Abstract: Many regions of the cortex have been identified to be specifically selective for different features. For example, visually presented stimuli proceed, via both the dorsal “where” and ventral “what” streams, before converging in the frontal cortex for decision making processes. However, several subregions of both streams have been identified that demonstrate selectivity on many semantic dimensions, such as size. Most of the studies examining regions selectively activated in maintenance of semantic size have employed the use of visually presented images. In the present, however, study we provide a review of relevant literature, proposed techniques, and a list of word stimuli that may help elucidate the multivariate neural processing of several semantic dimensions.

Negative attitudes towards atheists are hardly a new trend in our society. However, given the pervasiveness of the prejudices and the lack of foundation for them, it seems warranted to explore the underlying elements of these attitudes. Identifying these constitutive elements may help pick apart the different contributing factors and perhaps mitigate or at least understand them in the future. The present study was designed to identify which myths or stereotypes about atheists are most influential in these attitudes. A Lexical Decision Task was utilized to identify which words related to popular stereotypes are most related to the label atheists. The labels Atheists, Christians, and Students were compared to positive words, negatives words, words or interests, neutral words, and non-word strings. Analyses revealed no significant differences among the participants' reaction times in these various comparisons, regardless of religion, level of belief in god, level of spirituality, or being acquainted with atheists. Possible explanations for these results are discussed in this thesis.

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Cette thèse s’est intéressée aux interférences linguistiques intervenant dans la situation de la parole dans la parole, en comparant l’effet de masque de masqueurs paroliers générés dans une langue intelligible pour les participants (français) à celui de masqueurs paroliers générés dans des langues non connues (gaélique irlandais et italien), sur l’identification de mots cibles français. Une tâche de décision lexicale à -5 dB nous a permis d’observer des résultats significativement différents entre les masqueurs paroliers générés dans les langues inconnues (irlandais et italien), avec les masqueurs paroliers italiens qui ont réduit l’intelligibilité des mots cibles français avec la même efficacité que les masqueurs paroliers français, alors que les masqueurs paroliers irlandais ont conduit aux performances les plus élevées. L’utilisation de masqueurs de bruit fluctuant générés à partir de chacun des masqueurs paroliers, a montré que seuls les masqueurs paroliers générés dans une langue intelligible ont produit des interférences linguistiques de haut niveau en plus d’interférences acoustiques et linguistiques de bas niveau. Ainsi, la différence de performances observée entre les masqueurs paroliers irlandais et italiens serait expliquée au niveau acoustique et non à un niveau linguistique. De plus, bien que les masqueurs paroliers italiens et français aient eu des effets de masque équivalents, leurs interférences étaient de natures différentes. Lorsque l’italien devient intelligible pour les participants, les masqueurs paroliers italiens, comme ceux générés en français, produisent des interférences linguistiques de haut niveau, et ce, que les mots cibles soient produits dans la langue native des participants ou dans leur langue seconde. / This research aimed to explore the linguistic interference that occurs during the speech-in-speech situation, by comparing the masking effects of speech backgrounds that were produced in an intelligible language for the participants (i.e., French), to the masking effects of speech backgrounds that were produced in unknown foreign languages (i.e., Irish and Italian), on the identification of French target words. At -5 dB SNR, a lexical decision task revealed significantly divergent results with the unknown languages (i.e., Irish and Italian), with Italian and French speech backgrounds hindering French target word identification to a similar extent, whereas Irish speech backgrounds led to significantly better performances. Using fluctuating noise backgrounds derived from each speech background signals, showed that only the speech backgrounds generated in an intelligible language (i.e., French) produced linguistic interference of high level in addition to acoustic interference and linguistic interference of low level. Thus, the difference observed between the speech backgrounds in Irish and Italian can be explained at an acoustic level but not at a linguistic level. Moreover, although the speech backgrounds in French and in Italian had equivalent masking effects on French word identification, the nature of their interference was different. When Italian became intelligible to the participants, the speech backgrounds in Italian produced linguistic interference of high level like those generated in French, with the target words produced in the native language to the participants or in their second language.

