Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2003. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 86-88). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2003. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 78-82).

Thesis (Ph.D)--Psychology, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009. / Committee Chair: Dr. Elizabeth T. Davis; Committee Member: Dr. Gregory M. Corso; Committee Member: Dr. Krishnankutty Sathian; Committee Member: Dr. Paul Corballis; Committee Member: Dr. Wendy A. Rogers. Part of the SMARTech Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Collection.

Economic voting--the effect of national economic circumstances on vote preferences--is often seen as the closest thing to a law that exists in the social sciences. Why, then, do incumbents frequently win amidst economic downturns and challengers in economic boom times? I argue that the conventional wisdom fails because it leaves no room for political leadership. Rejecting the notion that candidates have little influence over when and to what extent economic voting occurs, I develop a campaign-centered theory that highlights candidates' power to alter the strength of the economic vote strategically. Specifically, I draw on cognitive-psychological research on priming to argue that candidates' decisions to emphasize or deemphasize economic issues in campaign messages--decisions which I argue are not endogenous to economic context--systematically condition voters' willingness to hold governments accountable for past economic performance. I test my argument against the conventional economic voting model by evaluating the impact of televised campaign ads in national elections in five countries. Combining quantitative analysis of public opinion data with original content analysis of both televised ads and newspaper stories, I show that the effect of economic campaign messages on the economic vote is profound. In some cases, the effect is electorally decisive. In elections in which candidates focus on non-economic issues, however, evaluations of the nation's economic performance have little influence on vote preferences. Only when candidates focus squarely on economic issues do voters come to evaluate the candidates based on economic considerations. Notably, I show that this activating effect is driven by exposure to economic campaign ads in particular, not the campaign in general as conventional theory predicts. Electoral campaigns, therefore, can overcome structural conditions thought to hamstring electoral candidates. More generally, I show that, by reevaluating the psychology of economic voting in light of extensive research on priming, we can improve our understanding of election outcomes in both developed and developing democracies that conventional models treat as anomalous. / text

This dissertation explores language comprehension in native speakers (NSs) and second language (L2) speakers of French. Recent findings suggest that whereas NSs process complex sentences using both syntax and semantics, late learners of a L2 process shallowly, relying on lexical, semantic, and pragmatic cues to interpretation. Studies supporting this Shallow Structure Hypothesis (Clahsen & Felser, 2006b) rely on limited methodologies, however, and are challenged by reports demonstrating proficiency and cognitive effects on processing. In addition, recent research suggests that native language comprehension is not always complete or accurate (Ferreira & Patson, 2007) and is subject to variability (Dabrowska, 2012). This dissertation brings new evidence to bear on NS-L2 differences through the structural priming paradigm and investigates several factors thought to contribute to NS-L2 differences, including the exploratory effect of relative language dominance. Evidence from a self-paced reading task examining off-line and on-line priming of relative clause attachment height suggests that prior exposure to structural information through comprehension influences NSs' subsequent comprehension at the post-interpretive stage. Results argue for priming at the level of abstract hierarchical syntax and an implicit learning account of persistence. This study is one of few to demonstrate priming of ambiguously attached modifiers during comprehension and the first to do so within a L2. Unlike for NSs, the nature of the L2 priming effect is linked to discourse information. Age of acquisition was found to be a more important factor in L2 priming than language dominance. The results also argue that both native and L2 speakers are susceptible to shallow processing, though they use slightly different strategies. While NSs in the current study were more willing to accommodate competing syntactic and semantic analyses, ultimately accepting a less-than-complete analysis, the L2 parsing mechanism preferred to settle on one interpretation. The evidence here lends partial support to the hypothesis that L2 processing relies more on semantic/pragmatic information than NS processing but crucially does not exclude the possibility of L2 syntactic processing and highlights NS-L2 similarities in terms of the contexts that trigger shallow processing. / text

The mechanisms that mediate the maintenance of chronic pain states are poorly understood, but elucidation of such could yield insight into how pain becomes chronic and how the process can potentially be reversed. This thesis investigated the role of ascending and descending spinal dorsal horn circuitry and interneurons in the plasticity that mediates a transition to pathological pain plasticity using hyperalgesic priming model. The results showed that, while dorsal horn neurokinin 1 receptor-positive neurons or descending serotonergic neurons mediated IL-6- and carrageenan-induced acute mechanical hypersensitivity, they were not required for PGE₂-induced mechanical hypersensitivity. In stark contrast, ablation of dopaminergic neurons did interrupt the IL-6- and carrageenan-induced mechanical hypersensitivity, but the subsequent PGE₂ injection failed to cause mechanical hypersensitivity - thereby reflecting that primed state plasticity is driven by differential mechanisms. In addition, the pharmacological antagonism of spinal dopamine D1/D5 receptors reversed priming and its agonism induced mechanical hypersensitivity exclusively in primed mice, which suggests dopaminergic control of pathological pain plasticity in a D1/D5-dependent manner. Moreover, in a primed state, changes to spinal dorsal horn GABA pharmacology were accompanied by upregulation of neuroligin 2 mRNA and protein expression. These findings 1) indicate a novel role for descending dopaminergic neurons in the maintenance of pathological pain plasticity, and 2) point to the inhibitory synaptic expression of neuroligin-2 as the spinal determinants of this type of pain plasticity.

This study examines character traits in United States presidential campaign advertisements. It was predicted that Republican and Democratic trait content would be similar in appeal advertisements but would differ in attack and contrast advertisements. Additionally, it was expected that the traits most frequently conveyed in primary election advertisements would differ from those most frequently employed in general election advertisements. The conveyance of traits in conjunction with issues was examined. The hypotheses and research questions were tested on televised campaign ads from the 2008 and 2012 primary and general elections. Overall, both parties appeal to and attack specific character traits with similar frequencies. The traits used in primary election advertisements were much more positive than the traits used in general election advertisements. Campaigns combine issue content with specific traits in their ads. The findings of this study answer questions about how candidates build and shape their images through televised political advertisements.

