse plant species for the superinduction of defense, often resulting in enhanced pest and disease resistance and abiotic stress tolerance. Here, we propose a guideline that might assist the plant research community in a consistent assessment of defense priming in

Social Semantics for an Effective Enterprise

Science.gov (United States)

Berndt, Sarah; Doane, Mike

2012-01-01

An evolution of the Semantic Web, the Social Semantic Web (s2w), facilitates knowledge sharing with "useful information based on human contributions, which gets better as more people participate." The s2w reaches beyond the search box to move us from a collection of hyperlinked facts, to meaningful, real time context. When focused through the lens of Enterprise Search, the Social Semantic Web facilitates the fluid transition of meaningful business information from the source to the user. It is the confluence of human thought and computer processing structured with the iterative application of taxonomies, folksonomies, ontologies, and metadata schemas. The importance and nuances of human interaction are often deemphasized when focusing on automatic generation of semantic markup, which results in dissatisfied users and unrealized return on investment. Users consistently qualify the value of information sets through the act of selection, making them the de facto stakeholders of the Social Semantic Web. Employers are the ultimate beneficiaries of s2w utilization with a better informed, more decisive workforce; one not achieved with an IT miracle technology, but by improved human-computer interactions. Johnson Space Center Taxonomist Sarah Berndt and Mike Doane, principal owner of Term Management, LLC discuss the planning, development, and maintenance stages for components of a semantic system while emphasizing the necessity of a Social Semantic Web for the Enterprise. Identification of risks and variables associated with layering the successful implementation of a semantic system are also modeled.

Multisensory Flavor Priming

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Dijksterhuis, Garmt Bernard

2016-01-01

with a taxonomy of different priming situations. In food-related applications of flavor, both bottom-up (sensory) as well as top-down (expectations) processes are at play. Most of the complex interactions that this leads to take place outside the awareness of the perceiving subject. A model is presented where...... many, past and current, aspects (sensory, surroundings, social, somatic, sentimental) of a (flavor) perception, together result in the perception of a flavor, its liking. or its choice. This model borrows on ideas from priming, situated/embodied cognition, and (food-related) perception.......Flavor is multisensory; several interacting sensory systems-taste, smell, and mouthfeel-together comprise "flavor," making it a cognitively constructed percept rather than a bottom-up sensory one. In this chapter, some of the complications this entails for flavor priming are introduced, along...

SEMANTIC WEB MINING: ISSUES AND CHALLENGES

OpenAIRE

Karan Singh*, Anil kumar, Arun Kumar Yadav

2016-01-01

The combination of the two fast evolving scientific research areas “Semantic Web” and “Web Mining” are well-known as “Semantic Web Mining” in computer science. These two areas cover way for the mining of related and meaningful information from the web, by this means giving growth to the term “Semantic Web Mining”. The “Semantic Web” makes mining easy and “Web Mining” can construct new structure of Web. Web Mining applies Data Mining technique on web content, Structure and Usage. This paper gi...

The contribution of executive control to semantic cognition: Convergent evidence from semantic aphasia and executive dysfunction

OpenAIRE

Thompson, Hannah E; Almaghyuli, Azizah; Noonan, Krist A.; Barak, Ohr; Lambon Ralph, Matthew; Jefferies, Elizabeth

2018-01-01

Semantic cognition, as described by the Controlled Semantic Cognition (CSC) framework (Rogers, Patterson, Jefferies, & Lambon Ralph, 2015), involves two key components: activation of coherent, generalizable concepts within a heteromodal ‘hub’ in combination with modality-specific features (spokes), and a constraining mechanism that manipulates and gates this knowledge to generate time- and task- appropriate behaviour. Executive-semantic goal representations, largely supported by executive...

Modified Multi Prime RSA Cryptosystem

Science.gov (United States)

Ghazali Kamardan, M.; Aminudin, N.; Che-Him, Norziha; Sufahani, Suliadi; Khalid, Kamil; Roslan, Rozaini

2018-04-01

RSA [1] is one of the mostly used cryptosystem in securing data and information. Though, it has been recently discovered that RSA has some weaknesses and in advance technology, RSA is believed to be inefficient especially when it comes to decryption. Thus, a new algorithm called Multi prime RSA, an extended version of the standard RSA is studied. Then, a modification is made to the Multi prime RSA where another keys is shared secretly between the receiver and the sender to increase the securerity. As in RSA, the methodology used for modified Multi-prime RSA also consists of three phases; 1. Key Generation in which the secret and public keys are generated and published. In this phase, the secrecy is improved by adding more prime numbers and addition of secret keys. 2. Encryption of the message using the public and secret keys given. 3. Decryption of the secret message using the secret key generated. For the decryption phase, a method called Chinese Remainder Theorem is used which helps to fasten the computation. Since Multi prime RSA use more than two prime numbers, the algorithm is more efficient and secure when compared to the standard RSA. Furthermore, in modified Multi prime RSA another secret key is introduced to increase the obstacle to the attacker. Therefore, it is strongly believed that this new algorithm is better and can be an alternative to the RSA.