S'ha investigat molt tant els mecanismes neuronals bàsics de l'audició com l'organització psicològica de la percepció de la parla. Tanmateix, en ambdós temes n'hi ha una relativa escassetat en quant a modelització. Aquí describim dos treballs de modelització. Un d'ells proposa un nou mecanisme de millora de selectivitat de freqüències que explica resultats de experiments neurofisiològics investigant manifestacions de forward masking y sobretot auditory streaming en l'escorça auditiva principal (A1). El mecanisme funciona en una xarxa feed-forward amb depressió sináptica entre el tàlem y l'escorça, però mostrem que és robust a l'introducció d'una organització realista del circuit de A1, que per la seva banda explica cantitat de dades neurofisiològics. L'altre treball descriu un mecanisme candidat d'explicar la trobada en estudis psicofísics de diferències en la percepció de paraules entre bilinguës primerencs y simultànis. Simulant tasques de decisió lèxica y discriminació de fonemes, fortifiquem l'hipòtesi de que persones sovint exposades a variacions dialectals de paraules poden guardar aquestes en el seu lèxic, sense alterar representacions fonemàtiques . / Though much experimental research exists on both basic neural mechanisms of hearing and the psychological organization of language perception, there is a relative paucity of modelling work on these subjects. Here we describe two modelling efforts. One proposes a novel mechanism of frequency selectivity improvement that accounts for results of neurophysiological experiments investigating manifestations of forward masking and above all auditory streaming in the primary auditory cortex (A1). The mechanism works in a feed-forward network with depressing thalamocortical synapses, but is further showed to be robust to a realistic organization of the neural circuitry in A1, which accounts for a wealth of neurophysiological data. The other effort describes a candidate mechanism for explaining differences in word/non-word perception between early and simultaneous bilinguals found in psychophysical studies. By simulating lexical decision and phoneme discrimination tasks in an attractor neural network model, we strengthen the hypothesis that people often exposed to dialectal word variations can store these in their lexicons, without altering their phoneme representations. / Se ha investigado mucho tanto los mecanismos neuronales básicos de la audición como la organización psicológica de la percepción del habla. Sin embargo, en ambos temas hay una relativa escasez en cuanto a modelización. Aquí describimos dos trabajos de modelización. Uno propone un nuevo mecanismo de mejora de selectividad de frecuencias que explica resultados de experimentos neurofisiológicos investigando manifestaciones de forward masking y sobre todo auditory streaming en la corteza auditiva principal (A1). El mecanismo funciona en una red feed-forward con depresión sináptica entre el tálamo y la corteza, pero mostramos que es robusto a la introducción de una organización realista del circuito de A1, que a su vez explica cantidad de datos neurofisiológicos. El otro trabajo describe un mecanismo candidato de explicar el hallazgo en estudios psicofísicos de diferencias en la percepción de palabras entre bilinguës tempranos y simultáneos. Simulando tareas de decisión léxica y discriminación de fonemas, fortalecemos la hipótesis de que personas expuestas a menudo a variaciones dialectales de palabras pueden guardar éstas en su léxico, sin alterar representaciones fonémicas.

En los estudios sobre la percepción de los sonidos del habla es fácil encontrar diversos ejemplos que muestran que algunas características de la señal resultan más notorias que otras. En general estas diferencias no han sido incorporadas en los modelos de reconocimiento de palabras. En este trabajo se muestran evidencias de los sesgos en la percepción de vocales en adultos utilizando la técnica de los potenciales evocados. Independientemente de la lengua materna de los participantes, el fonema /i/ resulta mejor discriminado (i.e. respecto a /e/). Además se estudia el papel que la notoriedad de los estímulos juega en la representación y el acceso léxico. El juicio léxico realizado sobre no-palabras se ve acelerado cuando estas contienen como vocal crítica la /i/ (vs. /e/). / In speech perception literature, it is easy to find examples of some characteristics in the signal hich are more salient than others. However, such differences have generally not been incorporated in word recognition models. In this dissertation, evidence of adult vowel perception biases is shown by means of the event-related potentials (ERP) technique. We show that, regardless of the participants' native language, the /i/ phoneme is recognised more easily (relative to the /e/ phoneme). In addition the role that salience plays in lexica representation and access is studied. We find that lexical judgement in non-words is speeded when these contain /i/ as a critical vowel (vs. /e/).

The thesis covers sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic aspects of Czech and Slovak language relations. To both fields, it contributes in the form of own empirical research. At the centre of attention are native speakers of Slovak living long-term in Czechia and their language behaviour under this setting in relation to Czech and Slovak. Given that two languages in question are genetically very close and mutual intelligible, the actual language behaviour of the described population is not strictly predetermined by the social norms (Dickins, 2009). However, there are also conditions supporting the accommodation to Czech (Sloboda, 2005). The thesis focuses on the identification of factors influencing language choice and on the impacts of such factors on the psychlinguistic processing of Slovak and Czech words. The sociolinguistic part builds on questionnaire-based surveys, such as those conducted by Sloboda (2006). The own questionnaire survey was carried out via web. The data from 651 respondents were assessed, all from native speakers of Slovak having grown up in Slovakia and commencing their stay in Czechia after the age of 18. The data revealed that Slovak is used more than Czech, that Czech is more often perceived, that the use of Czech is more common in the communication with strangers or in...

This dissertation investigates how cognates are organized in the bilingual mental lexicon and examines whether orthography in one language, via phonological representations, influences the processing of cognates and false friends in the other language. In light of the framework of two well-known models of bilingual visual word recognition, the Bilingual Interactive Activation (BIA) and the Bilingual Interactive Activation Plus (BIA+), the premise is that there is activation from orthography to phonology across a bilingual’s two languages and that this activation is modulated by the degree of orthographic and phonological code overlap. Two objective metrics were used to assess crosslinguistic similarity of Portuguese-English cognates and false friends that were selected for a cross-language lexical decision task with masked priming. Dynamic time warping (DTW), an algorithm that was originally conceived to compare different speech patterns in automatic speech recognition and to measure acoustic similarity between two time-dependent sequences, was used to compute crosslinguistic phonological similarity. The Normalized Levenshtein Distance (NLD), an algorithm that calculates the minimum number of single-character insertions, deletions or substitutions required to change one word into another and normalizes the result by their lengths, was used to compute crosslinguistic orthographic similarity. Portuguese-English bilinguals who acquired their second language after reaching puberty, and English functional monolinguals who grew up speaking primarily English were recruited to participate in the experimental task. Based on collected reaction time and accuracy data, mixed-effects models analyses are used to estimate the individual effects of crosslinguistic orthographic, phonological and semantic similarity and the role each of them, along with English proficiency, word frequency and length play in the organization of the Portuguese-English bilingual mental lexicon.