Figure assignment entails competition between object properties on opposite sides of borders. The figure is perceived on the side of the border that wins the competition. Ample evidence indicates that configural familiarity is among the competing object properties. We investigated whether priming the semantics of a familiar object suggested along one side of a border can increase its likelihood of winning the competition. To prime the semantics, we presented brief masked exposures of object names before brief masked exposures of displays where a portion of a familiar object was suggested on one side of a central border separating two equal-area, black-and-white regions. Participants reported whether the figure lay on the left or right side of the central border and were unaware of the presence of the word prime. These experimental primes named either the Same Object (SO) or a Different Object (DO) as the familiar object suggested in the display. In the DO condition, the word named an object either in the Same Category (DO-SC) or a Different Category (DO-DC) as the familiar object suggested in the display, where superordinate category was defined as natural versus artificial objects. We also used non-words as control primes. We hypothesized that, if semantic activation influences figure assignment, participants in the SO and DO-SC conditions should be more likely than participants in the DO-DC condition to perceive the figure on the side where the familiar object lies following experimental primes than control primes. We did not observe differences between experimental and control prime in any condition. However, we did obtain a Prime Context Effect, in that participants were more likely to perceive the figure on the familiar side of the border in the SO and DO-SC conditions than in the DO-DC condition. The Prime Context Effect shows that participants discerned the relationship between the masked word prime and the semantics of the familiar object suggested in the display, and this led them to change their strategy on both experimental and control trials. We also found that behavior changed over the course of the experiment: Participants in the DO-DC condition perceived the figure on the familiar side of the border more often in the second half of the experiment, on both experimental and control trials. This pattern suggests that over the course of the experiment, they learned to rely more on information from the display than from the prime, perhaps by restricting their attention to the time when the figure-ground display appeared. Participants in the DO-SC condition perceived the figure on the familiar side of the border more often on experimental trials in the second half of the experiment, whereas their performance on control trials did not differ in the first and second half. We hypothesize that participants in the DO-SC condition learned to match the superordinate semantics of the experimental prime and the display, leading to semantic priming. Taken together, these results show that (1) participants can quickly learn the relationship between experimental primes and target displays and can change their strategy accordingly, and (2) semantic activation can affect figure assignment.

Most research in word recognition uses words that already exist in the reader's lexicon, and it is therefore of interest to see whether newly learned words are represented and processed in the same way as already known words. For example, are newly learned words immediately represented in a special form of lexical memory, or is there a gradual process of assimilation? As for L2 language learners, are newly learned words incorporated into the same processing system that serves L1, or are they represented quite independently?The current study examines this issue by testing for the existence of the Prime Lexicality Effect (PLE) observed in masked priming experiments (Forster & Veres, 1998). Strong form priming was found with nonword primes (e.g., contrapt-CONTRACT), but not with word primes (e.g., contrast-CONTRACT). This effect is generally assumed to result from competition between the prime and the target. So if the readers had been trained to treat "contrapt" as a new word, would it now function like a word and produce much weaker priming? Elgort (2007) demonstrated such an effect with unmasked primes with L2 bilinguals. The current study investigates the PLE in both L1 and L2 bilinguals under different training conditions. When the training program involves mere familiarization (learning to type the words), a PLE was found with visible primes, but not with masked primes, which suggests that unmasked PLE is not the best indicator of lexicalization. In the case of "real" acquisition where the new word is given a definition and a picture of the object it refers to, and learning is spread over two weeks, a clear PLE was obtained. However, when the same experiment was carried out on Chinese-English bilinguals using the same English materials, completely opposite results were obtained. The learning enhanced priming, rather than reducing it, suggesting that the L2 lexicon might differ qualitatively from the L1 lexicon. The implications of these results for competitive theories of lexical access are discussed, and alternative explanations are considered.

This dissertation focuses on the unique aspects of Maltese morphology brought about by its genetic and geographic history. The experiments conducted and described here build on past research in Indo-European languages and new research in other Semitic languages to determine how different word formation systems function. Applying experimental techniques to the study of Maltese is crucial for two reasons. First, though Maltese is a Semitic language, recent extensive contact with English has greatly impacted its vocabulary and the structure of its verbs. Though the effects of persistent language contact is pervasive, clear and systematic differences may be observed between native Semitic verbs and those borrowed from English. Secondly, unlike other Semitic languages, the Maltese writing system uses the Roman alphabet. This allows for tests that require the reading of written stimuli to be performed in the same writing system as previous studies in Indo-European languages, eliminating a number of confounding factors.A masked priming experiment asked Maltese speakers to judge whether or not test items were words of their language. The test items included real and nonce verbs of both Semitic and English origin. Accuracy rates and reaction time were recorded and compared across speakers. The results of this experiment support the psychological salience of the consonantal root as a unit of lexical organization.An elicitation experiment asked native speakers of Maltese to provide a verb form that corresponded to a given noun or adjective. The test items were nouns of Semitic and English origin and non-words constructed to resemble such nouns. Responses were broadly transcribed and analyzed for their similarity to the expected patterns. The results show that speakers are able to use two morphological strategies to form new words. The factors affecting the choice between morphological systems include linguistic structure and social variables.Collectively, this pair of experiments indicate that the consonantal root is a viable morphological and psychological unit of lexical organization, supporting a search-based approach to lexical access. Furthermore, speakers are able to form new words on the basis of whole words, showing that this level of organization must also be present to facilitate lexical access.