Psychologizing the Semantics of Fiction

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

John Woods

2010-04-01

Full Text Available Psychologiser la sémantique de la fictionLes théoriciens sémantistes de la fiction cherchent typiquement à expliquer nos relations sémantiques au fictionnel dans le contexte plus général des théories de la référence, privilégiant une explication de la sémantique sur le psychologique. Dans cet article, nous défendons une dépendance inverse. Par l’éclaircissement de nos relations psychologiques au fictionnel, nous trouverons un guide pour savoir comment développer une sémantique de la fiction. S’ensuivra une esquisse de la sémantique.Semantic theorists of fiction typically look for an account of our semantic relations to the fictional within general-purpose theories of reference, privileging an explanation of the semantic over the psychological. In this paper, we counsel a reverse dependency. In sorting out our psychological relations to the fictional, there is useful guidance about how to proceed with the semantics of fiction. A sketch of the semantics follows.

Jigsaw Semantics

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Paul J. E. Dekker

2010-12-01

Full Text Available In the last decade the enterprise of formal semantics has been under attack from several philosophical and linguistic perspectives, and it has certainly suffered from its own scattered state, which hosts quite a variety of paradigms which may seem to be incompatible. It will not do to try and answer the arguments of the critics, because the arguments are often well-taken. The negative conclusions, however, I believe are not. The only adequate reply seems to be a constructive one, which puts several pieces of formal semantics, in particular dynamic semantics, together again. In this paper I will try and sketch an overview of tasks, techniques, and results, which serves to at least suggest that it is possible to develop a coherent overall picture of undeniably important and structural phenomena in the interpretation of natural language. The idea is that the concept of meanings as truth conditions after all provides an excellent start for an integrated study of the meaning and use of natural language, and that an extended notion of goal directed pragmatics naturally complements this picture. None of the results reported here are really new, but we think it is important to re-collect them.ReferencesAsher, Nicholas & Lascarides, Alex. 1998. ‘Questions in Dialogue’. Linguistics and Philosophy 23: 237–309.http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/A:1005364332007Borg, Emma. 2007. ‘Minimalism versus contextualism in semantics’. In Gerhard Preyer & Georg Peter (eds. ‘Context-Sensitivity and Semantic Minimalism’, pp. 339–359. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Cappelen, Herman & Lepore, Ernest. 1997. ‘On an Alleged Connection between Indirect Quotation and Semantic Theory’. Mind and Language 12: pp. 278–296.Cappelen, Herman & Lepore, Ernie. 2005. Insensitive Semantics. Oxford: Blackwell.http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/9780470755792Dekker, Paul. 2002. ‘Meaning and Use of Indefinite Expressions’. Journal of Logic, Language and Information 11: pp. 141–194

Semantic tagging of and semantic enhancements to systematics papers: ZooKeys working examples

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Penev, L.; Agosti, D.; Georgiev, T.; Catapano, T.; Miller, J.; Blagoderov, V.; Roberts, D.; Smith, V.S.; Brake, I.; Ryrcroft, S.; Scott, B.; Johnson, N.F.; Morris, R.A.; Sautter, G.; Chavan, V.; Robertson, T.; Remsen, D.; Stoev, P.; Parr, C.; Knapp, S.; Kress, W.J.; Thompson, F.C.; Erwin, T.

2010-01-01

The concept of semantic tagging and its potential for semantic enhancements to taxonomic papers is outlined and illustrated by four exemplar papers published in the present issue of ZooKeys. The four papers were created in different ways: (i) written in Microsoft Word and submitted as non-tagged

Topics in Semantics-based Program Manipulation

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Grobauer, Bernt

four articles in the field of semantics-based techniques for program manipulation: three articles are about partial evaluation, a method for program specialization; the fourth article treats an approach to automatic cost analysis. Partial evaluation optimizes programs by specializing them with respect...... article in this dissertation describes how the second Futamura projection can be achieved for type-directed partial evaluation (TDPE), a relatively recent approach to partial evaluation: We derive an ML implementation of the second Futamura projection for TDPE. Due to the differences between ‘traditional...... denotational semantics—allows us to relate various possible semantics to each other both conceptually and formally. We thus are able to explain goal-directed evaluation using an intuitive list-based semantics, while using a continuation semantics for semantics-based compilation through partial evaluation...

