Thesis (Ph. D.)--Auburn University, 2009. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 60-67).

The degree to which the two language systems of bilinguals are separate or interact in some way is a question that has been addressed using several methods. In the domain of morphosyntax, results from cross-linguistic priming have shown that bilinguals’ hearing a particular sentence structure in one of their languages increases the likelihood that they will produce a similar structure in the other language. This supports a shared-syntax model of bilingual processing in which bilinguals store similar structures together. Priming from L1 to L2 and L2 to L1 appears to be equally strong (Loebell & Bock, 2003; Schoonbaert, Hartsuiker, & Pickering, 2007) but researchers have not examined in depth how language experience and proficiency variables affect priming. Priming research has also indicated that only those structures that share word order across languages are subject to priming (Bernolet, Hartsuiker, & Pickering, 2007; Loebell & Bock, 2003) but has not addressed whether the verb features such as tense are subject to priming. This study addressed two questions: 1) How do the language experience measures of age of acquisition, current language use, and language proficiency affect priming? and 2) Are tense markings (future and present tenses) subject to priming across languages? Sixty-eight Spanish-English bilingual adults completed a priming task from English to Spanish and from Spanish to English and measures of language experience and proficiency. Results indicate that although passive structures prime across languages, the variables of age of acquisition, current use, and proficiency do not affect priming. This finding provides support for the shared-syntax model as a representation of bilingual language in speakers with diverse levels of experience and proficiency. Results also indicate that tense does not prime across languages. This suggests that languages have separate stores for tense markings. / text

Money helps people gain access to the goods and services they require and it allows people to make choices without having dependence on others (Boucher & Kofos, 2012). Prior research has shown that when the concept of money is activated, participants behave in a less pro-social but a more self-sufficient way in that while they are less likely to offer help to others or to donate money, they make more effort to complete a task and they prefer to work alone rather than to work collectively with others (Vohs, Mead & Goode, 2006). In this study, we examined the effect of money activation on the level of support for government goods and services programmes as a function of the type of programmes (welfare related or universal) and the participantʼs socioeconomic position (higher or lower). All participants performed a memory task before completing a government goods and services survey. The memory task consisted of either money-related words (for the money primed group) or neutral words not associated with money (for the control group). The results show that relative to the participants in the control group, those primed with money had lower levels of support for government programmes, and the effect was stronger for welfare related compared with universal programmes. No significant interaction between priming and socioeconomic status was found, although there was a trend that activating the concept of money had a larger effect for the higher socioeconomic group compared with the lower socioeconomic group. These results provided converging evidence to previous research that activating the concept of money could change peopleʼs attitudes and behaviours, inducing them to become less sensitive to othersʼ needs. Our results also extend the findings of prior research to the valuation of existing government programmes. They suggest that money activation could lower peopleʼs support for social policies, resulting in unintended consequences.

In the current work, the distinction between priming for associatively-related (AR) and unassociated semantically-related (SR) words is examined. Specifically, whereas associatively-related words demonstrate strong and robust priming effects when presented within the context of lexical-level tasks, generation of significant SR priming appears to require execution of an explicitly semantic task. This apparent levels-of-processing effect, if reflected in the neural-level implementation, would suggest that the mechanisms underlying priming may be localized to spatially and functionally distinct cerebral regions. In the first part of the thesis, an artifactual decision task (ADT) is developed and refined, which proved capable of producing strong immediate SR priming for auditorily presented words. Insertion of unrelated items between prime and target produced differential effects on priming, with AR targets exhibiting an interference effect that slowly diminished as more unrelated items were inserted. The nature of the underlying difference at the neural substrate level was subsequently examined in a PET imaging study, in which subjects performed an auditory ADT using both AR and SR words. Analysis of the cerebral blood flow patterns (CBF) using both simple contrasts, as well as partial least squares (PLS) analysis, found priming-related rCBF decreases in the left frontal regions, primarily within the inferior prefrontal cortex, and left-sided priming-related increases, localized primarily to the superior temporal gyrus, and the ventral temporal surface. Priming-related modulations were reflected by SR words, but not AR words. A behavioral PLS analysis demonstrated that an increase in both SR priming and AR interference effects was associated with increased activity with the extrastriate cortical regions, particularly on the left, suggesting a contribution of visual areas to both facilitatory and interference effects. The imaging findings are

No description available.