Competitor presence reduces internal attentional focus and improves 16.1km cycling time trial performance.

Science.gov (United States)

Williams, Emily L; Jones, Hollie S; Andy Sparks, S; Marchant, David C; Midgley, Adrian W; Mc Naughton, Lars R

2015-07-01

Whilst the presence of a competitor has been found to improve performance, the mechanisms influencing the change in selected work rates during direct competition have been suggested but not specifically assessed. The aim was to investigate the physiological and psychological influences of a visual avatar competitor during a 16.1-km cycling time trial performance, using trained, competitive cyclists. Randomised cross-over design. Fifteen male cyclists completed four 16.1km cycling time trials on a cycle ergometer, performing two with a visual display of themselves as a simulated avatar (FAM and SELF), one with no visual display (DO), and one with themselves and an opponent as simulated avatars (COMP). Participants were informed the competitive avatar was a similar ability cyclist but it was actually a representation of their fastest previous performance. Increased performance times were evident during COMP (27.8±2.0min) compared to SELF (28.7±1.9min) and DO (28.4±2.3min). Greater power output, speed and heart rate were apparent during COMP trial than SELF (pperformance. Competitive cyclists performed significantly faster during a 16.1-km competitive trial than when performing maximally, without a competitor. The improvement in performance was elicited due to a greater external distraction, deterring perceived exertion. Copyright © 2014 Sports Medicine Australia. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Inter-deriving Semantic Artifacts for Object-Oriented Programming

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Danvy, Olivier; Johannsen, Jacob

2008-01-01

We present a new abstract machine for Abadi and Cardelli's untyped calculus of objects. What is special about this semantic artifact (i.e., man-made construct) is that is mechanically corresponds to both the reduction semantics (i.e., small-step operational semantics) and the natural semantics (i...... actual substitutions, we then represent object methods as closures and in the same inter-derivational spirit, we present three new semantic artifacts: a reduction semantics for a version of Abadi and Cardelli's untyped calculus of objects with explicit substitutions, an environment-based abstract machine...

Priming Ability Emotional Intelligence

Science.gov (United States)

Schutte, Nicola S.; Malouff, John M.

2012-01-01

Two studies examined whether priming self-schemas relating to successful emotional competency results in better emotional intelligence performance. In the first study participants were randomly assigned to a successful emotional competency self-schema prime condition or a control condition and then completed an ability measure of emotional…

The contribution of executive control to semantic cognition: Convergent evidence from semantic aphasia and executive dysfunction

OpenAIRE

Thompson, Hannah; Almaghyuli, Azizah; Noonan, Krist A.; barak, Ohr; Lambon Ralph, Matthew A.; Jefferies, Elizabeth

2018-01-01

Semantic cognition, as described by the controlled semantic cognition (CSC) framework (Rogers et al., 2015, Neuropsychologia, 76, 220), involves two key components: activation of coherent, generalizable concepts within a heteromodal ‘hub’ in combination with modality-specific features (spokes), and a constraining mechanism that manipulates and gates this knowledge to generate time- and task-appropriate behaviour. Executive–semantic goal representations, largely supported by executive regions ...

Survey of semantic modeling techniques

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Smith, C.L.

1975-07-01

The analysis of the semantics of programing languages was attempted with numerous modeling techniques. By providing a brief survey of these techniques together with an analysis of their applicability for answering semantic issues, this report attempts to illuminate the state-of-the-art in this area. The intent is to be illustrative rather than thorough in the coverage of semantic models. A bibliography is included for the reader who is interested in pursuing this area of research in more detail.

Semantic multimedia analysis and processing

CERN Document Server

Spyrou, Evaggelos; Mylonas, Phivos

2014-01-01

Broad in scope, Semantic Multimedia Analysis and Processing provides a complete reference of techniques, algorithms, and solutions for the design and the implementation of contemporary multimedia systems. Offering a balanced, global look at the latest advances in semantic indexing, retrieval, analysis, and processing of multimedia, the book features the contributions of renowned researchers from around the world. Its contents are based on four fundamental thematic pillars: 1) information and content retrieval, 2) semantic knowledge exploitation paradigms, 3) multimedia personalization, and 4)

Psychotherapy augmentation through preconscious priming

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Francois eBorgeat

2013-03-01

Full Text Available Objective: To test the hypothesis that repeated preconscious (masked priming of personalized positive cognitions could augment cognitive change and facilitate achievement of patients’ goals following a therapy.Methods: Twenty social phobic patients (13 women completed a 36 weeks study beginning by 12 weeks of group behavioural therapy. After the therapy, they received 6 weeks of preconscious priming and 6 weeks of a control procedure in a randomized cross-over design. The Priming condition involved listening twice daily with a passive attitude to a recording of individualized formulations of appropriate cognitions and attitudes masked by music. The Control condition involved listening to an indistinguishable recording where the formulations had been replaced by random numbers. Changes in social cognitions were measured by the Social Interaction Self Statements Test (SISST.Results: Patients improved following therapy. The Priming procedure was associated with increased positive cognitions and decreased negative cognitions on the SISST while the Control procedure was not. The Priming procedure induced more cognitive change when applied immediately after the group therapy. Conclusion: An effect of priming was observed on social phobia related cognitions in the expected direction. This self administered addition to a therapy could be seen as an augmentation strategy.

Neural correlates underlying musical semantic memory.

Science.gov (United States)

Groussard, M; Viader, F; Landeau, B; Desgranges, B; Eustache, F; Platel, H

2009-07-01

Numerous functional imaging studies have examined the neural basis of semantic memory mainly using verbal and visuospatial materials. Musical material also allows an original way to explore semantic memory processes. We used PET imaging to determine the neural substrates that underlie musical semantic memory using different tasks and stimuli. The results of three PET studies revealed a greater involvement of the anterior part of the temporal lobe. Concerning clinical observations and our neuroimaging data, the musical lexicon (and most widely musical semantic memory) appears to be sustained by a temporo-prefrontal cerebral network involving right and left cerebral regions.

Flexible recruitment of semantic richness: Context modulates body-object interaction effects in lexical-semantic processing

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Cody eTousignant

2012-03-01

Full Text Available Body-object interaction (BOI is a semantic richness variable that measures the perceived ease with which the human body can physically interact with a word’s referent. Lexical and semantic processing is facilitated when words are associated with relatively more bodily experience (high BOI words, e.g., belt. To date, BOI effects have been examined in only one semantic decision context (is it imageable?. It has been argued that semantic processing is dynamic and can be modulated by context. We examined these influences by testing how task knowledge modulated BOI effects. We presented the same stimuli (high- and low-BOI entity words and a set of action words in each of four action/entity semantic categorization tasks (SCTs. Task framing was manipulated: participants were told about one (actions or entities or both (actions and entities categories of words in the decision task. Facilitatory BOI effects were observed when participants knew that ‘entity’ was part of the decision category, regardless of whether the high- and low-BOI entity words appeared on the affirmative or negative side of the decision. That BOI information was only useful when participants had expectations that object words would be presented suggests a strong role for the decision context in lexical-semantic processing, and supports a dynamic view of conceptual knowledge.

Prime time news: the influence of primed positive and negative emotion on susceptibility to false memories.

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Porter, Stephen; ten Brinke, Leanne; Riley, Sean N; Baker, Alysha

2014-01-01

We examined the relation between emotion and susceptibility to misinformation using a novel paradigm, the ambiguous stimuli affective priming (ASAP) paradigm. Participants (N = 88) viewed ambiguous neutral images primed either at encoding or retrieval to be interpreted as either highly positive or negative (or neutral/not primed). After viewing the images, they either were asked misleading or non-leading questions. Following a delay, memory accuracy for the original images was assessed. Results indicated that any emotional priming at encoding led to a higher susceptibility to misinformation relative to priming at recall. In particular, inducing a negative interpretation of the image at encoding led to an increased susceptibility of false memories for major misinformation (an entire object not actually present in the scene). In contrast, this pattern was reversed when priming was used at recall; a negative reinterpretation of the image decreased memory distortion relative to unprimed images. These findings suggest that, with precise experimental control, the experience of emotion at event encoding, in particular, is implicated in false memory susceptibility.

Scandinavian Semantics and the Human Body

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Levisen, Carsten

2015-01-01

, it is demonstrated that Scandinavian and English systems differ significantly in some aspects of the way in which the construe the human body with words. The study ventures an innovative combination of methods, pairing the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach to linguistic and conceptual analysis......This paper presents an ethnolinguistic analysis of how the space between the head and the body is construed in Scandinavian semantic systems vis-a-vis the semantic system of English. With an extensive case study of neck-related meanings in Danish, and with cross-Scandinavian reference...... with empirical evidence from the Evolution of Semantic Systems (EoSS) project. This combination of empirical and interpretative tools helps to integrate evidence from semantics and semiotics, pinning out in great detail the intricacies of the meanings of particular body words. The paper concludes that body words...