Recently Burton, Bruce and Johnston (1990) have presented an interactive activation and competition model of face recognition. They have shown that this IAC model presents a parsimonious account of semantic and repetition priming effects with faces. In addition, a number of new predictions are evident from the model's structure. One such prediction is highlighted by Burton et al. themselves - that for short prime-target stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) a face should prime the recognition of a target name (or vice versa), 'self priming'. This thesis examined this prediction and found that it held for a design in which items were repeated across prime type conditions (same, associated, neutral and unrelated). Further, cross (face prime/name target) and within-domain (name prime/name target) designs were found to produce equivalent degrees of self and semantic priming (Experiments 1 and 2). Closer examination of the Burton et al. model suggested that the effect of domain equivalence for self priming should not hold for a design in which the stimulus items are not repeated across prime type conditions (i.e. subjects are presented with each item only once). This prediction was confirmed in Experiments 3, 4, 5 and 6.The time courses of self and semantic priming were investigated in two experiments where the interstimulus interval (ISI) between prime and target, and prime presentation times were varied. The results proved difficult to accommodate within the Burton et al. model, but it is argued that they did not provide a sufficient basis on which to reject the model. Finally, the self priming paradigm was applied to the study of distinctiveness effects. Faces judged to be distinctive in appearance were found to produce more facilitation than faces judged to be typical in appearance. Similarly, caricatured representation of faces were found to produce more facilitation than veridical or anticaricatured representations. The results of the distinctiveness studies are discussed in terms of the Valentine's (1991a; 1991b) exemplar-based coding model and Burton, Bruce and Johnston's (1990) IAC implementation. It is concluded that the results of these experiments lend support to the Burton et al. model.

Laughter is a socioemotional cue that is characteristically positive and historically served to facilitate social bonding. Like other communicative gestures (e.g., facial expressions, groans, sighs), however, the interpretation of laughter is no longer bound to a particular affective state. Thus, an important question is how basic psychological mechanisms, such as early sensory arousal, emotion evaluation, and meaning representation, contribute to the interpretation of laughter in different contexts. A related question is how brain dynamic processes reflect these different aspects of laughter comprehension. The present study addressed these questions using event-related potentials (ERP) to examine laughter comprehension within a cross-modal priming paradigm. Target stimuli were visually presented words, which were preceded by either laughs or environmental sounds (500 ms versions of the International Affective Digitized Sounds, IADS). The study addressed four questions: (1) Does emotion priming lead to N400 effects? (2) Do positive and negative sounds elicit different neurocognitive responses? (3) Are there laughter-specific ERPs? (4) Can laughter priming of good and bad concepts be reversed under social anxiety? Four experiments were conducted. In all four experiments, participants were asked to make speeded judgments about the valence of the target words. Experiments 1-3 examined behavioral effects of emotion priming using variations on this paradigm. In Experiment 4, participants performed the task while their electroencephalographic (EEG) data were recorded. After six experimental blocks, a mood manipulation was administered to activate negative responses to laughter. The task was then repeated. Accuracy and reaction time showed a small but significant priming effect across studies. Surprisingly, N400 effects of emotion priming were absent. Instead, there was a later (~400–600 ms) effect over orbitofrontal electrodes (orbitofrontal priming effect, OPE). Valence-specific effects were observed in the early posterior negativity (EPN, ~275 ms) and in the late positive potential (LPP, ~600 ms). Laughter-specific effects were observed over orbitofrontal sites beginning approximately 200 ms after target onset. Finally, the OPE was observed for laughs before and after the mood manipulation. The direction of priming did not reverse, contrary to hypothesis. Interestingly, the OPE was observed for IADS only prior to the mood manipulation, providing some evidence for laughter-specific effects in emotion priming. These findings question the N400 as a marker of emotion priming and contribute to the understanding of neurocognitive stages of laughter perception. More generally, they add to the growing literature on the neurophysiology of emotion and emotion representation.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Texas at Dallas, 2007. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 111-117)

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2007. / The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file. Title from title screen of research.pdf file (viewed on November 1, 2007) Includes bibliographical references.

Konstanz, Univ., Diplomarbeit, 2006.