Inter-deriving Semantic Artifacts for Object-Oriented Programming

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Danvy, Olivier; Johannsen, Jacob

2010-01-01

We present a new abstract machine for Abadi and Cardelli's untyped non-imperative calculus of objects.  This abstract machine mechanically corresponds to both the reduction semantics (i.e., small-step operational semantics) and the natural semantics (i.e., big-step operational semantics) specified...

[Endurance capabilities of triathlon competitors with type 1 diabetes mellitus].

Science.gov (United States)

Boehncke, S; Poettgen, K; Maser-Gluth, C; Reusch, J; Boehncke, W-H; Badenhoop, K

2009-04-01

Treatment of type 1 diabetes mellitus (DM) aims to prevent complications by strictly optimizing blood glucose levels. Although physical exercise is an important part of metabolic control, endurance sports are considered hazardous for patients with type 1 diabetes because of the extreme physiological stress they represent. To further elucidate the metabolic challenge this form of exercise presented we investigated the performance of triathlon competitors with type 1 diabetes. Ten patients (32-61 years) with type 1 diabetes (disease duration 2-35 years) were followed for three years, during which each year they participated in one triathlon long-distance competitions (2.4 miles swimming, 26.2 miles running and 112 miles cycling; Ironman Germany 2005-2007). Glucose, cortisol, aldosterone, renin, thyroid hormones, testosterone, growth hormone and catecholamines were measured in blood and saliva. Five non-diabetic competitors served as controls. The performance equalled those of age-matched healthy athletes. Several participants experienced hyperglycemia early in the bike leg, whereas all of them developed low blood glucose levels during the marathon leg. Basal insulin supply was reduced up to 50 % on race day. Hormone levels in athletes with type 1 DM and healthy controls were similar. Patients with type 1 DM can successfully sustain extreme endurance challenges. Physiological alterations of the metabolic state complicated by type 1 DM can readily be compensated by adapting intensified insulin therapy and nutritional modifications. Thus 1 DM should not be regarded a contraindication to participating in high endurance sports.

CASL - The CoFI Algebraic Specification Language - Semantics

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Haxthausen, Anne

1999-01-01

This is version 1.0 of the CASL Language Summary, annotated by the CoFI Semantics Task Group with the semantics of constructs. This is the second complete but possibly imperfect version of the semantics. It was compiled prior to the CoFI workshop in Amsterdam in March 1999.......This is version 1.0 of the CASL Language Summary, annotated by the CoFI Semantics Task Group with the semantics of constructs. This is the second complete but possibly imperfect version of the semantics. It was compiled prior to the CoFI workshop in Amsterdam in March 1999....

Using semantic analysis to improve speech recognition performance

OpenAIRE

Erdoğan, Hakan; Erdogan, Hakan; Sarıkaya, Ruhi; Sarikaya, Ruhi; Chen, Stanley F.; Gao, Yuqing; Picheny, Michael

2005-01-01

Although syntactic structure has been used in recent work in language modeling, there has not been much effort in using semantic analysis for language models. In this study, we propose three new language modeling techniques that use semantic analysis for spoken dialog systems. We call these methods concept sequence modeling, two-level semantic-lexical modeling, and joint semantic-lexical modeling. These models combine lexical information with varying amounts of semantic information, using ann...

Co-clustering for Weblogs in Semantic Space

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Zong, Yu; Xu, Guandong; Dolog, Peter

2010-01-01

Web clustering is an approach for aggregating web objects into various groups according to underlying relationships among them. Finding co-clusters of web objects in semantic space is an interesting topic in the context of web usage mining, which is able to capture the underlying user navigational...... interest and content preference simultaneously. In this paper we will present a novel web co-clustering algorithm named Co-Clustering in Semantic space (COCS) to simultaneously partition web users and pages via a latent semantic analysis approach. In COCS, we first, train the latent semantic space...... of weblog data by using Probabilistic Latent Semantic Analysis (PLSA) model, and then, project all weblog data objects into this semantic space with probability distribution to capture the relationship among web pages and web users, at last, propose a clustering algorithm to generate the co...

Discovery and Selection of Semantic Web Services

CERN Document Server

Wang, Xia

2013-01-01

For advanced web search engines to be able not only to search for semantically related information dispersed over different web pages, but also for semantic services providing certain functionalities, discovering semantic services is the key issue. Addressing four problems of current solution, this book presents the following contributions. A novel service model independent of semantic service description models is proposed, which clearly defines all elements necessary for service discovery and selection. It takes service selection as its gist and improves efficiency. Corresponding selection algorithms and their implementation as components of the extended Semantically Enabled Service-oriented Architecture in the Web Service Modeling Environment are detailed. Many applications of semantic web services, e.g. discovery, composition and mediation, can benefit from a general approach for building application ontologies. With application ontologies thus built, services are discovered in the same way as with single...

Action representation: crosstalk between semantics and pragmatics.

Science.gov (United States)

Prinz, Wolfgang

2014-03-01

Marc Jeannerod pioneered a representational approach to movement and action. In his approach, motor representations provide both, declarative knowledge about action and procedural knowledge for action (action semantics and action pragmatics, respectively). Recent evidence from language comprehension and action simulation supports the claim that action pragmatics and action semantics draw on common representational resources, thus challenging the traditional divide between declarative and procedural action knowledge. To account for these observations, three kinds of theoretical frameworks are discussed: (i) semantics is grounded in pragmatics, (ii) pragmatics is anchored in semantics, and (iii) pragmatics is part and parcel of semantics. © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

A Semantic Analysis Method for Scientific and Engineering Code

Science.gov (United States)

Stewart, Mark E. M.

1998-01-01

This paper develops a procedure to statically analyze aspects of the meaning or semantics of scientific and engineering code. The analysis involves adding semantic declarations to a user's code and parsing this semantic knowledge with the original code using multiple expert parsers. These semantic parsers are designed to recognize formulae in different disciplines including physical and mathematical formulae and geometrical position in a numerical scheme. In practice, a user would submit code with semantic declarations of primitive variables to the analysis procedure, and its semantic parsers would automatically recognize and document some static, semantic concepts and locate some program semantic errors. A prototype implementation of this analysis procedure is demonstrated. Further, the relationship between the fundamental algebraic manipulations of equations and the parsing of expressions is explained. This ability to locate some semantic errors and document semantic concepts in scientific and engineering code should reduce the time, risk, and effort of developing and using these codes.

The Semantics of Plurals: A Defense of Singularism

Science.gov (United States)

Florio, Salvatore

2010-01-01

In this dissertation, I defend "semantic singularism", which is the view that syntactically plural terms, such as "they" or "Russell and Whitehead", are semantically singular. A semantically singular term is a term that denotes a single entity. Semantic singularism is to be distinguished from "syntactic singularism", according to which…

Working memory predicts semantic comprehension in dichotic listening in older adults.

Science.gov (United States)

James, Philip J; Krishnan, Saloni; Aydelott, Jennifer

2014-10-01

Older adults have difficulty understanding spoken language in the presence of competing voices. Everyday social situations involving multiple simultaneous talkers may become increasingly challenging in later life due to changes in the ability to focus attention. This study examined whether individual differences in cognitive function predict older adults' ability to access sentence-level meanings in competing speech using a dichotic priming paradigm. Older listeners showed faster responses to words that matched the meaning of spoken sentences presented to the left or right ear, relative to a neutral baseline. However, older adults were more vulnerable than younger adults to interference from competing speech when the competing signal was presented to the right ear. This pattern of performance was strongly correlated with a non-auditory working memory measure, suggesting that cognitive factors play a key role in semantic comprehension in competing speech in healthy aging. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Building Numbers from Primes

Science.gov (United States)

Burkhart, Jerry

2009-01-01

Prime numbers are often described as the "building blocks" of natural numbers. This article shows how the author and his students took this idea literally by using prime factorizations to build numbers with blocks. In this activity, students explore many concepts of number theory, including the relationship between greatest common factors and…

Recognizing Plant Defense Priming.

Science.gov (United States)

Martinez-Medina, Ainhoa; Flors, Victor; Heil, Martin; Mauch-Mani, Brigitte; Pieterse, Corné M J; Pozo, Maria J; Ton, Jurriaan; van Dam, Nicole M; Conrath, Uwe

2016-10-01

Defense priming conditions diverse plant species for the superinduction of defense, often resulting in enhanced pest and disease resistance and abiotic stress tolerance. Here, we propose a guideline that might assist the plant research community in a consistent assessment of defense priming in plants. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The structure factor of primes

Science.gov (United States)

Zhang, G.; Martelli, F.; Torquato, S.

2018-03-01

Although the prime numbers are deterministic, they can be viewed, by some measures, as pseudo-random numbers. In this article, we numerically study the pair statistics of the primes using statistical-mechanical methods, particularly the structure factor S(k) in an interval M ≤slant p ≤slant M + L with M large, and L/M smaller than unity. We show that the structure factor of the prime-number configurations in such intervals exhibits well-defined Bragg-like peaks along with a small ‘diffuse’ contribution. This indicates that primes are appreciably more correlated and ordered than previously thought. Our numerical results definitively suggest an explicit formula for the locations and heights of the peaks. This formula predicts infinitely many peaks in any non-zero interval, similar to the behavior of quasicrystals. However, primes differ from quasicrystals in that the ratio between the location of any two predicted peaks is rational. We also show numerically that the diffuse part decays slowly as M and L increases. This suggests that the diffuse part vanishes in an appropriate infinite-system-size limit.

Colleagues and Competitors: How Internal Social Comparisons Shape Organizational Search and Adaptation

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Baumann, Oliver; Eggers, JP; Stieglitz, Nils

2018-01-01

Intra-organizational comparisons—managers and units benchmarking their performance against each other—can turn colleagues into competitors. To better understand when organizations should allow or even encourage internal social comparisons, we study their implications for organizational adaptation....... We highlight empirical implications and discuss theoretical links to work on intra-organizational competition, social comparisons and aspiration-driven search, diversification and performance, and the adaptation of multi-business firms....

Towards a Reactive Semantic Execution Environment

Science.gov (United States)

Komazec, Srdjan; Facca, Federico Michele

Managing complex and distributed software systems built on top of the service-oriented paradigm has never been more challenging. While Semantic Web Service technologies offer a promising set of languages and tools as a foundation to resolve the heterogeneity and scalability issues, they are still failing to provide an autonomic execution environment. In this paper we present an approach based on Semantic Web Services to enable the monitoring and self-management of a Semantic Execution Environment (SEE), a brokerage system for Semantic Web Services. Our approach is founded on the event-triggered reactivity paradigm in order to facilitate environment control, thus contributing to its autonomicity, robustness and flexibility.

Equipping Canadian Workers: Business Investment Loses a Step against Competitors Abroad

OpenAIRE

Benjaming Dachis; William B.P. Robson

2013-01-01

After several years of relatively robust performance, Canada is lagging its peers in business investment growth, according to a new report by the C.D. Howe institute. In “Equipping Canadian Workers: Business Investment Loses a Step against Competitors Abroad,” authors Benjamin Dachis and William B.P. Robson find 2013 growth in new private-sector plant and equipment spending per worker in Canada seems likely to lag investment abroad, with strength in the more natural-resource-oriented province...

Semantic Observation Integration

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Werner Kuhn

2012-09-01

Full Text Available Although the integration of sensor-based information into analysis and decision making has been a research topic for many years, semantic interoperability has not yet been reached. The advent of user-generated content for the geospatial domain, Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI, makes it even more difficult to establish semantic integration. This paper proposes a novel approach to integrating conventional sensor information and VGI, which is exploited in the context of detecting forest fires. In contrast to common logic-based semantic descriptions, we present a formal system using algebraic specifications to unambiguously describe the processing steps from natural phenomena to value-added information. A generic ontology of observations is extended and profiled for forest fire detection in order to illustrate how the sensing process, and transformations between heterogeneous sensing systems, can be represented as mathematical functions and grouped into abstract data types. We discuss the required ontological commitments and a possible generalization.

Insensitive Enough Semantics

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Richard Vallée

2006-06-01

Full Text Available According to some philosophers, sentences like (1 “It is raining” and (2 “John is ready” are context sensitive sentences even if they do not contain indexicals or demonstratives. That view initiated a context sensitivity frenzy. Cappelen and Lepore (2005 summarize the frenzy by the slogan “Every sentence is context sensitive” (Insensitive Semantics, p. 6, note 5. They suggest a view they call Minimalism according to which the truth conditions of utterances of sentences like (1/(2 are exactly what Convention T gives you. I will distinguish different propositions, and refocus semantics on sentences. As distinct from what the protagonists in the ongoing debate think, I argue that the content or truth conditions of utterances of both context sensitive sentences and sentences like (1/(2 are not interesting from a semantic point of view, and that the problem sentences like (1/(2 raises is not about context sensitivity or context insensitivity of sentences, but relevance of the content of utterances.

Event-related potential and reaction time evidence for inhibition between alternative meanings of ambiguous words

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Chwilla, D.J.; Kolk, H.H.J.

2003-01-01

We investigated the effects of two primes that converged onto the same semantic target representation (e.g., LION-STRIPES-TIGER) or diverged onto different semantic target representations (e.g., KIDNEY-PIANO-ORGAN). Balota and Paul (1996) showed that the RT effects of two related primes in naming

The Problem of Naturalizing Semantics.

Science.gov (United States)

Sullivan, Arthur

2000-01-01

Investigates conceptual barriers prevalent in the works of both proponents and opponents of semantic naturalism. Searches for a tenable definition of naturalism according to which one can be a realist, a non-reductionist, and a naturalist about semantic content. (Author/VWL)

Compiling Dictionaries Using Semantic Domains*

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ronald Moe

2011-10-01

Full Text Available

Abstract: The task of providing dictionaries for all the world's languages is prodigious, re-quiring efficient techniques. The text corpus method cannot be used for minority languages lacking texts. To meet the need, the author has constructed a list of 1 600 semantic domains, which he has successfully used to collect words. In a workshop setting, a group of speakers can collect as many as 17 000 words in ten days. This method results in a classified word list that can be efficiently expanded into a full dictionary. The method works because the mental lexicon is a giant web or-ganized around key concepts. A semantic domain can be defined as an important concept together with the words directly related to it by lexical relations. A person can utilize the mental web to quickly jump from word to word within a domain. The author is developing a template for each domain to aid in collecting words and in de-scribing their semantics. Investigating semantics within the context of a domain yields many in-sights. The method permits the production of both alphabetically and semantically organized dic-tionaries. The list of domains is intended to be universal in scope and applicability. Perhaps due to universals of human experience and universals of linguistic competence, there are striking simi-larities in various lists of semantic domains developed for languages around the world. Using a standardized list of domains to classify multiple dictionaries opens up possibilities for cross-lin-guistic research into semantic and lexical universals.

Keywords: SEMANTIC DOMAINS, SEMANTIC FIELDS, SEMANTIC CATEGORIES, LEX-ICAL RELATIONS, SEMANTIC PRIMITIVES, DOMAIN TEMPLATES, MENTAL LEXICON, SEMANTIC UNIVERSALS, MINORITY LANGUAGES, LEXICOGRAPHY

Opsomming: Samestelling van woordeboeke deur gebruikmaking van se-mantiese domeine. Die taak van die voorsiening van woordeboeke aan al die tale van die wêreld is geweldig en vereis doeltreffende tegnieke. Die

PrimeFaces beginner's guide

CERN Document Server

Reddy, K Siva Prasad

2013-01-01

A guide for beginner's with step-by-step instructions and an easy-to-follow approach.PrimeFaces Beginners Guide is a simple and effective guide for beginners, wanting to learn and implement PrimeFaces in their JSF-based applications. Some basic JSF and jQuery skills are required before you start working through the book.

Semantic Business Process Modeling

OpenAIRE

Markovic, Ivan

2010-01-01

This book presents a process-oriented business modeling framework based on semantic technologies. The framework consists of modeling languages, methods, and tools that allow for semantic modeling of business motivation, business policies and rules, and business processes. Quality of the proposed modeling framework is evaluated based on the modeling content of SAP Solution Composer and several real-world business scenarios.

Semantic annotation in biomedicine: the current landscape.

Science.gov (United States)

Jovanović, Jelena; Bagheri, Ebrahim

2017-09-22

The abundance and unstructured nature of biomedical texts, be it clinical or research content, impose significant challenges for the effective and efficient use of information and knowledge stored in such texts. Annotation of biomedical documents with machine intelligible semantics facilitates advanced, semantics-based text management, curation, indexing, and search. This paper focuses on annotation of biomedical entity mentions with concepts from relevant biomedical knowledge bases such as UMLS. As a result, the meaning of those mentions is unambiguously and explicitly defined, and thus made readily available for automated processing. This process is widely known as semantic annotation, and the tools that perform it are known as semantic annotators.Over the last dozen years, the biomedical research community has invested significant efforts in the development of biomedical semantic annotation technology. Aiming to establish grounds for further developments in this area, we review a selected set of state of the art biomedical semantic annotators, focusing particularly on general purpose annotators, that is, semantic annotation tools that can be customized to work with texts from any area of biomedicine. We also examine potential directions for further improvements of today's annotators which could make them even more capable of meeting the needs of real-world applications. To motivate and encourage further developments in this area, along the suggested and/or related directions, we review existing and potential practical applications and benefits of semantic annotators.